The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee advances human rights through grassroots collaborations.
The Fight for Interdependence
By UUSC Staff on June 6, 2025
At UUSC, we know that our liberation is bound up together, as Dr. Lilla Watson once said. It is our responsibility to advance human rights domestically and abroad and advocate for our government to play a meaningful role in global justice work. The Trump Administration continues to further a separatist, individualist agenda that prioritizes the power of the wealthy, white elite over the freedom of all.
In service of this agenda, Trump has moved to dramatically restructure the State Department. This sweeping reorganization would reverse human rights goals and set back global progress for generations. Read up on some of the changes below, and then take the newest Resistance Network’s action to speak out against this devastating restructuring:
- The Office of Global Women’s Affairs has been eliminated.
- The Office of Religious Freedom will be elevated, as will the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Given the profile and background of Trump appointees, it can be expected that both offices will weaponize anti-Semitism to advance a Christian ethno-nationalist worldview.
- The office for UN Peacekeeping operations has been eliminated, as have offices for Countering Violent Extremism, and for Conflict and Stabilization Operations.
- The Bureau for Democracy, Rights and Labor will establish a new office for “Natural Rights” dedicated to “traditional western conceptions of core freedoms and . . . an affirmative vision of civil liberties.”
- The Office of International Labor Affairs has been renamed as the “Office of Free Markets and Free Labor.”
- The Office to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons will still exist but will lose its approximately $100 million in programming resources for survivor support, advocacy and accountability, and be confined to production of the annual Trafficking in Persons report.
- Most chillingly, the Office on Population, Migration and Refugees “will be substantially reorganized to shift focus towards supporting the Administration’s efforts to return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status.” A new Office of Remigration will be established to facilitate the detention and rendition of individuals designated for removal from the United States.
These changes represent an ideological shift that threatens human rights at home and abroad. The State Department restructuring flies in the face of justice, human dignity, and an international commitment to peace.
Use your voice to make a difference. Join the Resistance Network and submit a letter to Marco Rubio speaking out against this catastrophic change. Our liberation is bound up together, which means we are made stronger by collective action. Together, we can continue to fight against the separatist, supremacist agenda of Trump and work toward an interdependent future.
