CNN
—
The State Department began firing more than 1,300 people on Friday as part of a dramatic overhaul of the agency, according to a State Department official.
The firings will affect 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers in Washington, DC, an internal notice seen by CNN said. It comes as the State Department implements a drastic reorganization as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to shrink the federal government.
Those fired on Friday worked on issues like countering violent extremism; helping Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover; educational exchanges; and issues related to women’s rights, refugees and climate change.
Hundreds of offices and bureaus are being eliminated or altered as a result of the restructuring that began to be implemented on Friday. The layoff notices, issued via email, came out as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was of Washington, DC, on a flight back from an overseas trip to Malaysia.
“Nearly 3,000 members of the workforce will depart as part of the reorganization,” the notice said. That number includes people who are being fired as well as those leaving voluntarily.
As the layoffs happened Friday, notes of support popped up around the halls of the Washington, DC, headquarters, thanking fired employees for their service. Signs calling on remaining colleagues to “resist fascism” and “remember the oath you vowed to uphold” were also seen in the building.
At the end of the day, employees lined around the entrance lobby and the sidewalks outside of the State Department to “clap out” their fired coworkers. Those who lost their jobs emerged from the building, some crying, some holding boxes, to steady applause from colleagues and a growing crowd of supporters and demonstrators gathered for a rally outside.
“These firings were not done with dignity and respect, but I have walked out of the State Department with my head held high, alongside my civil service and foreign service colleagues,” said Olga Bashbush, a career diplomat who was fired Friday. She told CNN she had served as a diplomat for 20 years and just happened to have started last October in an office in DC that is being eliminated.
“Without our diplomacy professionals, we are going to have those forever wars that Congress and the United States and the president have said that they don’t want to be in,” she said. “We are here to serve and protect, and I’m still willing to serve and all of my colleagues here today are willing to serve.”
Former State Department officials and Democratic lawmakers who spoke at the rally condemned the firings, echoing that they will take a toll at a time when the role of diplomats and foreign affairs experts is particularly important as the Trump administration tries to broker ends to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
They also leveled sharp criticisms of the broader reorganization, which includes sweeping changes to focus on the Trump administration’s priorities, such as reducing immigration to the US and promoting the administration’s worldview, with less emphasis on protecting and promoting human rights across the globe.
Trump administration officials have defended the reorganization, arguing it was necessary to make the “bloated” agency more effective and aligned with the president’s priorities.
“In connection with the Departmental reorganization first announced by the Secretary of State on April 22, 2025, the Department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,” Friday’s notice said.
“Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities,” it said.
Foreign service officers who are given “Reduction in Force” (RIF) notices on Friday will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days before formally losing their jobs, according to the notice. Most civil servants will be placed on leave for 60 days before their firing takes effect, the notice said.
Rubio on Thursday said the reorganization was being implemented in “probably in the most deliberate way of anyone that’s done one.”
A senior State Department official, when asked for an estimate of how much money the firings would save taxpayers, could not provide a specific answer but said the budget request for the next fiscal year “reflects substantial savings.”
The official said the RIF plan “looked at the functions that were being performed, not at individuals.”
“If a particular function was being performed that was no longer aligned with what the department was going to be doing going forward, that function was being eliminated,” the official said Thursday. “It was personnel agnostic.”
The firings are impacting both members of the civil and foreign service in Washington, DC. Foreign service officers are often highly trained, speak multiple languages, and serve around the world on behalf of the US. If they were working in a now-eliminated office on May 29, the day Rubio approved the reorganization plan, they may be cut.
There aren’t plans for cuts at overseas posts as of now, the senior State Department official said.
“In less than six months, the U.S. has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations,” a statement from the American Foreign Service Association said Friday.
“There were clear, institutional mechanisms available to address excess staffing, if that had been the goal. Instead, these layoffs are untethered from merit or mission,” the statement said. “They target diplomats not for how they’ve served or the skills they have, but for where they happen to be assigned. That is not reform.”
“We stand with the entire State Department workforce and with every American who understands that professional, non-partisan diplomacy is not expendable. It is essential,” it said.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Dalia Abdelwahab and Scott Pisczek contributed to this report.
