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Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the changes were needed and called the outrage overblown.
July 16, 2025, 5:42 p.m. ET
Experts in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Specialists on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s chemical weapons. Workers helping to relocate Afghans who fled the Taliban.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee grilled a top State Department official on Wednesday at a hearing about the firing last week of more than 1,300 department employees, including longtime policy experts in key national security areas.
Among those fired, said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the committee’s top Democrat, were the entire staff of the Office of Casualty Assistance, which supports the families of State Department employees who die while serving abroad.
“The entire team was fired on Friday in the midst of trying to bring back an American citizen who had died overseas,” Ms. Shaheen said. An aide to Ms. Shaheen said the senator was referring to a diplomat killed in a car accident in northern Mexico last week.
The mass layoffs are part of a State Department reorganization implemented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who says they are needed to streamline a bloated bureaucracy and root out liberal ideologues.
The firings of U.S.-based workers, along with a roughly equivalent number expected to accept voluntary buyout offers, are meant to shrink the department’s domestic work force of roughly 18,000 by about 15 percent.
Michael J. Rigas, the State Department’s top official for management, argued that the cuts were modest relative to the department’s size and growth over the past 20 years.
Mr. Rigas downplayed concerns about the closure of offices handling issues like nuclear proliferation and terrorism, saying much of that work was being merged into existing or new offices.
The changes, he said, would “make the State Department a more efficient and effective organization better able to advance the core interests of the American people and accountable to the American taxpayers.”
Democrats were unpersuaded.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, told Mr. Rigas that he did not challenge the goal of a more efficient department. But the reorganization, he said, “was done in a sloppy, rushed way that has cost us decades of relevant critical experience.”
And Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said the department had dismissed “the only Ukraine intelligence analyst and Russia analyst” at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where multiple offices will be consolidated.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas was among several Republicans who scoffed at Democratic outrage over the layoffs. He noted that the 3,000 U.S. jobs Mr. Rubio plans to eliminate were a small fraction of the department’s global work force of 76,000.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, called that figure “very misleading.” About two-thirds of those employees, he said, are foreign nationals who often perform work like embassy maintenance and security.
Mr. Rigas repeated assurances by other department officials that there were no plans to overhaul foreign operations, such as closing embassies and consulates or laying off diplomats posted abroad.
But some of those workers fired on Friday were posted overseas. The layoffs were based on where employees were stationed as of May 29. Some people who began foreign assignments within the past seven weeks learned of their fate only after relocating from the United States.
Mr. Booker berated Mr. Rigas over one such case, a security specialist who had just shipped his belongings to Pakistan for a new assignment.
“Hours after the movers left his home, he was fired,” Mr. Booker said.
Mr. Rigas noted that the 1,107 civil servants who lost their jobs were first placed on administrative leave and would receive pay and benefits for 60 days. The 246 laid-off Foreign Service Officers — specially trained diplomats who rotate from post to post over their careers — will spend 120 days on administrative leave.
Officially known as a reduction in force, or R.I.F., the layoffs are based on eliminated job positions and do not target individuals, Mr. Rigas said. Laid-off workers can apply for open positions within the department, he said.
“The caveat being, there is a governmentwide hiring freeze right now,” he added.
Democrats charged that the layoffs were enabled by underhanded tactics, including revisions to the official Foreign Affairs Manual, which governs the State Department’s organization and policies. Mr. Rubio approved changes to a section of the manual in ways that Democrats said were meant to narrowly target the layoffs by placing workers in extremely narrow new job categories.
The revisions also include new language making “fidelity” to executive branch power and policy a criterion for tenure and promotion decisions, one of many changes that have been denounced by the American Foreign Service Association.
The association announced on Tuesday that it had named the veteran diplomat John Dinkelman as its new president, and also that Mr. Dinkelman was among those laid off last week.
Mr. Cornyn suggested that State Department workers were overwhelmingly hostile to Mr. Trump’s agenda, saying there were “perhaps thousands of career people at the State Department who are doing their best to undermine” the new administration.
But in earlier remarks, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the committee’s Republican chairman, painted a different picture.
“I’m always impressed when I go out of the country — and, for that matter, here — about how State Department employees are probably the least partisan of any government agency that there is,” he said.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
