U.S. faces foreign crises with a hollowed out diplomatic corps

Pigott said the department mobilized a wide-ranging Ebola response within 24 hours of word of the outbreak. “Our highest priority remains protecting the health and security of the American people by working to prevent this outbreak from reaching our shores.”

Rewriting the rules

Current and former officials also say the State Department has rewritten the fundamental rules and policies around evaluations and promotions in a manner that will further sideline career diplomats.

A new bell curve designed to limit the number of U.S. diplomats receiving top ranking on their annual reviews could also limit chances for promotion and could spell the end of careers.

Both current and former officials acknowledged the evaluation system needed reform but said the changes only created a different set of problems. A fourth former diplomat said the new system had left many foreign service officers despondent.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the reformed system “is consistent with the Trump administration’s emphasis on accountability in government.

“Having been involved in supervising and evaluating personnel for many years in different contexts, I believe this change will restore accountability and ensure that evaluations reflect actual performance rather than inflated ratings designed to evade difficult conversations,” he told The Daily Wire.

Foreign service officers are also subject to new criteria for performance evaluations with a list that places “fidelity” at the top of desired skills and traits.

Former diplomat Mark Lambert, who retired last January after decades in Asia policy, said beyond ensuring bad advice to leadership from employees too scared to speak their minds, tying U.S. diplomats’ success to loyalty puts alliances at risk because a partisan Foreign Service results in inconsistent foreign policy.

“The Foreign Service is like the military, you take an oath to the Constitution,” Lambert said. “You have people who’ve served loyally to presidents and to secretaries of state, irrespective of political party, because that loyalty is to the Constitution. And you’re hired for your judgment, to provide analysis, to provide input to your boss, no matter what political party.”

Rubio Briefing 5/5/26 — Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Pigott, the State Department spokesman, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio “values candid insights from patriotic Americans who have chosen to serve their country.”

“In fact, this administration reorganized the entire State Department to ensure those on the front lines — the regional bureaus and the embassies — are in a position to impact policies,” Pigott said. “What we will not tolerate is people using their positions to actively undermine the duly elected president’s objectives.”

Experts without a seat at the negotiating table

Unlike past administrations of both parties, senior career foreign service officers have been largely absent from high level negotiations in the Trump administration, former and current State Department officials said.

Diplomatic discussions on the Ukraine and Iran wars have instead been led by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner or Trump’s longtime friend Steve Witkoff, a businessman with no diplomatic experience. Trump has praised them, saying they do great work on critical international negotiations.

“When the president went to Beijing, and if you look at who was manifested on his flight, there wasn’t a China expert among them,” Lambert said. “It’s not a surprise that if you have a problem with Russia or with China, and you’re using a real estate lawyer, or people who’ve never negotiated successfully with the Chinese, you’re going to have suboptimal outcomes.”

Three former senior career diplomats told NBC News they believed the Trump administration sidelines career experts because it did not want its decisions to be questioned.

Former Ambassador John Bass, who served in Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan, said there was little doubt of the Trump administration’s intentions.

“Clearly, there is an organized effort to strip the career, professional workforce of experienced leaders who have a degree of expertise and who have been taught to take initiative, to solve problems, to fill the space and to speak on behalf of the nation,” Bass told NBC News.

“It’s pretty clear that this administration does not value any of those things, and in fact sees anyone taking initiative as disloyal or somehow part of a ‘deep state,’ even if they’re taking that initiative in a way that is fully consistent with the objectives that have been laid out by the president and the secretary.”

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Islamabad on April 12, 2026. — U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Islamabad on April 12, 2026.Jacquelyn Martin / AFP – Getty Images

Pigott rejected the premise that key decisions were made without meaningful input from experienced professionals.

“Career and political officials across the department, along with our embassies and interagency partners, are working side by side to respond to this operation,” he said.

As part of a reorganization last summer, nearly 250 foreign service officers were forced out of their jobs. Diplomats take on new assignments around the globe every few years, but the cuts only targeted foreign service officers who happened to be assigned to Washington at the time of the decision.

“The State Department arbitrarily fired 247 Foreign Service Officers based on where their name landed on a spreadsheet on May 29 of last year,” now-former U.S. diplomat Maryum Saifee said in a public post following the announcement. “Many of us had moved to onward assignments, and in some cases overseas postings. A good number were promoted after being fired.”

Their termination letters said it was performance based and there was “no work available,” she wrote, but “new classes of diplomats, expensive to train, have replaced us.”

After fighting the action in court for nearly a year, the layoffs were formalized this month, just as the agency ramped up a campaign for new recruits.

Changes to the foreign service entrance exam including the removal of questions deemed to be focused on a “diversity, equity and inclusion agenda,” alongside a State Department’s recruitment video featuring black and white historical footage of almost entirely white men only added to concerns.

“The messaging on who they’re trying to recruit is pretty obvious. You know, they’re using archival footage of a foreign service that hasn’t existed for 30 years,” according to the first former official. “Across administrations, Republican, Democratic, the whole purpose of the foreign service was to make it look like America. That means, the kid who went to community college in Montana, as well as a veteran who did grad work in Atlanta, as well as your usual sort of DC folks. That’s not what they’re recruiting with that message.”

Pigott dismissed the concerns.

“The same folks claiming to be concerned about supposed ‘politization’ should be thanking this administration for reversing the destructive DEI policies forced on the State Department under Biden,” he said. “We have one fundamental goal: to implement President Trump’s America first foreign policy to make our nation safer, stronger, and more prosperous.”

Putting America First

Horst had not planned on leaving the Foreign Service.

She had been nominated in February of 2024 to be the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka. Like Adams Smith, her nomination was also held up.

When realized her nomination — like dozens of others — was not going to be resubmitted by the Trump administration, she took it in stride and found herself an available position within the department. “It is the prerogative of every White House to decide who they want to nominate,” she said.

So she applied to be part of the Lewis Local Diplomats, an initiative which sends State Department employees to cities such as Knoxville, San Antonio, Riversideand Kansas City to help local governments connect with foreign businesses and attract foreign investment. “You don’t get more America first than this,” she said.

She was supposed to arrive at her next post in August but by the end of June she was told the program had been canceled. She spent the next month applying for a series of jobs but the only place to move was down.

“I decided if there’s a ceiling, I’m going to get out and work on the things that matter to me,” Horst said. She now works in sustainable agriculture in her home state of Minnesota.

Many of the current and former diplomats said the impact of the mass departure will be felt for many administrations to come.

“The long-term damage is not just to America’s reputation, but the things Americans care about,” Horst said. “Will I be OK overseas if I travel and have an emergency? Can I get a passport? Can my business export the way it used to? Are my supply chains okay?”

For Kelly Adams-Smith, who now teaches foreign policy at American University, the departure of senior foreign service officers is only more reason to encourage the next generation to take the foreign service exam and join the U.S. diplomatic corps.

“We need a pipeline of well-trained, educated, nonpartisan professionals coming into the foreign service, we always need that,” Adams-Smith said. “I would hate for young people who dream of a career in public service, to not do that at this moment, because we need them. Desperately.”

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