There has been no shortage of adjectives Democrats have used to describe the firings of thousands of USAID workers and, more recently, over 1,300 State Department staff. “Sloppy.” “Rushed.” “Shortsighted.” “Heartbreaking.” “Troubling.” “Cruel.”
Those were just some of the jabs flung at Michael Rigas, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s reorganization — and reduction in force — at the State Department.
But the jabs belied deeper questions about how exactly the decisions were made to fire those 1,300 workers, which include 1,100 civil servants and nearly 250 foreign service officers.