Chicago – July 12, 2025
The State Department is cutting its Washington-based staff by about 15% in what officials are calling the largest overhaul of the agency in decades. Some employees have already taken early retirement, while hundreds more received layoff notices Friday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the overhaul, eliminating 132 offices he’s described as part of a “bloated bureaucracy.” His staff rewrote key personnel rules to allow the department to fire foreign service and civil service officials in roles now being phased out.
Rubio has defended the move as essential to speeding up internal processes, citing the layers of bureaucracy that slow decision-making. “There were 40 boxes on this piece of paper,” he told senators in May. “That means 40 people had to check off ‘yes’ before it even got to me. That’s ridiculous. And if any one of those boxes didn’t get checked, the memo didn’t move. That can’t continue.”
