A transition team for President Trump has asked scores of senior career diplomats to resign from their positions on Monday, as soon as Mr. Trump takes office, and many of those asked to step down intend to do so, two U.S. officials said.
The practice is common when a presidential transition occurs, but it is happening faster and on a larger scale than with previous administrations, one U.S. official said. That means a possible loss of valuable knowledge of both the American institution and global affairs at the start of the administration.
The Trump transition team at the State Department is led by aides to Marco Rubio, the Florida senator picked by Mr. Trump to replace Antony J. Blinken as secretary of state. Mr. Rubio is expected to be confirmed quickly by the Senate.
Some of the officials stepping down are at the level of assistant secretary or higher and run large bureaus in the department that focus on regions of the world or broad issues. Many of those positions were held by political appointees and will be vacated, which is expected during a transition. The Trump transition team asked for the resignations on Friday.
It is unclear what kinds of jobs the veteran diplomats, known as foreign service officers, will seek or get in the coming weeks or months. Career diplomats are members of a union that would try to protect them from being fired from the State Department if that were to happen unfairly.
Every president and their appointed secretary of state replaces all or most of the people in those senior positions early in an administration. In some cases, foreign service officers decide to retire, especially if they have served for more than two decades. In some cases, they have held top positions throughout the department already and have no clear advancement path when a new administration comes in.
Among the top department officials who had earlier planned to step down is Daniel J. Kritenbrink, a longtime diplomat who has served as assistant secretary of East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Biden administration and is a former ambassador to Vietnam.
Ambassadors also offer their resignations, which the incoming president and secretary of state accept in most cases.
Ambassadors have been announcing their departures. Jeffrey Prescott, a political appointee representing the United States at United Nations agencies in Rome, posted on social media about his departure on Monday and his work on U.N. food programs during his tenure.
Like top officials at the State Department in Washington, ambassadors are a mix of political appointees and career diplomats. Many of the political appointees are wealthy donors to the president’s campaign, whether a Democratic or Republican one, and have little experience in diplomacy or global affairs.
At a confirmation hearing for Mr. Rubio last week, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, asked him to leave career diplomats serving as ambassadors in place until new ones appointed by Mr. Trump are confirmed and in place to do their jobs.
On Jan. 13, R. Nicholas Burns, the ambassador to China, said in an email that he was departing Beijing for Washington and then would leave the State Department. Mr. Burns had an unusual career: He was a foreign service officer for many decades and eventually became the third-ranking official at the department. He left for other jobs, including a teaching post at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then returned to serve as an ambassador under President Biden.
Mr. Burns said he was proud to have represented the United States during an “enormously difficult and challenging time” in U.S.-China relations.
And he defended the federal government and its many employees, saying that “we have truly outstanding men and women in public service” and that “they are working very hard and often at great personal sacrifice to represent us in seriously challenging circumstances in China and around the world.”
“I believe they deserve our full support going forward,” he added.
