Rubio has announced a sweeping reorganization of the State Department with a plan of cutting more than 700 positions and eliminating 132 of 734 bureaus, which would reduce personnel by 15%, Town Hall reported.
The U.S. State Department, which oversees international diplomacy, had a $61.2 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
Rubio’s intention is clear. Get rid of State Department efforts that focus on liberal ideology and not on matters of core national interests and diplomacy worldwide.
Legal challenges to Rubio's announcement, which was made Tuesday, are sure to come, attorney Gerard Filitti of The Lawfare Project, said on American Family Radio Wednesday.
But will those legal challenges amount to anything?
Senior staff have been instructed to present implementation plans within 30 days with the hope that change will be in place by July 1, Town Hall reported.
“We are facing tremendous challenges across the globe. To deliver on President Trump’s America First Foreign Policy, we must make the State Department Great Again. In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Rubio said.
In the past 15 years, the State Department has seen “unprecedented” growth and with that growth has come soaring costs, Rubio said. That annual budget, a decade ago, was $51 billion.
What it hasn’t seen is a return on its investment, the Secretary of State said.
The problem is the State Department’s history, Filitti told show host Jenna Ellis.
It’s not hard to think of liberal leanings within government under Joe Biden for the last four years.
But not all areas of government are the same.
Liberal history of State Department
“The State Department is perhaps one of the most corrupt when it comes to being captured by the bureaucracy of the U.S. government,” Filitti said.
“It’s fair to say that a lot of what it has done overseas in its missions has been contrary to American policy, has been actually appeasing whether it's local warlords or helping economies in the Middle East to the disadvantage of America,” he said.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced its presence within the administration earlier this year by highlighting numerous examples of funding support for left-wing ideology initiatives through United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
USAID is a State Department program.
Among the projects it had been funding are a transgender clinic in India, left-leaning media outlets and other abortion, environmentalism and transgender initiatives.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced his Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) strategic plan on Nov. 14 of last year – oddly nine days after Donald Trump’s landslide victory over Democrat Kamala Harris.
“I am committed to advancing our security and prosperity by building a diplomatic corps that fully represents America in all its talent and in all its diversity with the skills to contend with 21st Century challenges,” Blinken said then.
Trump signed his executive order entitled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” on Jan. 20, his inauguration day.
However, the stroke of Trump’s pen hasn’t brought all states into compliance on all matters.
Activist and legal groups, elected officials and local jurisdictions have launched more than 150 lawsuits against the Trump administration since his second term began, Fox News reported.
So, what’s a few more?
“Over the last 10 years, I think we've come to expect lawfare with anything Donald Trump does. So, I guess there will be lawsuits filed,” Filitti said.
But he doesn’t expect successful legal challenges to the remaking of the State Department.
“The courts have increasingly sided with the administration in terms of its ability to fire people, and what makes the State Department unique is that foreign policy is one of those core functions of the presidency. It’s harder for people to argue that congressional oversight is needed when it comes to foreign policy or foreign agency,” Filitti said.
That gives the administration much more freedom of movement in reorganizing the State Department than it might have in other domestic agencies, Filitti said.
A rescue attempt for Voice of America
One domestic agency benefitting from a federal judge’s order on Tuesday was Voice of America (VOA).
VOA’s state mission is to “inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”
VOA described its content as “accurate, objective and comprehensive.”
The Trump administration disagreed.
A senior White House official told Fox News, “Voice of America has been out of step with America for years. It serves as the Voice for Radical America and has pushed propaganda for years now.”
The administration shuttered VOA earlier this year, a move that placed 1,300 employees on administrative leave. Washington, D.C., District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of Ronald Reagan, ordered that VOA be restored.
The administration is expected to appeal.
“The jurisdiction problem is one that we're seeing over and over again, with district court judges that are basically trying to put nationwide orders in place, especially when it comes to shuttering agencies and grabbing power where they don't seem to have any,” Filitti said.
He says the courts seems to be giving Trump room to operate but are also sending a message that he needs to slow down.
“The courts are sending Donald Trump a message that ultimately what he's doing is probably OK, but he needs to follow more process, the administration needs to follow more process than it has been.”
Focusing on business interests first
Back at the State Department, Filitti expects Rubio’s first plans to include assisting American business interests overseas.
“What we can hope for is there will be focus on breaking down barriers to trade, breaking down barriers to American entry into global markets, rather than pursuing these DEI initiatives or pursuing LGBTQ theatre studies in Ghana which we’ve seen under USAID. We don’t want the State Department to be engaged in programs that do nothing for American interests.”
The State Department should help America succeed economically first and foremost, Filitti said.
“I think we will see Trump reorganize in that direction,” he predicted.
