The senior officials of the State Department have developed plans to close a dozen consulates abroad by this summer and plan to close many more missions, in what could be a blow for the efforts of the United States government to establish partnerships and collect information, according to US officials.
The ministry also plans to dismiss many local citizens who work for its hundreds of missions. These workers represent two thirds of the agency’s workforce and, in many countries, they form the foundation of the knowledge of American diplomats in their environment.
The narrowing is part of the greater reduction in the federal government of President Trump and his “America First” foreign policy, in which the United States ends or limit the formerly important means of exerting a global influence, including by democracy, human rights and aid works.
The movements come at a time when China, the main rival in America, has exceeded the United States in the number of global diplomatic positions. China has carried out solid links between nations, in particular in Asia and Africa, and exercises greater power in international organizations.
Any vast closure of missions, in particular whole embassies, would hinder the work of large parts of the federal government and potentially compromise American national security.
The ambassacts of the officers of the Chamber of the Military, Intelligence, the police, health, commerce, trade, treasure and other agencies, which monitor all developments in the host nation and work with local officials to counter everything, from terrorism to infectious disease via the currencies.
The prospect of wide cuts has already generated a certain anxiety within the Central Intelligence Agency. The vast majority of American intelligence agents under cover work in embassies and consulates, pretending to be diplomats, and the closure of diplomatic positions would reduce CIA options to find out where to position its spies.
The cuts intervene while the State Department is of hemorrhage of senior executives via voluntary resignations, and a hiring frost means that the workforce is narrowed by attrition. A current five -week course mainly for senior career diplomats, including ambassadors, choosing to retire has around 160 people, one of the largest cohorts of recent memory retirement agents, said an American official.
About 700 employees – including 450 career diplomats – have given resignation documents in the first two months of this year, the official said. It is an astonishing rate: before 2025, around 800 people had resigned in an entire year.
Efforts aimed at reducing diplomatic positions and endowment abroad are part of an internal campaign aimed at reducing the Operations Budget of the State Department, perhaps up to 20%, according to two US officials knowing evolving discussions. Like others who spoke for this article, they discussed sensitive plans on the state of anonymity.
Possible cuts and related proposals could evolve as the internal debate continues.
The process was accelerated by a team led by Elon Musk, which has integrated in government agencies in the search for what it calls government waste. A team member, Edward Coristine, a 19 -year -old engineer who publicly passes “Big Balls”, is in the State Department which contributes to directing the agency’s budget cuts. The budget of the ministry and the number of employees are tiny compared to those of the Pentagon.
A memo circulating within the department proposes to close a dozen consulates, mainly in Western Europe, according to three US officials who have seen or have been informed of the note. This action occurs while Mr. Trump distances the United States from his democratic allies in Europe in favor of strengthening relations with Russia.
The 271 world diplomatic posts in the United States are lagging behind 274 in China, but the United States currently has an advantage in Europe, according to a study by Lowy Institute.
The State Department informed two committees of the congress last month of the closures. And on Monday, the department officials declared to the committees that they also planned to close a Gaziantep, Turkey consulate, which was a hub for US officials to work with refugees from neighboring Syria and humanitarian aid groups.
These consulates are small operations, generally with one or two American diplomats and staff of local citizens. But they help collect and disseminate information in places far from capitals and to deliver visas.
In mid-February, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, sent a note to the heads of mission, who are generally ambassadors, telling them to ensure that staff at posts abroad was “held at least necessary to implement the priorities of the president’s foreign policy”. He also said that all the posts left vacant for two years should be abolished, said an American official who saw the memo.
A cable sent from Washington Wednesday to Global Missions tells all employees to search for “waste, fraud and abuse”, the expression that Mr. Musk uses to justify his deep cuts through the government. Officials are invited to help with Mr. Musk’s mission by examining all the contracts that cost $ 10,000 to $ 250,000, said the US official, who saw the cable.
This could contribute to a reduction project of up to 20% of the operating budget of the State Department. The American official said that the expression “at all levels” had been used, but we don’t know what it means. According to a proposal, closed embassies work could be absorbed by another embassy in the same region or by a regional mission center.
The plan to close a dozen consulates mainly in Western Europe is more concrete. The officials of the State Department have shared a list with the Congress, although this can still change. The list includes consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal. It also includes a consulate in Brazil, according to an American official who saw the list. Certain details of the planned closures were reported earlier by Politico.
“The State Department continues to assess our global posture to ensure that we are best placed to meet modern challenges on behalf of the American people,” the agency said in a statement on Thursday when it questioned the various proposed changes.
In his remarks to the employees during his first day in the department, Mr. Rubio declared that he appreciated the diplomatic corps, but that there will be changes. “
“The changes are not intended to be destructive; They are not supposed to be punitive, “he said. “The changes will be because we must be a 21st century agency that can move, by a shot that is used by many, at the speed of relevance.”
Since then, Mr. Rubio has supervised cuts of drastic foreign aid and authorized Mr. Musk and Pete Marocco, a man named division policy, to draw or place thousands of employees at the United States agency for international development, a sister agency of the State Department. This has raised doubts among diplomats on Mr. Rubio’s commitment.
The discomfort among diplomats is still fueled by the fact that they have not seen any sign that Mr. Rubio tried to repel the efforts of Mr. Trump aimed at weakening democratic Ukraine and to adopt Russia, which could point out a wider acquiescence to the White House guidelines. The diplomats noted a viral photo of Mr. Rubio sprawled the stone on a sofa in the oval office last Friday while Mr. Trump had shouted at Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine.
Employees of foreign and civil services from the State Department are preparing for dismissal cycles. The ministry has around 76,000 employees, with 50,000 of these local citizens abroad. Among the others, around 14,000 are trained diplomats that turn abroad, called outdoor service and specialists, and 10,000 members of the public service and work mainly in Washington.
The heads of mission were invited by senior officials of the department to submit a list by mid-February to the minimum number of local citizens they need to maintain mission operations, said an American official.
Diplomats and civil servants could be rejected by force reduction orders, a mechanism that government agencies can use to dismiss workers. Another American official said that this type of order is supposed to take into account seniority and performance at work.
In recent weeks, a list of 700 public service employees who could potentially be dismissed has been circulating within the department, but so far, only 18 people who were in probation status have been released, said an American official.
An attempt to cut the workers has been canceled for the moment. In early February, the ministry made orders to contracting companies to end the work of 60 entrepreneurs from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Companies have put workers, who include specialists in technology and the region, on unpaid leave. But after internal discussions, the office asked mostly or everyone to come back this week.
The senior officials discuss the consolidation of the parts of the department. A proposal would retrograde, thanks to a merger, the Office of Democracy and Human Rights as well as in the offices working on questions of counters and refugees and migration. The Ministry’s foreign aid office and the tiny vestiges of the USAID would be placed under the same umbrella.
Managers also proposed to merge some of the regional offices of the department. These are led by assistant secretaries in Washington and supervise policies and operations in large expanses of the world. The offices are at the heart of American diplomacy.
March 6, 2025
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An earlier version of an image legend with this article, using Getty image information, poorly identified a building indicated in the image. It was the interior department, not the State Department. The image has been replaced.
