Rubio outlines plans to drastically cut human rights offices in State
Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to gut the State Department's human rights bureau as part of a sweeping reorganization of the country's diplomatic service, according to internal department documents and people familiar with the plans.
The State Department sent a document to Congress on Thursday notifying lawmakers of the changes that call for the elimination of most offices in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — or DRL as it's known in the diplomatic corps. That would lead to funding freezes or cuts on programs ranging from internet freedom initiatives in autocratic countries to support for pro-democracy civil society groups facing repression in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is part of a wider effort to reorganize more than 300 bureaus and offices at State outlined in the document, which was obtained by POLITICO, all to tackle what the Trump administration views as an unwieldy and bloated foreign policy bureaucracy.
Fox News previously reported on the wider reorganization plans but other details, including the scale and scope of the cuts to human rights offices and funding have not been previously reported.
Under the proposal, the reorganization would cut DRL staff by up to 80 percent and leave in limbo more than $400 billion in grants for human rights programs in developing countries and autocracies that have already been appropriated, according to two former officials and a current official familiar with the matter. Some officials could transfer to other offices, while others would effectively be laid off. All were granted anonymity as they weren't authorized to discuss internal reform measures publicly. The State Department did not give a timeline on when it would carry out the proposed reforms.
The reorganization also calls for the creation of new positions that reflect the Trump administration's cultural lurch to the right in foreign policy, including emphasizing so-called civilizational allies and debates over digital censorship. Those include a deputy assistant secretary of State for 'Democracy and Western Values' and an office of 'natural rights' that will 'ground the department's values-based diplomacy in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms,' according to an internal State Department notification to U.S. lawmakers on the proposed reforms.
'For example, the office will build the foundation for criticisms of free speech backsliding in Europe and other developed nations,' the document reads — an apparent reference to the Trump administration's criticisms of close NATO allies such as the United Kingdom and Germany for laws against hate speech and the spread of disinformation, as well as Germany's move to classify a far-right political party growing in popularity as an 'extremist' group that opens it up to security and intelligence surveillance.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The notice was sent to Congress but it's unclear how Congress could alter or halt the proposed reorganization, officials noted. Democrats could push back on the proposed changes but both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans, who widely support the Trump administration's efforts to slash the federal government.
The reorganization would also eliminate the top official overseeing human rights issues: the under secretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights. That would be folded under a new position — the under secretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs. This senior post would oversee the remnants of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration rapidly dismantled during its first months in office.
The proposed changes have fueled internal anger and backlash among some officials who work on human rights within the department who argue that Rubio's efforts to trim the fat will cut too deep into the muscle and bone of the department's expertise on human rights issues.
'The impact will be devastating,' said Uzra Zeya, a former senior Biden administration State Department official and now CEO of Human Rights First, a nonprofit advocacy group. 'Rubio's chief point on the reorganization has been that we're not going to lose this capacity on human rights, we're just folding it into the regional bureaus where it can be better managed and rationalized. These cuts would eviscerate that capacity.'
Other officials scratched their heads over DRL's refocus to issues such as 'natural rights' and scrutinizing close allies that are fully functioning democracies.
'Forget Russia's torture and killing of Ukrainians, let's focus on the real threat like U.K.'s laws against hate speech,' one of the department officials noted wryly.
The State Department has framed the proposed reorganization as overdue and necessary to adapt the U.S. diplomatic corps to modern national security threats and cut down on overlapping or duplicative offices. Notably, the reorganization appears to target only domestic offices and not U.S. embassies or consulates abroad.
According to the notification to Congress, the reorganization would cut the State Department's domestic workforce by up to 3,448 personnel, taking into account new reductions and voluntary departures that the Trump administration has offered career government officials under its deferred resignation programs championed by Trump's Department of Government Efficiency.
'The Department's domestic operations have grown considerably over the last 25 years. The resulting proliferation of bureaus and offices with unclear, overlapping, or duplicative mandates has hobbled the department's ability to rapidly respond to emerging threats and crises, or to effectively advance America's affirmative interests across the world,' the notification to Congress reads.
Vice President JD Vance outlined the administration's criticisms of allies like Germany and the United Kingdom during a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference in February that presaged how the State Department's reorganization could shift more scrutiny on allies.
'Expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential,' he said in that speech. 'If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.'
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