Workers at the US state department say firings, resignation buyouts, a proposed budget cut of 48%, and reorganization under the Trump administration has left staff with low morale and will likely have long-term impacts.
Foreign programs and services aimed towards LGBTQ+ communities, maternal and reproductive health, and minority groups have been removed or cut in place of far-right ideological policies being pursued by a 26-year-old senior adviser and Trump appointee at the agency.
Senate Democrats and workers have criticized recent firings at the department, characterizing them as “unlawful”, “sloppy” and “rushed”.
More than 1,350 employees at the state department received Reduction In Force (Rif) notices on 11 July after the supreme court lifted injunctions blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with them, about 15% of the domestic workforce.
Approximately 3,000 employees in total have left the agency through the Rif and early retirement or resignation buyouts.
During a Senate committee hearing on 16 July about the cuts, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, Michael Rigas, claimed: “The 15% number that you referenced came from our initial assessment after consulting with the under secretaries,” and claimed “certainly” that there was an analysis done on the costs and benefits of the cuts.
Jose Mercado, who was recently laid off after working at the state department for 29 years, pushed back. “There was no consulting. There was no analyzing. He is absolutely incorrect in the information that he provided, especially when answering Representative Meeks’ last questioning. It was the least transparent process that you can ever imagine, and it was directed. It was not up to the undersecretaries. It was very directed from top down,” he said.
“By law and by practice, this is why it’s not supposed to happen this way,” added Mercado, who served as deputy director of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor’s office of the western hemisphere affairs. “This was not done within the confines of the law. The procedures were rewritten so they could do this.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, the union for federal workers, has noted it is preparing legal challenges to the Reduction In Force at the state department.
A policy adviser at the state department, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, claimed veterans and employees with seniority or disabilities would not be terminated without being offered other positions, in addition to personnel who were set up to complete trainings with the Department of Defense.
A spokesperson for the US Department of State cited the supremecourt decision to permit Reduction In Forces by the Trump administration to move forward in arguing the reduction in force was lawful, though the court did not address the legality of the efforts.
They claimed the layoffs were in accordance with applicable law. They had no comment on any additional layoffs or the proposed budget cut.
Low morale and shifting policies to far-right ideologies
The policy adviser noted in recent months the morale at the department has sunk and a culture of “keeping your head down” has prevailed in anticipation of cuts. They also cited staffers were limited to what organizations or embassies they could meet with.
“They were asking that any meetings we had were approved by senior leadership in the bureau, which was unheard of,” they said. “Because of the political sensitivities of this administration.”
They said the cuts affect national security, given human rights and the diplomatic corps have been sidelined in favor of pushing far-right ideologies.
They explained the annual human rights reports compiled by staffers and submitted to Congress by February had sections removed by Trump administration officials on anything related to maternal and reproductive health, LGBTQ+ rights, or minority groups because they don’t fall into the administration’s “America first” priority.
The advisor also cited a Trump political appointee as an example, Samuel Samson, 27, who wrote a recent Substack article published by the state department criticizing Europe for “mass migration” and criticizing criminal investigations into far-right factions in the UK and Germany.
Samson has proposed the state department directly fund French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is currently facing embezzlement charges in France. And he recently went on a trip to South Africa, which the adviser said was also used as a family vacation.
A spokesperson for the state department said the trip was to meet with government leaders and civil society about the Expropriation Act, which has been criticized as unfair to white landowners, the rights of white minorities in South Africa, and Trump administration priorities.
“They’re getting rid of people who are defending human rights across the world, and those are being cut to promote the type of ideology that is completely out of line with mainstream political and foreign policy thought,” the adviser said. “They’re talking about ‘remigration’’, a far-right European concept of cleansing via mass deportations or promoting voluntary return of non white immigrants and their descendants. It’s a madhouse.”
Long-term impacts of cuts
Mercado explained that after the 2024 presidential election, employees anticipated changes that are typical with changing presidential administrations, but were surprised when no guidance was being given to employees even once Donald Trump assumed office in January 2025.
“We were not receiving any guidance whatsoever on what they wanted us to work on, which was, at the time, kind of strange, because we’re used to getting that information relatively quickly,” Mercado said. “We were getting excluded from a lot of the decision making and policy writing, action memos, information memos, so that the regular workflow that we were in, that started getting less and less brought into the fold.”
Then when the administration came in, USAID was dismantled and rumors began swirling around on cuts at the US state department.
“It was a hard pill to swallow once we found out that we were gone, but all of this time, it was understood that this was going to affect the civil service. A lot of folks did not think that the Foreign Service would get touched,” he added. “We served as a check and balance, we provided an outsider’s view to an extent within the department. We understand you want to do x and y with nation z, but here are the things that you need to consider before you do that.”
Mercado noted his department provided information and served as a counterbalance when the National Security Council and other high-level policymakers were looking into making decisions, especially in regard to nations with human rights issues to help improve those in order to facilitate US government and businesses and organizations from doing business with that country.
“The institutional knowledge that’s lost in that, in the end, will affect the American people,” he said on the impacts of the cuts. “Diminished capabilities, weaker foreign policy and by getting rid of their watchdog, which you could consider us that when it comes to human rights and democracy, it now leaves the door open for unsavory business practices.”
The policy adviser argued the national security risks posed by defunding and cutting staff at the state department, that have also been previously claimed by former Trump officials at the Department of Defense.
“They’re essentially destroying people’s lives based on some capricious nature of this administration to impose and create some political ideology,” the advisor said. “And the Department of Defense has actually been the biggest critic of cuts at the State Department. Gen Jim Mattis, the former secretary of defense under Trump, has said if you’re not going to fund the state department, you need to buy me more bullets.”
In 2013, during a Senate hearing, Mattis, as commander of the US Central Command, told senators: “The more that we put into the state department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget.”
A spokesperson for the US Department of State claimed the layoffs and cuts preserved critical functions.
