A leaked Trump administration draft executive order said to be circulating among US foreign diplomats suggests a fundamental overhaul of the US state department, including severe cuts to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus concerning climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.
The reforms, if implemented, would be among the largest reshufflings of the department since its establishment in 1789, Bloomberg has learned, having viewed a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times originally reported the draft. The US state department rejected the report, with a representative saying that the reporting is “entirely based on a fake document.”.
Earlier on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had referred to the reported revamp as “fake news” in an X post. “The nytimes is the victim of another hoax.
The proposals are also said to involve the scrapping of the Bureau of International Organizations, which deals with liaison with the United Nations and a reduction of diplomatic work in Canada.
The garrison state department would be reconfigured under the reform into four regional bureaus handling Indo-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Eurasia. But some number of “non-essential” embassies and consulates across sub-Saharan Africa would be shut down.
The New York Times stated that the planned executive order could be signed by Donald Trump this week and the amendments would come into force by 1 October.
The measure is intended to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the state department and “streamline mission delivery” while reducing “waste, fraud and abuse”, the news outlet quoted from the document. If the plans were to go through, they would represent a major rejection of the US allegiance to a multilateral world order.
A high-ranking African diplomatic official stated that details circulating within the state department regarding foreign service reforms to be announced would be less comprehensive than those outlined in the document.
One poster on a US foreign service-dedicated Reddit thread said they did not believe the changes would extend as far as the draft order. “I think this is being leaked as a red herring meant to make us appreciate a more restrained but still unpopular reorganization,” one user posted.
“It will be effectively immediately challenged and enjoined, and then ‘implementation’ will be strung out until Trump gets voted out.”
Nevertheless, any fundamental restructuring of the US foreign operations follows the Trump administration’s attempt to consolidate the US Agency for International Development (USAID) into the state department, reducing operations, and then restoring some, such as emergency food assistance programs.
The bureau of humanitarian affairs would “take on any mission-critical responsibilities formerly performed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”, the order states.
The leaked Sunday draft order would abolish the Bureau of African Affairs, the climate special envoy, the Bureau of International Organizations and the Office of Global Women’s Issues.
“Diplomatic relations with Canada will come under a much diminished team assigned as the North American Affairs Office (NAAO) in the Office of the Secretary,” as per the document. That entails a major reduction in the US embassy in the capital, Ottawa.
The shake-up would also involve US diplomatic personnel posted to regions for the length of their careers instead of being sent out in rotations across the globe. State department-granted Fulbright scholarships would be transformed as “exclusive for master’s-level study in national security fields” with priority in “critical” languages.
Fellowships affiliated with historically Black Howard University in Washington, would also be cancelled as part of the administration’s attempt to cut diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
All positions and responsibilities must be explicitly approved in writing by the President of the United States,” the order states, also requiring cessation of the foreign service exam for future diplomats. The new hiring standards, it stated, included “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”.
But the order is not the sole internal report making the rounds to recommend altering US diplomatic activity. Another recommends a 50% cut in the state department budget, and a third advocates reducing 10 embassies and 17 consulates.
The US state department employee population consists of 13,000 foreign service members, 11,000 civil service employees, and 45,000 locally employed staff at over 270 diplomatic missions abroad, says its website.
