Tuesday, April 23`, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 34
Anadolu: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday his plans to impose a sweeping reorganization of the US State Department to align with President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies, claiming the agency is in dire need of a shake-up following “decades of bloat and bureaucracy.”
The overhaul is expected to take months to implement. It comes as Trump continues to pursue his foreign policy goals that have so far included a sweeping crackdown on all forms of immigration to the US, a global trade war that has sent markets plummeting, and a policy realignment that has prompted longtime international allies to reassess their ties with Washington.
A new organizational chart circulated by the State Department shows that the bureau that focuses on international human rights and democracy would be downgraded while the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy would be shuttered alongside the Office of Global Women’s Issues.
The chart appears to indicate that global health would instead be overseen by an ambassador-at-large operating under the undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment. No successor office for women’s issues appears in the State Department’s new organizational chart.
“This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist,” said Rubio.
Details on how the overhaul will be implemented remained sparse, but the department said it would be executed “methodically over the next several months.”