Trump Guts State Department And Staff Warns People Should Be ‘Scared’

WASHINGTON – As the Trump administration on Friday began its firing of 1,353 employees at the State Department, laid-off employees described shock, a chaotic process of layoffs and concern about the ramifications of gutting government diplomatic expertise.

“They moved us three times in the past week, telling us we were going to be merged into different offices… there’s no transparency, no official communication, no anything, just complete disrespect for people who had been serving this country for many years,” said Andrea Samuelson, who was fired after 16 years at the department.

Another terminated employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, told HuffPost they had worked in an office focused on keeping Americans safe, and the public should be wary of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claims that his changes to the State Department will streamline its work.

“People should be feeling scared: they are going to be less safe no matter what this administration says,” the employee said, saying their dismissal “came out of nowhere.” 

State Department officials and congressional sources previously told HuffPost that Rubio’s decision-making about which personnel and offices to cut seemed arbitrary and involved little transparency. Several officials fired on Friday said they had not anticipated that they or their offices would be affected.

Affected State Department staffers spoke with HuffPost during an afternoon rally in front of the agency. Dozens of people — including two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (Va.) ― gathered to applaud, or “clap out” the terminated employees, whose ranks included both career civil servants and foreign service officers. As those officials walked out of the looming Harry S. Truman building, many were visibly crying and several were carrying plaques; others strode out and joined the crowd awaiting them, tacitly projecting defiance. The crowd held up signs with messages like “THANK YOU AMERICA’S DIPLOMATS” and “DIPLOMACY IS HOMELAND SECURITY.”

“To see them treated so shabbily hurts, but it also hurts our country because this diminishes our influence overseas,” Van Hollen told HuffPost. “You know the people who are going to be cheering this? They’re our adversaries — they’re going to be celebrating. Our allies and friends? They’ll be worried. So Donald Trump likes to say he’s about America first. What we’re witnessing here is America in retreat. When we disengage from the world, we lose.” 

Last month, a senior State Department official defended the overhaul in an email to HuffPost.

“Secretary Rubio, under President Trump’s leadership, is working to consolidate and strengthen the State Department workforce. Leadership from the Department has been to dozens of congressional briefings and hearings regarding the reorganization. The proposed reorganization follows all Congressional requirements. Consultation with Congress will continue to ensure a State Department that best reflects America’s core national interests,” the official wrote.

Samuelson argued, “To call it a process would be a joke.”

One laid-off official said the process was “very confusing,” preventing affected employees from ensuring that necessary knowledge and expertise would be shared with colleagues who remain.

“I was implementing legislation that passed under the first Trump administration and seemingly had Secretary Rubio’s support, so there was reason to believe that would live on,” added the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, calling their role “a dream job.”

“The bureaucracy can appear opaque. On the inside, it’s just a lot of people working together,” the official said.

HuffPost witnessed hugs among staffers, people offering to help each other find jobs and chants by others unaffected directly by the firing. Former officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — which the Trump administration shuttered on July 1 — and former appointees at the State Department under President Joe Biden were among the crowd of supporters.

Tom Rhodes, a former USAID employee, carried a sign saying “DESTROY ≠ REFORM”. He said he had been posted to Peru working on “protecting American and Western interests against Chinese aggression and environmental crime… all of that work is impossible now.”

A foreign service officer who retired after 34 years, Bob Gilchrist, described the moment as “a tragic day for our country” as the government lost “dedicated public servants who’ve worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations.”

Speakers at the rally led chants to “fight back” and told former State Department employees they should speak up since they were no longer subject to government restrictions. 

Attendees passed out small flyers bearing a firm message, printed under an American flag: “Here worked America’s experts on democracy, human rights (yes, which include women’s, LGBTQ+ & minorities’ rights), elections security, freedom of expression, privacy, on countering corruption, violent extremism and disinformation, and more,” it read. “You’ve just released them and hundreds of their colleagues into the wild… in the United States of America.