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WASHINGTON: The US State Department fired more than 1,300 employees on Friday in line with a dramatic reorganization plan from the Trump administration that critics say will damage America’s global leadership and efforts to counter threats abroad.
The department sent layoff notices to 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers with assignments in the United States, according to a senior department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
Notices said positions were being “abolished” and the employees would lose access to State Department headquarters in Washington and their email and shared drives by 5 p.m., according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
As fired employees packed their belongings, dozens of former colleagues, ambassadors, members of Congress and others spent a warm, humid day protesting outside. Holding signs saying, “Thank you to America’s diplomats” and “We all deserve better,” they mourned the institutional loss from the cuts and highlighted the personal sacrifice of serving in the foreign service.
“We talk about people in uniform serving. But foreign service officers take an oath of office, just like military officers,” said Anne Bodine, who retired from the State Department in 2011 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is not the way to treat people who served their country and who believe in ‘America First.’”
While lauded by President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their Republican allies as overdue and necessary to make the department leaner and more efficient, the cuts have been roundly criticized by current and former diplomats who say they will weaken US influence and the ability to counter existing and emerging threats abroad.
The layoffs are part of big changes to State Department work
The Trump administration has pushed to reshape American diplomacy and worked aggressively to shrink the size of the federal government, including mass dismissals driven by the Department of Government Efficiency and moves to dismantle whole departments like the US Agency for International Development and the Education Department.
USAID, the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency, was absorbed into the State Department last week after the administration dramatically slashed foreign aid funding.
A recent ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the layoffs to start, while lawsuits challenging the legality of the cuts continue to play out. The department had advised staffers Thursday that it would be sending layoff notices to some of them soon.
In a May letter notifying Congress about the reorganization, the department said it had just over 18,700 US-based employees and was looking to reduce the workforce by 18 percent through layoffs and voluntary departures, including deferred resignation programs.
“It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions,” Rubio told reporters Thursday during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.”
Foreign service officers affected will be placed immediately on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally lose their jobs, according to an internal notice obtained by AP. For most civil servants, the separation period is 60 days, it said.
Protesters gather to criticize the job cuts
Inside and just outside the State Department, employees spent over an hour applauding their departing colleagues, who got more support — and sometimes hugs — from protesters and others gathered across the street.
As speakers took to a bullhorn, people behind them held signs in the shape of gravestones that said “democracy,” “human rights” and “diplomacy.”
“It’s just heartbreaking to stand outside these doors right now and see people coming out in tears, because all they wanted to do was serve this country,” said Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who worked as a civilian adviser for the State Department in Afghanistan during the Obama administration.
Robert Blake, who served as a US ambassador under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, said he came to support his peers at a very “unjust time.”
“I have a lot of friends who served very loyally and with distinction and who are being fired for nothing to do with their performance,” Blake said.
Gordon Duguid, a 31-year veteran of the foreign service, said of the Trump administration: “They’re not looking for people who have the expertise ... they just want people who say, ‘OK, how high’” to jump.
“That’s a recipe for disaster,” he added.
The American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents US diplomats, said it opposed the job cuts during “a moment of great global instability.”
“Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests,” the AFSA said in a statement. “These layoffs are untethered from merit or mission.”
As the layoffs began, paper signs started going up around the State Department. “Colleagues, if you remain: resist fascism,” said one.
An employee who was among those laid off said she printed them about a week ago, when the Supreme Court cleared way for the reductions. The employee spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
She worked with about a dozen colleagues to put up the signs. They focused on bathrooms, where there are no security cameras, although others went in more public spaces.
“Nobody wants to feel like these guys can just get away with this,” she said.
The State Department is undergoing a big reorganization
The State Department is planning to eliminate some divisions tasked with oversight of America’s two-decade involvement in Afghanistan, including an office focused on resettling Afghan nationals who worked alongside the US military.
Jessica Bradley Rushing, who worked at the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, known as CARE, said she was shocked when she received another dismissal notice Friday after she had already been put on administrative leave in March.
“I spent the entire morning getting updates from my former colleagues at CARE, who were watching this carnage take place within the office,” she said, adding that every person on her team received a notice. “I never even anticipated that I could be at risk for that because I’m already on administrative leave.”
The State Department said the reorganization will affect more than 300 bureaus and offices, as it eliminates divisions it describes as doing unclear or overlapping work. It says Rubio believes “effective modern diplomacy requires streamlining this bloated bureaucracy.”
The letter to Congress was clear that the reorganization is also intended to eliminate programs — particularly those related to refugees and immigration, as well as human rights and democracy promotion — that the Trump administration believes have become ideologically driven in a way that is incompatible with its priorities and policies.
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Lee reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Amiri from New York. Chris Megerian in Washington contributed.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the US Department of State at https://apnews.com/hub/us-department-of-state.

LONDON: Palestine Action supporters say they will make the ban on the group “unenforceable” after it was proscribed as a terrorist organization by the UK government. 

On Thursday, the group’s founder Huda Ammori, 31, encouraged over 200 people in a Zoom meeting to protest the move this weekend in London and elsewhere, .

“My faith in people like you all is at an all-time high,” she said. “We’re a force to be reckoned with when we act together.

“The most effective route is through actions like the ones Defend Our Juries are leading the way on, in terms of making this ban unenforceable.”

Defend Our Juries is a group originally set up to convince juries not to convict climate activists engaged in disruptive behavior in the UK.

In the Zoom meeting attended by Ammori, a Defend Our Juries member encouraged people to be arrested, saying the police take “a soft approach” to conscientious protests.

“People will be thinking, ‘is that the end of it, has that repression worked to silence us?’ Imagine if it’s the opposite effect and there are double (the number) of us in Parliament Square on Saturday, and there are similar actions in Cardiff and Manchester,” the Defend Our Juries member said.

The call to protest comes a week after 29 demonstrators were arrested for supporting Palestine Action with placards in Westminster, including an elderly female Church of England priest.

“The Met (Police) commissioner has now got an excruciating dilemma. He was being hauled over the coals for wasting public money, for arresting an 83-year-old priest with a sign opposing genocide,” the Defend Our Juries member said.

“He’s either got to double down on that, leaving him looking like he’s not listening, or he’s got to leave it be, which is to admit the law is mad and unenforceable. He’s got no good option. As long as we turn up in numbers, we expose this.”

Palestine Action was outlawed on July 5 after members of the group broke into a Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton and vandalized military aircraft. Under the terms of the ban, support for the group could lead to a 14-year prison sentence. 

Protesters, though, are using encrypted messaging platforms such as Signal to plan further demonstrations in other UK cities, The Times reported. 

Ammori, of Palestinian-Iraqi heritage, has backed the protests to cause major disruption in the UK court system if hundreds of people are arrested under the Terrorism Act.

The first of these, in London, will be held in Parliament Square on Saturday at 1 p.m., and attendees were told via Zoom that they would be provided with placards, solicitors’ information and prepared statements to read to police if arrested.

A nine-page document was also issued with instructions to communicate via burner phones and on what to do when arrested, including to “go floppy” when manhandled by police to “add to the visual drama of the action” of “civil resistance.”

Another activist with over 100 arrests to their name told the Zoom call: “The worst thing we can do is to be scared. We have to become active … You will find it wonderful to do, important to do.

“If any of you have been getting depressed about issues recently, it’s a great antidote to depression.”

Ammori will appear before the High Court on July 21 after a judicial review of the ban on Palestine Action was called, with moves to prevent its proscription rejected by the Court of Appeal.