President-elect Donald Trump plans to immediately shake up the State Department by appointing new officials to the highest positions.
A source familiar with the situation told Fox News that the new Trump administration will immediately move new officials into key operational roles in State Department to ensure the department implements Trump’s foreign policy agenda from day one.
Typically, career State Department officials will oversee these key positions while political appointees await Senate confirmation. Trump’s team is bringing in dozens of “senior office officials” to ensure that career employees are overseen by officials close to Trump. The source says the transition has already identified senior office officials who will take over.
The source also said the move affects more than 20 additional key roles in the state. Reuters reported last week that Trump officials have already asked others to step down, bringing the total to about 30 senior positions affected by the initiative. They include all those who work as undersecretaries and oversee key regional, policy and communications offices.
TRUMP TRANSITION TEAM ASKS 3 STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS TO RESIGN: REPORT
Trump is planning a shakeup at the State Department (Donald Trump 2024 campaign)
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the transition team told Fox: “It is entirely appropriate for the transition to seek officials who share President Trump’s vision of putting our nation and American workers first. We have a lot of wrongs to fix, and that requires a dedicated team focused on the same goals.” “
Trump’s transition team recently asked three senior career diplomats to step down from their roles, according to a Reuters report.
Dereck Hogan, Marcia Bernicat and Alaina Teplitz, career diplomats who have reportedly been asked to leave their roles, oversee of the State Department workforce and internal coordination.
All three career diplomats named in the report served under Democratic and Republican administrations, Reuters noted. Unlike political appointments, diplomats do not usually resign when the president leaves office.
Throughout his political career, Trump has gone after the “deep state”, and this move could be seen as part of his efforts to fundamentally change government at the bureaucratic level.
Trump has never hidden his disdain for the government agency responsible for foreign relations, calling it “Deep State Department” during his first term, reflecting his belief that career diplomats are working to undermine his goals.
Trump is likely to work in tandem with his nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who said during his confirmation hearing that government employees will have to work on Trump’s “America First” agenda and promised to make the agency “relevant.”
“What has happened over the last 20 years under multiple administrations is that the influence of the State Department has declined at the expense of other agencies, and also at the expense of the National Security Council, because it takes so long for the State Department to take action,” Rubio said.
Rubio said the department’s “core mission is not well defined” in the modern federal bureaucracy and that “it is our obligation to define it.” (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“We want the State Department to be relevant again,” Rubio said. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“And so more and more often they stop inviting you to meetings and stop putting you in charge of things because it takes too long to get a result.”
He said the department’s “core mission is not well defined” in the modern federal bureaucracy and “it’s our responsibility to define that.”
“We want the State Department to be relevant again, and it should be because the State Department has a lot of talented people who are experts in a certain area and who have graduate skills. And that’s not being fully utilized because, more and more, on Question after Question, “We’ve seen the State Department being marginalized because of internal inertia, because of the way the structure works. We have to be at that table when decisions are made, and the State Department has to be a source of creative ideas and effective implementation,” he added.
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Rep. Brian Mast, R–Fla., the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, he told reporters he wanted to root out those at State who ran the department’s so-called “woke” funding programs.
“If you have people writing endorsements vilely supporting a radical agenda, like doing drag shows overseas and trying to find that vague connection and not connecting things to American national security interests, then you should be aware that we’re going to be looking for them, and we’re going to be looking to create government as we would ensure that their existence does not continue in the State Department.”
