The Real Meaning of the State Department RIF

RIP—er, RIF, State Department as we knew you.

One of my early duties during my over two and a half decades working for the State Department was to “support” Secretary of State James Baker’s official visit to London.

I read up on current policy, made sure I had my passwords and combinations in hand in case they needed crucial documents from the embassy after hours, and shined my shoes. Baker traveled with a large party, taking up a whole floor in a very nice central London hotel. Then I got a taste of real Foreign Service life: My first task was to make sure every TV in all the rooms worked. After Baker arrived, I was to get the required wake-up time for each member of the staff and, at the conclusion of my overnight shift the next morning, call each to summon them to breakfast, despite the hotel having a very nice complimentary service that did just that same thing. Later I became known as “Ambassador to Harrod’s” after having to escort so many Mrs. Important Somebodies shopping while hubby was on a diplomatic business trip to the UK.

While there were of course better days, and things may have changed since I left, I can’t guarantee you that a Foreign Service officer (FSO; no doubt a “special assistant”) isn’t right now walking two steps behind some assistant secretary, carrying his briefcase for him. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t shed too many tears alongside those who claim recent staff cuts at State are the end of diplomacy or ceding territory to the Chinese or any such nonsense.

State is a bloated, corpulent, insular, risk-averse, academically inbred, stifling, overly bureaucratic, back-stabbing, stodgy, mid-20th century institution that lost its mojo after the Cold War ended; everyone who worked there would admit it if they weren’t afraid of the “corridor reputation” that drives promotions, assignments, and retirement gigs at think tanks and universities. In Senate testimony, the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio complained the State Department decision-making process was far too cumbersome. He described receiving a memo requiring 40 people to approve before it landed on his desk. “We can’t move at that pace in this world,” Rubio said.

The staff cuts give State perhaps its last chance to become useful in the foreign affairs community, or to forever watch the big flexes continue to go to the CIA, NSC, or military, while State is lucky to be assigned to check to see whether the TVs work in all the adults’ hotel rooms.

The history of this last chance began many institutions ago, as post–Cold War secretary after secretary would come into office ordering a third-party efficiency study, which was quickly ignored. They then added vertical stacks of offices designed to service pet projects and find new purpose. (Hillary was the worst, with whole sections of the building filled with offices frantic about women’s rights, LGBT stuff, and tin stoves for Africa, all mostly designed to provide B-roll footage for her upcoming presidential campaign.) Secretary Colin Powell arrived from the Pentagon aghast at the slowness of getting things done in Foggy Bottom, but was quickly consumed by the bureaucracy before he abandoned State in the worst pet project of all: staffing up the Iraq War reconstruction effort and Embassy Baghdad, then the world’s largest mission.

The more recent history starts in February of this year, when some 2,000 DOGE-adjacent RIF notices were sent out to domestic State employees. Those State employees, alongside people in nearly two dozen other agencies sued, claimed President Trump had no constitutional authority to fire Executive Branch employees like that. The cases found a sympathetic judge (on the West Coast, of course) who issued a nationwide injunction (of course) reprieving the workers for a few months.

Meanwhile, there were budget cuts. A hiring freeze. A freeze on the infamous FSO intake exam. About 1,400 employees resigned or retired “voluntarily.” State rewrote its own rules for issuing RIFs to allow it to eliminate employees by job title and work area, making it easier for the department to pick and choose which people would get the axe. Then, earlier this month, the constitutional case made its way to the Supreme Court, where 8–1 (Kentanji Brown Jackson dissenting—of course!), issued a decision saying Trump indeed did have the authority to fire. The RIFs followed three days later, on July 11.

A reported 1,107 local Washington-area civil service employees were RIFed, in addition to nearly 246 Foreign Service Officers currently on domestic assignments. Including semi-voluntary retirements and resignations, the total workforce reduction at State since Trump took office is about 3,000 people, some 15 percent of the total. “Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities,” the department said in a notice to staff.

Though State provided no statistical breakdowns, talk suggests impacted offices include the Bureau of Cyberspace and Policy, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Bureau of Energy Resources, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Multilateral Trade Affairs Office, Office of Agriculture Policy, Global (Climate) Change, and others, for a total of 132 offices within bureaus. It does not appear many RIFs—if any—touched one of State’s largest internal organizations, the Bureau of Consular Affairs. Consular controls the issuance and revocation of visas worldwide, as well as U.S. passports, both now firmly in line with Trump’s America First agenda.

Sources indicate personnel affected seem to have been pulled from all levels of experience, as the RIF was largely based on the job someone unfortunately held as of the cut-off of May 29. It is said on the FSO side high ranking as well as senior Foreign Service officers were included, and at least one domestically assigned ambassador and one person who was headed out to be a Deputy Chief of Mission abroad. State has signaled no further domestic reductions are planned at present, and has been coy about any serious plans to cut back diplomatic staffing abroad. (The latter is probably a mistake if cutting waste is the goal; see here. Domestic changes without changes overseas are little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the ship of State.)

Some employees seeking to retain their jobs will reach out to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a three-person panel that hears appeals to firings and other disciplinary actions the federal government takes against civil servants and FSOs. The problem is that the board has so far this year already received 11,166 appeals, about twice its typical workload. The board is also not fully staffed, ensuring a years-long backlog. Another Hail-Mary pass: The federal judge who first blocked Trump from implementing mass layoffs before the Supreme Court intervened said she plans to litigate the legality of individual agency workforce reduction plans. The FSO employees’ association created a defense fund for those headed to court to somehow try to reverse the RIF.

Back here on earth, it is best to ignore the Democratic crybabies saying this RIF will damage the U.S. on the world stage. There is still plenty of work to be done for real change at Foggy Bottom and meanwhile there are still plenty of State Department employees at work in line with the department’s new America First orientation, as opposed to its grasp-at-relevance purple-haired global orientation. No one likes to see decent people lose their jobs because they were inadvertently caught up in something bigger than themselves, but the changes at State are long overdue and very necessary if the institution is to survive as anything but America’s concierge abroad.

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