Democrats demand answers on how US State Department firings went down

There has been no shortage of adjectives Democrats have used to describe the firings of thousands of USAID workers and, more recently, over 1,300 State Department staff. “Sloppy.” “Rushed.” “Shortsighted.” “Heartbreaking.” “Troubling.” “Cruel.” Those were just some of the jabs flung at Michael Rigas, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s reorganization — and reduction in force — at the State Department. But the jabs belied deeper questions about how exactly the decisions were made to fire those 1,300 workers, which include 1,100 civil servants and nearly 250 foreign service officers. “Your claim that you went through a thoughtful process to execute these RIFs completely defies reality,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, referring to the State Department’s reductions in force. “To illustrate one example, individuals who were hired under veterans’ preference were RIF’d with no acknowledgement of their veteran status in their service summary that you included in their letters. Why should we believe that you went through a thoughtful process where you can't even check this basic box of acknowledging their veteran service?” she added. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the committee, also grilled Rigas on the decision-making behind the RIFs — echoing concerns that it was an indiscriminate process based more on who happened to work in the bureaus that got axed rather than on performance and merit. “Why is the department letting diplomats go who we've invested years in training and language skills? Some of those who have been let go are fluent in five or six languages. Was there an assessment of the expertise it was losing in these layoffs? If so, how was that assessment done? Is it a written evaluation? Is it an assessment of what the needs are in the future for the department?” she asked. Rigas pushed back on the notion that merit wasn’t taken into account. “In the instance where offices were combined, you have what's called a competitive area, and each office has its own competitive area. So what we did is the most complicated reduction in force ever conducted by the federal government, and we did it in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management,” he explained. “It's called the bump and retreat. And what you do is [is ask] your senior leadership: What are the functions that you need to carry out this mission, and what positions and what skill sets do you need, and what level of experience do you need to be able to execute on this mission? And you say … we only need 25 people in this office, but we're combining an office that has a total of 75 people among the three offices.” “What OPM does is then take everyone's skills, experience, expertise, veterans’ preference, tenure, and they compete them against each other for each position that is in the combined area,” he continued. “So while there are people who have skills and experience who were unfortunately part of the reduction in force, you can sort of take some comfort to know … that the people who remain were the ones who ranked highest under this sort of merit system process.” Not everyone was convinced, including Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, who questioned how competitive the process really was. “You literally just fired department experts on nuclear proliferation, including experts with decades of expertise on Iran's nuclear weapons program, on ending Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yet the intelligence analysts with decades of experience on Russia and Ukraine walked out the door,” he said. “Claiming that you've consolidated offices in the interests of efficiency I think misses the point that this competition was done in a sloppy, rushed way that has cost us decades of relevant, critical experience.” Another widespread complaint among Democrats is that the firing of 250 foreign service officers was arbitrarily based on their rotation, so those who happened to be serving at home, as opposed to overseas, were all simply fired — victims, Democrats say, of circumstance. Duckworth pointed out that it was President Donald Trump himself who required those domestic tours. “This is something he implemented in 2017, yet you seem to exclusively target FSOs who are on domestic tours. They're on these domestic tours because President Trump, in his first term, said you need to do a domestic tour. … How do you reconcile that?” Rigas did not have a direct answer. And while it didn’t come as much of a surprise that Republicans would eliminate or consolidate bureaus seen as anathema to Trump’s foreign policy vision — democracy promotion, human rights, gender equality — Democrats sought to highlight the closure of bureaus and subsequent departure of employees that they said were critical to national security, and by extension, Trump’s own agenda. “The thing I focus on the most is talent and skills, less than title and function. And my concern about the RIF that you've led, that has pushed 1,300 people out the door, is that the way it was done has cost us huge talent,” said Coons, noting that this talent included specialists in cybersecurity and countering China. Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, also cited the termination of dozens of counterterrorism programs. “It really remains unclear what if any programs will exist that prevent the recruitment of desperate people to terrorism,” she said, adding: “Terrorism abroad, it doesn't stay abroad.” But Rigas pointed out that the Bureau of Counterterrorism merged with the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau, “so the essential functions will remain.” He also criticized the sprawling number of bureaus and offices — “over 1,500 office units in the United States alone” — that had popped up over the years. “You have some issue of the day that needs to be addressed, and it's a real problem, and you create an office to address it, right? And they probably did a good job and addressed it, and then five years later, maybe the problem isn't as salient or as urgent, but the bureau remains,” he said. “And what we've looked at here is to the extent that some of those issues still need some day-to-day management, maybe they don't need to have their own bureau. Maybe they can be combined with another bureau that does similar overlapping functions,” he added. “And so we asked folks how can we continue to execute on these important missions, but do it in the most efficient and effective way possible, so that you've got clear lines of accountability and a better use of resources?”