Last week, the New York Times ran a long article headlined, “Rubio Announces Major Cuts at State Dept., Accusing It of ‘Radical’ Ideology.” The new Secretary of State will collapse the agency’s unfathomable number of Byzantine bureaus and offices from 734 to 602, or -18%, and slash domestic staff levels by -15%. The result will be what the Times called “a drastic restructuring of the department.”
It would be fair to call the State Department the Deep State HQ. Its thousands of career bureaucrats are deeply embedded in globalist organizations like the WHO, WEF, IMF, United Nations, etc. It is often downright hostile to nationalist, populist, and sovereignty-first policies— not just here in the US, but all over the world.
The State Department functions as a policy-continuity machine. Trump spent scads of time scraping against State Department barnacles during Trump 1.0. Among other things, it undermined his efforts to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords and the WHO, it slow-walked and ignored his big diplomatic shifts, and leaked like a broken sieve whenever his policies departed from globalist dogma.
In other words, it is ripe for restructuring.
In a separate articleabout Trump’s first 100 days, the New York Times printed a graph that basically proves with a single statistic that President Trump has so far kept the State Department on lockdown. There have been fewer State Department press briefings under Trump 2.0 than any other modern administration:
The Times reported that the newly announced State Department overhaul is part of a larger Trump initiative “to reduce and reshape the government to a degree unseen in generations.” And they never saw it coming. Secretary Rubio said Foggy Bottom’s new comprehensive plan re-focuses the agency on “America’s core national interests.” In other words, transgender musicals and swanky Davos conferences are out.
In last week’s announcement, Rubio cited one example: the “bureau for democracy, human rights and labor.” He explained it had become a vendetta platform that left-wing activists used to wage soft wars against conservative foreign leaders, such as in Poland, Hungary, and Brazil. Another awful example, the “bureau of population, refugees and migration,” sent millions of taxpayer dollars to NGOs that had promoted mass migration all over the world, including “the invasion on our southern border.”
The Times struggled to find a downside. “Some State Department veterans,” the Gray Lady painfully admitted, “have long conceded that the department, with its many offices and tens of thousands of employees in Washington and overseas, would benefit from judicious streamlining.” The only concrete complaint it could muster was that DOGE employee Edward Coristine, 19, whose gamer handle is “Big Balls,” is currently assigned to the State Department.
Democrats can’t stand the idea, of course, because Trump. The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), complained without evidence that the restructuring had “less to do with streamlining the State Department and more to do with eviscerating American soft power.” Or maybe it’s both streamlining and eviscerating. Just saying.
Leaked restructuring memos cited by the Times suggested even bigger changes blinking on the radar, including potential budget cuts up to 50% and the possible closure of dozens of embassies, consulates, and other overseas offices.
This long-overdue restructuring —that even critics agree was necessary— is another terrific example of Trump’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy. I’ve been thinking a lot about why no other president has ever tried anything of this scale, with the individual Cabinet heads obviously empowered to act independently and quickly make radical changes inside their agencies. I can offer two observations.
First, I think most Administrations are structurally cautious, because of the politics of bad optics. They don’t want some Cabinet officer going too far and embarrassing the Administration, which can derail more important initiatives, tying them up in some unwanted media firestorm. Thus, in times past, every off-script revision must be first vetted and approved by the White House before anyone can do anything, bogging reforms down in bureaucratic molasses.
That dynamic is clearly absent from Trump 2.0, which, understandably, surprised everyone. No previous administration has ever dared delegate so much authority to its political appointees.
Second, and perhaps explaining the first, all the new Cabinet members seem to be working off a common plan. Maybe it’s ‘Project 2025.’ Or maybe Project 2025 was just a decoy. Either way, if I’m right that there is a central plan, it keeps them all playing off the same page of the hymnal, reducing chances for absonant errors and discordant decisions.
What will the world look like without the U.S. State Department getting in everyone’s hair all the time? We may soon find out.
The NYT with the Gray Lady gone taking journalism with her has lost its ability to report news!!!!!!
I’D SAY OVER RIPE
As a state department contractor in the computer bureau, I hope they don’t cut too much. We do good work to keep everyone’s software running!
What is the software doing? Bet you don’t fully know. Chop, chop.
Everyone called Rubio “Deep state”. I am not seeing it.
It”s the greatest show on earth!