US State Department begins layoffs in Trump’s shake-up of diplomatic corps
Mass layoff came days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for US president to gut entire government positions. More than 1,350 US State Department employees have been fired in a major diplomatic shake-up ordered by President Donald Trump, in a move critics predict would curb the United States’ influence around the world. Friday’s mass layoff, which affect 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers based in the United States, come at a time when Washington is grappling with multiple crises on the world stage: Russia’s war in Ukraine, the almost two-year-long Gaza conflict, and the Middle East on edge due to high tension between Israel and Iran. Diplomats and other staff clapped out departing colleagues in emotional scenes at the Washington headquarters of the department, which runs US foreign policy and the global network of embassies. Some were crying as they walked out with boxes of belongings. “It’s just heartbreaking to stand outside these doors right now and see people coming out in tears, because all they wanted to do was serve this country,” said US Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who worked as a civilian adviser for the State Department in Afghanistan during the administration of former President Barack Obama. The layoffs at the department came three days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to begin carrying out its plan to gut entire government positions. The conservative-dominated top court lifted a temporary block imposed by a lower court on Trump’s plans to lay off potentially tens of thousands of employees. The 79-year-old Republican says he wants to dismantle what he calls the “deep state”. Since taking office in January, he has worked quickly to install fierce personal loyalists and to fire swaths of veteran government workers. Advertisement Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the foreign policy department is too cumbersome and requires thinning out of some 15 percent. “It’s not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don’t need those positions,” Rubio told reporters on the sidelines of his ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.” The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) – the union representing State Department employees – condemned the “catastrophic blow to our national interests”. “We oppose this decision in the strongest terms.” The State Department employed more than 80,000 people worldwide last year, according to a fact sheet, with about 17,700 in domestic roles. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), long the primary vehicle to provide US humanitarian assistance around the world, has already been mostly dismantled. According to The Washington Post, State Department employees were informed of their firings by email. Foreign Service officers will lose their jobs 120 days after receiving the notice and will be immediately placed on administrative leave, while civil service employees will be separated after 60 days, the newspaper said. Ned Price, who served as State Department spokesman under former Democratic President Joe Biden, condemned what he called haphazard firings. “For all the talk about ‘merit-based,’ they’re firing officers based on where they happen to be assigned on this arbitrary day,” Price said on X. “It’s the laziest, most inefficient, and most damaging way to lean the workforce.” Adblock test (Why?)
Worker dies following immigration raids on California cannabis farms
A farmworker has died from injuries he sustained in immigration raids on two California cannabis farms, as United States authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with protesters. The United Farm Workers advocacy group confirmed the death of Jaime Alanis, who was injured after a 30-foot (nine-metre) fall during one of the raids, in a post on X on Friday. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” it said. Federal immigration authorities confirmed on Friday that they had arrested about 200 immigrants suspected of being in the US illegally in raids on Thursday at two cannabis farms in Carpinteria and Camarillo, Southern California. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that they also found at least 10 immigrant children during the raids who were rescued from “potential exploitation, forced labour, and human trafficking”. The statement said four US citizens had been arrested for their role in violent confrontations between agents and protesters. Authorities are also offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of another person suspected of firing a gun at the federal agents. “During the operation, more than 500 rioters attempted to disrupt operations. Four US citizens are being criminally processed for assaulting or resisting officers. The rioters damaged vehicles, and one violent agitator fired a gun at law enforcement officers,” the statement said. Advertisement One of the raids saw immigration agents clad in military-style helmets and uniforms storm Glass House Farms – a licensed cannabis grower which also grows tomatoes and cucumbers – in Camarillo on Thursday. Agents faced off with the demonstrators outside the farm, as crowds of people gathered to seek information about their relatives and to oppose the raids. Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department, said at least 12 people were injured as a result of the raid and protest. Jaime Alanis inside Ventura County Medical Center after he was injured during an immigration raid on July 10, 2025, in Camarillo, California [AP Photo] During the raid, Alanis, who had reportedly worked at Glass House Farms picking tomatoes for 10 years, called his family in Mexico to say he was hiding from authorities. “The next thing we heard was that he was in the hospital with broken hands, ribs and a broken neck,” said Juan Duran, Alanis’s brother-in-law, according to The Associated Press news agency. In a statement, Glass House said immigration agents held valid warrants, and it is helping provide detained workers with legal representation. “Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” the statement said. United Farm Workers said in a statement that some US citizens who worked at the firm are not yet accounted for. The raid is the latest to take place as part of the Trump administration’s controversial all-out campaign cracking down on immigration in the US. Since returning to the White House, Trump has unleashed groups of immigration agents to round up undocumented migrants and sent accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without due process. But in the wake of Thursday’s raids, Federal Judge Maame E Frimpong ordered a temporary halt to the Trump administration’s indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles. The Friday ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by immigrant advocacy groups in the US District Court last week, accusing the Trump administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during immigration raids in Southern California. The filing asked the judge to block the administration from using what they called unconstitutional tactics. In her ruling, which remains in place for 10 days, Judge Frimpong agreed that “roving patrols” of immigration agents without reasonable suspicion violated the Fourth Amendment, protecting individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth Amendment, ensuring due process of law. Advertisement Frimpong directed agents to stop racially profiling people and ordered the federal government to ensure detainees have access to legal counsel. Al Jazeera correspondent in Washington, DC, Shihab Rattansi, said the case gets to the “heart of whether we can have these marauding sort of gangs of ICE agents without any identification” sweeping people up. “[The plaintiffs argue there is] no probable cause to suspect they’re breaking any kind of immigration laws. And we know a lot of people who are citizens are being swept up too,” Rattansi said. Adblock test (Why?)
US sanctions Cuban president, ‘regime-controlled’ luxury hotels
State Department head Rubio said he had sanctioned several senior officials and their ‘cronies’ for their ‘brutality toward the Cuban people’. The US State Department has imposed sanctions on senior Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced as he marked the fourth anniversary of a brutal crackdown on historic antigovernment protests. In a post on X, Rubio said the State Department would be “restricting visas for Cuban regime figureheads”, including President Diaz-Canel, Defence Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, and their “cronies” for their “role in the Cuban regime’s brutality toward the Cuban people”. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also announced that the State Department has added the Torre K hotel to its restricted list of entities in order to “prevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime’s repression”. The Cuban government has promoted the luxury high-rise Torre K in central Havana as a symbol of modernisation. But the government has faced criticism for its large investment in luxury hotels amid a severe economic crisis in the nominally socialist one-party state. “While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,” Rubio said. Ten other “regime-linked properties” were also added to the State Department’s List of Prohibited Accommodations, it said in a statement. The statement said the sanctions were being enacted in “solidarity with the Cuban people and the island’s political prisoners”, citing the Cuban government’s brutal crackdown on the July 2021 demonstrations – the largest since the Cuban revolution in the 1950s. Advertisement The police crackdown resulted in one death and dozens of wounded protesters. “Four years ago, thousands of Cubans peacefully took to the streets to demand a future free from tyranny. The Cuban regime responded with violence and repression, unjustly detaining thousands, including over 700 who are still imprisoned and subjected to torture or abuse,” the State Department said. Rubio also accused Cuba of torturing pro-democracy activist Jose Daniel Ferrer, whose bail was revoked as he was taken into custody alongside fellow dissident Felix Navarro in April. “The United States demands immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners,” Rubio said. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the latest measures as part of a “ruthless economic war” being waged by the administration of US President Donald Trump. “The USA is capable of imposing migratory sanctions against revolutionary leaders and maintaining a prolonged and ruthless economic war against Cuba, but it lacks the ability to break the will of these people or their leaders,” he said on X. In January, then-US President Joe Biden had removed Cuba from the blacklist of countries sponsoring terrorism. But Trump returned the country to the blacklist immediately after returning to the White House as he resumed his “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba that typified his foreign policy during his first term. Adblock test (Why?)
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