Last week, the U.S. Foreign Service — the 10,000+ diplomats who staff our embassies, conduct foreign policy, and manage our international relationships — fired 200 employees. It was the latest of several rounds of mass layoffs at the Service, and a key component of the State Department’s overhaul, which it announced in April, accompanied by a series of posters and rousing edits charging citizens to “Be the Face of America.”

To understand why this is happening, and what State really wants for the future of the Foreign Service, I spoke with a team of State Department officials headed by Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for Global Public Affairs.

They told me exactly how the Trump administration is building a new diplomatic corps that actually loves America… and what the Foreign Service was like under Biden (the news on that front was alarming, to say the least).