Trump Eliminates Africa Operations and Closing Offices of Climate Change,Human Rights Etc
A draft of a Trump administration executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent.
The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.
The purpose of the executive order, which could be signed soon by President Trump, is to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the State Department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to a copy of the 16-page draft order obtained by The New York Times. The department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.
Some of the proposed changes outlined in the draft document would require congressional notification and no doubt be challenged by lawmakers, including mass closures of diplomatic missions and headquarters bureaus, as well as an overhaul of the diplomatic corps. Substantial parts of it, if officials tried to enact them, would likely face lawsuits.
Elements of the executive order could change before final White House review or before Mr. Trump signs it, if he decides to do so. Neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council had immediate comment on the draft order early Sunday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a short comment on social media after this article was published calling it “fake news.”
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The draft order calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.Credit...Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The document began circulating among current and former U.S. diplomats and other officials on Saturday. It was not immediately clear who had compiled the document or what stage of internal debates over a restructuring of the State Department it reflected. It is one of several recent documents proposing changes to the State Department, and internal administration conversations take place daily on possible actions.
Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.
The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new criteria for hiring, including “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”
The draft says the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake “policy development and review” and “operational planning.”
The proposed reorganization would get rid of regional bureaus that help make and enact policy in large parts of the globe.
Instead, the draft says, those functions would fall under four “corps”: Eurasia Corps, consisting of Europe, Russia and Central Asia; Mid-East Corps, consisting of Arab nations, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Latin America Corps, consisting of Central America, South America and the Caribbean; and Indo-Pacific Corps, consisting of East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
One of the most drastic proposed changes would be eliminating the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the White House National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
The draft also said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments,” the document said.
Canada operations would be put into a new North American affairs office under Mr. Rubio’s authority, and it would be run by a “significantly reduced team,” the draft said. The department would also severely shrink the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Brussels this month.Credit...Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin
The department would eliminate a bureau overseeing democracy and human rights issues; one that handles refugees and migration; and another that works with international organizations. The under secretary position overseeing the first two bureaus would be cut. So would the office of the under secretary of public diplomacy and public affairs.
The department would also get rid of the position of the special envoy for climate.
The department would establish a new senior position, the under secretary for transnational threat elimination, to oversee counternarcotics policy and other issues, the draft memo said.
The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance would absorb the remnants of the United States Agency for International Development, which has been gutted over the last two months by Mr. Rubio and other members of the Trump administration.
As for personnel, the memo said, the department needs to move from its “current outdated and disorganized generalist global rotation model to a smarter, strategic, regionally specialized career service framework to maximize expertise.”
That means people trying to get into the Foreign Service would choose during the application process which regional corps they want to work in.
The department would offer buyouts to foreign service and civil service officers until Sept. 30, the draft said.
The draft order also calls for narrowing Fulbright scholarships so that they are given only to students doing master’s-level studies in national security matters.
And it says the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for the Rangel and Pickering fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.
The draft executive order is one of several internal documents that have circulated in the administration in recent days laying out proposed changes to the State Department. Another memo outlines a proposed cut of nearly 50 percent to the agency’s budget in the next fiscal year. Yet another internal memo proposes cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, was asked on ABC’s “This Week” about the huge crowds that recently turned out for rallies led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. “I think the energy of the Democratic Party right now is across the board,” Jeffries said. “And everyone has made that observation; that this is not a right-left moment. It’s a moment of right versus wrong.”
Senator Chris van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who traveled to El Salvador last week and met with a man from his state who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration, said on CNN that President Trump “is trying to change the subject” by claiming the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, is a member of the MS-13 gang. He said Trump is “outright defying” the Supreme Court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
Protesters in New York City demonstrating against Trump administration policies on Saturday.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
At the heart of two major legal cases challenging the Trump administration’s deportation actions are two related but distinct concepts: due process and habeas corpus.
In one case, the government last month deported Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members, denying them a court hearing before they were expelled. The Trump administration used an 18th-century law that allows the government to deport immigrants, without giving them their day in court, when the United States is invaded or at war.
The matter reached the Supreme Court this weekend after lawyers said the Trump administration was preparing to deport another group of detained Venezuelan migrants in Texas without giving them a chance to contest their removal. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked their removal, apparently concerned that their access to a form of court hearing — habeas corpus relief — might be denied.
In another case, the Trump administration deported a Maryland man to El Salvador in what the administration initially acknowledged was a mistake. A federal judge ordered the government to facilitate the return of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, but it has not done so.
Here’s what the terms due process and habeas corpus mean, and why they matter.
What is due process?
Due process is the idea that people should have access to fair treatment before the law. It forbids convictions without a fair trial, for example, and it requires law enforcement officials to make criminal suspects aware of their right against self-incrimination and their right to have a lawyer present.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The 14th Amendment contains a similar clause.
Courts have long held that anyone in the United States, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, has a right to due process under the Constitution.
“For example, a green card holder cannot be summarily deported from the United States without some kind of hearing before an immigration judge, and that hearing has to be fundamentally fair,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell University. “Normally.”
Why is this coming up now?
The Trump administration has sought to skirt the promise of due process by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a powerful but rarely used law. The administration alleges that a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, is invading the United States.
The administration’s critics say the government is manufacturing an emergency to trample on core rights. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who visited Mr. Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last week, said his case was about the “fundamental principle in the Constitution” of due process.
At an anti-Trump protest in Manhattan on Saturday, one sign carried two words: “Due Process.”
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration, arguing that it had improperly invoked the Alien Enemies Act in peacetime. The Supreme Court denied the advocacy group’s initial challenge, saying it had been filed in the wrong court. But it also said that anyone targeted for deportation under the law should be allowed habeas relief, or a court hearing, before being expelled.
The decision set off a scramble by the A.C.L.U. to prevent further deportations without hearings, and the group is now involved in litigation over the Alien Enemies Act in at least nine courts.
In court, the cases have turned more on procedural questions than on due-process principles. But another legal concept, habeas corpus, has emerged as a central issue.
You lost me. What is habeas corpus?
Habeas corpus is an ancient concept that predates the Constitution, Mr. Yale-Loehr said. It means that people who are in government custody have a right to challenge their status in a court hearing, called a habeas corpus proceeding.
A writ of habeas corpus from a judge requires the government to produce an individual in custody for a hearing.
Habeas corpus, which means “you should have the body” in Latin, has been the primary way that federal courts have reviewed the constitutionality of criminal convictions in state courts. And it is an important tool for immigrants to avoid unlawful detentions and deportations.
The principle is derived from centuries of common law, the type of law created by court cases rather than a legal code. But the Constitution also says that habeas corpus can be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
So what’s the connection to these cases?
Some legal scholars say that the government deprived Mr. Abrego Garcia of the right to a habeas corpus hearing by sending him to a foreign prison.
In the Alien Enemies Act case, the A.C.L.U. said in court papers on Friday that the administration appeared to be on the cusp of carrying out more deportations while depriving Venezuelan migrants in U.S. custody of the chance to contest their removals. The Supreme Court issued its temporary order blocking deportations hours later.
A lawyer for the government said in a filing on Saturday afternoon that the Supreme Court’s order was “premature” and that detainees had “adequate time to file” claims challenging their removal.
The Vatican released an image of Pope Francis seated in a wheelchair and talking with Vice President JD Vance.Credit...Vatican Media, via Agence France-Presse
Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis at the pontiff’s residence in Rome on Sunday, the Vatican said, in a previously unannounced visit during Easter celebrations.
The Vatican said the meeting was a “brief” exchange of Easter wishes that lasted “a few minutes.” In a photograph released by the Vatican, the pope is seated in a wheelchair opposite Mr. Vance as the pair talk.
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