▶ 0:04:26What's your name?
▶ 0:08:00Why do we start over?
▶ 0:17:47The subcommittee on oversight intelligence will come to order. Without objection, the chair may declare the subcommittee in recess at any point. The purpose of this hearing is to identify divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion policies implemented under the Biden administration that the State Department must reform to meet America first foreign policy objectives. I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
▶ 0:18:13Good afternoon and welcome to the first hearing of the subcommittee on oversight and intelligence in the 119th Congress. As we start new as we start the new Congress, I'm looking forward to working with the colleagues to de to develop to deliver real results for the American people by advancing President Trump's America first policies and agenda over the next few months through our State Department reauthorization deliberations.
▶ 0:18:35This committee, this subcommittee will work to identify areas of the secretary's office or the sbureau that must be reformed and reprogrammed to reorient the United States as a leader on the world stage while ensuring that taxpayer dollars are effectively used to bolster US national security efforts.
▶ 0:18:53For far too long, the State Department prioritized radical liberal political ideologies and woke policies over advancing diplomatic objectives that serve American interests and protect the American people from our adversaries. While the Biden administration was trying to figure out what pronouns to use, our adversaries grew stronger and more emboldened. China aggressively enforced unlawful territorial claims in the South China Sea and has undermined the United States and our allies at every turn.
▶ 0:19:23Russia invaded Ukraine. North Korea ramped up its military provocations. Iran advanced its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, empowering its proxies to now cause chaos throughout the entire region of the Middle East. Israel was attacked and global shipping routes in the Red Sea was blocked. Over the last four years, among others, the American people watched these foreign policy failures unfold and voted for real change and action.
▶ 0:19:50On November 5th, the American people gave President Trump and the Republican le Congress a mandate to reverse the damage and restore common sense to our federal government. Today, this subcommittee will take its first step to deliver on this mandate by examining the State Department's Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
▶ 0:20:08The Office of Diversity and Inclusion detrimentally influenced operations across the State Department by making DEI a core precept for promotion considerations within the ranks of the foreign service, granting passport applications the ability to select X as a gender, and using taxpayer dollars to fund numerous woke projects, including commemorating Black Consciousness Month with an event in which employees learned about the inclusive Afrobrazilian culture through music and LGBTQI plus culture
▶ 0:20:38through vogue dance in Brazil. That was a mouthful. These policies corrupted the core mission of the State Department and we must restore unity and fundamental American principles to the department, eliminate wasteful spending, and ensure that President Trump's executive orders are fully implemented, not subverted by rebranding DEIdriven programs. It is our duty to ensure that Americans become safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
▶ 0:21:06I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before the subcommittee today and I look forward to productive discussions on how we can enhance America's security through common sense policies and responsible leaderships. The chair will now recognize my good friend and ranking member, the gentleman from Florida, Representative Moscowitz for any statements he may have. Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:21:33Uh good afternoon and thank you to the witnesses for testifying at today's hearing. The first oversight and intelligence subcommittee hearing for the 119th Congress. First hearing is ranking member and it is also nice to be here with my friend and colleague chairman Mills from Florida. Florida had a good day yesterday with the Gator win. I I would like to spend a few minutes focusing on the title of this hearing. deficient, infeebled, and ineffective.
▶ 0:22:03If I didn't know any better, I thought we would be talking about Trump's tariffs u that were just put in place. In fact, if you listen to Elon Musk talking about the architect of the Trump tariff, the mastermind, Peter Navaro, Elon calls him a He calls him dumber than a sack of bricks. And then Elon apologizes to the sack of bricks because he thought he offended the sack of bricks by comparing them to Peter Navaro.
▶ 0:22:27uh you know I was looking forward to a meaningful discussion of our current foreign policy discussion but the trend continues in this Congress. We don't want to do any oversight of the current administration or examination or discussion uh even though that is kind of the point of this subcommittee but instead we're focused on looking backwards Biden era policies. So we're going to talk about DEI news flash to my colleagues across the aisle. You won we lost. This was one of the issues on the ballot. There's an EO has been signed.
▶ 0:22:58DEI has ended. But yet, we're still going to look backwards. Oddly enough, there were some of programs and objectives that you rolled back that you also had in place during the first Trump uh administration that pro promoted uh diversity and inclusion. You know, I I there's this movie Space Balls. I'm a big fan uh of this movie Space Balls. There's a scene when Colonel Sanders and Dark Helmet uh are talking and Colonel Sanders says to Dark Helmet, he says, "You're looking at now, sir.
▶ 0:23:28Everything that is happening now is happening now." And Dark Helmet says, "What happened to then? We passed it when just now. We're at now." Now, this is the present. Okay? And not a single one of my colleagues want to talk about now. They want to talk about then. They want to talk about the past. Okay. What I want to know is when will then be now? Soon perhaps.
▶ 0:23:55Uh our witness today, Ambassador Gina Abberrombi with Winstanley has experience on the ground in some of the most sensitive uh regions of national interest and extensive involvement in our national security apparatus. I want to welcome her and the other witnesses here today. The ambassador after her term uh to Malta uh served as the chief diversity inclusion officer at the State Department. uh and I'm sure she'll be able to provide more detailed insight into the programs that the Trump administration has begun dismantling.
▶ 0:24:23Uh you know, one of the things I want to talk about and and end with here in my opener, Mr. Chairman, is that it is a bipartisan objective, Democrats and Republicans, to talk about what's happening with China. Um, we had a China select committee that was very bipartisan, but my colleagues seem to be undermining that effort because of what the freezing that has gone on with foreign aid.
▶ 0:24:48Anyone who any member who has traveled around the world and met with world leaders, met with ambassadors knows every time the United States removes a dollar from foreign aid, every time we withdraw and create a vacuum, China is coming in and is develop and making more friends. The United States having more leverage, having more influence, we want to fight belt and road. Well, we can't withdraw. We can't isolate.
▶ 0:25:16Um, and what's been going on within the State Department, what's been going on within the administration is absolutely against what we're trying to accomplish on China. These tariffs that the president is putting in place on China, well, the other piece to that is to isolate China from the rest of the world at the same time. But we're not. And we're fueling other countries to turn to China, to run to China as we withdraw our foreign aid.
▶ 0:25:45Uh, America first can't be America alone. Uh, and that's that's where we're headed with the current policies of the administration. With that, Mr. Chairman, uh, I yield back. Thank you, ranking member. Uh, like yourself, I was also a bit confused whenever we talked about deficient and feebled and effective. I thought we were talking about Biden's entire administration over the last four years.
▶ 0:26:10Um, but I'll also remind uh our ranking member that in order to understand the mistakes that was made in the in the past, we have to resurface and rehash these issues so that we can prevent them from occurring in the future, not just continue to make the same mistakes over and over because we didn't learn from them. Um, other members of the committee are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record. We're pleased to have our distinguished panel of witnesses before us today on this very important topic. Mr.
▶ 0:26:39Simon Henson, I apologize if I mess up anyone's name, is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Henson's has served as a foreign service officer in the State Department for over 20 years, and thank you for your service. Mr. James Rogers serves as a senior counsel for the America First Legal. Prior to joining America First Legal, Mr. Rogers was senior litigation counsel at the Solicitor General's Office of the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Mr.
▶ 0:27:05Rogers also serves as a foreign service officer in the State Department for 6 years. Thank you so much for being here. Ambassador Gina Amberi Winstanley served as the chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Department of State under the Biden administration. This chair, this committee recognizes the importance of the issues before us and is grateful to have you here to speak with us today.
▶ 0:27:30Your full statements will be made part of the record and I'll ask each of you to keep your spoken remarks to five minutes in order to allow members time for the questions. I now recognize Mr. Henson for his opening statement. Thank you, Chairman Mills, Ranking Member Moscowitz, members of the committee. The views I express in this testimony are my own. My only prayer for the future of diversity and inclusion is that we invest in and nurture talent no matter what they look like.
▶ 0:27:57That was actually Snow White actress Rachel Zgler, and it's one thing I agree with her on. Diversity is great when it comes from fair competition and individual choice. Equity should mean equal opportunity and equal treatment. Inclusion is good when it's possible. But in life, variables beyond the control of organizations result in disperate outcomes. Critical race theory says disperate outcomes are caused by unseen forces like structural bias or systemic racism. And for proponents of this theory, equity means ensuring equal outcomes.
▶ 0:28:27So they rigged the system to achieve it under labels like DEI. But professions and skilled trades need standards. When I go to the doctor, I want one who got A's in biology. I want them to have aced the MCAT and gone to a rigorous medical school. When I get on a plane, I want pilots who were selected because they're good at math, spatial reasoning, and keeping calm in a crisis.
▶ 0:28:46When I call 911, I want them to send a police officer who knows the law and can catch a criminal or a fireman who can lift an average person. There are two ways to get diversity in selective professions. You can educate everyone to a high standard and let them compete, or you can discriminate to get the sex and race percentages you want. And in trying to make the US foreign service look like America, the State Department chose discrimination.
▶ 0:29:13If you want the analysis, the data, the charts, I've written several long reports which are available online. But there's no systemic evidence of bias at the State Department against favored minorities. The sad truth is that the American education system is failing to deliver a pipeline of potential recruits that is as racially diverse as our country. Only 30% of eth grade students in the US are proficient readers. In 2023, not a single child tested proficient in math across 67 schools in the state of Illinois.
▶ 0:29:41In 2020, the Smithsonian Museum wanted us to believe that hard work is the key to success and work before you play were aspects of white culture. That would have surprised my friend Titusi in Fiji, a successful builder. And it would have been news to my friend Cojo in Togo, who gets up at dawn every day to run his coffee farm. I've lived 10 years in Africa, four in Asia, and 20 in Europe. The values that make people succeed are the same the world over. The reason our schools fail is because we let them.
▶ 0:30:08Economist Roland Frier's research on charter schools showed that success is not about teacher pay or iPads or class sizes. It's teacher feedback, data to guide instruction, tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations. So, with strong families, homework, discipline, no phones in the class, and high expectations, we could fix our schools. That would increase the talent pool. That would allow diversity to occur naturally in competitive fields. But instead, the State Department, like so many other institutions, has decided to achieve its diversity goals by lowering standards.
▶ 0:30:37And meanwhile, in our foreign policy, rather than following its own joint strategic plan and concentrating on the values at the heart of the American way of life, the department has pursued a leftist agenda. The Biden State Department's equity action plan contained the word equity 113 times, but equality appeared only seven times.
▶ 0:30:55Under former Secretary Blinken, the State Department offered grants to promote trans transgenderism in India, drag performances in Ecuador, LGBTQIA plus awareness in Batswana, a gender and sexuality library in Lebanon, and DEI training for police in Latin America. Blink's US aid promoted gender affirming medical care, although other developed countries have banned it for minors. They conflated conversion therapy with any effort to help young people accept reality.
▶ 0:31:21And at the United Nations, US diplomats fought to replace sex with sexual orientation and gender identity and women with women in all their diversity, which is code for allowing men to self-identify into women's spaces and compete against women in sports. Woke ideology is dug in. Consultants are making millions writing and advising about it. Institutions will resist or rebrand.
▶ 0:31:44At NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, they kept their DEI chief, but renamed her from chief inclusion officer to chief of the office of team excellence and employee success. At California Institute of Technology, they promoted their assistant vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion, and assessment to associate vice president for campus climate engagement and success. New titles, same old jobs. Discrimination is discrimination.
▶ 0:32:08Whether you call it affirmative action or DEIA or belonging or engagement or success or excellence, hiring people because of how they look and not what they do is wrong. And it's also illegal. The State Department's guiding principles at home must be equal opportunity, fair treatment, high expectations, and accountability. And in foreign policy, the focus must be on enduring American values. Thank you for inviting me today, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Mr. Aninson. At this point in time, we'd like to recognize Mr.
▶ 0:32:37Rogers for his opening statement. Chairman Mills, Ranking Member Moscowitz, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opport the invitation to testify. I'll be summarizing my written testimony. First, to acknowledge the positive. My testimony is about the Department of State's failures under prior secretaries. Things have already marketkedly improved under Secretary Rubio, and I'm confident the problems I outlined can and will be addressed under his leadership. I served as a State Department foreign service officer for six years.
▶ 0:33:02My experience during President Trump's first term showed that the department has an entrenched culture focused on opposing him and punishing anyone who exposes this. Shortly before my consular tour in Brazil in 2017, President Trump rescended Obama era requirements focused on fast visa interview speeds. Instead, he ordered the department to focus on thoroughly vetting visa applicants. However, the minister councelor for consular affairs for Brazil, Doug Coniff, ignored these orders and imposed an even more aggressive standard than what President Trump had required had rescended.
▶ 0:33:28My direct supervisors, consular chief David Frons and Deputy Chief Kelly Cops, also directly disobeyed department directives about slowing down the interview process to give officers enough time to vet applicants. I blew the whistle about this. The department investigated and confirmed I was right. Soon after, apparently in retaliation, Fron filled my employee evaluation with false negative statements that left the that led the department to deny me job tenure and schedule me for separation.
▶ 0:33:51While preparing a grievance against this, I discovered the same problems were happening worldwide and that more thorough visa interviewing would likely decrease visa overstay rates by 50 to 75%. This means that out of the 1.8 million visa overstays during President Trump's first term, malfeasants likely caused 900,000 to 1.4 million of them. To put that in perspective, 10 US states have populations of less than 1.4 million. Thus, consular managers subverting President Trump's policies managed to add an entire state population's worth of illegal aliens in just four years.
▶ 0:34:21The department's office, the inspector general ignored my complaint about this. The office of special counsel also rejected my complaint, incorrectly, claiming that it was a sec, it was secondhand information. Yet, at the same time, the intelligence community's IG was investigating secondhand allegations from Alexander Vinman that formed the sole basis for the impeachment to President Trump. I also submitted a complaint to the OC for whistleblower retaliation. But seven months later, when my grievance was nearing resolution, the attorney assigned to investigate my case had never even started investigating.
▶ 0:34:47Eventually, I won my grievance, but the department made the process as painful and drawn out as possible and hobbled my career in ways I would never recover from. It became clear I had no future there, so I left. This experience shows that first, department employees believe they can disobey the president's lawful orders, and they often get away with it. Second, the mechanism is designed to stop and protect whistleblowers do not work. In my current role as senior council at America First Legal, we've discovered more problems.
▶ 0:35:11The department started assigning diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility scores to employees in 2022 and using them to make tenure and promotion decisions. Anecdotal evidence suggests these scores were used not just as an Orwellian way of enforcing ideological conformity, but also as a pretext for discriminating against white males. One department employee was reprimanded by his supervisor and penalized in his DEI score because he declined to volunteer his free time to help at an LGBT pride festival outside of work hours. But the DEI hysteria did not stop there.
▶ 0:35:38When he applied for onward assignments, he was almost always required to describe his efforts to promote DEIa. Only the two posts that did not seek this information accepted his application for an onward assignment. Thankfully, the new administration has eliminated these DEI these DEIA scores. However, the bureaucracy continues to discriminate against employees in other ways. For example, a diplomatic security special agent has been the target of a nearly five-year long witch hunt because he posted traditional Christian symbols and prayers to his personal social media.
▶ 0:36:05Department officials reacted to these innocuous posts with baseless allegations that he was a white nationalist and a right-wing Christian associated with violent extremism. This agent has been selected for promotion three times over the last 5 years, but the department refuses to promote him because of the pending investigation. This sort of protextual attack driven by ideological extremists within the department must stop. Those involved in this weaponization of government must be held accountable. These specific cases are emblematic of a more widespread problem in the department's culture that festered during the Biden years.
▶ 0:36:33Through Freedom of Informationation Act requests, AFL has uncovered diplomatic cables that detail the extreme ideological bias in Blinken era department programs that sought to indoctrinate doesn't uh sought to indoctrinate citizens of other countries into supporting divisive left-wing causes. These Biden era DEIA programs spread unwanted divisive leftist ideology to foreigners, driving resentment against our country, making it harder to achieve legitimate foreign policy goals that actually would improve Americans lives. President Trump's order removing DEIA from the government is already having a positive effect.
▶ 0:37:02However, the the department should also retroactively re-evaluate everyone denied promotions from 2022 to 2025 without using DEIA scores and then give promotions with back pay to those found worthy. More generally, because there appears to be a persistent pattern of bias in tenure and promotion decisions, employee evaluation should exclude anything that might allow a reader to infer an employees race, sex, religion, or other protected characteristics. Additionally, to better protect whistleblowers, there must be reforms to the department's grievance system and how IG's and the OSC handle complaints, which I've detailed in my written testimony.
▶ 0:37:32Thank you, and I welcome any questions from the subcommittee. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. I now recognize Ambassador Amber with Stanley for her opening statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of the subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to join you here today to address some of the misconceptions around diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as characterized in the title of this hearing.
▶ 0:38:00I come from a family of proud public servants. I have three siblings, an older brother who served in the army, a younger one who is a submariner veteran, and a sister who is a retired Navy captain. But I'm the only one who faced a terrorist attack while serving her country in the Middle East. During 30 plus years of assignments in the State Department, I stepped up to challenges in Cairo, Jakarta, Baghdad, and the Gaza Strip.
▶ 0:38:27Because of the stellar record and more, I was selected as the first woman to lead a diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia. America got to show her best leaders come from all backgrounds. So when called on to go to the one of the most conservative nations in the world as a working mom with a young family, I was honored to go. And when terrorist threats required my family's evacuation and separated us for 18 months, I stayed.
▶ 0:38:58My presence conveyed a powerful testimony about the rights, capabilities, and patriotism of women without uttering a word. Even so, the most challenging assignment that I took on in my 30 plus career year career was to support my colleagues, all of them, as chief diversity and inclusion officer for the department CDIO. Why do the hard and too often misunderstood work to ensure America's representatives represent the breath and complexity of our nation?
▶ 0:39:28Well, as Secretary Rubio said at my first hearing as CDIO, not only is our nation's diversity our strength, but if our workforce doesn't reflect our population, then it merits inquiry. So, three reasons. We aim to create a system that ensures the very best rise to the top. There's no difference in this administration's stated goal of a merit-based society and the goals of the DEIA effort that I oversaw at the State Department.
▶ 0:39:57And we worked to address behavior that too often led to EEO complaints. Two, we wanted to save taxpayer money. It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and ship around the world highly talented and highly trained representatives. When talent leaves early and takes those skills with them, America loses. The department has lost valuable talent, perhaps like the gentleman next to me, because they lost faith in the system.
▶ 0:40:27And three, we have to walk the talk. In order to remain a great power, America's word must be trusted. We've told the world we believe in a level playing field and our history of service and achievement. from Nobel Prize ruiner Ralph Bunch. The Tuskegee Airmen, Navajo Code Breakers, and Dr. Summer Atar show the world what we are capable of. And don't forget the DEIA unit got its start under President Trump, and I thank him for that.
▶ 0:40:57But President Biden understood that we needed a larger effort to tackle well-bedded cronyism. Common sense tells us to deal successfully with the world's issues, it's not enough to tap a few viewpoints, a few backgrounds, few experiences. We need diplomats who can connect and engage with the range of humanity.
▶ 0:41:17Foreign service officers advocate for America's priorities at community centers, government buildings, yes, but factories, remote border crossings, and farms and town squares. And let me be clear, every change we made, every effort we undertook, every data point we gathered was cleared by lawyers. The Department of State has some of the finest and most conservative lawyers in the government.
▶ 0:41:45And I can confidently say that we followed the law and the intent of Congress. There were no so-called DEIA hires and anyone who says otherwise is misinformed. Our focus was to dismantle cronyism, bring transparency, and build trust. So, let me talk about a few of the programs that we started. Our method of assigning most diplomats is to have a bid list where everybody can see what assignments are open.
▶ 0:42:15But in a key position, the deputy assistant secretary position was more secretive. Those positions weren't advertised or competed. You had to be known to the assistant secretary or someone in the assistant secretary circle. You had to have the right connections, be in the in crowd. And because of this opacity, only certain people even knew that the position was open and available. This cronyism was far from meritocracy.
▶ 0:42:42And the office of diversity and inclusion led the efforts to ensure that these positions, like others, were advertised and openly competed. Is this something that the American people would want to see turned back? this transparency and I can tell you the first recipient of that DAS position under this new system was a white male. He wasn't the only one but he was the first one because inclusion means everyone.
▶ 0:43:08Another priority was to bring transparency and fairness to the assignments at a lower level. We brought strong business practices to improve our selection processes. We brought in standardized questions and panel interviews, something that business has been using for years, but the Department of State had not. And one of my favorite changes was modeled on the US military culture, something I heard from my siblings all the time. We've got your back.
▶ 0:43:37My office worked with key stakeholders in the building and our embassies abroad and host governments to put a stop to widespread harassment and discriminatory treatment to some of our diplomats from various agencies at embassies overseas. Many reported being stopped, questioned, detained, even harassed by government officials in a way that would be illegal in the United States. Sometimes the diplomats Madam Ambassador, your time is up. All right. You see, I'm excited about these programs.
▶ 0:44:07I am as well. Well, thank you, Madam Ambassador. Um, I now recognize myself for five minutes. You know, I want to go over a couple of things that you just made mention of. You talked about inclusivity means everyone. Can you tell me how doing an actual event which is only tailored towards a certain gender or a certain sexual preference or a certain uh racial bias is in some way inclusive of all as opposed to just saying that everyone is welcome?
▶ 0:44:37Uh Mr. Chairman, when you say doing a certain event, are you talking like let's just say for example an LGBTI LGBTQI event. Do you think that's inclusive of every individual that they would feel that that's something that they want to partake in? So I believe that it is a learning experience for people who don't belong to that group. That's why but again I'm asking it's not about learning. We we do that a lot. So I I work in the foreign service and I know for a fact that we learn about cultures.
▶ 0:45:07We learn about regions. We learn about the idea of not just cultural exchanges but also what are some of the actual norms that you can actually learn about that allows you to be a better diplomat so that you can engage with them because sometimes people are a little more vague and ambiguous in how they say things but it's a cultural issue not they're trying to evade the question so I understand that portion of it okay but what we're talking about is inclusivity means everyone yes so when you section off groups do you think that is inclusive
▶ 0:45:38when you're trying to tailor money to only go towards those particular groups for particular events. The point is to bring in under represented groups. That is why and we have the statistics. Go's done reports for many years that show we have under reppresented groups in the department of state. Therefore, while we hire for merit only, we do have to recruit in a more focused fashion for different groups.
▶ 0:46:06People are Don't you believe though that meritocracy should be the only merit in which you're actually judged upon or that you're graded upon shouldn't matter any other factor other than who is the very best at being able to do a job. And I don't think that having served in the United States military for a number of years, I don't think once did I look to my left and right and say, gosh, I sure hope that he knows his pronouns. Gosh, I sure hope that he has this background in culture.
▶ 0:46:36Gosh, no. I said, I hope that he's the absolute best war fighter that we have who's standing to my left and right. That's the only thing that I cared about. As I fought from with a gentleman who was from Cambodia who lived in LA, a man from Brooklyn, a man from Lumbard, Illinois, all of which the color of their skin didn't matter. We all wore green.
▶ 0:47:01And that actually matters more so than any other diversity, equity, inclusion, which has been nothing but a divisive tool. But I will ask this. Can you please outline how much money did the department allocate to fund the office of diversity, equity, inclusion every fiscal year? Every fiscal year. At the beginning, my first year, our budget was about $2.2 million.
▶ 0:47:28By the time I left, it had grown to about $7 million. And these figures are you probably have access to them already. Of course, uh there were other programs throughout the building that might have fallen under the rubric of what the Department of State always used, which is recruit for diversity, but we hire for merit. There were no DEIA.
▶ 0:47:55Can you just explain to me how did this funding advanced American interest overseas? How did this funding support the actual toppling of the Iranian regime who was brutally murdering and torturing people like Masa Amini? How did this diversity, equity, inclusion prevent the Houthis from increasing attacks that disrupted 12% of global trade? The unfreezing of assets that led to a continuation of proxy funding.
▶ 0:48:22How did DEI and the office within the State Department help our overseas security and national security interests? Sure, if I may, please. As I mentioned in my remarks and as we all know from the 1960s, our reputation matters. That's how we build allies. That's how we build support. And trust matters, right? I beg your pardon. Trust. Our allies must trust that we're going to be there, right? Trust, but that we are going to.
▶ 0:48:48Just like Biden showed trust when he withdrew us from Afghanistan, abandoning, okay, so many of our SIV and others who fought alongside us for 20 plus years for political reasonings. I believe that was a great harm and I understand that that harm is continuing even now with the SIVs that they are not able to come to the United States now which is not good.
▶ 0:49:14But if I may answer the question that you asked, our reputation of being a a country where merit counts, where if you work hard, you can achieve and that means all of us. Going and showing the world that all of us are able to benefit from our hard work is important. It does help our foreign policy.
▶ 0:49:42Well, I agree that hard work matters, especially as a person who grew up in a broken home where my dad spent 32 years in prison. My mom spent seven and a half years in prison. It was riddled with drug addiction and other substance abuses. Hard work is what matters. Hard work is what got me here and why our socioeconomic background shouldn't define us as individuals and we shouldn't in like divisively try and identify people by anything other than the best and the hardest working. With that, I'd like to now recognize my ranking member, Mr.
▶ 0:50:10Mosowitz, for five Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm actually going to go to Maline Dean first for questions if that's okay. Recognizing the gentle lady, Maline Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, ranking member. Thank you to uh all of you for coming to testify today before uh this subcommittee on oversight foreign affairs committee. Um I'm touched by your comments there, your personal comments.
▶ 0:50:38Uh, I don't know if you know this, but uh, a passion of mine is dealing with learning more about addiction. I have a son in recovery from opioid addiction, 12 and a half years. Uh, but we know too many people who don't have that kind of outcome. So, I'd like to work with you on that. Thank you. Uh, I'm going to start with some words. Uh, Pete Buddhajud once explained DEI as a set of opposites. The opposite of diversity is uniformity.
▶ 0:51:07He said the opposite of equity is inequity. The opposite of inclusion is exclusion. The values and principle principles of our country are not uniformity, inequity, and exclusion. That's not the America I know, nor is it the the America I will ever fight for. Mr. Chair, is the committee aware of who is president of the United States today? Donald J. Trump.
▶ 0:51:37It's not Joseph R. Biden. This backward look on a topic of DEI is such a misuse of our time. It's a misuse of your time. The role of this foreign affairs committee in oversight is important. Yet, Republicans have decided that relitting relitigating the Biden administration is a better use of our time. I disagree because oversight is important.
▶ 0:52:05There are plenty of actions by the current administration that warrant oversight. Here are just three examples. The illegal shuttering of USID and the subsequent spread of disease, death, and starvation of children deserves our oversight and our two, the national security advisor's irresponsible and likely criminal use of signal and apparently
▶ 0:52:35many many times as well as Gmail recklessly compromising our own national security and a military operation as well as intelligence officers and military personnel. Boy, that deserves congressional foreign affairs oversight.
▶ 0:52:54Number three, the incompetent and incoherent use of massive tariffs, even on our allies, especially on our allies, deserves congressional oversight.
▶ 0:53:08It is the largest tax hike on Americans in peace time since World War We should be taking a look at the loss of 11 trillion dollars in 11 weeks by this president who inherited an economy that was the envy of our allies. And while this president weaponizes tariffs against our allies, they continue to show respect to our country.
▶ 0:53:34They they continue to show respect to our country that the president does not show respect for theirs. Lithuanian leaders, think of this. You saw this. It was so moving. Lithuanian leaders and citizens gathered to give our four fallen American soldiers a dignified and honorable farewell as they sent them here to the United States. But where was the commander-in-chief?
▶ 0:53:56He canled his attendance at the dignified transfer of the four the bodies of four American soldiers who tragically died in Lithuania. Well, after all, he had a couple of golf games to go to. a million dollar a plate fundraiser for a pack that supports him and I guess a few chachkis trump chachkis to sell along the way. Don't attend the return of our heroes. Who exactly was he raising the money for?
▶ 0:54:27I'm not really sure. Certainly not the American people who are suffering massive losses in their retirement, in their attempt to save money for their kids' education, in their attempt to pay for everyday goods. But here we are talking about DEI under the Biden administration. Are you kidding me? This is a farce. I apologize that you are here for this farce. You should not be as qualified as you are. This is not what you should be talking about with us.
▶ 0:54:57I regret the waste of your time, the circus that this is. As you might imagine, I am utterly outraged. Today's hearing is unserious and unworthy of this committee. It reflects poorly on those in this room who decided to convene it, and I want to be sure that is on the record. Mr. Chairman, I yield back with the simple question, who is the president of the United States?
▶ 0:55:23Well, I think it's very obvious that the American people unanimously decided to elect President Donald J. Trump. But I will remind the gentle lady from uh Pennsylvania that all last Congress in the 118th, all I heard about was the Trump derangement syndrome of Trump, Trump, Trump. But yet, you want to talk about the four bodies. Let's talk about when Joe Biden was checking his watch while they were offloading what was his responsibility and his failure on August 26, 2021.
▶ 0:55:5196 We lost 13. 96 members have been returned. Donald Trump was there for Miss Dean, your time is over. To enter some documents in the record. Without objection. Uh, let me just tell you what they are. I'll enter into the record FY22 NDAA, which had bipartisan support, including Secretary Rubio, who was an original co-sponsor that explicitly endorsed promotion of DEI.
▶ 0:56:17Number two, oh the secretary said a quote uh the secretary shall implement performance and advancement requirements that reward and recognize the efforts of individual in senior positions and supervisors in the department in fostering an inclusive environment and cultivating talent consistent with the merit system principles such as such participation in mentoring programs or support sponsorship initi initiatives recruitment events and other similar opportunities.
▶ 0:56:46I'll also note for the record the bipartisan statement from representatives McCll and Meeks in 2021 applauding the NDAA's focus on strengthening management operations of the defense uh Department of State by recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce. I'd also like to enter into the record two articles from the Atlantic that I'm sure everyone here is familiar with regarding the National Advisor's use of signal.
▶ 0:57:15They are by Jeffrey Goldberg. Number one is Trump administration accidentally texted me war plans for the record. Number two, here are the attack plans that Trump adviser shared on Signal. And the final Nick Kristoff, New York Times talking about exactly the the cost of shuttering USID, the millions around this world who will lose their lives. With that, I yield back. Okay. I appreciate it.
▶ 0:57:43Um, Miss Steen, but I I will just go ahead and say while you were mentioning Senator Rubio, uh, now Secretary Rubio, while you were mentioning Chairman McCall, no longer chairman of the foreign affairs and ranking member Meeks, I'll ask a question that you asked me to make it easier. Who is the president of the United States right now? Donald Trump, about the directive of President Trump, DEI is something that we will be eliminating, but we will enter your documents of director and I genuinely look forward to working with you on things like substance abuse and addiction issues.
▶ 0:58:10It's something that is not studied enough as well as for mental health which is a key thing and I will point out uh and recognize a Marine Carl Castillo who just took his life last week. Um we definitely need to do more and it's not just continuing to issue out more pharmaceutical drugs. No, for our service members. Um I look forward to working with you on that. Likewise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:58:34With that, I'd like to recognize at this time the gentleman from um Illinois, Representative Schneider, for five Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And um I agree. I I want to associate myself with the words of my colleague from Pennsylvania, uh Miss Dean. The world's on fire. Russia is consolidating ga gains in Ukraine. China is testing red lines in the Pacific. Iran proxies are active across the Middle East.
▶ 0:59:02And now just yesterday, the Trump administration announced it has opened direct talks with Iran. That's a major development, one with implications for the regional stability, for nuclear proliferation, and for US deterrence. This subcommittee focused on oversight and intelligence is precisely the place we should be asking about these issues and asking tough questions. What are the administration's objectives? What is the intelligence shaping this approach?
▶ 0:59:31What are the risks? What are our allies being told? And how are they supporting us or challenging us? But we're not doing that today. In his opening remarks, the chair appeared to claim that it was DEI policies that was responsible for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Hamas's invasion of Israel, China's actions in the Indo-Pacific. I don't think he believes that, but that's what this hearing seems to imply.
▶ 1:00:02I'll use my military language. I won't. I'm just going to say we shouldn't be doing this. I was going to Yep. So, we're holding a hearing instead to relegate the past administration's diversity initi initiatives at the State Department while Tran and Moscow coordinate and Beijing Beijing expands its influence. What are we doing?
▶ 1:00:28We're attacking internal HR policies, attacking them with some absurd, I have to say absurd arguments. Gentlemen, this is not serious foreign policy oversight. It's a political sideshow and it's profound abdication of the responsibility we hold in this committee as members of Congress. To be clear, I don't defend every initiative of the previous administration. I didn't then, I don't now. I raised concerns publicly and privately.
▶ 1:00:54But at least their efforts to broaden recruitment and strengthen retention at the State Department were aimed at building institutional capacity, strengthening America's capacity to perform diplomacy and development around the world, making our country more safe and more secure. That's more than I can say for what we are doing today. This hearing has nothing to do with confronting our adversaries. It has nothing to do with securing American leadership in a dangerous world.
▶ 1:01:22It has everything to do with scoring short-term political points and earning the favor of the gentleman at 1600 Pennsylvania. At a time when our credibility, our alliances, and our deterrence post posture are on the line, we should be focused on the hard work of oversight, asking hard challenging questions, reviewing classified assessments, holding this administration accountable for the real decisions like was made or at least announced yesterday.
▶ 1:01:49Instead, this committee is looking inward, picking fights with civil servants and dangerously wasting the moment. This isn't leadership. This is abdication. And I want to pick up on something else that my colleague said. She quoted uh former Secretary Buddha Judge, diversity is uniformity. And I'm going to argue that uniformity is a threat to what we are or who we are trying to be as a nation and our And I'll ask any of the two gentlemen.
▶ 1:02:19I'll read a quote and see if you share a concern I have about this. The quote is quote, "The Department of State specialists on Near East were almost without exception unfriendly to the idea of a Jewish state. Some thought the Arabs on account of their number and because of the fact that they controlled such immense oil resources should be appeased. Some among them were also inclined to be anti-Semitic. I want to make plain that the president of the United States and not the State Department is responsible for making foreign policy.
▶ 1:02:48Do you agree with that, Mr. Harkinson? Absolutely. The president of the United States is in charge of foreign policy. Mr. Rogers, Yes, I agree that the president is in charge of foreign policy. Ambassador, do you know who said that by any chance? It's a trick question. Uh, I think I do know who said it, but I'll say no. It was President Truman. Okay.
▶ 1:03:14President Truman was talking about the Arabist in the State Department because at that time we had uniformity in our State Department. Uniformity in thinking, uniformity of experience, oftentimes uniformity in education. The reason we promote diversity in our diplomatic corps from the most senior ambassadors to the most junior foreign officers is because we need their experience, we need their perspective.
▶ 1:03:43And if we go down a path where it's not just merit. Merit counts. It's imperative. But if we only say merit is the only thing, then we end up with a state department that looked like it did in the 1940s. That's not what we want. We want a State Department that is prepared for the challenges of the 2025s and the uh century ahead with a rising China, a threatening Iran, and a threatening Russia.
▶ 1:04:11We need these diversity programs to bring in people with a variety of perspectives, a variety of experiences, and a variety of ideas. And so, I resent the idea that we should all be thinking alike or looking alike or following the same path. We need to challenge each other. Time is over. I yield back. Uh and I do appreciate uh a lot of your sentiments and a lot of the comments. I agree with you. The president is responsible for foreign policy and there is no debate on that whatsoever.
▶ 1:04:37President Biden's responsible for the increase in Iranian aggression for the defunding of many of the programs that were working for Russia's continual focus whenever he wouldn't actually authorize lethal aid. It was President Trump who actually authorized lethal aid for the Ukrainians. It was President Biden who actually delisted the Houthi rebels as disrupted 12% of global trade. Are are we extending time for debate? I'm I'm happy to. Okay.
▶ 1:04:59Because at the end of the day, October 7th in Israel would not have occurred under President Trump because there wouldn't have been $10 billion in unfrozen fungeible assets or up was it now 1.7 billion barrels per day. Under President Trump, it was a half million barrels per day. When you talk about the illicit oil and ghost ships that are going and look, I'm happy to have foreign policy discussions. We can go as far back into the Ottoman Empire expansion from Sultan all the way up to 2011. We talk about the Arab Spring and uprisings.
▶ 1:05:29I spent 10 plus years. It'd be a little bit long but I spent over 10 years in the Middle East deployed in multiple locations. Foreign policy I do care about, but what I also care about is the strength of the State Department. Same way I care about the strength of the armed services, which I know you do as well. And when I talk about, and Mr. Dr. Henson said it correctly. I don't care what my heart surgeon looks like. I care about whether or not he or she is the best at what she does.
▶ 1:05:55So when you say that I if we only base it on merit, that's a mistake. I disagree. I think having the best and the brightest, regardless of what they look like, is the only thing that should matter. So I appreciate that. There was a time when merit was defined as did you have an Ivy League education? To get that Ivy League education, you had to come from the prep schools of the East Coast. Right? Having the experiences.
▶ 1:06:23If I had more time to talk to the witnesses, I would ask the ambassador why it's important that we have people who can relate to the experiences and perspectives of the nations we are sending them to represent our nation. And by the way, happy to give a second round of questioning should you want to ask that. I'll wait. I'm here. At this time, I'd like to acknowledge my good friend, our ranking member, Representative Moscowitz. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, and in fairness to the chairman, he is by himself here. So, he he is pulling Yeah. But there the good thing is if there was nine of you, it might be a fair fight. Okay.
▶ 1:06:53He's he's pulling the duty of of of his whole committee. So, you know, and first, let me say, Mr. Mr. Chairman, we we appreciate your service um to to the country and your continued uh commitment uh to folks in the State Department and going to other countries during times of need. I mean, you you you have you have been there. What we're saying, many things we're saying is like, look, we didn't agree with the Biden administration on many things. There were many things that we didn't agree and we had these hearings already.
▶ 1:07:22These DEI hearings were occurring for two years uh when you guys had the 118th. But at least when we disagreed with the Biden administration, we were like able to say it. You can barely find a Republican who's willing to come out and disagree with the current administration. At least in the House. I mean, a couple senators have come out and talked about the tariffs. I barely can find a Republican to come out and talk about the tariffs. I mean, can you imagine if President Biden did anything that caused the stock market to go down 7,000 points?
▶ 1:07:51I mean, they would show like 500 pictures of different basements trying to find out where President Biden is, okay? You know, there is a lot to talk about of what's going on right now. A lot to talk about, right? And and Republicans should feel okay to to to defend those things. They if they believe in them, then they should be able to defend them. But there's not a single committee, subcommittee or main committee, talking about anything that is going on now. It's all backwards.
▶ 1:08:21It's all looking backwards. I mean, you know, the president came in and said, "We're going to solve the Ukraine war on day one." That hasn't happened, right? That war is still going on. In fact, Putin is the one who just turned down a ceasefire, right? We should be talking We should be talking about that. We had battle plans, attack plans, whichever adjective verb you want to use, leaked on signal. We talk about trust with our allies. I mean, that undermines trust with our allies. We have tariffs.
▶ 1:08:51We're tariffing friend and foe alike, the whole world. That undermines trust and credibility. And that doesn't mean that there isn't bipartisan support to try to fix supply chain. As someone who was the emergency management director during COVID, our supply chain is broken. Democrats and Republicans in the Trump administration and the Biden administration spent $8 trillion after CO didn't fix anything in the supply chain.
▶ 1:09:15And so, yeah, we do need to figure out how to onshore some of our manufacturing back, but the execution of this is crazy. I mean, that's why you're seeing people within the Trump administration fighting with each other in this Peter Navaro, Elon Musk stuff. You're seeing some of Trump's ardent supporters, billionaires coming out and attacking the administration. Everyone understands we got to onshore jobs, but to to tariff the whole world at the same time to crash the stock market when that was clearly going to be a repercussion.
▶ 1:09:46These are things we should be talking about. Um you you you know there was a lot and you know how you know how I like boards. I bring I bring boards sometimes. You know, when President Zalinsky came to the White House, right, about with, you know, during for to talk about trying to bring the conflict to an end, we heard a lot about what he was wearing. Oh my god, the precious Oval Office. He didn't wear a suit. I mean, here's here's a picture of Kid Rock in the Oval Office.
▶ 1:10:15He looks like he's about to jump over 10 buses, okay, when he's done on the White House lawn. Okay, so like give me a little bit of a break. Okay, we can put that down now. I think I think I think that picture that picture solves itself. It But you know what else are we talking about, right? Oh, Canada. They're going to be the 51st state. I'd love to have a hearing on that, right? To figure out how many people want to make that happen. By the way, if Canada were become the 51st state, it'd be the last time we had a Republican president.
▶ 1:10:45It' be the last time the Republicans ever controlled the US House of Representatives because between California and Canada, you'd have a lot more Democrats. We heard that we're all going to vacation in Gaza. I mean, you guys excited to to go vacation in the Riviera of the of the Middle East. Um, you know, we we we've been treating Canada and Greenland for the first three months tougher than we were treating Iran. I'm glad now that we're focused on Iran.
▶ 1:11:14I'm glad that we're moving strategic resources there. it is an opportunity to talk uh about Iran, but we've been tougher on Europe for the first 90 days than we were on Thrron. Uh and so these are there are lots of things that we can be talking about, Mr. Chairman. Uh things that we haven't yet talked about, things that Republicans should feel comfortable in defending if they believe in them. But we're going back to hearings we've already had, not just in this committee, but a number of committees.
▶ 1:11:43And so that's why we're we're bringing it up, Mr. Chairman, my time is elapsed and I yield back. Thank you. Thank you, Ranking Member. We will now go to a second round of questions. I will just state for the record that in order for us to move forward as a nation, we must understand the mistakes of the past.
▶ 1:12:03And while this is just our first hearing, I think it is apppropo for us to go through the past so that our next hearings can focus on how do we actually resolve key issues. But we did talk about oversight. The role of oversight is also how taxpayer monies, us as good stewards are being utilized.
▶ 1:12:23And I think that we have seen where the offices of DEI utilizing the 2 million and 7 million and 10 million and continuing to go up in numbers could have been better spent on things that we all care about. Stopping the Iranian regime from nuclear power and allowing it to be a democratically elected free Iran. Stopping Russia's aggression. making sure that it's territorial sovereignty and stopping China's continuation of its advancement towards a one nation unification towards Taiwan.
▶ 1:12:51So, I'm with you 100% and we all share sentiment. At this time, I'll recognize myself for 5 minutes. Mr. Henson, can you please outline the impact that DEI policies have had on recruitment and retention across the state department? on recruitment. We've essentially um I I we can debate what the term DEI hire means, but we have changed the way in which people come in.
▶ 1:13:17Instead of you have to pass the written, then you take the oral, and then 10% of the people pass the oral. Now, you don't have to pass the written. They'll dig into that bucket with this holistic or whatever you want to call it, character review, just like the universities do so that they can get the right percentage. Then they put them into the oral after they've gone through this thing called a qualification evaluations panel which again looks for personal essay uh personal narrative things that they can find to boost the right percentages and then they pass 50% in the oral.
▶ 1:13:46So it's changed I would say it's rigged the system to provide results that they want as opposed to just judge people according to their abilities and and merits. And so we've ended up with um and I take the the point about diversity of viewpoint I think is very important. Uh, unfortunately, we've reduced the diversity of viewpoint and we very much have a a more left-wing state department than we did um back in the days of Truman and even 20 years ago. As far as morale, uh, look, one side always wins when you rig a system. So, I imagine they feel better.
▶ 1:14:15Uh, but the other side loses. And that's why as Americans, it's always been so important that we judge each other not according to those immutable characteristics, but by the things that are more important. And I would say that has suffered in in the past five years. Thank you so much. and this whole rebranding of DEI. Uh, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Henson, in what ways could DEI initiatives continue under a different name or office within the State Department?
▶ 1:14:45They can just uh we've seen this happen in multiple government agencies and private corporations. They just change the job title of the person administering the program. Um they can rename existing rename the existing programs uh but keep the same content of the the programs and the rules that are applied. Uh they can like I said change position titles and then they can put DEI concept into other programs that you wouldn't know that they'd had done it because based on the name you wouldn't be able to see it. Um this is a real persistent problem is that sort of attempt to burrow it in and and hide it in other places.
▶ 1:15:14And and what kind of protections Mr. Hangerson, do you think that we should uh implement to ensure that DEI initiatives cannot just simply be rebranded under a different name? It'll be difficult because they're pretty embedded and a lot of people believe in them and do very well out of them. But I think one thing is oversight about where the money goes. The number I heard was more like $40 million over the past two fiscal years spent on DEI and related programs because you have to count things like paying a trainer $10,000 to come and talk to people about microaggressions.
▶ 1:15:44So, I think that stuff has to go, the things that are divisive. And then I one suggestion that I have is to change the uh recruitment and the promotion process so that you eliminate all of the obvious factors that you can tell about somebody like their sex and their race and so on. So that you can judge them on how they did their job, how well they speak the language, how many times they've been to the region and so on.
▶ 1:16:04And and just for the record, do you feel that since implementing the DEI officer, DEIA, that the State Department has become more effective in their diplomacy efforts and in securing US national interests abroad? I I believe in in metrics and I believe in proof and you know the science. I I don't see any metric by which you can judge that we have gotten safer, more prosperous or more effective as diplomats as a result of spending this money.
▶ 1:16:32And I've seen some research that shows the exact opposite. That in fact morale and distrust and and general uh sense of well-being among employees has gone slightly down. Mr. James or Mr. Raj, I'd love to hear your response as well. You know, there's this saying politics stops at the wat's edge. That was popularized after World War II. Uh and uh there's a reason for that. It's because when the department's not just the internal DEI programs, it's it's this promotion like we talked about in my testimony. The department's been promoting these DEI ideas all over the world.
▶ 1:17:01And that doesn't make us safer because it's it's taking very divisive, contentious political issues we don't even agree on internally and trying to indoctrinate the rest of the world. Um the foreign service shouldn't be a missionary force to promote a certain ideology and that encourages resentment among foreigners who don't accept the same cultural values. There's this whole idea from President Wilson of self-determination and that just completely disrespects that principle that other countries should get to determine their own path forward rather than us dictating it to them.
▶ 1:17:26And Madam Ambassador, I'd be happy to hear your comments as well on whether or not you think that our US national and security interests were advanced in areas in the Middle East to help with stabilization as a result of DEIA. Yes, I think they were beginning to be strengthened because we were walking the talk. And there's a reason that businesses as well as others change the titles but continue to do the work.
▶ 1:17:56That's because they know the value of the work. That's why there are companies like Costco, like CocaCola, like um ELF that continue with these programs because they know that it's good for their customers and it's good for their workers. It's good management. If one of the programs I've listed for you is one that you would like to see go away, adding transparency and accountability.
▶ 1:18:24These are the things that we were working on to make a more inclusive and accountable and trusted organization. And I would be surprised to hear my colleagues suggest that there shouldn't be transparency in assignments or promotions. I I my time unfortunately is expired, but I believe that rebranding and rechanging the name is just trying to be tricky. Um, with that, I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider, for 5 minutes.
▶ 1:18:49Uh, thank you and thank you for giving us the chance to um ask questions again. Uh, Mr. Rogers, you talk about United States promoting uh ideals or values. Should the United States be promoting uh democracy around the world? Yes, it should promote democracy, but democracy doesn't include promoting DEIA promot I'm just asking should we promote should we should we be promoting anti-corruption around the world? Absolutely. Okay. Um Mr.
▶ 1:19:19Henson, we've talked about as the State Department's changed, what percent of uh of the senior ranks in the State Department are I I couldn't tell you exactly. Um if you were to guess, is it more or less than 50%. It it's the senior ranked is probably far higher than 50% because they were recruited in the 90s when the recruitment was not the same as it is 82.4%. So you know what's what's America's demography's changed.
▶ 1:19:49In uh 1990 it was probably 80% European and uh 12% African-American and and the rest you know Hispanic and Asian. And now the numbers of Hispanics are far higher, Asians are far higher. Um and so you will see a change in the recruitment. Also women I believe are now slightly over 50% of new recruits. Okay. Um Ambassador Abberrombi Win Stanley, you've uh served in the State Department for a long time. You've been a diplomat around the world. I'm going to give you the rest of my time.
▶ 1:20:19Can you talk about why it is so important two things? That the people who travel across the world to represent our nation reflect who we are as a nation. and why as people see that they appreciate that the people who are in those countries have an appreciation for the nuance and distinctiveness of each of those countries. Absolutely. Thank you, sir.
▶ 1:20:41Um I know from my own personal experience the surprise when I have walked into rooms representing the United States of America, the reaction of me being part of a delegation. Oh, you Americans, you talk about this, but you're actually doing it.
▶ 1:21:00You're a US diplomat, and it brings us credibility as a nation, a nation that has said for centuries that everybody can come here and reach their full potential. That is what DEIA is about. Trying to level the playing field so that people get as far as their abilities will take them.
▶ 1:21:22That is the message that we've been giving the world and we have to show that diversity to to be taken seriously and people are watching us now as well because we did make the case successfully about leveling that playing field. Again, the Department of State recruits where all of our different populations are in the nation and we do live separately. People say Sunday morning is the most segregated time of of the week in America. So, we are in different places.
▶ 1:21:51So, we have to recruit in different places, but we hire for merit. You have to pass that written exam until we made the changes. And keeping in mind that the written exam is very similar to an SAT test. Those sorts of questions are not what determine whether you're going to be a good diplomat. That's in the oral assessment. the the assessment when we're asking people hypotheticals about situations that have happened with diplomats.
▶ 1:22:22That is where the rubber hits the road. And I've been an assessor, so I'm very familiar with all three sections of this exam and and the difference. And my colleagues will know this because they've been through both. They know what that written test is and they know what the oral test is. So these are the things that help us get all of America through the door and out to the world.
▶ 1:22:43languages, firsthand experiences with different cultures, my ability to blend in the streets of Cairo were what got my Arabic so so good and my ability to do negotiations in the vernacular to do interpretations. When Governor Cenounu came to Egypt, I was the one that was his interpreter for meetings. Those are the sorts of things that come because we have all Americans represented and the world is watching us.
▶ 1:23:13We cannot give up on this and people will continue to do it. They'll call it something else, but it's good leadership. It's good management to take care of all of your people, not just the ones that remind you of you or that you have something in common. They went to the same school as you. Take care of everybody. That's inclusion. And and I'll add one thing with the writing test. I was an engineer undergraduate. Writing was not my strength. I know that if I was going to get into a career and succeed, I had to learn to write.
▶ 1:23:42But if I could get in the door, I would have the chance to gain those skills and use my other skills that come naturally to to succeed. That's why we have to balance how we evaluate people, not with a standard standardized test, but with evaluations of what do they bring in the full package. I yield back. Thank you so much, Mr. Snyder. I'll just point out the fact that there's a difference in equity and equality and the difference is is one believes in equal opportunity.
▶ 1:24:10The other one believes in equal outcome and that is not merit. And I will say one more time that it is important for us to understand the history and our past mistakes in order to try and advance and move forward to guarantee we have a stronger diplomatic core to make sure that our armed forces have everything they need because none of our adversaries are scared by the ideas that we can he them or out pronoun them as we walk on to the battlefields whether that be
▶ 1:24:41militarily, diplomatically or economically. And I can tell you that the Ayatollah in Iran is not sitting there worrying about our diversity, equity, and inclusion. They're worried about the fact that this is the strongest nation on earth. I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable testimonies and the members for the questions. The members of the subcommittee may have some additional questions for the witnesses and we will ask you to respond to these in writing.
▶ 1:25:07Pursuant to committee rules, all members may have five days to submit these questions and extraneous materials for the record subject to the length and limitations. Without objection, the committee stands adjourned. So, the programs that I mentioned, should we get rid of them because they came out of my office?