Supreme Court Decision Triggers Mass Layoffs, Significant Structural Overhaul at State Department

The State Department is beginning a round of cuts that will reduce its workforce by 15 percent.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the ability to move forward with plans to reduce the federal workforce, according to CBS.

Layoffs will begin on Friday. About 1,800 jobs are expected to be cut as part of a reorganization of department staff and offices.

Some employees were told that they should report in person on Friday with all government-issued items, such as laptops, phones, diplomatic passports and any other government property.

“We took a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

The department initially proposed the cuts in April but had to wait while the courts decided if it could move forward.

“We have to do what’s right for the mission and what’s right for the American people,” a State Department official said.

“There has been a delay — not to our interests, but because of the courts,” department representative Tammy Bruce said, according to Fox News.

“It’s been difficult when you know you need to get something done for the benefit of everyone.”

In a Thursday briefing posted on the department’s website, Bruce said the reorganization of which the job cuts are a piece will ensure that the “department moves at the speed of relevancy and restores the department to its roots of results-driven democracy.”

She indicated the department “has grown unsustainable over the years with elements related to the Cold War and other elements that we have moved beyond but still stayed — an aspect that you have a size and people working on things that are not within the framework of the modern age or of what we want to accomplish.”

“And certainly the decision that the American people made last year that Donald Trump’s vision about what the world should be in the context of how America can be great again and what we can contribute as Americans, that when something is too large to operate, too bureaucratic to actually function and to deliver projects or action, it has to change,” she said.

Bruce noted that years of sprawl hurt the department, adding that cuts are “not the fault of the people who were misled, effectively, by certain administrations that grew this department into being irrelevant.”

“We must be able to contribute to a world that we’ve seen in the modern age can destroy everyone’s lives. Our department, the State Department, can make the difference with diplomacy, and Donald Trump is the highlight of that,” she said.

The changes are “a statement about a structure that needs to adapt, that must be smaller in order for us to be relevant, but even more than relevant – effective, quick. We’ve seen even just in these past five months how quickly things can change and what can happen when you move at the speed of relevancy,” she explained.

Bruce added, “It’s sometimes difficult, as any enterprise in America has learned, that when change is necessary, but in this case, we inherited a dynamic that needed reform, and we are taking and implementing reform.”

“This is about making sure that the State Department is able to operate in a manner that makes it relevant and effective. That is what the American people want. It’s what all of us want. And in this dynamic that’s exactly what we’re achieving.”

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