It was not immediately clear who had compiled the document or what stage of internal debates over a restructuring of the State Department it reflected. It is one of several recent documents proposing changes to the department, and internal administration conversations take place daily on possible actions.
Some of the ideas have been debated among U.S. officials in recent weeks, though it is unclear to what degree they would be adopted or how active the draft is, officials said.
Elements of the draft executive order could change before final White House review or before President Trump signs it, if he decides to do so.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a short comment on social media after this article was published, calling it “fake news.” There are no indications that Mr. Rubio or his top aides have signed off on the document, though they have been working on a reorganization of the State Department.
Neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council replied to requests for comment early Sunday before this article was published, including a question asking whether Mr. Trump would sign such an executive order.
The purpose of the executive order is to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the State Department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to a copy of the draft order obtained by The New York Times. The order says the department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.
Some of the proposed changes outlined in the draft document would require congressional notification and no doubt be challenged by lawmakers, including mass closures of diplomatic missions and headquarters bureaus, as well as an overhaul of the diplomatic corps. Substantial parts, if officials tried to enact them, would likely face lawsuits.
On Sunday afternoon, Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a social media post: “Whether parts of this draft EO ever reach Trump’s desk, it’s already clear this administration is determined to gut the @StateDept and run American diplomacy and development capabilities into the ground.”
A White House official said the same afternoon that the proposals were not true and that the White House was not considering them.
The document began circulating among current and former U.S. diplomats and other officials on Saturday.
Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.
The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new hiring criteria that includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”
The draft says the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake “policy development and review” and “operational planning.”
The proposed reorganization would get rid of regional bureaus that help make and enact policy in large parts of the globe.
Instead, the draft says, those functions would fall under four “corps”: Eurasia Corps, consisting of Europe, Russia and Central Asia; Mid-East Corps, consisting of Arab nations, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Latin America Corps, consisting of Central America, South America and the Caribbean; and Indo-Pacific Corps, consisting of East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Brussels this month.Credit…Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin
One of the most drastic proposed changes is to eliminate the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
The draft also said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments,” the document said.
Canadian operations would be put into a new North American affairs office under Mr. Rubio’s authority, and it would be run by a “significantly reduced team,” the draft said. The department would also severely shrink the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
The department would eliminate a bureau overseeing democracy and human rights issues; one that handles refugees and migration; and another that works with international organizations. The under secretary position overseeing the first two bureaus would be cut. So would the office of the under secretary of public diplomacy and public affairs.
The department would also get rid of the position of the special envoy for climate.
The department would establish a new senior position, the under secretary for transnational threat elimination, to oversee counternarcotics policy and other issues, the draft memo said.
The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance would absorb the remnants of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been gutted over the last two months by Mr. Rubio and other members of the Trump administration.
As for personnel, the memo said, the department needs to move from its “current outdated and disorganized generalist global rotation model to a smarter, strategic, regionally specialized career service framework to maximize expertise.”
That means people trying to get into the Foreign Service would choose during the application process which regional corps they want to work in.
The department would offer buyouts to foreign service and civil service officers until Sept. 30, the draft said.
The State Department has about 80,000 employees, with 50,000 of those being local citizens abroad. Of the rest, about 14,000 are trained diplomats who rotate overseas, called foreign service officers and specialists, and 13,000 are members of the civil service who work mostly out of Washington.
The draft order also calls for narrowing Fulbright scholarships so that they are given only to students doing master’s level studies in national security matters.
And it says the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for the Rangel and Pickering fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.
The draft executive order is one of several internal documents that have circulated in the administration in recent days laying out proposed changes to the State Department. Another memo outlines a proposed cut of nearly 50 percent to the agency’s budget in the next fiscal year. Yet another internal memo proposes cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates.
Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.
