Tea at Trianon: State Deptartment Mass Layoffs: Not "the First of its Kind"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

State Deptartment Mass Layoffs: Not "the First of its Kind"

From Sharyl's Substack:

Are the 2025 Layoffs the First of Their Kind?
The 2025 State Department layoffs are not the first mass layoffs in the department’s modern history.
In 1987, 1,270 State Department positions were eliminated. It was explicitly described at the time as the “largest round of job cuts in the department’s modern history.”
The 2025 layoffs, with 1,353 firings, are larger in absolute numbers, but smaller in terms of workforce percentage.
Since the 1987 layoffs, the State Department roster had expanded by an additional 12,000+ employees.
1,270 firings in 1987: 8% of the State Department direct-hire staff of 15,800.
1,353 firings in 2025: 5% of the State Department's total direct-hire staff of 27,230 (14,399 Foreign Service employees and 12,831 Civil Service).
Read on for details. (Read more.)