Trump wants to shrink the State Department’s size, reach and focus
Plans call for fewer embassies, cuts to programs to build goodwill abroad and more focus on immediate U.S. interests.
President Donald Trump wants to radically shrink the State Department — leaving it with fewer diplomats, a smaller number of embassies and a narrower remit that critics argue could hand China wins across the world.
The Trump administration, fueled by Elon Musk and his acolytes, appears determined to focus the department on areas such as transactional government agreements, safeguarding U.S. security and promoting foreign investment in America. That means cutting back or eliminating bureaus promoting traditional soft power initiatives — such as those advancing democracy, protecting human rights, supporting scientific research or generally fostering goodwill abroad.
The changes would amount to a historic restructuring of the storied department whose work and scope has expanded over the decades to include a variety of efforts to bolster American influence abroad, ranging from helping countries defend their critical networks from hackers to advocating for people with disabilities.
Some of these ideas have been telegraphed in public orders and statements from Trump and others. Additional details about the strategy and what will be cut were described to POLITICO by a person familiar with internal State Department discussions and a former U.S. official with ties to the Trump team. POLITICO also reviewed private documents that provide insight into the plans, which remain fluid. Several people were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
Supporters say the shakeup would lead to a more focused but still flexible Foreign Service that would better serve U.S. interests.
“Substantial changes at the State Department are necessary to cut down on the bloated federal bureaucracy,” said Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who added in a statement that he had “personally experienced the challenges of an unresponsive and dismissive State Department.”
But critics say the reforms could damage the U.S. long term, especially as it goes head-to-head with an ambitious China. The communist-led country has in recent years surpassed the United States in its number of diplomatic facilities around the world, expanding its foreign influence as America’s dwindles.
The Trump administration, instead, is “going to dramatically shrink the ambit of American diplomacy, dramatically shrink the purpose and the practice of our diplomacy and return it, if not to the 19th century, at least pre-World War II,” said Tom Shannon, a former senior State Department official who served under Republican and Democratic presidents.
While it’s not clear yet how many embassies would be closed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on board with cutting a significant number, the person familiar with the internal discussions said.
The State Department Executive Secretariat has asked the Defense Department, the CIA, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, to rank U.S. embassies in order of importance to their work, according to a State Department official who has seen the request. That official and a second State official said the Pentagon has tasked combatant commands around the world to report back with their respective lists.
The first official said the departments and agencies were to score embassies on a zero to 10 scale (10 being the most important). A quarter of the embassies in each region must be given scores between zero and two; a quarter must score from three to five; and half can receive scores from six to 10, the person said. The criteria to be considered include the department or agency’s overall budget devoted to its presence at the embassy, including for facilities maintenance and the importance of the embassy in the agency or department’s policy priorities, the official said.
POLITICO also obtained a list of potential consulates that could be cut. The targets mentioned are in Rennes, Lyon, Strasbourg, and Bordeaux in France; Dusseldorf, Leipzig, and Hamburg in Germany; Florence, Italy; Ponta Delgada, Portugal; and Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Embassy cuts are more complicated than consulate closures in part because many embassies house overseas functions of other branches of the U.S. government, including trade and even agriculture offices. If carried out, however, the changes could mean more embassies would cover multiple countries, a set-up that already exists in some places, such as the Caribbean.
Representatives of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has taken the lead in helping Trump cut the size of the federal workforce, are driving the planning. Trump also has issued executive orders that signal the shifts that lay ahead for the State Department — efforts that go well beyond plans for it to subsume the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Many of the new Trump administration’s foreign policy priorities can be gleaned from its effort to dismantle USAID. At that agency, DOGE has slashed programs that promote good governance, democracy, education and general economic development but is keeping some that deal with health issues and emergency humanitarian aid, according to emails, spreadsheets and other documents seen by POLITICO. The Supreme Court is likely to review a legal challenge to the USAID funding cuts.
The USAID cuts suggest the State Department’s bureau that focuses on human rights and democracy could get scaled down if not axed.
Elon Musk holds a chainsaw as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Maryland. | Jose Luis Magana/AP
Trump’s anti-immigration stances also suggest that the State Department bureau that focuses on migration and refugees could be scuttled or cut back.
If
the trend continues, other State bureaus that could be in danger
include the Educational and Cultural Affairs bureau; the Conflict and
Stabilization Operations bureau; the bureau of Oceans and International
Environmental and Scientific Affairs. The latter could face suspicion
over its climate change-related work, as such programs are not a
priority for Trump.
According to the person familiar with the internal discussions, the economic affairs bureau will likely be kept, given Trump’s often transactional view of the world and interest in promoting foreign investment in the U.S.
The person also said that the consular affairs division — which carries out work such as visas, passports and helping Americans stranded overseas — will remain a critical pillar of the State Department. Still, the individual said, that section will see some staffing cuts.
James Hewitt, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, justified changes at State by pointing to America’s broader finances. “Well, we are $36 trillion in debt,” he said.
In a statement, the State Department press office insisted it was following presidential directives on “workforce optimization” and assessing its “global posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people.”
The State-related proposals remain tentative, especially amid court challenges to DOGE’s sweeping authority. Some major parts of the State Department are required by legislation, which could make restructuring tricky. And details, such as exactly how many embassies to close, could vary as discussions unfold and logistics make change hard.
Whatever diplomatic outposts and initiatives are left are likely to be staffed by many fewer people. As POLITICO has previously reported, Rubio is on board with at least a 20 percent cut to staffing at the State. And ambassadors overseas have been asked to prepare data on their staff in anticipation of reductions, multiple U.S. diplomats have already confirmed to POLITICO. The department has suspended or canceled some Foreign Service testing to comply with Trump’s broad hiring freeze imposed across the government, and it’s not clear if or when a new crop of U.S. diplomats will be onboarded.
Roughly two-thirds of the State Department’s estimated 75,000 employees are local hires working for U.S. missions overseas. Such foreign nationals are easier to lay off than U.S. civil and Foreign Service officers, who have more legal protections, but all the groups will see some cuts, the person familiar with the talks said. Rubio is expected to soon announce that several hundred employees deemed to be on probation will lose their jobs, according to two State Department officials familiar with the plans.
Trump this month issued an executive order calling for “reforms in recruiting, performance, evaluation and retention standards” for the Foreign Service. The changes would include revamping the Foreign Affairs Manual and other bedrocks of U.S. diplomacy.
The executive order appeared aimed at creating a more pliable group of State Department employees who are easier to fire.
A former senior State Department official warned that it could stop many diplomats from offering dissenting views, either in routine analytical work in embassies or via the official “Dissent Channel,” which sends such views directly to the secretary of State. Discouraging dissent could endanger top U.S. officials’ ability to make well-informed decisions, the former official said.
Staffers and offices that engage in work related to diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — are being cut across the government, including at State. It’s not clear how the anti-DEI philosophy will affect some special envoy offices at State, such as ones that advocate for disability rights or women’s issues.
That said, special envoy offices have proliferated in recent years, in part due to congressional mandates, and are likely to be trimmed back overall.
It’s also possible that the administration may allow some bureaus or offices to continue to exist on paper but never fill their positions.
“Even statutory departments and functions have significant room for discretionary cuts to staffing and budgets,” the person familiar with the discussions said.
Still, the Trump administration may find that it is harder to staff up if it later decides to restore slashed programs.
“They’re taking a lot of steps now that are going to be pretty hard to reverse engineer,” warned a former Biden administration official, who was granted anonymity because they were worried about facing retaliation from the Trump team.
Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.