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US State Department tells staff planned layoffs to begin soon

11 July 2025 16:44 (UTC +04:00)

The State Department will start sending notices to members of its workforce impacted by the reorganization soon, the agency's top official for management said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration moves ahead with its plans to overhaul the U.S. diplomatic corps and cut jobs, APA reports citing Reuters.

"Soon, the Department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force," Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Michael Rigas said in an email to the workforce.

"Once notifications have taken place, the Department will enter the final stage of its reorganization and focus its attention on delivering results-driven diplomacy," Rigas said.

The move is the first step of a restructuring that Trump has sought to ensure U.S. foreign policy is aligned with his "America First" agenda. It will likely result in hundreds of job cuts including members of the elite foreign service who advocate for U.S. interests in the face of growing assertiveness from adversaries such as China and Russia.

No State Department official publicly said when the first notices for the planned layoffs would be sent, but the widespread expectation is for the terminations to start as soon as Friday.

The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to pursue the job cuts and the sweeping downsizing of numerous agencies, a decision that could lead to tens of thousands of layoffs while dramatically reshaping the federal bureaucracy.

Trump in February issued an executive order directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revamp the foreign service to ensure that the Republican president's foreign policy is "faithfully" implemented. He has also repeatedly pledged to "clean out the deep state" by firing bureaucrats that he deems disloyal.

Neither Rigas nor any other State Department official specified how many people would be fired but in its plans to Congress sent in May, the Department had proposed laying off nearly 1,900 employees of the 18,000 estimated domestic workforce. Another 1,575 were estimated to have taken deferred resignations.