The State Department will begin issuing layoff notices to employees via email “in the coming days” as a part of the Trump administration’s plans to downsize government, Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, told staff on Thursday in a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The memo did not detail the number of employees who would be let go but said “every effort has been made to support our colleagues who are departing.”
Uncertainty over the status of the plan has negatively impacted morale at the department, with some of the workforce exasperated and embittered with the plans to fire people at a time when many were asked to work additional hours to assist U.S. citizens seeking to flee the Middle East amid Israel’s war with Iran.
One State Department employee, speaking like some others on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal, told The Post last month that the push exposed how the department’s leadership “either doesn’t appreciate or just doesn’t care” about its workforce.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed Congress in May that the department planned to reduce its U.S. workforce by more than 15 percent — almost 2,000 people — as part of a sweeping reorganization intended to streamline what he has called a “bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources.” Separately, he has accused certain bureaus within the department of pursuing a “radical political ideology.”
President Donald Trump is a longtime critic of the State Department, dating back at least to his first term in office. Since he was re-elected, it has been clear that his second administration would target the department; the question was not whether cuts would happen but how big they would be.
This week, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to launch plans for mass firings and reorganizations at 19 federal agencies and departments while litigation continues.
The justices lifted a lower-court order that temporarily blocked plans to lay off thousands of federal workers, including at the State Department, because the administration did not first consult with Congress.
While the layoffs are deeply unpopular among career officials, some expressed mild relief that the court’s decision ended the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the department.
“The only thing worse than these layoffs was the uncertainty about these layoffs,” one State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters, told The Post.
