Rubio unveils major State Department overhaul
- MEE Staff
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Rubio said the State Department's bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was being axed after pushing for an arms embargo against Israel
The US State Department on Tuesday revealed a sweeping restructuring plan that will cut positions and scale back human rights offices, as part of US President Donald Trump's approach to remake American diplomacy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio billed the plan as a major shake-up to streamline the department, which many US conservatives say has been overtaken by so-called "woke" ideology.
"The Department is bloated, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great-power competition," Rubio said in a statement, referring to the US rivalry with China.
"The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America's core national interests," he added.
One of the key changes will be eliminating the office of the undersecretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights. The division is to be replaced by a new office of "coordination for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs".
The office is slated to take over the work of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as well, which was shuttered by the Trump administration earlier this year. More than 80 percent of USAID's programmes have been cancelled, and hundreds of USAID workers posted abroad with their families were dismissed.
While other bureaus that work on human rights and refugees are still included in Rubio's new plan, they will be subordinated to the new office on foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs.
In a Substack post describing the State Department's new structure, Rubio said the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor had pushed for an American arms embargo against Israel and was attacking "anti-woke" leaders in Poland, Hungary and Brazil.
Rubio also accused the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration of facilitating "mass migration around the world, including the invasion on our southern border."
Offices axed
Overall, the plan would reduce the number of offices within the State Department from 734 to 602 and end 700 Washington-based positions for Foreign Service and Civil Service employees, according to a State Department internal fact sheet.
Other offices that would be axed by Rubio include the Bureau of Energy Resources, the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the Office of International Religious Freedoms, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Office of Global Women's Issues, among others.
The blueprint, however, stops short of the more sweeping changes that the New York Times and other news outlets reported Rubio was considering earlier in April.
The reports said Rubio's plan included abolishing the entire agency in charge of policy in Africa and closing US embassies in sub-Saharan Africa. Under that plan, the State Department would also implement a regionalist approach to diplomacy, creating four new offices for Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Indo-Pacific to oversee global affairs.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that at least 10 embassies and 17 consulates could be closed across the globe.
The Middle East was generally unaffected by the closures, but a draft did call for reducing costs at the US embassy and consulate in Baghdad and Erbil, respectively.
Rubio called the previous report "fake news."
Earlier in April, the White House's Office of Management and Budget introduced a proposal to gut the State Department’s budget by almost 50 percent, and eliminate the department's funding for the United Nations.
The State Department document released on Tuesday did not mention UN funding.
Copyright © 2014 - 2025. Middle East Eye. All rights reserved.
