Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday stood by the Trump administration’s controversial reorganization of the department and shuttering of large swaths of the U.S. foreign assistance apparatus, arguing that the intent of American foreign policy remained unchanged.
During his first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as secretary, a panel he was a member of during his tenure in the Senate, Rubio said that the State Department was reviewing foreign aid programs and that some of the preexisting initiatives “made no sense,” like a $10 million initiative to fund male circumcision programs in Africa — part of an effort to counter the spread of HIV in the region.
The State Department is on track to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development by July, and Rubio has previously said that the State Department as a whole was bloated, top-heavy and overly bureaucratic.
