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Undated: The United States Department of
State (DOS),[3]
often referred to as the State Department, is the
United States federal executive department that advises the President and
represents the country in
international affairs and foreign policy issues.[4]
Equivalent to the
foreign ministry of other countries, it was established in 1789 as the
nation's first executive department.[5]
The State Department's duties include implementing the
foreign policy of the United States, operating the nation's
diplomatic missions abroad, negotiating treaties and agreements with foreign
entities, and representing the United States at the
United Nations. It is led by the
Secretary of State, a member of the
Cabinet who is nominated by the
President and
confirmed by the
Senate. In addition to administering the Department, the Secretary of State
serves as the nation's chief diplomat and representative abroad. The Secretary
of State is the first Cabinet official in the
order of precedence and in the
presidential line of succession, after the
Vice President of the United States,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, and
President pro tempore of the Senate.
The State Department headquartered in the
Harry S Truman Building, a few blocks away from the
White
House, in the
Foggy Bottom neighborhood of
Washington, D.C.; "Foggy Bottom" is thus sometimes used as a
metonym.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State
-- 2017 --
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January 29: Trump's state department
purge sparks worries of 'know-nothing approach' to foreign policy
The sudden dismissal of several senior officials has left a gaping hole at the
heart of US diplomacy: ‘The machinery is still there, but no one’s in the
cockpit’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/29/state-department-purge-trump-foreign-policy
February 20: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has reassigned
a majority of the staff meant to work most closely with the top US diplomat in
what career officials at the State Department fear is the start of a major
reorganization.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/17/politics/tillerson-state-department-shakeup/
February 21:
State Department silent while other countries shape the
message ...
For more than a month, as the US has tangled with China, floated new terms for
Middle East peace, watched North Korea test a ballistic missile and proposed
an overhaul of ties with Russia, the State Department has been quiet.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/politics/state-department-tillerson-press-silence/
April 24: An article on a State Department website about President
Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort has been removed after criticism that it was an
inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.
Critics complained that resources were being used to tout the for-profit club,
which Trump refers to as the Winter White House. The club, in Palm Beach, Fla.,
is held in Trump's trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary.
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525444099/state-department-website-features-trumps-for-profit-club-mar-a-lago
July 31: How the Trump Administration broke
the State Department.
Morale has hit rock bottom at Foggy Bottom, as American foreign service officers
languish and Rex Tillerson builds a mini-empire.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/31/how-the-trump-administration-broke-the-state-department/
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September 15: State Department officials
briefed Senate staff on Friday on plans to cut up to $10 billion from the
department’s budget over five years, but offered few specifics to ease concerns
that the administration risked weakening U.S. standing in the world.
The plan is the result of an ongoing assessment of the department ordered by
President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-diplomacy/state-department-describes-plans-for-cuts-offers-few-specifics-sources-idUSKCN1BQ2WR
November 7: 'I'm the only one that matters':
Trump disregards State Department's unfilled positions
"So we don't need all the people that they want," Trump said. "Don't forget, I'm
a businessperson and I tell my people, 'Where you don't need to fill slots don't
fill them.' But we have some people that I'm not happy with there."
"The one that matters is me," Trump continued Thursday night. "I'm the only one
that matters because when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be.
You've seen that, you've seen it strongly."
"It's called cost saving," Trump said. "I want my vision, but my vision is my
vision anyway. It's called cost saving. There's nothing wrong with cost saving."
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-state-department-tillerson-only-one-that-matters-2017-11
November 9: State Department senior ranks
being depleted at 'dizzying speed': Ambassador
The U.S.’s ranks of diplomats are losing key leaders at a “dizzying speed” as
the State Department struggles to recruit talent amid a hiring freeze and
sinking morale in the Trump administration, according to a new essay from a top
ambassador.
Three of the agency’s five career ambassadors, the highest rank for diplomats,
have retired or quit since January. Nearly half of career ministers — the next
level down and equivalent to the military’s three-star generals — are gone too,
down to 19 from 33. The next-level minister counselors have seen their numbers
drop by 62 diplomats, to 369, since Labor Day “and are still falling,” writes
Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, the president of the American Foreign Service
Association union.
Without these leaders, the U.S. could face a diminished role on the world stage,
unable to keep up with the increasingly aggressive foreign policies of rising
countries like China, she argues.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-accused-decapitating-leadership-state-department/story?id=51006690
-- 2018 --
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January 13: Morale disintegrates at State
Department as diplomats wonder who will quit next to escape Trump
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article194607714.html
January 17: Trump's State Department is
Desperate to Escape President, With 60 Percent Of Diplomats Having Already Left
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-state-department-staff-leaving-783506
February 11: The Hollowing Out of the State
Department Continues
The agency lost 12 percent of its foreign-affairs specialists in the first eight
months of the Trump administration.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/tillerson-trump-state-foreign-service/553034/
March 13: The State Department is riddled
with key vacancies as Trump seeks nuclear talks with North Korea
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/the-state-department-is-riddled-with-key-vacancies.html
March 13: Read the State Department's
Response to President Trump Replacing Rex Tillerson With Mike Pompeo
http://fortune.com/2018/03/13/trump-rex-tillerson-mike-pompeo-state-department/
March 13: Donald Trump has fired Steve
Goldstein, the State Department official who challenged his account of firing
Rex Tillerson.
The latest dismissal came in the midst of chaos in the White House after the
President decided he would sack Mr Tillerson, who had served as his Secretary of
State.
Following that firing, Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein released a
statement that appeared to contradict Mr Trump's account of the sacking. In it,
he said that Mr Tillerson hadn't heard about being fired until the President
sent a tweet announcing it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/steve-goldstein-fired-trump-rex-tillerson-us-state-department-white-house-a8254151.html
March 16: At Trump’s State Department,
Tillerson Is Out, Pompeo In
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/at-trumps-state-department-tillerson-is-out-pompeo-in
April 19: The State Department’s collapse,
as explained by Rex Tillerson
The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow interviewed the former secretary of state. The
results were revealing.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/19/17257158/trump-state-department-tillerson-new-yorker
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April 21: Trump’s State Department no longer
calls West Bank ‘occupied’ in annual report
In first ... document on human rights abuses refers simply to ‘Israel, Golan
Heights, West Bank and Gaza,’ with no comment on the status of the territories
Last December, it was reported that US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman asked
the State Department to stop calling the West Bank occupied, which would mark a
noted departure in US policy.
State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert, however, later told reporters his
comments indicated no shift in the US position. Before his confirmation to the
diplomatic role, Friedman was a staunch settlements supporter and columnist for
right-wing Israeli publications.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-state-department-no-longer-calls-west-bank-occupied-in-annual-report/
April 23: Trump’s State Department Erases
Reproductive Rights From Human Rights Report
“Reproductive rights are human rights, and omitting the issue signals the Trump
Administration’s latest retreat from global leadership on human rights."
The report, titled “Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017,”
is meant to “document the status of human rights and worker rights in nearly 200
countries and territories” and is “used by a variety of actors, including the
U.S. Congress, the executive branch, and the judicial branch as a factual
resource for decision making in matters ranging from assistance to asylum.”
This year’s iteration of the human rights report eliminated sections on
“reproductive rights,”
which, according to
the Washington Post,
had been introduced during the Obama administration in the 2011 report that was
released the following year.
https://rewire.news/article/2018/04/23/trumps-state-department-erases-reproductive-rights-human-rights-report/
May 2: Trump touts
renewed 'spirit' at State Dept. under Pompeo
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/02/trump-state-department-mike-pompeo-565612
May 2: Trump visits State Department for the
first time for Pompeo’s swearing-in
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/president-trump-visits-state-department-for-the-first-time-for-pompeos-swearing-in/2018/05/02/ee0b385c-dcbb-4712-b959-a5d7a7fe8ba4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f0c3be77365c
May 7: State Dept.: Giuliani doesn’t speak
for US on foreign policy
The Trump administration sought to distance itself Monday from Rudy Giuliani’s
dramatic public statements about Iran and North Korea, saying that President
Donald Trump’s new lawyer does not speak for the president on matters of foreign
policy.
Since joining Trump’s legal team last month and becoming its public face,
Giuliani has raised eyebrows for a series of startling assertions not only about
his legal strategy and the special counsel investigation, but also about global
affairs and Trump’s policies. That spurred widespread confusion over whether the
former New York mayor, now on Trump’s payroll, was disclosing information he’d
been told by the president, stating U.S. government policy or merely describing
his own impression of events.
https://apnews.com/5e9abd42a1aa45c7be3a70f66042952b
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June 12: Trump’s State Dept thinks Singapore
is in Malaysia
In
posting the transcript of a press briefing that Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo gave on Monday, the venue was described as “JW Marriott, Singapore,
Malaysia” on the department’s official website.
As of 1.45pm Tuesday, the mistake had yet to be rectified.
Singapore joined with Malaya and the two Borneo states to form the new
federation of Malaysia under the terms of the Malaysia Agreement in 1963.
However, it left in 1965 to form the independent Republic of Singapore.
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/06/12/trumps-state-dept-thinks-singapore-is-in-malaysia/
June 25: “Be Careful What You Wish For”: How
Mike Pompeo Trumpified the State Department
Insiders praise Pompeo as a vast improvement over
Tillerson. Behind the scenes, however, sources say Pompeo is remaking American
diplomacy in Trump’s image—and cracking down on dissent. “It has really sent
chills through people,” a former foreign-service officer says. “They are using
diplomatic security to try to, quite frankly, intimidate people.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/how-mike-pompeo-trumpified-the-state-department
July 11: U.S. State Department warns
Americans in London ahead of Trump visit
Some accuse the State Department of scaremongering and organizers of London's
protest say that they are in solidarity with Americans.
https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/11/u-s-state-department-warns-americans-in-london-ahead-of-trump-visit/
July 14: Trump’s war on the State Department
President Trump is seeking to radically remodel the State Department
in an unprecedented way, according to former officials from administrations of
both political parties.
Past GOP presidents have also sought to cut the State Department down to size,
and even current employees have acknowledged bureaucratic
problems at Foggy Bottom.
But some former officials describe Trump's efforts as something unseen before —
a war of sorts on the State Department that if carried out would leave it
hobbling.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341923-trumps-war-on-the-state-department
July 18: The
White House and the
State Department are at odds over Russian President
Vladimir Putin's offer to allow the U.S. access to Russians accused of
election meddling in return for interviews of Americans accused by the Kremlin
of unspecified crimes.
Even as the White House said the offer, made by Putin to President
Donald Trump at their summit in Helsinki on Monday, was under consideration,
the State Department called Russia's allegations against the Americans "absurd,"
suggesting that any questioning of them would not be countenanced by the U.S.
The Russian claims against the Americans, including former U.S. Ambassador to
Russia Michael McFaul, relate to allegations of fraud and corruption.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-trump-state-department-putin-proposal-20180718-story.html
July 26: What it’s really like to work in
the State Department under Trump
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/594dvq/what-its-really-like-to-work-in-the-state-department-under-trump
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August 22: At a Senate hearing on Tuesday,
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut questioned the State Department’s work
to counter Russian propaganda and disinformation while President Trump attacks
U.S. media outlets.
Murphy, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on
Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, pressed U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell about the discrepancy
between Trump’s tweets and state department policy, prompting this response from
Mitchell.
“I just want to push back on this idea that there is a strategy that’s separate
from the views of the President. This is the President’s administration, this is
his foreign policy,” Mitchell said.
Murphy was not convinced.
http://www.wshu.org/post/murphy-pushes-state-department-trump-tweets#stream/0
August 24: Trump's latest North Korea gamble
blindsides State Department
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/trump-s-latest-north-korea-gamble-blindsides-state-department-1306033219765?v=railb&
August 31: Under Pompeo, the State
Department Is Getting Its Groove Back
https://www.weeklystandard.com/jenna-lifhits/pompeos-challenge-working-with-trump-while-empowering-state-department
September 10: There’s a lot unsaid in the
State Department statement about closing the Palestinian office in D.C.
The announcement says that the Palestinian Liberation Organization has "refused
to engage with the U.S." on peace efforts.
https://thinkprogress.org/state-dept-close-palestinian-office-condemning-trumps-peace-plan-a1a0eab58168/
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September 11: State Department And
Immigration Law Contradict Trump Speech
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/09/11/state-department-and-immigration-law-contradict-trump-speech/#35c6d76c257a
September 14: Pompeo fills State Department
gaps as he vows Trump-like swagger
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/pompeo-fills-state-department-gaps-as-he-vows-trump-like-swagger-1.547464
September 17:
White and Male: Trump’s Ambassadors Don’t Look Like the Rest of America
The diversity problem predates this administration, but some State
Department officials fear it’s getting worse.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/17/white-male-trump-ambassadors-dont-look-like-america-us-state-department/
September 19: Why
Is Trump’s State Department Stealing Ideas from Old Spice Commercials?
Mike Pompeo’s #Swagger hashtag diplomacy is an international embarrassment.
On Monday, coupled with the launch of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Instagram
account, the State Department launched a campaign rebranding itself the
“Department of Swagger.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/13/state-department-mike-pompeo-swagger-donald-trump-219867
September 21: Trump's State Department lacks
money, clear mandate to fight Russian disinformation, 'fake news'
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/09/21/trump-administration-lacks-resources-fight-russian-fake-news/1292089002/
October 3: Pompeo: Senate Democrats Holding
Up 65 Trump State Department Nominees
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/03/pompeo_senate_democrats_holding_up_65_trump_state_department_nominees.html
October 18:
Pompeo undertakes effort to promote diversity hires amid media criticism
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October 26: State Department: No Plans to
Change Passport Policy Despite Trump Anti-Trans Memo
Advocates for the transgender community have been keeping a close eye on the
passport process amid fear of changes by the Trump administration.
https://rewire.news/article/2018/10/26/state-department-no-plans-to-change-passport-policy-despite-trump-anti-trans-memo/
October 28: Fox Business drops guest who
blamed migrant caravan on 'Soros-occupied State Department'
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/413542-fox-business-exec-condemns-rhetoric-of-guest-who-blamed-migrant-caravan-on
October 29: Trump met State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert about replacing Nikki Haley at UN
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-met-state-department-spokeswoman-heather-nauert-about-replacing-nikki-haley-at-un
October 29: By sending US troops to the
Mexico border, Trump repeats a costly Obama mistake
Donald Trump plans to send 5,000 US troops to the country’s southern border, a
massive increase from the 800 originally planned, in order to secure legal ports
of entry, the
Wall Street Journal reports.
The troops are expected to remain there through mid-December, as a caravan of
migrants
seeking asylum from Central America works its way to the US border with
Mexico.
In fact, both presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush tried it.
Both times, US diplomats, local business people, and lawmakers called
it an expensive failure (paywall).
... State Department officials worried the operations would hamper their
cooperation with Mexican law enforcement authorities, the report said.
https://qz.com/1441730/trump-sends-troops-to-the-border-repeating-obamas-mistake/
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October 30: Could State Department
spokeswoman replace Haley?
President Trump reportedly meets Heather Nauert in connection with the post of
United Nations ambassador.
Nauert, 48, would be an unorthodox choice for the UN role given that she had
little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the
administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent
for Fox News.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/253968
October 30: The Atlantic
is reporting that the FBI is looking into a matter sent to them by
the office of special counsel Robert Mueller about an anonymous woman who is
alleging she was offered $20,000 to make a false allegation of sexual harassment
against Mueller. The woman had initially spoken to at least ten reporters from a
variety of news outlets, who were unable to verify her account. In a letter to a
reporter, she claimed, a man “offered to pay off all of my credit card
debt, plus bring me a check for $20,000 if I would do.” She added, “He knew
exactly how much credit card debt I had, right down to the dollar, which sort of
freaked me out.”
The woman named GOP operative John Burkman, who also hosts a talk radio
show and frequently promotes conspiracy theories, as being part of the
operation.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/151959/fbi-investigating-report-plot-discredit-robert-mueller-sexual-harassment-accusations
November 4: Trump's empty State Department
Almost Half the Top Jobs in Trump’s State Department Are Still Empty
n 18 countries, the White House has yet to designate a U.S. ambassador. That
includes Australia, a close ally to America that is beginning to look to China
instead.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/state-department-empty-ambassador-to-australi/574831/
November 7:
House Dems to Turn the Screws on Trump’s State Department
The new Congress will flex its oversight muscles on everything from
mismanagement at the State Department to questions about Trump’s finances.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/07/house-dems-to-turn-the-screws-on-trumps-state-department/
December 31: Brett McGurk Says State
Department Facing ‘Extremely Difficult Circumstances’ In Farewell Tweet
A top State Department official who
resigned in protest of President
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops in
Syria wished his colleagues well in a tweet Monday as they face what he
called “extremely difficult circumstances.”
Brett McGurk, the outgoing U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the
self-described Islamic
State, submitted his letter of resignation to Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo on Dec. 21. Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis submitted a searing letter of resignation to the president a day
earlier.
“Today was my last day at the State Department,” McGurk tweeted Monday. “I wish
my former civilian and military colleagues well as they work under extremely
difficult circumstances to protect the interests of our great country.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-mcgurk-farewell-tweet_us_5c2a7099e4b0407e9085167d
-- 2019 --
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