“This plaque was on my desk during what became USAID's last Ebola response effort. When I was allowed back in my office for 15 minutes to collect my things, this was the very first thing that I grabbed because it is just symbolic of everything that was being lost,” said Megan Fotheringham, describing a small, circular plaque that she says captures what was lost when the Trump administration folded the U.S. Agency for International Development into the State Department.
Voices at the one-year anniversary: former staff, unions, and lawmakers
At an event on Capitol Hill marking the one-year anniversary of layoffs that removed roughly 1,350 people from the State Department, former federal employees, union officials and members of Congress argued those cuts have degraded U.S. diplomatic and operational capacity overseas. Senator Chris Van Hollen, D‑Md., called the reductions “unfair to individuals” and said they “hurt our capacity to advance our interests and values overseas.”
Speakers included Megan Fotheringham, who served as deputy director in USAID's Office of Infectious Disease, and Maryum Saifee, a former foreign service officer who said employees with relevant language skills and regional experience were ordered not to work when crises arose. “When war broke out in Iran, many of us — foreign service officers — [our jobs] were still sitting in limbo. I'm fluent in Arabic. I served in Baghdad. So some of us volunteered to staff the evacuation task force,” Saifee said. “Guess what the department did? They said ‘No thank you.’ So we just sat on the sidelines.”
Ebola response: the plaque, the program, and current outbreak concerns
Fotheringham described the plaque as a symbol of a 50‑year U.S. commitment to stop Ebola “at its source” — noting the plaque was originally given to a USAID foreign service advisor in 1976 after the first recognized Ebola outbreak was contained in Zaire. The article reports a current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa and cites public health experts who say folding USAID into State, and the push-out of nearly all USAID employees, has hindered response efforts.
Iran negotiations and lost institutional expertise
Speakers at the event argued that career foreign affairs staff reductions have hampered diplomacy, pointing to peace negotiations with Iran as a case study. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks, D‑N.Y., criticized the process, saying: “Instead of sending someone that's competent that knows how to write an [a memorandum of understanding], they sent two real estate developers — who have no idea what diplomacy is about — to write an MOU.” The article names special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as real estate developers spearheading the peace negotiations; it also reports that hostilities resumed in that war after the collapse of a ceasefire.
An informational panel at the press conference said State’s Bureau of Energy Resources — “the office built to weaken Iran’s oil leverage and keep [the Strait of] Hormuz open” — was shuttered seven months before the conflict that, the panel noted, “saw gas prices spike.”
State Department response: claimed operational readiness
The State Department pushed back in a statement to Government Executive, praising career employees’ roles in responding to 2025 Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and in upholding a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand. The spokesperson said, “The RIFs have not had any negative impact on our ability to respond to operations, our ability to plan and our ability to execute in service to Americans.” The statement added that the reorganization enabled the department to “respond quicker and more effectively” and to move at the “speed of relevancy.”
Legislation to restore former foreign service officers
Lawmakers at the event highlighted a bill that would let foreign service officers who were involuntarily separated or retired between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2030, rejoin the Foreign Service without retaking any written or oral test. Representative Don Beyer, D‑Va., said, “There’s no reason you have to take the [Foreign Service Officer Test] again when you come back in. But I’m sure you’d pass it.” The proposal is presented at the event as a pathway to recover specialized expertise lost in the layoffs.
How former foreign service officers, lawmakers, public health responders, and energy officials are responding
- Former foreign service officers and USAID specialists: Many are publicly documenting missed opportunities to deploy language and regional expertise, and some are supporting legislative relief that would allow reentry without retesting.
- Lawmakers and union officials: Democratic members and union representatives who attended the event are framing the layoffs as a national-security and operational problem and are pushing legislative fixes.
- Public health responders: Cited public health experts warn that losing USAID institutional capacity complicates responses to the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa and undermines efforts “to stop Ebola at its source.”
- Energy and regional security officials: Speakers pointed to the shuttering of the Bureau of Energy Resources and linked that loss to reduced capacity to counter Iran’s oil leverage ahead of a conflict that affected global gas prices.
One year after the reorganization and layoffs, the debate centers on competing accounts: former employees and some lawmakers say tangible operational gaps have materialized in crises from Ebola to Iran, while the State Department contends its reorganization improved speed and effectiveness. A pending piece of legislation — exempting a defined set of former officers from retesting — is the clearest congressional response offered at the anniversary event; whether it becomes law will determine how quickly experience displaced in 2025 and 2026 can be reinserted into U.S. diplomatic and development work.
