What The Hell America!

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at major cuts to the U.S. State Department, preparations for Pope Francis’s funeral, and the effect of White House tariffs on the global economy.

Slashing State

The White House unveiled a sweeping plan on Tuesday to reorganize the U.S. State Department, in one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive federal overhauls since taking office. The plan will cut 132 agency offices, eliminate around 700 jobs in Washington, and shutter programs dedicated to peace and democracy promotion.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at major cuts to the U.S. State Department, preparations for Pope Francis’s funeral, and the effect of White House tariffs on the global economy.

Slashing State

The White House unveiled a sweeping plan on Tuesday to reorganize the U.S. State Department, in one of President Donald Trump’s most aggressive federal overhauls since taking office. The plan will cut 132 agency offices, eliminate around 700 jobs in Washington, and shutter programs dedicated to peace and democracy promotion.

“In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X. “Region-specific functions will be streamlined to increase functionality. Redundant offices will also be removed, and non-statutory programs misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist,” he added on Substack.

Rubio does not list what those core interests are beyond delivering on Trump’s “America First” agenda. In Trump’s second term so far, that agenda has included gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, launching a global trade war, cracking down on immigration, and retreating from multilateral institutions. Another key administration priority has been eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and other initiatives perceived to be part of the “woke” liberal agenda, including the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad.

That last priority appears to have factored heavily into decisions about which State Department programs to cut. As part of the proposed reorganization, for instance, the Trump administration will eliminate the office of the Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, known as the “J programs,” which Rubio accused of having “provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense.” Also cut is the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which Rubio said “became a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against ‘anti-woke’ leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes.”

Additional cuts include the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which investigates war crimes; the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which seeks to prevent war; the Office of Global Women’s Issues and the department’s diversity and inclusion office; and the office of the director of the Foreign Service Institute, which provides language training and education support for foreign service officers. The restructuring will also create a new bureau of emerging threats that will focus on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

“Clearly, they’ve taken a hit to what I would call soft power,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department analyst. “The Chinese and the Russians, I’m sure, will see this as an extension of a dysfunction that’s going to allow them, particularly the Chinese, to capitalize on the fact that the Trump administration seems to have gone on a values holiday when it pertains to American alliances and American allies.”

A memo sent by Deputy Secretary of State Christoper Landau gave undersecretaries until July 1 to develop plans to implement these changes. These will include cost-cutting and downsizing efforts; according to internal documents seen by local media, senior officials must reduce U.S.-based staff by around 15 percent, potentially affecting hundreds of jobs.

“The American people deserve a State Department willing and able to advance their safety, security, and prosperity around the world, one respectful of their tax dollars and the sacred trust of government service, and one prepared to meet the immense challenges of the 21st Century,” Rubio wrote on Substack.

But some experts are hesitant to believe that these reforms will reinvigorate the State Department. “On balance, with or without reform of the Department of State, unless you had a president who understood and believed in foreign policy and a secretary of state whom he trusted, who he respected, and who he listened to, I think they can do whatever they want with the Department of State,” Miller said. “It’s not going to make a whole lot of difference.”

Today’s Most Read

What We’re Following

Funeral proceedings. Catholic Church cardinals announced on Tuesday that Pope Francis will lie in state at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica starting Wednesday, and his funeral will be held on Saturday morning. Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re will preside over the service.

Francis died on Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke and cardiac arrest. His death followed weeks of ill health and a lengthy hospital stay due to pneumonia.

Foreign leaders from around the world announced on Tuesday that they will attend Francis’s funeral, including Trump, several European officials, and Argentine President Javier Milei. Francis was from Argentina and was the church’s first Latin American pontiff. A conclave will convene to choose his successor sometime after May 6. A specific date will be selected after Saturday’s service.

Slow market growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs will slow global economic growth to 2.8 percent this year compared to 3.3 percent in 2024. With a slim rebound expected in 2026, the world economy over the next two years will expand well below its longtime average of 3.7 percent.

“The landscape has quickly changed,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said. “We are entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset.”

This was the agency’s first World Economic Outlook since Trump took office in January, and it comes as confidence in the U.S. Federal Reserve dips over the president’s recent attempts to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell, though it is unclear if Trump has the legal authority to do so. “Were Powell to be removed, markets would almost certainly interpret it as an inflationary signal, potentially driving long-term interest rates higher and undermining the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency,” said Elliot Dornbusch, the chief investment officer at CV Advisors.

Direct talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday proposed direct talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the early days of the war. Although Zelensky did not directly respond to Putin’s offer, he said that Kyiv is eager to discuss a halt to attacks on civilians. Zelensky adamantly opposes any deal that concedes Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, something that Putin seeks to do and that the United States appears more inclined to allow.

Putin’s proposal comes amid mounting pressure from the White House to secure a cease-fire deal. Last Friday, Rubio said the United States may “move on” from peace talks if no progress is made in the coming days. Trump expressed a more optimistic tone, posting on Truth Social on Sunday that “hopefully” the two sides can come to an agreement this week.

U.S., Ukrainian, and European officials are expected to convene in London on Wednesday to push for an unconditional cease-fire, with White House special envoy Keith Kellogg representing the U.S. side. “This must be the starting point,” Zelensky said in a nighttime address. Wednesday’s meeting will be a follow-up to talks in Paris last week.

Odds and Ends

A popular U.S. “Mexican Grill” is expanding south of the border. On Monday, fast food chain Chipotle announced that it will open its first location in Mexico early next year in partnership with Alsea, a company that has brought other U.S. restaurants to Latin America. “We are confident that our responsibly sourced, classically cooked real food will resonate with guests in Mexico,” said Nate Lawton, Chipotle’s chief business development officer. As a consumer, I’ll just say that it’s a little unsettling that he felt the need to specify that Chipotle’s food is “real.”