Weekly Mind Dump: What Mass Firings at the State Department Mean for the Country

You don’t replace this wealth of knowledge and experience overnight. And the nation will be worse off for it. U.S. diplomats' moral core will be seriously tested.

Week of 7/6-7/12, 2025:

As 1353 summarily fired State Department employees filed out of the Harry S. Truman Building on Friday as scores of their colleagues applauded them, a spark of protest manifested itself. Print-outs popped up in the restrooms stating, “Colleagues, if you remain: RESIST FASCISM - Remember the oath you vowed to uphold.” At the now dismantled Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, someone posted a hand-scrawled note on official stationery at the entrance reading, “You have saved so MANY lives❤️”

Mind you, this comes out of one of the most self-disciplined, unflappable and dedicated bodies of workers you can find. When a U.S. diplomat gets angry, they might turn red in the face, sit down and write a stiffly worded, perfectly grammatical memo to the files, then carry on with their duties. I know because I was one of them for 23 years.

I cannot emphasize enough the significance of the message to “resist Fascism” and “remember the oath.” Those who choose public service as their career take the oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” to heart, most adhering to it beyond their federal employment. The 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service personnel turned out ignominiously like so many convicts from a penitentiary not only deserve better, but they represent the best of the best of America. More on that later, but first I want to return to a favorite focus of mine: the conscience of a diplomat.

There is an ongoing debate over whether the United States is heading for autocracy. Here’s my take: we’re already there. It’s not “whether” but to what degree. As Donald Trump and his MAGA shock troops, in cahoots with a collaborative Supreme Court and a catatonic Congress, daily erode freedoms and persecute their enemies, one can argue over how far down the road we’ve traveled toward dictatorship. But a full-fledged democracy we are no more. Just ask those being swept off the streets and “disappeared” by masked agents with no warrants.

The State Department is facing the greatest assault on its people and mission since the McCarthy era. USAID’s shameful termination underscores this. The State Department is in crisis. And, by extension, so is the nation’s security. Those remaining in the diplomatic trenches are now being confronted with instructions to pursue policies that are legally or morally questionable. Will they merely follow orders, or act on their consciences? Would they defend the annexation of Canada, seizure of Greenland, or of the Panama Canal? How about an alliance with Putin’s Russia? The abandonment of NATO? The mass transfer of Gazans to other countries to enable the development of a “Trump Riviera” in the Middle East?

Those deemed not with the program are being purged, as in other agencies, and replaced with MAGA shock troops. Project 2025’s Gleichschaltung (alignment) measures are aimed to bring about a bureaucracy of sock puppets serving a master. A “fidelity” to the president (Führerprinzip) section is now required of U.S. diplomats in their performance reviews. The morally eviscerated Marco Rubio has proven himself to be Trump’s Joachim von Ribbentrop, a sad mediocrity who lives to please the Fuhrer.

The late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “It is sometimes said that diplomats lack a moral compass, passively following the orders of bosses and regimes regardless of their political or ethical character — or lack thereof.” And, in The Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt wrote, “Conscience is the anticipation of the fellow who awaits you if and when you come home.” In other words, one’s actions should not be based on society’s widely accepted norms at a given period of time, but rather on whether one will be able to live with oneself when contemplating one’s words and deeds. Can you look at yourself in the mirror without shame?

My message to U.S. diplomats — actually to all federal employees — is to “do the right thing,” remain faithful to your oath. History shows us how remaining moral has been done in the past and how those who serve evil eventually pay the price.

According to the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust (ISRAH), between 1933 and 1945 diplomats representing 27 countries rescued Jews in more than 35 geographic areas. These included diplomats of Axis nations as well of neutral and Allied countries. Japan’s vice consul in Vilnius, Chiune Sugihara helped some 6,000 Jews flee Europe by issuing them exit visas to Japan. German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz covertly helped arrange the mass flight to Sweden of almost the entire Danish Jewish population and other Nazi targets, totaling some 8,000, in 1943. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews, including 10,000 children. At one point, Lutz even jumped into the Danube River to save a bleeding woman, a victim of Hungarian fascists. Switzerland, of course, was a neutral nation, though with strong pro-Nazi sympathies. A number of Italian diplomats likewise risked careers and freedom to rescue and protect persecuted Jews.

The most interesting figure for me is German diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz. Born into Prussian aristocracy, von Trott, a devout Christian, saw Nazism for the evil it was. Determined to help bring the Third Reich down, he joined the Nazi party in order to gain access to the secrets and inner workings of the regime. At the same time, he served as a foreign policy advisor to a clandestine group of anti-Nazi intellectuals known as the Kreisau Circle, which coordinated with Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. He met secretly with allied diplomats to pass on what he learned as well as the views of his fellow conspirators. Tragically, they were caught and executed. “It’s living that makes sense of dying,” were von Trott’s last words.

In my own small way, I defied orders to try to save lives. In the mid-’80s, as head of one of our consulates in Thailand, taking my cue from Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, I issued scores of official letters declaring {NAME} was “a person of interest to the United States government and therefore warranted protection under international law.” I did this to try to save the lives of Cambodian and Lao refugees who were being forcibly repatriated by Thai authorities, many facing death by drowning or violence. The State Department did not instruct me to this. In fact, U.S. policy was that Thailand and UNHCR must take responsibility for protecting these people. The Thai clearly were not and the UN was slow off the mark. The Thai respected my confected letters. And I hoped lives indeed were being saved.

During diplomatic training, we were asked at a personnel retreat, “What drove you to join the Foreign Service?” A still uninhibited recent college graduate, I spouted a Kipling quote, “Ship me somewhere’s east of Suez, where the best is like the worst…” But, of course, I, like my colleagues, was motivated by more than adventure — idealism, patriotism and a commitment to help others. We were not in it for money or fame. Steeped in history, we sought to emulate the examples and ideals of our first diplomat Ben Franklin and other noteworthy statesmen, including the examples cited above.

The 1353 State Department workers purged on Friday by the criminal regime now running our country took with them, collectively, hundreds of years of specialized knowledge, from foreign languages to arms control to international development to conflict stabilization and much more. More than 1,500 other State Department employees took voluntary departures earlier this year. The investment taxpayers committed to train them is immeasurable. You don’t replace this wealth of knowledge and experience overnight. And the nation will be worse off for it.

(As in the past, I plan to report on the current state of the State Department and Foreign Service. Those recently dismissed employees who wish to share their insights can DM me on this platform after which encrypted messaging would be used.)