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The State Department is considering closing 27 consulates and embassies across the world as part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s budget cuts.
According to an internal memo obtained by CNN, the department is also eyeing a move to pull resources from U.S. diplomatic missions in Somalia and Iraq, despite having ongoing counterterrorism efforts in both of those countries.
A State Department spokesperson told Daily Kos that “operations continue as normal,” though they were not able to confirm nor deny the possibility of future closures.
“The State Department continues to assess our global programs and posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people,” they told Daily Kos.
In other words, nothing is off the table.
Consulates are typically low-staffed agencies that provide help to Americans abroad with things like passports and visas. Even though Secretary of State Marco Rubio hasn’t publicly signed off on any closures yet, he has an interesting history with some of the countries who made the list.
One of the consulates is in South Sudan, where Rubio recently revoked all U.S. visas after its government refused to take a deportee who wasn’t even from South Sudan, but a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—another country on the list to lose its consulate.
Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau argued that South Sudan’s government issued the man emergency travel papers to the United States stating that he was a citizen of their country. Because of this, he said, South Sudan’s argument was “legally irrelevant,” and they would have to accept the man regardless of newfound information.
Ultimately, South Sudan accepted the deportee, but the United States did not reinstate visas.
Another country on the list is South Africa. Last month, Ebrahim Rasool, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, was booted from the United States for criticizing President Donald Trump.
“Emrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates [Trump]. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA,” Rubio wrote on X.
From picking fights with Canada to slapping tariffs on U.S. allies across the board, the Trump administration has been inching closer and closer to an isolationist foreign policy approach.
More so, the Trump administration has moved to cut the U.S. Agency for International Development once and for all. And, despite claiming that it’s hard on drugs, the Trump administration cut funding for USAID that was used to fight drug trafficking.
While the Trump team claims to be working to make the government more efficient, the motives behind their cuts and the impacts that follow prove an alternative motive: to obey Trump’s personal agenda.
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