Marco Rubio’s New Loyalty Oath

Ideological screenings are just the beginning of the State Department’s political tests for new foreign service officers, who must affirm their support for Trump’s executive orders, navigate training seminars monitored by Trump appointees, and demonstrate their “fidelity” at every turn.

After firing the hundreds of experienced officers who had, in the MAGA view, been woke and anti-Trump, the administration quickly started replacing them with people they deemed to be America First patriots who would push Trump’s agenda abroad for decades to come. “The great replacement,” one former diplomat joked ruefully. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Julia Ioffe

February 26, 2026

Join Puck to listen to this article

Last summer, a new cohort of aspiring foreign service officers sat for the standard written exam required to enter America’s diplomatic corps. They got their scores and their rankings, and then they waited. In the past, the top-ranked candidates were basically guaranteed to receive offers, with decisions sent out by August. But August came and went, and as applicants watched the Trump administration decimate the State Department workforce, they began to wonder if there would be a new class of foreign service officers at all. Did a White House that had essentially outsourced Marco Rubio’s job to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner even need diplomats anymore?