Secretary Rubio: "We are identifying justified vs unjustified programs"

Secretary Rubio: "The State Department has those people here present, and they are part of this process we are going through to primarily identify programs that are on hold and understand whether they are justified or not.

For example, there are many climate programs that we are funding around the world, and people are free to support them. We are not banning climate programs. If someone wants to fund a climate program out of their own pocket or through an NGO, they are free to do so. The fundamental question is whether that should be a priority for the United States or if, instead, we should focus on programs that help nations achieve energy independence or reliability in their energy sector so they can develop economically.

That is the kind of resource reallocation we are trying to implement, and they have been very helpful in identifying those programs.

The same applies to personnel. No government agency can claim that every single person working there is indispensable. I believe that is true for practically every entity of any government in the country. So that will also be a process we go through.

We have very talented people. We don’t want to lose talented individuals, but there are functions and roles that need to be examined, and we are working on that daily. Even as we handle this other work, we have people analyzing this every day.

Doge has been very helpful in the State Department in that regard. We still have more work to do."