Marco Rubio, supposedly the sane, responsible adult in the Trump administration, runs a State Department that has reportedly hit on a simple way to choose its senior diplomats: ask whether they voted for Trump.
The Hill summarizes the Washington Sun’s reporting (which is paywalled):
The State Department is asking some career diplomats who are applying for senior assignments about their voting history in the past three presidential elections, according to a report. Candidates who voted for President Trump would be eligible for the mid- to upper-level foreign service roles, the Washington Sun reported, adding that campaign donations were also scrutinized. Federal law directly prohibits federal officials from discriminating against staff based on political affiliation. ... The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the professional association and union for foreign service officers, has heard anecdotes of senior foreign service members not getting jobs after going through interviews with questions that were political in nature.
The department couldn’t settle on a response. It declined to address the voting questions, dismissed the reporting as resting on an “absurd premise,” and explained that it is merely screening for “fidelity,” which is “not about partisan behavior but rather about executing the President’s vision for foreign policy.”
Fidelity has a specific meaning at Rubio’s State Department. Last year it added a “fidelity” criterion for tenure and promotion that rewards “protecting and promoting executive power” and “quickly and completely aligning oneself and one’s team to the most current USG [United States Government] goals.” The fidelity section of the evaluation scorecard even links to a White House page listing Trump’s executive orders.
It’s all flatly illegal, and AFSA says it is exploring legal options. Four years of this will hollow out the Foreign Service culture and ranks—and whoever comes next will have to spend years rebuilding it.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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