\n The firings will affect 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers in Washington, DC, an internal notice seen by CNN said. It comes as the State Department implements a drastic reorganization as part of the Trump administration\u2019s broader efforts to shrink the federal government.\n <\/p>\n
\n Those fired on Friday worked on issues like countering violent extremism; helping Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover; educational exchanges; and issues related to women\u2019s rights, refugees and climate change.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hundreds of offices and bureaus are being eliminated or altered as a result of the restructuring that began to be implemented on Friday. The layoff notices, issued via email, came out as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was of Washington, DC, on a flight back from an overseas trip to Malaysia.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cNearly 3,000 members of the workforce will depart as part of the reorganization,\u201d the notice said. That number includes people who are being fired as well as those leaving voluntarily.\n <\/p>\n
\n As the layoffs happened Friday, notes of support popped up around the halls of the Washington, DC, headquarters, thanking fired employees for their service. Signs calling on remaining colleagues to \u201cresist fascism\u201d and \u201cremember the oath you vowed to uphold\u201d were also seen in the building.\n <\/p>\n
\n At the end of the day, employees lined around the entrance lobby and the sidewalks outside of the State Department to \u201cclap out\u201d their fired coworkers. Those who lost their jobs emerged from the building, some crying, some holding boxes, to steady applause from colleagues and a growing crowd of supporters and demonstrators gathered for a rally outside.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThese firings were not done with dignity and respect, but I have walked out of the State Department with my head held high, alongside my civil service and foreign service colleagues,\u201d said Olga Bashbush, a career diplomat who was fired Friday. She told CNN she had served as a diplomat for 20 years and just happened to have started last October in an office in DC that is being eliminated.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWithout our diplomacy professionals, we are going to have those forever wars that Congress and the United States and the president have said that they don\u2019t want to be in,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are here to serve and protect, and I\u2019m still willing to serve and all of my colleagues here today are willing to serve.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Former State Department officials and Democratic lawmakers who spoke at the rally condemned the firings, echoing that they will take a toll at a time when the role of diplomats and foreign affairs experts is particularly important as the Trump administration tries to broker ends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.\n <\/p>\n
\n They also leveled sharp criticisms of the broader reorganization, which includes sweeping changes to focus on the Trump administration\u2019s priorities, such as reducing immigration to the US and promoting the administration\u2019s worldview, with less emphasis on protecting and promoting human rights across the globe.\n <\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Trump administration officials have defended the reorganization, arguing it was necessary to make the \u201cbloated\u201d agency more effective and aligned with the president\u2019s priorities.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIn connection with the Departmental reorganization first announced by the Secretary of State on April 22, 2025, the Department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,\u201d Friday\u2019s notice said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cHeadcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities,\u201d it said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Foreign service officers who are given \u201cReduction in Force\u201d (RIF) notices on Friday will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days before formally losing their jobs, according to the notice. Most civil servants will be placed on leave for 60 days before their firing takes effect, the notice said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Rubio on Thursday said the reorganization was being implemented in \u201cprobably in the most deliberate way of anyone that\u2019s done one.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n A senior State Department official, when asked for an estimate of how much money the firings would save taxpayers, could not provide a specific answer but said the budget request for the next fiscal year \u201creflects substantial savings.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The official said the RIF plan \u201clooked at the functions that were being performed, not at individuals.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf a particular function was being performed that was no longer aligned with what the department was going to be doing going forward, that function was being eliminated,\u201d the official said Thursday. \u201cIt was personnel agnostic.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The firings are impacting both members of the civil and foreign service in Washington, DC. Foreign service officers are often highly trained, speak multiple languages, and serve around the world on behalf of the US. If they were working in a now-eliminated office on May 29, the day Rubio approved the reorganization plan, they may be cut.\n <\/p>\n
\n There aren\u2019t plans for cuts at overseas posts as of now, the senior State Department official said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIn less than six months, the U.S. has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations,\u201d a statement from the American Foreign Service Association said Friday.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere were clear, institutional mechanisms available to address excess staffing, if that had been the goal. Instead, these layoffs are untethered from merit or mission,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThey target diplomats not for how they\u2019ve served or the skills they have, but for where they happen to be assigned. That is not reform.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe stand with the entire State Department workforce and with every American who understands that professional, non-partisan diplomacy is not expendable. It is essential,\u201d it said.\n <\/p>\n
\n This story has been updated with additional reporting.\n <\/p>\n
\n CNN\u2019s Dalia Abdelwahab and Scott Pisczek contributed to this report.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The State Department began firing more than 1,300 people on Friday as part of a dramatic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-3328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}