#michael rigas

Amee Vanderpool at SHERO:

Following the US Supreme Court's ruling on July 8 that cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue mass firings by lifting a lower court injunction that had paused layoffs, more than 1,350 employees at the State Department were terminated via email. On July 11, the State Department sent out Reduction In Force notices to 1,350 employees in an attempt to gain "higher quality" staff, according to Michael Rigas, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, who testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 15, mere days after the notices were sent out. "Even though there were certainly people who were qualified and great patriots who were separated from service, what you can take comfort in knowing is that the people who remained actually were selected using merit systems principles, to actually have ranked as higher quality — in terms of tenure, in terms of experience, in terms of skills — to be able to carry out the mission," Rigas told House Foreign Affairs Committee Members in an attempt to justify for the rapid and chaotic dismissal of so many career professionals. "For the State Department to become an effective instrument of American Foreign policy, we must reform and streamline our institution," Rigas said in his prepared testimony. The Trump administration, through Michael Rigas, sought to defend the quick layoffs that were hastily arranged and perfectly timed to occur after the Supreme Court ruling, but before any further litigation could continue on the case that might jeopardize the terminations. You would think that such an enormous and essential undertaking would require years of study and planning. But this latest round of substantial State cutbacks was devised and implemented by two young advisors to the Trump administration, who have no real expertise in anything other than selling their far-right strategies.

The cutbacks focused on foreign programs and services that were aimed towards LGBTQ+ communities, maternal and reproductive health, and minority groups. The theoretical impetus for these terminations stemmed from the appointment of 26-year-old Samuel Samson as a Senior Advisor to the State Department by Donald Trump. On May 27, just weeks before the Court gave Trump the green light to fire more people, Samson published an article for the State Department on Substack, titled "The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe." [...]

The practical operation of terminating 1,350 State Department employees was spearheaded by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former agent of Elon Musk’s DOGE Agency, who oversaw the sloppy dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year. Lewin, a Harvard Law School graduate, has previously worked as a research assistant for Laurence Tribe and co-authored an essay in The New York Times with Tribe, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. Both argued for leveraging frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, but now Lewin is acting as a preverbal political hitman for Donald Trump and the “America First” theory that dominates the Project 2025 missive. Lewin, who is now serving in the newly created slapdash position of acting undersecretary for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs, and religious freedom, was promoted on July 11, the day of the layoffs, to become the agency’s third-highest-ranking undersecretary under Marco Rubio. He is one of the youngest individuals to hold that rank in the State Department’s history, possibly the youngest. In his short tenure with the federal government, Lewin has been promoted three times, and the Trump administration appears to be intent on rewarding his hard work with new titles that seem to have been created especially for him.

[...] Perhaps the best descriptor for these new Trumpian young guns, which includes Samson and Lewin, was when Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, called them “a small cabal of unqualified MAGA extremists.” Meeks continued when speaking about the latest overhaul of employees at the State Department: “This wasn’t a serious review of national security needs, it was a political stunt [and] the result? The most damaging brain drain in the State Department’s modern history.”

Andrew Roth at The Guardian:

The US state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of the country’s diplomatic corps in decades. Officials say the cuts will align their mission with Donald Trump’s vision of America first. The layoffs, which are commonly called reductions in force (or RIFs), along with voluntary redundancies, will affect nearly 15% of the state department’s domestic staff. A senior state department official said that was close to 1,800 people. The restructuring will also see several hundred bureaus merged or eliminated entirely. The department advises the president and leads the US in foreign policy issues. The state department went forward with the layoffs, which were long expected, after the supreme court sided this week with the Trump administration against a federal judge’s hold on plans for mass government firings that could affect hundreds of thousands of federal employees. “In the coming days, the department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force. First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States,” read a memo attributed to Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary for management and resources, announcing the layoffs.

State department officials said they wanted to eliminate redundant positions and agencies, noting that there were three offices at the state department managing sanctions policy, and that other offices had “proliferated” under Bill Clinton during the post-cold war era. [...] The changes will empower regional bureaus by creating a simpler chain of command, the officials said. That is also likely to empower political appointees, making the unwieldy state department bureaucracy easier for the Trump administration to manage.

The State Department under Marco Rubio announces plans to lay off around 15% of its domestic staff by using reductions in force (RIF) notices.

This is part of the Trump Regime’s attack on diplomatic values and national security.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: State Department Is Laying Off Over 1,300 Staffers Under Trump Administration Plan