Exclusively – Trump’s team asks three senior American diplomats to resign, according to sources told Reuters

By Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Louis (Joe:) and Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Aides to President-elect Donald Trump have asked three senior diplomats who oversee workforce and internal coordination at the U.S. State Department to step down from their roles, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said, a possible sign of deepening ties. Coming changes to the diplomatic corps

The sources said that the team overseeing the State Department’s transition to the new administration, the agency’s review team, asked Derek Hogan, Marcia Bernicat and Alina Teplitz to leave their positions.

While political appointees typically resign when a new president takes office, most career Foreign Service officers continue from one administration to the next. The three officials have served in both Democratic and Republican administrations over the years, including as ambassadors.

Trump, who will be inaugurated on January 20, pledged during his presidential campaign to “clean out the deep state” by firing bureaucrats he considers disloyal.

“There’s a little bit of concern that this could set the stage for something worse,” said one US official familiar with the matter.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team said: “It is entirely appropriate for the transition to seek officials who share President Trump’s vision of putting our nation and America’s workers first. We have a lot of failures.” To reform, this requires a committed team focused on the same goals.”

A State Department spokesman said the department had no staff announcements. Hogan, Bernicat and Teplitz did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump is likely to adopt a more confrontational foreign policy, and has pledged to make peace between Ukraine and Russia and provide more support for Israel. He also called for unconventional policies such as trying to make Greenland part of the United States and pushing NATO allies to increase defense spending. Experts say the diplomatic manpower that implements this rather than backing down will be key to achieving its goals.

The decision to ask the three to step down is reminiscent of personnel changes at the State Department during the first Trump administration, when several key officials in leadership positions were removed from their jobs.

According to two separate sources familiar with Trump’s plans for the State Department, the administration plans to appoint more political appointees to positions such as assistant secretary, which are typically held by a mix of career bureaucrats and politicians.

These sources said that Trump’s team wants to bring more politically appointed officials to the State Department as there was a prevailing feeling among his aides that his agenda was “derailed” by career diplomats during his last term from 2017 to 2021.

The agency’s review team is already interviewing candidates for such positions, the two sources said.

According to the State Department’s website, Hogan is the Executive Secretary of the State Department, the official who manages the flow of information between the department’s offices and with the White House.

Bernicat is the U.S. Department of State’s Director General and Director of Global Talent who leads the recruiting, hiring, and career development of the Department’s workforce.

Assistant Secretary Teplitz has been with the Department for more than three decades, having served abroad as well as in Washington. Most recently, she carried out the duties of the Under Secretary for Administration, who oversees more than a dozen offices responsible for issues from budget to staffing, procurement and human resources across the workforce.

“These are not political positions,” said Dennis Jett, a professor at Penn State’s School of Foreign Service who spent 28 years in the diplomatic corps. “These are all the mechanisms of bureaucracy.” “But if you want to control bureaucracy, this is how you do it.”

He added that choosing who will fill the three roles will allow Trump’s team to shift resources to and from parts of the State Department, control information collected by the numerous offices and embassies and manage personnel decisions.

Destroying the “deep state”

The officials’ requests to step down came as Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, was testifying on Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his confirmation hearing.

Trump explained on his campaign website how, in 10 steps, he could “smash the deep state” and “fire the rogue bureaucrats and career politicians.”

The first of these steps is to reissue a 2020 executive order that would have removed job protections for some civil servants, making it easier to fire them.

Opponents of the plan — often called “Schedule F” after the new class of civil servants it would create — say stripping government employees of employment protections would be an attempt by Trump to politicize the federal bureaucracy to advance his political agenda.

Normally, presidents get to choose several thousand political appointees in the federal bureaucracy, but the professional civil service — about two million workers — is left alone. Schedule F would give Trump the ability to fire up to 50,000 of those and replace them with like-minded conservatives.

Professor Jett said taking charge of state employees would “accelerate” the process of appointing loyal officials.

Unions and government regulators have said they plan to sue Trump if he follows through on his promise to reintroduce Schedule F.