State Department notifies Congress of reorganization plan with bigger cuts to programs and staff

WASHINGTON -- The State Department connected Thursday notified Congress of an updated reorganization of the monolithic agency, proposing cuts to programs beyond what had antecedently been revealed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a steeper 18% simplification of unit successful the U.S.

The planned changes, elaborate successful a notification missive obtained by The Associated Press, bespeak the Trump administration's propulsion to reshape American diplomacy and scale backmost the size of the national government.

The connection includes an adjacent higher simplification of home unit than the 15% initially floated successful April. The section besides is readying to destruct immoderate divisions tasked with oversight of America's two-decade engagement successful Afghanistan, including an bureau focused connected resettling Afghan nationals who worked alongside the U.S. military.

The missive sent to Congress by the State Department notes that the reorganization volition impact much than 300 bureaus and offices “to refocus connected halfway U.S. overseas argumentation objectives and the needs of modern diplomacy.” The section says it's eliminating offices it describes arsenic doing unclear oregon overlapping enactment and that Rubio “believes that effectual modern diplomacy requires streamlining this bloated bureaucracy.”

The papers is wide that the reorganization besides is intended to destruct programs, peculiarly those related to refugees and migration arsenic good arsenic quality rights and ideology promotion, that the Trump medication believes person go ideologically driven successful a mode that is incompatible with its priorities and policies. It says, without evidence, that specified offices “have proven themselves prone to ideological seizure and radicalism.”

Some of the bureaus acceptable to beryllium chopped see the Office of Global Women’s Issues and the State Department’s diverseness and inclusion efforts, which person been eliminated government-wide nether Trump. The missive says the women's issues bureau is being eliminated to “ensure that promoting women’s rights and empowerment is simply a precedence crossed the afloat scope of the Department’s diplomatic engagement.”

Efforts to chopped the department's Afghan programs received contiguous backlash from veterans groups and advocates who person spent the past 3 and a fractional years since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan moving to resettle and integrate Afghans into beingness successful the U.S.

“This is not streamlining,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy seasoned and caput of #AfghanEvac. “This is deliberate dismantling.”

CARE, which stands for the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, was created successful October 2021 successful the aftermath of the withdrawal. The bureau was designed to assistance Afghans, similar interpreters who aided the U.S. military, who were eligible for resettlement successful the U.S. owed to their enactment helping America during the war.

The State Department notification says its enactment volition beryllium “realigned” to the Afghanistan Affairs Office.

Over time, CARE was credited with streamlining visa and migration processes that galore radical helping Afghans and Iraqis, who benefited from akin resettlement programs, said were overly bureaucratic, opaque and near at-risk Afghans waiting for acold excessively agelong connected programs specifically intended to assistance them.

In December, then-President Joe Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a proviso authorizing the CARE bureau for 3 years, but ever since President Donald Trump took office, concerns person loomed implicit the office’s future.

“Eliminating it — without nationalist explanation, modulation planning, oregon reaffirmation of ngo — is simply a profound betrayal of American values and promises,” VanDiver added.