MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hundreds of State Department employees are expected to get pink slips in the coming hours or days now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the downsizing of the federal government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is making a 15% cut at his department, and that's after the Trump administration dismantled the lead U.S. aid agency. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Former diplomats with the American Academy of Diplomacy describe the reduction in forces at the State Department as an act of vandalism.
THOMAS SHANNON: And there's been no explanation for why this has happened.
KELEMEN: Thomas Shannon was in the top job at the department at the start of the first Trump administration. There were lots of career diplomats retiring at that time, he recalls. But this is different.
SHANNON: It's all about deciding, OK, we're going to remove a significant hunk of our civil service and foreign service employees and restructure the department in ways that reflect a diminished global agenda.
KELEMEN: With less focus on human rights and democracy, among other things. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pushed back on that argument, saying he just wants to cut a bloated bureaucracy. He told senators in May how much it takes just to get a memo on his desk.
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MARCO RUBIO: There were 40 boxes on this piece of paper. That means 40 people had to check off, yes OK, before it even got to me. That's ridiculous. And if any one of those little boxes didn't get checked, the memo didn't move up the chain. That can't continue. We can't move at that pace in this world.
KELEMEN: Rubio's new organizational chart cuts 132 offices at headquarters, and his state department recently changed the rules for a reduction in forces so that he can simply fire people in the offices being cut. Ambassador Shannon calls that a mistake.
SHANNON: We're going to end up cutting a lot of really talented individuals who are going to be, like, in musical chairs. They're going to suddenly find themselves without a chair and so they're out.
KELEMEN: That means losing experts with language and cultural skills. Shannon says that, plus the loss of USAID may not be felt right away but will put the U.S. in the back seat in its global competition with China.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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