The U.S. State Department is preparing to close about a dozen consulates in the coming months, mostly in Western Europe, and aims to reduce its global workforce, several U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The State Department is also considering merging several of its specialized offices at its headquarters in Washington, which focus on areas such as human rights, refugees, global criminal justice, women's issues, and efforts to combat human trafficking, officials said.

Last month, Reuters reported that U.S. missions worldwide were asked to consider cutting both American and local staff by at least 10%, as Trump and billionaire Elon Musk launched unprecedented efforts to reduce the costs of the U.S. federal workforce.

Trump Restructures U.S. Foreign Service

The Republican president wants to ensure that the bureaucracy is fully aligned with his "America First" agenda. Last month, he issued an executive order directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to restructure the Foreign Service to ensure the "faithful and effective" implementation of his foreign policy.

During his election campaign, he repeatedly promised to "clean out the deep state" by firing bureaucrats he considers disloyal.

Critics argue that potential cuts to the U.S. diplomatic presence, along with the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has provided billions of dollars in global aid, risk undermining American leadership and creating a dangerous vacuum that adversaries like China and Russia could fill.

Trump and Musk claim that the U.S. government is too large and that taxpayer-funded aid has been spent wastefully and fraudulently.

List of Possible Consulate Closures

According to three officials, the list of smaller consulates under consideration for closure includes:

• Germany: Leipzig, Hamburg, and Düsseldorf
• France: Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon, and Strasbourg
• Italy: Florence
• Brazil: Belo Horizonte
• Portugal: Ponta Delgada

Officials also said the State Department notified Congress on Monday of its plan to close its mission in Gaziantep, Turkey, a location from which Washington has supported humanitarian efforts in northern Syria.

In Washington, dozens of staff members in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor have already been dismissed in recent weeks. Officials warned that more job cuts are coming.

“The State Department continues to assess our global footprint to ensure we are best positioned to meet modern challenges on behalf of the American people,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The U.S. currently has more than 270 diplomatic missions worldwide with a workforce of nearly 70,000 employees, including about 45,000 locally hired staff, according to the State Department website.