President Donald Trump instituted a holiday purge of America’s ambassador corps and informed nearly 30 career diplomats that their postings were ending and they were to return home within a month.
The New York Times reported late Monday that the purge claimed the jobs of more than two dozen foreign service officers whose experience at the State Department differs from the kind of political appointee, usually political donors and supporters, often selected by presidents for the highly-sought positions.
A spokesperson for a union representing such career diplomats contended to the Times that the fired officials were given little notice and said that the purge represented the largest single firing of a group of such ambassadors in the agency’s history.
“The lack of transparency and process breaks sharply with longstanding norms,” said Nikki Gamer with the American Foreign Service Association. A list of the affected positions obtained by the Times indicated that the firings included many posts in sub-Saharan Africa where the White House has apparently been content leaving similar posts vacant throughout 2025.
Her union added in a statement: “These abrupt, opaque, and unexplained recalls sabotage diplomatic effectiveness and U.S. credibility abroad.”
It’s unclear if and when the Trump administration will be able to fill those roles, which require Senate confirmation. Also unknown is whether the president plans to use those positions as awards for his political supporters, something that has become a theme of his second presidency. News of the firings came mere days before the Christmas holiday and is the latest shake-up for the State Department, which has undergone radical changes under the second Trump administration.
Headed up by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency now houses the remnants of USAID’s core functions while Rubio and his allies, following the work of Elon Musk earlier this year, continue to wind down the congressionally-authorized agency’s work (with the full blessing of the twin GOP majorities on the Hill). U.S. foreign assistance cratered under the second Trump administration as Musk led a purge of spending targeting the main vehicle for American diplomatic leverage and soft power across the globe.
In a recent Vanity Fair article citing 11 interviews with Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, the senior White House aide called those cuts to USAID a serious mistake.
A senior State Department official maintained to the Washington Post that the firings were “a standard process in any administration,” though the turnover of such positions in the first year of a new presidency is typically limited to political appointees. But the inability or unwillingness of the president to fill such vacancies that already exist suggest that they are part of a larger retreat of the U.S.’s presence in regions including the continent of Africa.
“An ambassador is a personal representative of the president, and it is the president’s right to ensure that he has individuals in these countries who advance the ‘America First’ agenda,” the official added.
In a broader sense, the Trump administration and the White House (where Trump and his allies have centered most policymaking) have been consumed with getting rid of any and all holdovers from the Biden administration, both at the personnel and policy levels.
While agencies like the U.S. Department of Education roll back Biden-era programs, the president himself has allowed and encouraged allies inside and outside of the administration to direct witch hunt-esque purges of federal employees seen as disloyal or unsupportive of Trump’s MAGA agenda at all levels of the federal government. Earlier in 2025, that included a purge of the White House National Security Council, at the time headed up by Michael Waltz.
The Department of Justice and White House have gone even further than any administration before, however, and sought to undermine the legality of pardons and other proclamations issued by President Joe Biden from 2021-2025. The Democratic president faces accusations of using an autopen to digitally sign documents which Trump and his allies contend, without providing evidence to support their claims, meant that Biden did not know what he was signing.
“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” Trump said in a Truth Social post last month.
He does not have the legal authority to cancel pardons or offers of clemency issued by the former president, but like all presidents has the authority to undo executive orders with a penstroke.
