On July 11, the State Department re-organized offices and “reduced in force” (RIF) about 1,300 civil and foreign service staff. My wife was one of them—her office was eliminated.

Some will relish the fact that some “babies” who supported Secretary Marco Rubio’s reforms have been thrown out with the “bathwater” of bloated budgets, duplicative offices, and feckless programs.

But we must separate our own interests from those of the country. This wasn’t personal. It sucks to lose your job. I don’t celebrate this happening to anyone, all politics aside. But the re-organization at State was long overdue, and some reductions in staff had to be part of it.

Talk-show host Stephen Colbert might think he deserves $15 million a year while his show reportedly loses $40 million. WNBA players like Angel Reese might think they’re owed more money when their league loses at least $10 million a year. But no one has a right to a job for life. There is more job security in government than in the private sector, but it is not absolute.

A study from 2007 found it took 16 private-sector jobs to fund one state government job in Oklahoma. Federal employees in Washington cost more than most state ones.

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The State Department grew from 57,340 worldwide employees in 2007 to 80,214 in 2024. The Foreign Service is twice as big today as it was at the height of the Cold War in 1970. According to Department officials, this month’s RIF barely returns staffing to 2020 levels.

Meanwhile, the national debt is $37 trillion and growing by at least $1.8 trillion a year.

There are few debt hawks left in Congress, and politicians urging fiscal responsibility often find themselves primaried or unelectable. Meanwhile, Congress and state legislatures continue to expand European-style welfare benefits without the taxes to fund them.

Efficiencies at State and other agencies won’t solve our entitlements problem. But they will save at least some money and set an example of reform. Government has become a massive NGO, producing jobs, grants, and handouts for ever more dependents. It doesn’t have to stay that way.

Comments on social media from current and former federal workers suggest an overwhelming “progressive” bias. Some civil servants evidently believe that they should determine what their jobs—and U.S. national interests—should be. But that’s not how elections work. What were priorities for the Obama and Biden administrations do not have to be priorities for their successors. Civil servants must carry out the president’s policies, not “do what they thought was best”, as 64 per cent of Democratic-voting senior federal managers said they would do, according to one poll.

The Rubio team has succeeded where secretaries of state since the Clinton administration have failed. Their re-organization has reined in State’s Byzantine document-clearance process, where endless offices weigh in. They have reduced the number of senior positions performing overlapping duties while sapping staff and money. They have eliminated redundant programs by closing nebulous offices like “Global Women’s Issues” (there was no office of “men’s issues”) and instead empowering regional bureaus and embassies to do what’s needed. All good.

Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old DOGE remnant now serving at the third-highest level at the State Department, called it “the most complicated and orderly RIF in history”, but admitted to the Washington Post that “mistakes happen when you’re doing anything in large numbers.” Indeed.

Some eliminated offices took with them staff with rare skills who may require re-hiring. Some Foreign Service officers were RIFed while on their way to new assignments, simply because of where they were sitting on May 29, the arbitrary day the music stopped in the game of musical chairs. And sending RIF notices to staff and then rescinding them hours later, which happened in a few cases, is like a doctor telling a patient he has cancer, then saying, “Whoops—no, you don’t.”

The Washington Post said it interviewed more than 60 people for its story about the State RIF. It also seemed to criticize the Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF), which I co-founded over a year ago, because some of our members are in senior roles. BFF is open to all who agree to our Principles—including that hiring into the diplomatic service should be based on merit. We attract a diverse membership, but naturally those who benefited from preferential hiring and promotion in recent years are less likely to join than those who have been harmed by it.

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The BFF champions equality of opportunity, not “equity”. Yet no one from the Post reached out to me or any of the board members for comment, though all three of us are in Washington and happy to talk. I’ll bet the Post was just as balanced in selecting their 60 employees as sources.

To tackle the Herculean, if not Quixotic, task of cutting staff and budgets at federal agencies, the Trump administration brought in digital ninjas like Edward “Big Balls” Coristine and Mr Lewin. Young men are biologically programmed to have less fear and take greater risks; that’s partly why they fight our wars. Personally, I look for three things in hiring managers: brains, leadership, and experience. Ideally a balance, but two extremely high scores can be enough. Experience is valuable, but it can at times act as an impediment to change. More seasoned hands would probably have balked at the hard choices, become mired in the process, or gone too slowly.

After the RIFs and re-organization, should Dogers remain to run federal agencies?

That will come at a price. A lesson learnt since the Roman Republic is that, once broken, traditional norms in government never come back. If the Trump administration keeps a cadre of callow STEM-degree prodigies in top positions, we can be sure to one day see the federal C-suites sprinkled with blue-haired, nose-ringed, recent “studies” grads. Them’s the rules.

I support re-organizing the federal government for efficiency and lean staffing. With AI and technology to increase productivity, we can save taxpayers money and still do the nation’s work.

The Rubio re-organization will ideally leave the State Department leaner, yet still capable of carrying out its mission: advancing our core national interests, at the direction of the president. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and judge the results in a few years.

State needs to finish the reform and reorganization in Trump’s first year. Then get to work rebuilding, so the American people—and federal workers—will see that government really can be made more accountable and efficient: in service of the people, not itself.