The fellowship: how Trump loyalists are taking over the US state department
Critics say competent foreign service veterans are being purged in favour of a ‘Maga deep state’Guy Chazan in New York
May 25, 2025
There
was widespread shock in Washington last month when Lew Olowski, a lowly
and little-known official, was appointed acting director-general of the
US foreign service — one of the state department’s most senior
leadership posts.
A
former national security lawyer, Olowski entered the foreign service
just four years ago. In his new job, which usually goes to a veteran
diplomat, he is, in effect, head of human resources at one of the
biggest US government agencies
It
was like “placing a junior military officer . . . in charge of the
Pentagon’s personnel system”, said AFSA, the foreign service’s labour
union.
But
Olowski had one thing going for him: his membership of the Ben Franklin
Fellowship (BFF), a conservative-leaning network of retired and serving
diplomats that has made big inroads into the state department since
President Donald Trump re-entered the White House.
The
BFF insists it is non-partisan but makes no bones about its support for
Trump’s America First agenda. In a blog post late last year, Phil
Linderman, its chair, said the organisation’s role was to steer
careerists at the state department “towards diplomacy that promotes
American sovereignty, strong national borders, fair trade practices, and
scepticism about multilateralism”.
Linderman
said that “Trump-aligned and conservative FSOs [foreign service
officers] and civil service staff are a distinct minority in state, but
they are there”. Such officials are now being promoted to top posts
across the department.
The
FT has identified 11 BFF fellows who have assumed senior roles at the
state department since Trump’s inauguration. One of them is Christopher
Landau, US ambassador to Mexico during Trump’s first term, who was
appointed deputy secretary of state in March.
But
fellows have also been tapped for roles ranging from acting
under-secretaries to deputy assistant secretaries and senior bureau
officials — a remarkable success rate for an organisation that was only
created last year.
One
official said that for many of the BFF fellows now being promoted,
“their main — and primary — qualification is that they agree with
Trump’s agenda”.
“State is eroding itself from the inside out,” the person said.
Some
have even described the BFF as the “Maga deep state” — a designation
Simon Hankinson, one of the fellowship’s founders, rejects.
“For
us the absolute last thing we’d ever want to do would be to
re-establish a deep state — that’s exactly what we’re against,”
Hankinson, a former state department official who is now a senior
research fellow in the border security and immigration centre at the
Heritage Foundation, told the Financial Times.
“And the _expression_ Maga carries such baggage.”
He
also dismissed suggestions from critics of the BFF that it was made up
of disgruntled white foreign service officers who felt victimised by the
state department’s diversity, equality, inclusion and accessibility
policies. One official called it “the revenge of the underperforming
white male”.
Hankinson
said it was clear that “women have been promoted at a higher rate than
men for the last 20 years” at the state department, but he insisted he
did not want to simply replace one form of discrimination with another.
“What
we would really like to see is a return to meritocracy and equality of
opportunity, as opposed to equality of outcomes,” he said.
But
the fellowship’s founders are proud of its growing influence, saying
they want to emulate the success of the Federalist Society, the
conservative network which supplied many of Trump’s judicial nominees
during his first term.
In his blog post Linderman said the BFF’s organisers were “following the playbook” of the Federalist Society.
“It’s definitely a model we’re bearing in mind,” said Hankinson.
The
personnel changes at Foggy Bottom, the Washington neighbourhood where
the state department is headquartered, have passed largely unnoticed by
the wider public, with other developments at the agency garnering much
greater attention.
These
include the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development,
the 10,000-strong agency with a $44bn budget that had become a symbol of
American soft power.
There
has also been widespread dismay in the US foreign policy establishment
at the state department’s collusion in Trump’s deportation programmes
and the arrest of students accused of involvement in campus protests.
Marco Rubio, secretary of state, has boasted of revoking thousands of
student visas since the change in government.
But
the personnel changes have also raised concerns. Gregory Meeks, the
ranking Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, has accused
Rubio of “replacing seasoned professionals with political loyalists,
undermining one of the core principles of the Foreign Service”.
One
of the most glaring examples, he said, was the appointment of Olowski,
who once worked as general counsel for Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller
News Foundation, as senior bureau official of the Bureau of Global
Talent Management. He replaced Marcia Bernicat, a seasoned diplomat who
is Black.
Rubio
“appointed an entry-level officer with one overseas tour to lead Global
Talent Management, replacing a two-time ambassador with decades of
service, who happened to be an African American woman,” Meeks said.
“This isn’t about race — it’s about experience, integrity, and basic
qualifications.”
The state department did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump
has never concealed his contempt for a “deep state” he claimed blocked
him during his first term in office, and has made clear his desire to
align the state department more closely with his Maga goals, including
by firing senior bureaucrats he deems disloyal.
In
a statement after his inauguration, the White House ordered the state
department’s “policies, programmes, personnel and operations” to be
brought in line with an “American First foreign policy, which puts
America and its interests first”.
That
process began even before Trump began his second term, with his
transition teams asking large numbers of senior career diplomats to step
down from their roles.
The
purge was considered unusual: most political appointees resign when a
new president takes office, but career FSOs tend to stay in post from
one administration to the next.
Those
being shoved aside were “non-partisan public servants” with “decades of
experience serving Republicans and Democrats and are key to US national
security”, said Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator.
Some
of the political appointments have also raised eyebrows, even among
Republicans. Darren Beattie, who was tapped as acting under-secretary
for public diplomacy and public affairs in February, worked as a
speechwriter for Trump during his first term, but left his post in 2018
after it was reported that he had spoken at a conference attended by
white nationalists. Last year he declared on X that “competent white men
must be in charge if you want things to work”.
Rubio
defended Beattie’s appointment, saying he had been brought on board
“because he’s strongly committed to ending the censorship programs that
were being operated out of the state department”.
US
diplomats say privately that experienced career FSOs are now retiring
or resigning in large numbers, in part over concerns at political
developments at the agency.
“They’re haemorrhaging experts at a rate that’s just unprecedented,” said one.
“State is being taken over by dangerous radicals.”