State Department reorganization impacts bureaus with human rights focus
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a meeting with President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a new organizational chart for his department Tuesday in what he called an effort to "drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp."
The big picture: The reorganization Rubio outlined targeted some bureaus with a focus on human rights.
- Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at Tuesday's briefing that the department is "reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy."
- But she emphasized that "this is a reorganization plan — it is not something where people are being fired today."
Yes, but: "Redundant offices" will be eliminated, Rubio wrote in a State Department Substack post Tuesday. He said "non-statutory programs misaligned with America's core national interests will cease to exist."
- The New York Times reported that an internal fact sheet from the department stated that part of Rubio's plan is to reduce the agency's total offices from 734 to 602.
Zoom in: Rubio said that the "expansive domain" of the former under secretary for civilian security, human rights, and democracy "provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine 'human rights' and 'democracy.'"
- Its bureaus and offices, he said, would be placed under a new coordinator "charged with returning them to their original mission of advancing human rights and religious freedom, not promoting radical causes at taxpayer expense."
- Asked Tuesday about the apparent disappearance of the Office of Global Criminal Justice from the updated organizational chart, Bruce said that because a bureau is folded into another larger bureau, it "doesn't mean that it's gone or we don't care."
- She later added, "If you don't see it on the chart, it may be moved."
Transferring remaining USAID functions "to such a monstrosity of bureaus would be to undo DOGE's work to build a more efficient and accountable government," Rubio said in his Tuesday post.
- He additionally said the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was used by "left-wing activists to wage vendettas against 'anti-woke' leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil" and to promote an arms embargo on Israel.
Context: While Rubio accused activists of redefining human rights, multiple outlets recently reported that the Trump administration would scale back the department's annual reports on international human rights to only what is required by law.
- Sections on LGBTQ+ rights, issues faced by women and challenges for people with disabilities will be trimmed, Politico reported.
- A Department official told Fox News the changes to the 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are "critical for removing report redundancy, increasing readability, maintaining consistency to U.S. statutes, and returning focus to human rights issues rather than political bias."
Zoom out: What exactly some of the changes Rubio outlined mean for the Department remains murky.
Go deeper: Trump withdraws U.S. from UN human rights council a second time
