Adorned with badges to represent laid-off public servants, a group of former federal employees gathered Thursday in front of the Capitol Building to mark the one-year anniversary of a major State Department reduction in force and illustrate what has since been lost.
The State Department RIF, as well as the shuttering of USAID last year, have weakened agency expertise, harmed national security and undermined global stability, the former employees said.
“Real work that was done for this country that is no longer being done — visa security, crisis response, disease surveillance, democracy promotion,” said Ferdaouis Bagga, a laid-off State Department worker, now a steward for American Federation of Government Employees Local 1534. “One year later, America is significantly less safe because these people, these badges, are no longer working.”
In July 2025, the State Department laid off nearly 1,350 employees — mostly civil service employees permanently based in the United States, but also some Foreign Service employees who had been temporarily serving in domestic posts. And early last year, USAID lost virtually its entire staff as a target of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Speakers on Thursday cited recent challenges in negotiations in the war with Iran and the U.S. government’s weakened ability to respond to the current Ebola outbreak in Africa as examples of what the workforce layoffs at both State and USAID have meant.
“Had USAID not been dismantled, USAID today would be on the ground helping to coordinate with those local communities, based on the trust that they built over many decades of work to combat that outbreak,” Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) said. “That’s the kind of capacity that has been lost because of these reckless, reckless decisions.”
Megan Fotheringham, former deputy director of USAID’s Office of Infectious Disease, spent more than 20 years with the agency before its dismantling.
“We lost expert staff who knew the countries, knew the partners and the ministries of health — and most importantly, an outbreak response playbook,” she said. “We lost institutional memory that took decades and valuable taxpayer dollars to build.”
Maryum Saifee, a Foreign Service officer for 17 years who received a RIF notice in 2025, said despite receiving paperwork that she was fired because there was “no work available,” her position with the chief data and artificial intelligence office was never actually eliminated.
“Right after I was fired, the department hired someone else to fill my job,” she said. “That’s not efficiency. That’s a purge intended to create a culture of fear.”
In May, the State Department finalized hundreds of the layoffs it initiated in 2025. Employees had been in limbo and on paid administrative leave for close to a year, after first receiving RIF notices last summer. A department spokesperson said the 2025 RIF complied with all legal requirements and was “thoughtfully designed to facilitate a more efficient, faster and effective America First diplomacy.”
“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 spokesperson told Federal News Network. “In fact, we have been able to respond quicker and more effectively, which was the entire point of the reorg — to empower personnel in the field while allowing us to move at the ‘speed of relevancy.’”
The spokesperson pointed to the department’s response to Hurricane Melissa, as well as working to reach a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, as examples showing why the department “remains confident” in the capabilities of its current workforce.
“You see career foreign service officers integral in informing and implementing policy,” the spokesperson said. “Not only that, these career officers are publicly acknowledged for their key role.”
At the same time, the State Department is now recruiting applicants for many of the same positions it eliminated last summer. Laid-off former employees who recently spoke with Federal News Network said the department has not reached out to them as part of its hiring surge. Some former Foreign Service officers have said it’s frustrating to see the agency back in hiring mode to fill vacancies in the positions they were laid off from.
Austan Mogharabi, a former Foreign Service officer with USAID for 15 years, said he believes legislative fixes will be necessary to protect both the civil service and the Foreign Service going forward.
“The nonpartisan civil service and Foreign Service were founded in order to ensure that we were working for the people and not for whoever happened to be in power at that moment,” Mogharabi, currently USAID board representative for the American Foreign Service Association, told Federal News Network at the press conference. “As nonpartisan members of the service, we will implement the initiatives of every administration that comes in, but we are continuing to work with Congress to prevent future administrations from gutting the services on a whim without legitimate cause and legitimate reason.”
Democrats at Thursday’s press conference called attention to their newly introduced bill, called the Foreign Service Test-Free Reentry Act. The legislation would let laid-off Foreign Service officers from the State Department RIF rejoin service without needing to retake Foreign Service entry exams. It comes as former employees, federal unions and lawmakers continue to call for their reinstatements.
“There’s no reason you have to take the test again when you come back in,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. “I’m sure you’d pass it easily, but you do not need the anxiety of doing that.”
Lawmakers also highlighted two bills they first introduced in 2025 — the PREP Act, which would shorten the probationary period for newly hired or promoted federal employees, as well as the REHIRE Act, which would give hiring preference to laid-off employees at agencies that are now recruiting.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was part of a group of lawmakers that introduced separate legislation in May, seeking to reinstate laid-off Foreign Service employees and give them priority as the State Department embarks on a recruitment campaign.
“The folks who do the quiet work every day to try to prevent us from getting into conflicts, the people who help win hearts and minds overseas, day by day, they’re all of these folks right here,” Van Hollen said. “The administration decided to lose the value of that great work, and in doing so, hurt our country.”
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