US lawmakers clash over State Department's future

As the hours stretched on during a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers asked the same question again and again. The State Department had presented a sweeping reorganization plan without consulting them, the U.S. representatives said — and they wanted to know why. “State Department officials came to brief staff earlier this week only after their reorganization had been set into motion,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York, at the opening of Wednesday’s hearing. “That’s not consultation. That’s, to me, insulting.” By the end of the four-hour session, the answer became clear. The government had involved some lawmakers in their plans — just not all of them. And certainly not any of those who opposed President Donald Trump’s dismantling of foreign aid. “There has been extensive consultation between the administration and members of this committee,” said Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, referring to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he chairs. “Just truthfully, not many members of the Democrat side.” Mast’s comments came three-and-a-half hours into a four-hour hearing, after yet another Democratic lawmaker — this time, Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California — described how the State Department’s reorganization had occurred “with zero consultation from Congress.” Consultation is not always legally required, but it is procedurally expected and often politically necessary, especially when changes touch programs or offices that were created by Congress or rely on its funding. The latest reorganization plan seeks to streamline the State Department by eliminating 132 offices and some 700 positions, aligning the agency’s operations with Trump’s “America First” agenda. “[Leaving Democrats out of consultations was] simply reflective of the fact that the last four years were spent with an administration that wasn’t talking about the things that they were doing,” said Mast, who argued that officials under the Biden administration had lied about what the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department were funding. “I don’t think it should be surprising to many that yes, a large amount of the consultation that’s going on is not going on with the people that were cutting the checks to do drag shows in Ecuador, or transgender musicals, or transgender plays, or transgender operas,” he added. Double-tiered resentment Mast’s list of programs has been repeatedly brought up by Republican lawmakers — and by President Donald Trump himself — over the last several months. While some of those programs did exist and were funded through small-scale State Department grants, critics say they've been amplified to suggest a broader ideological agenda than what the programs actually represented. At first, many of those programs were labeled as USAID programs. But as that agency was eviscerated, lawmakers shifted the blame to the State Department. The “drag show in Ecuador,” for example, links back to a $20,600 grant to “promote discussion and greater understanding of [diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility] concepts” through Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano, a nonprofit organization that provides free cultural activities and English classes to “promote friendship” between Ecuador and the United States. While no other details are listed on publicly available government websites, this grant has been highlighted by Republican lawmakers as an example of a “woke” State Department, with Sen. Michael McCaul raising questions about the program — which he stated hosted 12 drag theater performances — back in 2022. It was for that reason, Mast said, that Democratic lawmakers were excluded from conversations with the Trump administration this time around. Kamlager-Dove, like many other Democrats, pointed out that the committee’s Republican leadership had brought three former State officials to testify instead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself — or any other current officials from the Trump administration. While Rubio is expected to appear before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs at some point this month, no one from the government has done so in a public forum to date, despite the near-total evisceration of USAID and the fundamental restructuring of the U.S. government’s foreign aid apparatus. Today, USAID has been almost entirely folded into the State Department, while the vast majority of its programs, staff, and operations have been sliced away. “[Not consulting Democratic lawmakers is] simply reflective of the fact that the last four years were spent with an administration that wasn’t talking about the things that they were doing,” Mast added. Samantha Power, the former administrator of USAID, appeared before Congress several times during the Biden administration. While the comprehensive list of Power’s testimonies has been removed alongside USAID’s website, her last public appearance before lawmakers seems to be at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just over a year ago. The main topic at that hearing was not transgender operas, musicals, or plays but Gaza, and whether or not USAID was funding Hamas through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the U.N.’s central response team in Palestine. (At that time, neither USAID or any U.S. agency had funded UNRWA since an investigation into the U.N. body was launched four months prior to the hearing). Still, Republican lawmakers expressed feeling betrayed by the Biden administration over the last four years — with Mast stating the State Department would have spent U.S. taxpayer dollars better if they just “lit the money on fire.” And throughout Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats expressed the same, just with a different target: the Trump administration. The double-tiered resentment made it difficult for lawmakers to actually speak about the reason they were brought to the hearing in the first place — the need for a State Department reauthorization, which would renew and update the legal authority of the agency. While not required, reauthorizations are supposed to happen annually. But the State Department, which Mast said had a $55 billion budget last year, hasn’t been reauthorized since 2002. That’s largely due to partisan gridlock, competing priorities, and lawmakers using other workarounds to accomplish their aims. “The State Department tends to go on autopilot when it hasn’t gotten the direction that it needs, and that’s a natural bureaucratic instinct, but it needs to be fought all the time,” said David Hale, who served as the State Department’s former under secretary for political affairs during the first Trump administration, testifying at the hearing on Wednesday. “I think the annual authorization process will make sure the State Department is actually changing as events change, as requirements change.” Without reauthorization, the State Department has continued to function and receive cash. But without formal reauthorization by Congress, lawmakers exert only piecemeal influence on the agency: appropriators direct funds and impose conditions, while Capitol Hill advances foreign policy goals through other legislation. The need to fix that status quo — and finally, to reauthorize the State Department — was something both Republicans and Democrats seemed to agree on. But for half of those in the hearing, a conversation on reauthorization seemed out of step with the main issue at play: the reshifting of the State Department and the chaos of the last several months. “USAID, the Inter-American Foundation, the U.S. African Development Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation have all been established by law and have existing, valid authority. Yet the administration has moved to eliminate all of these entities,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas. “This committee and this Congress are surrendering influence and control over our diplomacy to the president of the United States.” The other side of the aisle, again, disagreed. “Far from ceding Congress’ authority to the executive branch, this entire exercise is about Congress reclaiming its important role in authorizing and reauthorizing the State Department,” said Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, who added the reorganization was “much-needed.” ‘A member-driven process’ Despite the palpable tensions, there were some things that lawmakers and the hearing’s witnesses — which consisted of Hale; former diplomat James Jeffrey, who last served in the State Department under the first Trump administration; and Uzra Zeya, who is now the president of Human Rights First, but served as a former State Department official under the Biden administration — agreed on, even across party lines. One of them was the Trafficking and Victims Protection Act, a law which, since the year 2000, has worked to combat human trafficking. The establishment of a “diplomatic reserve corps” was another, which Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said she would be introducing a bill to create. And, there was the need for the State Department to build up the expertise, resources, and staff to take on select responsibilities of USAID. Toward the end of the hearing, Mast asked each witness what they would prioritize and deprioritize in a reimagined State Department. Jeffrey said he would prioritize humanitarian and security assistance. Hale said he would emphasize investments in the security sector, global law enforcement, education, and economic assistance that can develop a country’s private sector. On the other hand, Hale would get rid of programs that promote democracy and state-building, stating they rarely worked. Zeya did not get a chance to respond to the question. Going forward, Mast said the reauthorization of the State Department will be “100% member-driven,” and that every lawmaker — Republican or Democrat — will have the opportunity to submit their ideas into a portal created for the task. “There will be opportunity for every single one [of the lawmakers] to input their amendments, their ideas, their thoughts, whatever it is they want to add or detract from in this bill,” said Mast. “We look forward to making sure that we hear from each and every one of them, and hopefully find that no members are silenced or precluded from offering the policies that they want to put forward.” In the meantime, Mast said, his conversations with the Trump administration will continue, “right up until the point that this bill is written and beyond.”