The State Department is finally undergoing the course correction it has long needed. According to recent reporting from FOX News, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reinstated and promoted a number of career Foreign Service officers who were denied advancement under the Biden administration’s expansive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) regime. This is a welcome development that should be applauded far beyond Foggy Bottom.

Few federal agencies were as emblematic of DEI excess as was the State Department under Biden-appointed Secretary Antony Blinken. In the Biden years, DEI considerations became an all-purpose filter for hiring, promotion, and even diplomatic posting decisions. Career officials privately grumbled that professional merit, regional expertise, and language skill suddenly took a back seat to bureaucratically defined “representation metrics.” Some employees were told outright that advancement would require them to demonstrate their “lived experience” aligned with the Department’s DEI goals – a standard both nebulous and discriminatory. Others saw promotion boards weighed down by ideological mandates that had little to do with advancing American interests abroad.

Rubio has now begun the process of unwinding that bureaucracy and restoring the meritocratic........

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