Post by aj2hall on Jul 11, 2025 21:52:22 GMT
None of this is OK or normal. Most of it was predicted in Project 2025.
www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/11/us/trump-texas-news
Trump Administration Live Updates: State Dept. Begins Firing Nearly 1,400 Workers
The Trump administration began firing more than 1,000 State Department employees on Friday, as it moves to downsize the federal government’s diplomatic arm in what critics say is a risky retreat from America’s global engagement.
But the plan also has global implications, veteran diplomats say. It refocuses American diplomacy around Mr. Trump’s narrow and transactional sense of the national interest while downgrading priorities such as human rights, democracy and refugees. In doing so, critics argue, it undermines a moral purpose that, however imperfectly and inconsistently applied, has been a source of pride for generations of Americans and has distinguished the United States from more coldblooded global competitors such as Russia and China.
Democrats and diplomats also warned on Friday that Mr. Rubio’s plan to cut the department’s U.S.-based work force by about 17 percent, including through about 1,400 layoffs announced on Friday, would leave the department short handed — especially after the recent elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose relatively few surviving programs will be transferred to the State Department.
“As the U.S. retreats, our adversaries — like the People’s Republic of China — are expanding their diplomatic reach, making Americans less safe and less prosperous,” said a statement signed by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
“Rather than retaining skills and expertise honed over decades, Rubio will kneecap American human rights and humanitarian leadership in one Friday morning massacre,” she said.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents Foreign Service officers, decried the cuts as “untethered from merit or mission.”
“There were clear, institutional mechanisms available to address excess staffing, if that had been the goal,” the group’s president, Tom Yazdgerdi, said in a statement. The layoffs “target diplomats not for how they’ve served or the skills they have, but for where they happen to be assigned. That is not reform.”
“This decision sends the wrong signal to allies and adversaries alike: that the United States is pulling back from the world stage,” he added. “As allies look to the U.S. for reassurance and rivals test for weakness, the administration has chosen to sideline the very professionals best equipped to navigate this moment. Meanwhile, countries like China continue expanding their diplomatic reach and influence.”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/11/us/politics/trump-administration-multiple-jobs.html
A Half Dozen Trump Officials Hold More Than One Big Job
As President Trump dismantles parts of the government, remakes institutions and takes on perceived enemies and those who disappoint him, he is frequently putting top administration officials in charge of multiple federal agencies and offices — an approach that has little precedent.
www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/11/us/trump-texas-news
Trump Administration Live Updates: State Dept. Begins Firing Nearly 1,400 Workers
The Trump administration began firing more than 1,000 State Department employees on Friday, as it moves to downsize the federal government’s diplomatic arm in what critics say is a risky retreat from America’s global engagement.
But the plan also has global implications, veteran diplomats say. It refocuses American diplomacy around Mr. Trump’s narrow and transactional sense of the national interest while downgrading priorities such as human rights, democracy and refugees. In doing so, critics argue, it undermines a moral purpose that, however imperfectly and inconsistently applied, has been a source of pride for generations of Americans and has distinguished the United States from more coldblooded global competitors such as Russia and China.
Democrats and diplomats also warned on Friday that Mr. Rubio’s plan to cut the department’s U.S.-based work force by about 17 percent, including through about 1,400 layoffs announced on Friday, would leave the department short handed — especially after the recent elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose relatively few surviving programs will be transferred to the State Department.
“As the U.S. retreats, our adversaries — like the People’s Republic of China — are expanding their diplomatic reach, making Americans less safe and less prosperous,” said a statement signed by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
“Rather than retaining skills and expertise honed over decades, Rubio will kneecap American human rights and humanitarian leadership in one Friday morning massacre,” she said.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents Foreign Service officers, decried the cuts as “untethered from merit or mission.”
“There were clear, institutional mechanisms available to address excess staffing, if that had been the goal,” the group’s president, Tom Yazdgerdi, said in a statement. The layoffs “target diplomats not for how they’ve served or the skills they have, but for where they happen to be assigned. That is not reform.”
“This decision sends the wrong signal to allies and adversaries alike: that the United States is pulling back from the world stage,” he added. “As allies look to the U.S. for reassurance and rivals test for weakness, the administration has chosen to sideline the very professionals best equipped to navigate this moment. Meanwhile, countries like China continue expanding their diplomatic reach and influence.”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/11/us/politics/trump-administration-multiple-jobs.html
A Half Dozen Trump Officials Hold More Than One Big Job
As President Trump dismantles parts of the government, remakes institutions and takes on perceived enemies and those who disappoint him, he is frequently putting top administration officials in charge of multiple federal agencies and offices — an approach that has little precedent.
