US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership.
The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said.
They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can be scarce.
Photo: AP
A senior US Department of State official said the recall was standard procedure, senior diplomats were being encouraged to pursue new roles in the agency and that Trump has the right to ensure that senior US envoys would advance his agenda. The official declined to give an exact number of diplomats who were being recalled, but one list circulating in the department listed about 30 people.
Nonetheless, the move breaks with decades of precedent among administrations, which have tended to leave career diplomats in their posts even after the White House changes parties.
Ambassadors generally fall into two categories: One consists of the donors, former politicians and friends handpicked by the US president to serve in high-profile embassies such as Paris, London and Tokyo, often as a reward for their support. Those ambassadors almost always resign the same day the president who nominated them leaves office.
However, the vast majority of US embassies are led by trained career diplomats who are members of the US foreign service and adjust their message based on White House priorities of the moment. They are also confirmed by the US Senate, but tend to stay on between administrations.
Among the countries where ambassadors were being recalled were the Philippines, Vietnam, Guatemala and more than 10 in Africa.
“This is truly a decimation of the most experienced diplomats that we have,” said John Feeley, a career diplomat who served as US ambassador to Panama during Trump’s first term before resigning over differences with the president.
The American Foreign Service Association, which is a union and a professional organization for foreign service officers, said the recall “sends a dangerous message,” and pushed back against what it called “the politicization of our diplomatic corps.”
“This is not how America leads,” the association said in a statement posted on LinkedIn, saying it had received numerous reports of the recall from its members.
“Removing senior diplomats without cause undermines US credibility abroad and sends a chilling signal to the professional Foreign Service: experience and an oath to the Constitution take a backseat to political loyalty,” it said.
Dating back to Trump’s first term, his supporters accused members of the foreign service of belonging to the so-called “deep state” that they said was trying to undermine the president’s foreign policy shift.
That claim has been turbocharged in Trump’s second term. On Sunday, right-wing influencer Laura Loomer posted about what she called “Biden-era deep state holdovers” among US diplomats. She has previously lobbied Trump to fire national security professionals over alleged disloyalty to Trump.
In July, the department began dismissing about 1,300 US-based diplomats and other employees, after the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with plans to slash the size of the federal workforce.
Altogether, about 3,000 employees were expected to leave the department as part of the Trump administration’s reorganization, according to a notice seen by Bloomberg News in July.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously eliminated thousands of jobs when he helped dissolve the US Agency for International Development, accusing its employees of “rank insubordination” and working against Republican priorities.
A report from the foreign service association released earlier this month said professional diplomats have been deeply demoralized by the Trump administration’s changes and said US diplomacy is being “decimated from within.”
At a news conference on Friday last week, Rubio pushed back against reports of low morale.
“We are changing this place so that it is our missions in the field that are not just driving directives from the top down, but also ideas from the bottom up,” Rubio said. “That’s going to lead — and pay huge dividends for future secretaries of state long after I’m gone.”
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