Trump and Rubio decimate the human trafficking police

I am beginning to think that some of the claims made in the course of the Trump administration’s arbitrary targeting of people for deportation may not be made in good faith:

As President Donald Trump takes a beating from his own MAGA crowd for his handling of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophile and sex trafficker, his State Department pulled a surprising move: It decimated its office combating human trafficking.

As part of a downsizing, the Trump administration on Friday cut 1,353 positions at State, about 15 percent of its Washington-based staff, and the largest reduction in decades. This Reduction in Force (RIF) targeted foreign policy goals that don’t align with MAGA values. This included closing or eviscerating entire offices that promote democracy, combat genocide and violent extremism, help resolve armed conflicts, and supported women’s rights. Among them was the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, known as the TIP Office.

For 25 years, the TIP Office has worked to combat human sex and labor trafficking around the world. Its remit includes producing an annual report, as required by Congress, that grades every country on the issue. Those that fail can face economic repercussions from the US, putting teeth into the government’s efforts to end trafficking. This year’s report was due on June 30, but has not been released.

The TIP Office also works with local partners around the world to strengthen civil society groups, train prosecutors, and help other countries combat trafficking. The office’s mission, including managing tens of millions of dollars for these programs, has always had bipartisan support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio submitted his reorganization plan for the State Department to Congress in April, but stopped its implementation after a federal judge in California halted such plans across 22 agencies. Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court lifted that injunction, and State rushed ahead with its reduction in force (RIF) on Friday.

According to reorganization plans shared ahead of time with State employees, workers in the TIP Office expected few job cuts, but believed their office would be demoted from a stand-alone entity into a component of the Office for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

Perhaps the fact that the plans indicated they were being lumped into the category of democracy and human rights—ideas the Trump administration has sought to remove from the federal government’s foreign policy and had targeted in the departmental reorganization—should have been a sign that things would not go well. Still, workers there were blindsided when about half of the office’s full-time civil and foreign service employees received RIF notices Friday. When combined with Elon Musk’s deferred resignation program, the office now has about a third of the full-time staff it had in January.

That the party that made Jeffrey Epstein’s prosecutorial benefactor a member of the cabinet somehow got the support of influential podcasters theoretically obsessed with human trafficking is one of the bizarre little mysteries of the Trump era of American politics.