Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that his agency would undergo a massive reorganization effort, just days after denying the validity of a separate memo purporting to detail plans for a scaling-down of America’s diplomatic presence around the world.
In a blog post, the secretary wrote that last week’s closure of the Global Engagement Center (GEC) was part of a larger effort to streamline regional diplomatic functions and cut programs deemed to be “hostil[e] to American interests”.
“The problem is not a lack of money, or even dedicated talent, but rather a system where everything takes too much time, costs too much money, involves too many individuals, and all too often ends up failing the American people,” wrote Rubio in the lengthy statement posted to Substack.
He continued: “We will drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp, empowering the Department from the ground up. That means regional bureaus and our embassies will now have the tools necessary to advance America’s interests abroad because region-specific functions will be streamlined to increase functionality.”
“Redundant offices will also be removed, and non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist. All non-security foreign assistance will be consolidated in regional bureaus charged with implementing U.S. foreign policy in specific geographic areas.”
Rubio identified the GEC as a key example of a State Department program he considers misaligned with American interests — the office was responsible for identifying propaganda and misinformation from state and non-state actors deemed to be hostile to US interests, but was blamed by the secretary for censoring the speech of conservatives. The GEC has been a target of conservatives for years; a 2023 report from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee identified it as responsible for supporting the Election Integrity Partnership, a project led by researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington. Conservatives decried the effort, which regularly refuted GOP election fraud conspiracists such as Mike Lindell.
The secretary went on to identify other targets of the impending changes which he linked to various projects and causes the Trump administration did not support: the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which he accused of waging “vendettas” against far-right European leaders, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — which he blamed for fueling the stream of migrants to US borders.
His press secretary, Tammy Bruce, went on to characterize the changes as an effort to streamline the department — not reduce its functionality — at a news briefing Tuesday afternoon.
The agency, Bruce told reporters, had grown “quite bloated, unable to move” and was “unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission” due to redundancies and inefficient structures preventing offices with related interests from working together.
Rubio’s redesign was about “returning the state department to its traditional base. To its nature of human diplomacy,” she continued.
“Bottom line is: this now moves into something that is more accountable, more specific, easier to describe, easier to ask questions about, and easier effectively to – for everyone involved, here at the State Department and at the embassies and consulates involved – more accessible and more transparent,” said Bruce.
Over the weekend, a leaked draft of an executive order viewed by The Independent and first reported by The New York Times indicated broader plans by the Trump administration to cut a much more significant scope of the agency’s issue portfolio than either Bruce or Rubio has publicly stated.
The State Department has denied the veracity of that leaked draft order, which would close down most of the department’s embassies on the African continent and consolidate offices dealing with African geopolitical affairs into a White House-led team with a focus on just a few issues including counterterrorism.
Under that leaked plan, all “positions and duties” related to foreign aid, which Bruce has repeatedly said remains a priority for the Trump administration, would require direct approval from the president going forward.
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