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The State Department is executing its reorganization plan, according to a memo obtained by Semafor on Thursday night — with mass layoffs expected to follow as soon as Friday.
“Secretary Rubio, at the direction of President Trump, has undertaken a historic reorganization of the State Department, which was thoughtfully and deliberately executed by department leadership,” a senior State Department official said in a statement. “The America First State Department will better serve the American people.”
The move comes after the Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with reorganization and downsizing by lifting a lower-court judge’s decision that had blocked the planned layoffs, which could number in the thousands.
It’s a decision that the department has long anticipated. In the department-wide memo obtained by Semafor, the deputy secretary for management and resources wrote that “the Department will soon be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force.”
After reduction in force notices are sent out, the memo adds, “the Department will enter the final stage of its reorganization and focus its attention on delivering results-driven diplomacy.”
“Following those notifications, Under Secretary, bureau, and independent office reporting line changes will take effect, consistent with the attached final organizational chart,” according to the memo.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio submitted the State Department’s reorganization proposal to Congress in May. That plan includes cutting around 15% of domestic staff, which could amount to 3,400 people in total, as well as closing multiple offices and consolidating others.
And the department prepared for its broader reorganization plan even as it waited for the Supreme Court to rule: Last month, the department requested resumes from civil service employees, and its Foreign Affairs Manual was recently updated to help with the reorganization.
There were concerns that the department might proceed with layoffs even before the court ruling, as a spokeswoman for the American Foreign Service Association laid out last month to Semafor. But at the time, one person familiar with the discussions confirmed plans to wait for the ruling before proceeding with layoffs.
The high court’s ruling has been expected inside the administration for weeks now; multiple agencies are gearing up to proceed with further cutbacks once that decision came down. However, the justices did not address specific agency plans in their decision this week, meaning that lower-court challenges to details of layoff plans are likely to proceed.
Notable
- Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations -Committee, is heading up a new bill aimed at forcing the State Department to notify Congress of upcoming layoffs before they occur, Semafor reported.
- The high court’s decision “may also usher in a new phase of more professionalized layoffs, as opposed to the rapid, error-filled slashing” that governed the early days of DOGE, according to the Washington Post.