What's Little Marco doing to the State Dept.

Many of Voldemort's picks were questionable. Rubio on the other hand is "solid">

Clearing Foggy Bottom

Secretary of State Marco Rubio moves to overhaul one of Washington’s more dysfunctional operations.

By Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ

April 23, 2025 1:33 pm ET

A newsy analysis of the workings of D.C. (and beyond), providing the inside track on both the overhyped and overlooked events of the week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced a sweeping overhaul of his department—and the move is only decades overdue. It was all the way back in 2001 that the Hart-Rudman Commission pronounced State a “crippled institution,” lumbered by “an ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional policies do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound management, accountability, and leadership are lacking.” That’s about as damning an assessment an agency can receive, yet the only real changes at State in the ensuing quarter-century were more spending and mission creep.

Add to that sprawl a longtime Foggy Bottom belief that its diplomats know best and that it ought to operate as a power unto itself. The combo has consistently enabled a left-leaning bureaucracy to undermine the political class—in particular Republican presidents. Rubio’s reductions and consolidations are designed to narrow and sharpen the department’s missions, in the process making State’s far-flung reaches more accountable to appointees. A rundown of the changes:

What’s out: The reform will shutter 132 of State’s 734 offices. Among the cuts are those that fall obviously afoul of Donald Trump priorities, for instance State’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Ditto those that have served as hotbeds for ideological agendas—like the Global Engagement Center, which spent millions encouraging media outlets and platforms to censor speech (ahem, “disinformation”). And in the plain, old efficiency category: Gone are programs that are redundant or serve vague missions.

What’s moved or merged: One of the biggest changes will be the elimination of one of State’s six undersecretary positions—the one in charge of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, which runs what Foggy Bottom calls the “J programs.” In a State Department announcement, Rubio blasted the J “domain” as a platform for “activists” to “wage vendettas” against “antiwoke” world leaders and Israel. Some J programs will be cut, while others are reincorporated under a new Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Human Rights. In total State will transfer 137 offices elsewhere in the department, with a special focus on consolidating “regional-specific functions.”

What’s new: It isn’t all cuts. The overhaul aims to up State’s 21st-century game with a new Bureau of Emerging Threats. That office will focus on risks in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, as well as space policy and Arctic concerns.

Who’s gone: State estimates that approximately 700 positions will end alongside shuttered offices. State’s undersecretaries are under instruction to produce additional plans for reducing personnel in each of their areas by 15%. These numbers will change as appointees put the broad reform into reality. Don’t be too worried by the figures; the State Department boasts an 80,000-strong workforce.

USAID, Part II: The administration is still dealing with legal fallout from its cancellation of much of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s programming. But this overhaul appears to confirm Rubio’s intention of folding what remains of USAID’s functions into existing State offices. Expect a fresh wave of lawsuits, given Congress’s role in establishing USAID.

The Rubio stamp: While Democrats will never admit it, Rubio has handled his department changes with greater transparency and coordination than many fellow cabinet heads. He’s been specific with numbers, issued announcements and guidance, and—according to press reports—has shared these reorganization plans with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee—which have oversight responsibilities.

What looks good on paper can go very wrong in practice, and Foggy Bottom has had decades to grow accustomed to doing things its way. Indeed, in the usual course of things, it is the institution that co-opts the secretary of state. Internal resistance to this reorganization will be fierce, and Rubio’s bigger test will be implementation. But give him credit for choosing to take on a task that too many predecessors have ducked.

Environmental ‘Justice’ Goes Down

The second Trump term has meant the end of progressive initiatives turbocharged by the Joe Biden administration—most notably, the “diversity and inclusion” craze. Another for the list, as this week reinforced by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin: “environmental justice.”

Like a lot of progressive doctrine, “environmental justice” is useful for its vagueness, and the Biden team saw in that an opportunity to cloak (unpopular) progressive social programs as environmental work. Among Biden’s first executive orders was one ordering the federal government to go all in on “environmental justice” for “marginalized communities,” a justification for his team to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to any liberal nonprofit anywhere that claimed to support “justice” for anything. City Journal’s James Meigs last fall wrote this great piece about how this racket works in practice, and some of the unexpected policy consequences.

Zeldin has been systematically canceling theses EJ grants, and in a 55-minute-long Monday press conference called out at least one cringeworthy example: $50 million to the Climate Justice Alliance—which insists that “Climate justice runs through a free Palestine.” He recently used a video to ridicule the $4 million the Biden administration spent to create a one-room National Environmental Museum in EPA headquarters that is a “shrine to EJ” and costs $600,000 a year to run, yet saw only 1,900 visitors over the 10 months starting in May 2024.

He mounted his arguments for why EPA should and will prevail in the litigation over his decision to rescind eight major grants that flowed through Biden’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And he vigorously defended his EJ cuts on sheer sanity grounds: “The problem is, is that in the name of environmental justice, a dollar will get secured and not get spent on remediating that environmental issue. Instead, that dollar will get spent on a group to tell us that we should be spending a dollar to remediate the environmental issue.”

Going Whole Hogg

Democratic heads continue to explode over Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman David Hogg’s announcement that his activist group will pour $20 million into ousting older party members in primaries to “make room for a new generation.” Elected Democrats are blasting the 25-year-old’s plan as counterproductive, a waste of money and a breach of DNC etiquette. Political veteran James Carville branded it “the most insane thing I ever heard … aren’t we supposed to be running against Republicans?”

Yet almost none have criticized the real risk: that the effort results in an even more progressive and radicalized Democratic party. Hogg was quick to explain he isn’t going to target battleground-district moderates—only members in safe districts. His group, Leaders We Deserve, meanwhile only supports “trailblazers” who are “young, progressive” and “audacious.” That’s code for shifting the party further left. The group’s list of 2024 endorsed candidates provides a taste of what Hogg is aiming for.

Watch for the young activist to target bright-blue districts, and play on base discontent with the status quo to knock off older incumbents—replicating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 model, when she dispatched the powerful Joseph Crowley. With enough money, Hogg could notch some big wins and install more Squad-like members in the House. But to what end? The 2024 election was a blunt repudiation of progressive governance, and Democrats shouldn’t mistake voter concerns with Trump’s tariff agenda as a reembrace of liberal ideology. The Democrats fuming over Hogg’s moves surely understand this risk and may simply be reluctant to openly criticize this progressive double-down. But until they do, Hogg & Co. will claim to speak for Democratic voters.