by Dani Schulkin, Tess Bridgeman and Andrew Miller
Dani Schulkin (LinkedIn - X) is the Director of Democracy Initiatives at Just Security. She previously served as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and Senior Advisor to the Homeland Security Advisor at the White House. Her work spans national security, democratic governance, and administrative law.
Tess Bridgeman (Bluesky - LinkedIn - X) is co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. She previously served as Special Assistant to the President, Associate Counsel to the President, and Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC), and at the U.S. State Department in the Office of the Legal Adviser.
Andrew Miller (Bluesky - LinkedIn - X) served as the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 2022 to 2024.
April 22, 2025
Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a new proposed organizational chart today reflecting major structural changes to the State Department. The reorganization abolishes the most senior department position dedicated to human rights and civilian security, eliminates key equity and global accountability offices, and appears to complete the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The changes have not yet been implemented, and may change in the coming weeks and months. But if these changes are put in place, they will reflect a significant shift in how the United States engages with the world.
At bottom, the proposed restructuring appears intended to sideline rights-related offices and the funding they provide (several of the offices to be eliminated administer significant grant assistance) while further empowering regional, as opposed to functional, bureaus. According to Rubio’s statement: “Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.”
Though the changes to the department are significantly less extensive than many had feared – based in part on reports of cuts suggested by the Office of Management and Budget – they still appear to target some statutorily mandated positions. It remains unclear whether the administration plans to ask Congress to eliminate these positions, such as mandated ambassadors or envoys who may lack a home within the new structure.
More broadly, the cuts appear to be largely motivated by ideological considerations. Rubio’s accusation that the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), for example, “has become a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against ‘anti-woke’ leaders,” and his allegation that the department “occasionally veers into outright hostility to American interests,” come perilously close to flouting longstanding norms that the secretary of state and U.S. diplomats should refrain from overtly political acts. With the notable exception of Secretary Mike Pompeo during President Donald Trump’s first term, past secretaries had largely adhered to this standard of conduct.
Key changes if this proposal is implemented in full include:
Bureaus, Offices or Positions Eliminated:
Bureaus Opened or Renamed:
Bureaus and Offices Merged:
Foreign Assistance Restructured:
While a number of these changes are concerning, it has also long been true that the State Department bureaucracy could benefit from real reforms. To that end, the bipartisan State Department Reform Commission, established by Congress in 2023 (and fully funded in 2024), was tasked with examining “the changing nature of diplomacy and the ways in which the department can modernize to advance the interests of the United States.” And some close to the department have identified what they view as chronic problems in need of reform, such as outdated legal authorities, fragmented decision-making processes, and a rigid personnel system. But the question with any set of proposed reforms is whether they will reinvigorate the department in a way that strengthens America’s diplomatic capacity rather than diminishing it.
To understand what just happened – and what may lie ahead – it’s worth looking back at how the Department of State has evolved over the past four administrations.
Under President Barack Obama, the State Department operated with a broad mandate and six Under Secretaries overseeing key portfolios: Political Affairs, Economic Growth, Arms Control, Public Diplomacy, Management, and Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (known as “J” in bureaucratic parlance).
The structure emphasized:
During Trump’s first term, reorganization efforts were signaled but inconsistently implemented. Many leadership roles remained vacant or filled in an acting capacity. While the traditional structure of six Under Secretaries remained largely intact on paper, several programs were deprioritized or defunded in practice. In short, the first Trump administration reshaped the department not through formal reorganization, but through quieter means: attrition, vacancy, and sidelining.
Key developments included:
President Joe Biden inherited a State Department damaged by his predecessor’s neglect, but his administration largely restored and expanded upon Obama-era priorities. The department aimed to reaffirm its global leadership role, with a renewed commitment to multilateralism, equity, and institutional resilience.
The Biden-era structure featured:
The structure signaled a commitment to inclusive governance, multilateralism, and institution-building, though these objectives were complicated by the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.
That brings us to today’s news. The April 2025 reorganization chart signals a much more assertive restructuring effort.
Key changes include:
Elimination of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (J):
Removals or consolidations:
Additions and elevations:
In addition, Rubio’s emphasis on regional bureaus as the solution to bureaucratic logjams and inefficiencies is somewhat puzzling – not because regional bureaus are inherently less capable than their functional counterparts, but because they tend to already exercise more influence than the functional bureaus within the department, a source of recurring tension (there has long been debate on whether prioritization of bilateral and regional relationships, as opposed to cross-cutting challenges, best suits U.S. interests). Many of the department’s inefficiencies may have more to do with processes and procedures than with structure, raising important questions about whether this reorganization is truly designed to improve the functionality and efficiency of the department.
Taken together, these changes deprioritize human rights, equity, health, and civilian protection, circumscribing the remit of U.S. diplomacy and sidelining core American values.
The structure of the State Department is more than a bureaucratic diagram – it reflects how America sees its role in the world. Each administration’s organizational chart encodes its theory of diplomacy: what challenges it takes seriously, what values it promotes abroad, which priorities will be backed with institutional and financial resources, and who gets a seat at the table.
The Trump administration’s latest reorganization is not just a reshuffle. It’s a realignment of diplomatic priorities, one that seems set to constrain U.S. soft power, reduce institutional capacity on human rights, and centralize messaging under fewer leadership nodes.
At the same time, there are some aspects of the proposal that could increase efficiency without sacrificing diplomatic power, if implemented well. For example, as a general principle, absorbing some of the department’s many standalone offices into existing bureaus may be a sensible structural reform that could streamline reporting lines, reduce redundancy, and make offices easier to staff and manage.
Notably, the proposed reorganization slightly diverges from both the reported OMB suggestions for cuts for FY2026, which, for example, sought to eliminate the Africa Bureau, and a purported earlier draft of the reorg memo that called for replacing regional bureaus with multi-regional “corps” and closing large numbers of diplomatic missions around the world. This may suggest that Rubio is staking out bureaucratic ground early before budget decisions are finalized to defend at least some parts of the department.
In another departure from earlier memos, Rubio indicated that each regional bureau will be responsible for administering and programming humanitarian aid, a function that USAID performed in cooperation with PRM. The draft reorganization memo conceived of the creation of a Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which presumably would have absorbed remaining USAID employees. In the absence of a dedicated humanitarian operation at State, it is unclear what will happen to those employees, or the functions they performed.
Looking ahead, the devil, of course, is in the details. An org chart alone doesn’t tell us:
Congress has a vital oversight role to play. It should press for transparency in implementation – budget allocations, personnel decisions, and internal directives – and consider using appropriations, confirmation hearings, and legislative mandates to ensure that vital functions like human rights, equity, and crisis response are not sidelined under the banner of streamlining.
This moment isn’t just about structure – it’s about strategy, values, and whether American diplomacy will be capable of rising to a volatile global moment.