State Department lays off over 1,300 employees under Trump administration plan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. State Department fired more than 1,300 employees Friday in line with a dramatic reorganization plan from the Trump administration that critics say will damage America's global leadership and efforts to counter threats abroad.

The department sent layoff notices to 1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers with assignments in the United States, according to a senior department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

Notices said positions were being “abolished” and the employees would lose access to State Department headquarters in Washington and their email and shared drives by 5 p.m., according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

As fired employees packed their belongings, dozens of former colleagues, ambassadors, members of Congress and others spent a warm, humid day protesting outside. Holding signs saying, “Thank you to America’s diplomats” and “We all deserve better,” they mourned the institutional loss from the cuts and highlighted the personal sacrifice of serving in the foreign service.

“We talk about people in uniform serving. But foreign service officers take an oath of office, just like military officers,” said Anne Bodine, who retired from the State Department in 2011 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is not the way to treat people who served their country and who believe in ‘America First.'”

While lauded by President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their Republican allies as overdue and necessary to make the department leaner and more efficient, the cuts have been roundly criticized by current and former diplomats who say they will weaken U.S. influence and the ability to counter existing and emerging threats abroad.

Antony Blinken, who served as President Joe Biden's secretary of state, posted on X late Friday: “Thinking today of the men and women of the State Department — Foreign Service and Civil Service. Their dedication to serving the national interest and the American people is second to none.”

The Trump administration has pushed to reshape American diplomacy and worked aggressively to shrink the size of the federal government, including mass dismissals driven by the Department of Government Efficiency and moves to dismantle whole departments like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Education Department.

USAID, the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency, was absorbed into the State Department last week after the administration dramatically slashed foreign aid funding.

Late Friday, the U.S. Institute of Peace’s 300 employees began receiving notices that they were being let go, marking the second time they have been terminated. USIP is an independent, nonprofit think tank funded by Congress.

A recent ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the layoffs to start, while lawsuits challenging the legality of the cuts continue to play out. The department had advised staffers Thursday that it would be sending layoff notices to some of them soon.

In a May letter notifying Congress about the reorganization, the department said it had just over 18,700 U.S.-based employees and was looking to reduce the workforce by 18% through layoffs and voluntary departures, including deferred resignation programs.

“It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions,” Rubio told reporters Thursday during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.”

Foreign service officers affected will be placed immediately on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally lose their jobs, according to an internal notice obtained by the AP. For most civil servants, the separation period is 60 days, it said.

Inside and just outside the State Department, employees spent over an hour applauding their departing colleagues, who got more support -- and sometimes hugs -- from protesters and others gathered across the street.

As speakers took to a bullhorn, people behind them held signs in the shape of gravestones that said “democracy,” “human rights” and “diplomacy.”

"It’s just heartbreaking to stand outside these doors right now and see people coming out in tears, because all they wanted to do was serve this country,” said Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who worked as a civilian adviser for the State Department in Afghanistan during the Obama administration.

Robert Blake, who served as a U.S. ambassador under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, said he came to support his peers at a very “unjust time.”

“I have a lot of friends who served very loyally and with distinction and who are being fired for nothing to do with their performance,” Blake said.

Gordon Duguid, a 31-year veteran of the foreign service, said of the Trump administration: “They’re not looking for people who have the expertise ... they just want people who say, ‘OK, how high’” to jump.

“That’s a recipe for disaster,” he added.

The American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats, said it opposed the job cuts during “a moment of great global instability.”

“Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests," the AFSA said in a statement. “These layoffs are untethered from merit or mission.”

As the layoffs began, paper signs started going up around the State Department. “Colleagues, if you remain: resist fascism,” said one.

An employee who was among those laid off said she printed them about a week ago, when the Supreme Court cleared way for the reductions. The employee spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

She worked with about a dozen colleagues to put up the signs. They focused on bathrooms, where there are no security cameras, although others went in more public spaces.

“Nobody wants to feel like these guys can just get away with this,” she said.

The State Department is planning to eliminate some divisions tasked with oversight of America’s two-decade involvement in Afghanistan, including an office focused on resettling Afghan nationals who worked alongside the U.S. military.

Jessica Bradley Rushing, who worked at the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, known as CARE, said she was shocked when she received another dismissal notice Friday after she had already been put on administrative leave in March.

“I spent the entire morning getting updates from my former colleagues at CARE, who were watching this carnage take place within the office,” she said, adding that every person on her team received a notice. “I never even anticipated that I could be at risk for that because I’m already on administrative leave.”

The State Department said the reorganization will affect more than 300 bureaus and offices, as it eliminates divisions it describes as doing unclear or overlapping work. It says Rubio believes “effective modern diplomacy requires streamlining this bloated bureaucracy.”

The letter to Congress was clear that the reorganization is also intended to eliminate programs — particularly those related to refugees and immigration, as well as human rights and democracy promotion — that the Trump administration believes have become ideologically driven in a way that is incompatible with its priorities and policies.

Lee reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Amiri from New York. Chris Megerian and Gary Fields in Washington contributed.

Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Department of State at https://apnews.com/hub/us-department-of-state.

State Department employees applaud as their colleagues walk through the lobby of the State Department headquarters in the Harry S Truman Building, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

Fired State Department employees carry boxes out of the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, in Washington, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

State Department employees applaud as their colleagues walk through the lobby of the State Department headquarters in the Harry S Truman Building, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A man hugs former Foreign Service employee Bob Gilchrist, of Washington, left, as he holds a sign reading "Thank You America's Diplomats" outside the State Department headquarters, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

Retired State Department employees and supporters rally outside the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, in Washington, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A fired State Department employee, left, is greeted outside of the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, in Washington, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

State Department employees applaud as their colleagues walk through the lobby of the State Department headquarters in the Harry S Truman Building, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., speaks during a rally outside the headquarters of the State Department, in Washington, Friday, July 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Former Foreign Service employee Anne Bodine of Arlington, Va., demonstrates against potential layoffs at the State Department, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

State Department employees applaud as their colleagues walk through the lobby of the State Department headquarters in the Harry S. Truman Building, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

State Department employees cheer to recognize the service of their fired co-workers who are carrying boxes and their personal belongings out of the Harry S. Truman Building, the headquarters of the State Department, in Washington, Friday, July 11, 2025, as they , (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A woman reacts as she walks out of the State Department headquarters, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

A man hugs former Foreign Service employee Bob Gilchrist, of Washington, left, as he holds a sign reading "Thank You America's Diplomats" outside the State Department headquarters, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

The headquarters of the Department of State is seen, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

A sign is seen outside the headquarters of the Department of State, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FILE - Federal workers and supporters rally outside of the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gives a media briefing during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at the Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur Friday, July 11, 2025. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gestures as he boards his flight before departing from Subang Air Base, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, on Friday, July 11, 2025, after attending the 58th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gestures as he boards his flight before departing from Subang Air Base, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, on Friday, July 11, 2025, after attending the 58th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)