By Joshua Arnold

U.S. foreign policy under the second Trump administration will be “centered on one thing,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a speech to his agency personnel on Tuesday, “and that is the advancement of our national interest,” defined as “anything that makes us stronger or safer or more prosperous.” After four years of disastrous mismanagement by the Biden administration, this is welcome news, but it cannot happen without major changes.

The challenge for Rubio is to convince his department’s runaway bureaucracy to accept and implement those changes. The vision he pitched — one of innovative, efficient, and effective diplomacy — is a good start.

“There will be changes, but the changes are not meant to be destructive, they’re not meant to be punitive,” Rubio told his staff. “The changes will be because we need to be a 21st-Century agency that can move — by a cliche that’s used by many — at the speed of relevance. … Because the world is changing faster than we ever have … we really need to be thinking about where are we going to be in five, seven, 10, or 15 years.”

Rubio outlined five of those changes on Wednesday in a press statement setting forth the “Priorities and Mission of the Second Trump Administration’s Department of State.”

1. Secure American Borders

“First, we must curb mass migration and secure our borders,” Rubio declared. “The State Department will no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage mass migration. Our diplomatic relations with other countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration, and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants.”

This may at first seem like a counterintuitive top priority for America’s diplomats — certainly it never registered for the Biden administration. However, securing the border and stopping illegal immigration is a top concern for the Trump administration, and it is in the national interest to use every relevant tool to fix the problem — including diplomacy.

The mass migration “supply chain” reached far into Latin America, as many migrants traversed multiple countries before reaching the southwestern American border. President Donald Trump convinced Latin American countries to cooperate on border enforcement in his previous administration, and he appears keen to do so again.

In fact, given this top priority for American diplomats, Trump selected in Rubio a secretary of State particularly suited to the task. As a Florida politician and Cuban American, Rubio’s foreign policy focus has long been on Latin America, giving him an uncommon level of knowledge and expertise about the region. Rubio will make his first foreign trip next week to Latin American countries, visiting Panama (which also has a strategically important canal), Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic.

2. Replace DEI with Meritocracy

Rubio’s second priority as secretary is to “reward performance and merit, including within the State Department ranks,” he continued. In the State Department, President Trump’s Day One “executive order eliminating ‘DEIA’ [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] requirements, programs, and offices throughout the government … will be faithfully executed and observed in both letter and spirit.”

Over the past four years, the State Department launched itself headfirst into the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government” approach to institutionalize DEI practices throughout the federal government. Internal documents from 2022 show that State Department employees were required to practice DEI principles as a condition of career advancement. Mid-level foreign service officers were expected to “advance” DEI through their words and actions, while senior-level diplomats were expected to mentor others in DEI principles.

From that point, the department’s DEI dalliance only grew more outlandish. In November 2022, the State Department held a 10-day DEI challenge for employees, featuring lectures, readings, films, and even a jeopardy game. The State Department even tasked their IT department with developing code to include preferred pronouns in every employee’s email “From” line — an assignment which backfired spectacularly when in May 2023 it launched prematurely with all the wrong pronouns. In February 2024, Secretary of State Antony Blinken distributed a document to personnel on “Gender Identity Best Practices,” which warned them not to “misgender” or use gendered language.

At best, these exercises were distractions for the department, as it hurtled between international crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine, east Asia, and the Middle East. At worst, they objectively harmed America’s well-being by sidelining or forcing out quality foreign service officers turned off by the woke nonsense.

“To fulfill our mission, the State Department must continue to attract and retain the most capable people in federal service,” Rubio explained in a cable to State Department personnel around the world on Tuesday. “That means ending any practice, system, guideline, standard, or any other measure that prioritizes any criteria for selecting, training, evaluating, posting, or promoting our people on any basis other than performance and merit. … Upholding strict meritocracy is essential to securing our nation’s future.”

3. Eliminate Divisive Diplomacy

“Relatedly, we must return to the basics of diplomacy by eliminating our focus on political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad,” continued Secretary Rubio. “This will allow us to conduct a pragmatic foreign policy in cooperation with other nations to advance our core national interests.”

Under the Biden administration, the State Department needlessly antagonized foreign peoples and governments by lecturing them about — or worse, conditioning aid upon — mandatory racial diversity, LGBT priorities, and even abortion — policies that are even controversial in the United States. For instance, the State Department’s Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice Desirée Cormier Smith lectured European nations on their lack of inclusivity toward gypsies, and the Arab nation of Jordan on their lack of inclusivity towards a vanishingly small African minority. Again, in June 2022, the U.S. embassy in Kuwait caused a diplomatic incident with that conservative Muslim country by tweeting about Pride Month.

Such moral posturing only angers other nations, reinforces the stereotype of Americans as arrogant and out-of-touch and does nothing to advance our national interests.

4. Stop Censorship

Rubio’s next concern was to “stop censorship and suppression of information,” he said. “The State Department I lead will support and defend Americans’ rights to free speech, terminating any programs that in any way lead to censoring the American people.”

While not the largest or flashiest censorship outfit, apparently the State Department had joined other offices in the Biden administration to censor Americans who expressed disfavored political viewpoints.

Rubio intends to put a stop to this. “The State Department’s efforts to combat malign propaganda have expanded and fundamentally changed since the Cold War era and we must reprioritize truth,” he said. “While we will combat genuine enemy propaganda, we will do so only with the fundamental truth that America is a great and just country whose people are generous and whose leaders now prioritize Americans’ core interests while respecting the rights and interests of other nations.”

5. End Climate Policies

“Finally,” Rubio concluded, “we must leverage our strengths and do away with climate policies that weaken America. While we will not ignore threats to our natural environment and will support sensible environmental protections, the State Department will use diplomacy to help President Trump fulfill his promise for a return to American energy dominance.”

International climate agreements like the Paris accords (from which Trump already withdrew) often disadvantage American energy production relative to other countries, requiring the U.S. to cut carbon dioxide emissions while the world’s biggest carbon emitter, China, is approving two new coal plants per week.

Instead of wasting their energy on such disadvantageous negotiations, Rubio’s State Department intends to focus on negotiations that enhance American energy production. For instance, during the first Trump administration, the U.S. had worked out a deal to export liquid natural gas (LNG) to European nations like Poland, helping them become less reliant on energy from Russia-controlled pipelines.

6. Review All Foreign Aid Funding

A sixth change Rubio is bringing to the State Department is a comprehensive review of U.S. foreign aid, in compliance with one of Trump’s executive orders freezing new foreign development aid for 90 days. This change did not make his press statement, but the secretary did discuss it in a diplomatic cable issued Tuesday.

Rubio’s instructions freeze all new awards “until further notice” and pause the process of new funding requests while the department conducts a 30-day review. Within that time, Rubio required every office and bureau within the State Department to compile “a list of all active, pending, or proposed grants, subcontracts, contracts, or subcontracts, and provide a clear and concise statement explaining if and how the current or proposed use of obligated funds advances President Trump’s policy.”

Rubio also assigned the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning to develop standards to ensure that “all State Department and USAID non-security foreign assistance is aligned with President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”

The Biden administration State Department awarded lucrative grants for drag shows, LGBT activism, and pro-transgender English curriculum in Pakistan. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know exactly what the State Department is funding because it lacks a central database where all State Department grants can be reviewed, and the State Department has long resisted this measure of transparency. Even during the previous Trump administration, State Department officers sometimes refused to tell Congress what they were spending money to fund.

As part of this 30-day foreign aid review, Rubio ordered the creation of a database that will combine all State Department grants in one place.

National Interest

The astute reader may have noticed the common theme running through the changes Secretary Rubio will bring to the State Department — namely, America’s national interest.

“President Trump has given me a clear direction to place our core national interest as the guiding mission of American foreign policy,” said Rubio. “Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

For too long, the U.S. State Department has slunk along as an appendage of globalized progressivism. Under Rubio’s leadership, perhaps our government’s diplomatic department will finally learn to put America first.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.