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Trump’s Plan to Dismantle the State Department is a Declaration of War on Democracy [1]
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Date: 2025-04-21
America’s global leadership has never been perfect. But it has mattered.
From the ashes of World War II, the United States helped build an international order that, despite its contradictions, stood for democracy, human rights, and rule of law. It was our embassies that sheltered dissidents. It was our diplomats that brokered peace agreements. It was our foreign service officers who helped lift entire regions out of chaos and poverty.
Donald Trump wants to burn it all down.
According to The New York Times, the Trump Administration is circulating a draft executive order that would decimate the State Department. It would shut down almost every U.S. embassy and consulate in sub-Saharan Africa. It would eliminate the bureau tasked with promoting democracy and human rights. It would abolish the offices responding to climate change and refugee crises. Career diplomats would be fired and replaced with political loyalists chosen based on "alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision," not expertise or integrity. Core diplomatic functions would be outsourced to artificial intelligence systems.
Even the programs that helped make the Foreign Service more representative of America, like the Rangel and Pickering Fellowships, would be destroyed. Partnerships with historically Black institutions like Howard University would be cut off completely.
Instead of diplomats helping to build peace and prosperity, Trump’s America would focus narrowly on "coordinated counterterrorism operations" and "strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources." In plain English: endless militarism and neo-colonial plundering, dressed up in the American flag.
This is not government reform. This is the deliberate destruction of America's role in the world. It is a play ripped straight from the authoritarian handbooks of Putin and Orbán, who gutted their foreign ministries and replaced professional diplomats with regime loyalists and propaganda hacks. Trump, as always, is following the strongman script: destroy independent institutions, politicize expertise, and turn every lever of government into a machine for personal and political gain.
And they know they have to move quietly. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is already scrambling to dismiss the reporting as "fake news," because they understand how explosive this is. They know that if Americans realize what's happening, they might just rise up and stop it.
We have to prove them right.
If Trump gets away with this, America will abandon fragile democracies to collapse. Human rights atrocities will multiply. Authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China will fill the vacuum left by American retreat. The world will grow darker, more brutal, and more dangerous — and we will have no allies left to call when the fires we helped start come roaring back home.
This isn’t just about embassies or budgets. It’s about whether America still stands for anything at all. It's about whether we are a nation that believes in dignity and democracy—or just another failing empire clawing at whatever scraps it can steal.
That’s why we have to fight. Loudly. Relentlessly. Now.
Call your members of Congress. Protest. Post. Email the White House. Make noise everywhere you can. Every phone call, every tweet, every demonstration matters. You can find your members of Congress here: Find your representative.
They are counting on us to be distracted. They are counting on us to be too exhausted to care. They are counting on us to give up.
We see them. We are not tired. And we are not going quietly.
This is our country. This is our future. And we will not hand it over to a gang of corrupt fascists without a fight.
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