The plan, which Congress has been notified about, would eliminate 132 of the department’s 734 bureaus and offices, an internal State Department memo seen by Reuters said. Undersecretaries will submit plans to reduce staff by 15 per cent, the document added.
It was not immediately clear how many people would be laid off as a result of the revamp, but a report in online publication the Free Press, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X, said an additional 700 positions would be eliminated in the shuttered offices.
An internal working group will lead implementation of the reorganization and develop detailed plans for each part of the department by Jul 1, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote to staff in an internal email seen by Reuters.
The shake-up comes as part of an unprecedented push by Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk to shrink the federal government, saying US taxpayer money is misspent. The effort has led to the firing of thousands of government employees.
“In its current form, 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.
