A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality.
The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft. The New York Times first reported on the draft.
The US state department disputed the report, with a spokesperson telling Newsweek that the reporting is “entirely based on a fake document”.
Earlier on Sunday, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio called the reported overhaul “fake news” in a post on X. “The nytimes falls victim to another hoax.”
The proposals reportedly also include the elimination of the Bureau of International Organizations, which liaises with the United Nations and a cut in diplomatic operations in Canada.
Under the changes, the sprawling state department would be reorganized into four regional bureaus covering Indo-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Eurasia. But an unspecified number of “non-essential” embassies and consulates in Sub-Saharan Africa would be closed.
The New York Times said the proposal executive order could be signed by Donald Trump this week and the changes would take effect by 1 October.
The order is designed to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the state department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse”, the outlet quoted from the document.
If the proposals happened, they would be a significant rejection of the US commitment to a multilateral world order.
A senior diplomatic official in Africa said information circulating within the state department about foreign service reforms that are set to be announced would be less sweeping than those described in the document.
One poster on a US foreign service-dedicated Reddit page said they doubted that the changes would go as far as the draft order. “I suspect this is being leaked as a red herring designed to make us grateful for a more modest but still unpopular reorganization,” wrote one user. “It will be basically immediately challenged and enjoined, and then ‘implementation’ will be dragged out until Trump is voted out.”
Still, any radical reorganization of the US foreign operations comes after the Trump administration moved to fold the US Agency for International Development (USAID) into the state department, cut operations, and then reinstate some, including programs for emergency food assistance.
The bureau of humanitarian affairs would “assume any mission-critical duties previously carried out by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”, the order reads.
The draft order leaked on Sunday would eliminate the Bureau of African Affairs, the special envoy for climate, the Bureau of International Organizations, and the Office of Global Women’s Issues.
“Diplomatic relations with Canada shall fall under a significantly reduced team delegated as the North American Affairs Office (NAAO) within the Office of the Secretary,” according to the document. That includes a substantial downsizing of the US embassy in the capital, Ottawa.
The shake-up would also see US diplomatic staff assigned to regions for the duration of their careers rather than be deployed in rotations around the world. State department-awarded Fulbright scholarships would be reformed as “solely for master’s-level study in national security-related disciplines” with emphasis placed in “critical” languages.
Fellowships associated with historically Black Howard University in Washington, would also be cancelled as part of the administration’s effort to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“All positions and duties must receive explicit written approval from the President of the United States,” according to the order, which also calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats. The new criteria for hiring, it said, includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision”.
But the order is not the only internal document circulating to propose changes to US diplomatic operations. Another proposes a 50% reduction in the state department budget, and a third calls for the cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates.
The US state department workforce includes 13,000 members of the foreign service, 11,000 civil service employees, and 45,000 locally employed staff at more than 270 diplomatic missions worldwide, according to its website.
