State Department employees brace for Friday layoffs

Inside the State Department, employees are packing up their belongings in anticipation of a reorganization and reduction in force that is expected to cut nearly 2,000 jobs. The significant cuts and reorientation of the department’s mission will cripple the agency’s work to promote democracy, combat human rights abuses, and negotiate conflict resolution.

The proposed reorganization submitted to Congress was supposed to be completed by July 1, but a federal lawsuit filed by labor unions blocked the proposed reorganization and reduction in force, or RIF, plans across 22 agencies. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court lifted that injunction. While it did not rule on the legality of the reorganization plans at State or any other agency, it paved the way for massive cuts across the federal government to take effect. If Secretary of State Marco Rubio proceeds with the cuts and changes on Friday, as workers at the agency expect, it will be an immediate result of the Supreme Court’s intervention.

Those hardest hit will be employees at bureaus that focus on democracy, human rights, and conflict resolution, according to the agency’s plans. For example, the administration plans deep cuts at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which supports pro-democracy civil society groups around the world, and then to use what is left of the bureau for rightwing ideological pursuits, such as the administration’s allegations of free speech abuses in Europe.

State Department employees say the changes will be devastating, particularly when coupled with the destruction of USAID and the billions of dollars in grants that are being shut off, both abroad and to United States based non-governmental organizations. “For those of us in the conflict prevention and stabilization space, those of us in the human rights space, and those of us in the mass atrocity prevention and accountability space,” one State Department employee told Mother Jones, “it ends the entire industry in the United States.”

Texts, screenshots, and rumors spreading through the State Department have prepared employees for what is coming—and, after an official email Thursday confirming a RIF “in the coming days,” many believe it will come Friday. Around 9:30am, they expect an announcement that the reorganization plan has taken effect. This will be followed, employees believe, by RIF notices between 10am and 12pm. Around 3pm, employees expect to receive financial information such as whether they will first be put on administrative leave. Workers expect to lose access to internal systems and the building by the end of the day.

An employee at the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations expects their entire office to be eliminated tomorrow, in accordance with the reorganization plan. “In this administration, they’re big on getting deals done and taking credit,” said an employee in the bureau, who asked not to be named. “You have India-Pakistan, you have Gaza ceasefires, you have this Rwanda-DRC deal—but it takes a lot more than just the high level handshake. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes that has to be done to make sure these agreements are implemented and all that capacity is going away.”

One of the most dramatic hits is coming to DRL, which is currently overseeing 391 grants totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, one employee told Mother Jones. “They are RIFing all of us who actually understand what foreign assistance management at the State Department is,” said a DRL employee, who asked for anonymity. As a result, they said, congressionally-mandated funding may fail to go out to human rights and civil society groups around the globe. As a result, this person expects lawsuits over the DRL cuts.

These funds helped Americans, says the DRL employee. As the “biggest donor of democracy and human rights assistance around the world for the last few years,” this employee said, DRL helped create stable conditions for American businesses and nurtured pro-American sentiment—things that help enable access to foreign markets and critical minerals. “Once we’re gone, there is going to be a vacuum, and there are going to be malign actors that fill this vacuum,” including China and local radical and terrorist groups.

Expecting criticism for effectively erasing the last of the government’s democracy and human rights work abroad, the State Department drafted a “press guidance” document dated July 7 on how to defend the plan and Rubio in particular. The document, obtained by Mother Jones, cites broad goals of disempowering “unelected bureaucrats…pushing ideologically driven policies.” Rather than actually defend the plan, the document provides talking points that attack Democrats and progressives, shifting the story away from the Trump administration’s actions.

The document alleges that the Obama and Biden administrations used foreign assistance to push radical ideologies abroad. Biden, the press guidance alleges, used foreign aide to “bully countries into accepting so-called transgender rights” while ignoring “the wholesale slaughter of Christians.” It calls Biden’s proclamation of Easter Sunday of last year as Transgender Day of Remembrance “sickening.” In fact, Biden scheduled a Transgender Day of Visibility for every March 31 back in 2021, and in 2024 that happened to fall on Easter Sunday. Biden commemorated Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20—nowhere near Easter.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the guidance memo, or any pending cuts.