The Trump administration’s State Department just executed one of the most aggressive bureaucratic shakeups in modern history, formally dismantling USAID and rolling out a unifying “America First” rebrand that will slap the American flag on every diplomatic mission, embassy, and aid project across the globe.

Acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie told Fox News the move is about ensuring every U.S. effort abroad is instantly recognizable as coming from America. Beattie said past scattershot logos for embassies and aid programs made it unclear when American tax dollars were being spent, allowing other nations to steal credit for U.S. efforts while Washington’s bloated bureaucracy churned in the background.

“There’s some things you look at, and you have no clue it’s associated with the United States government at all,” Beattie said, calling the prior scatter of logos “contrary to our purposes.”

Now, that’s over. The new branding—centered on the American flag—is set to go live by October 1, ensuring every embassy, consulate, and program America touches abroad bears unmistakable U.S. identity.

This rebrand pairs with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s massive structural overhaul of the State Department, the biggest since the Cold War. Rubio announced earlier this year that USAID, the once-sprawling foreign aid arm, would be absorbed entirely under State. That process is now complete, and with it comes a massive shedding of bureaucrats: more than 3,400 State Department personnel, representing up to 20% of the department’s domestic staff, are being cut.

The goal? Strip away the layers of administrative bloat that Rubio says have made the State Department “unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission,” and push more decision-making power down to embassies and regional bureaus. Rubio told Congress that frontline diplomats and regional leaders were best positioned to identify problems and opportunities, rather than waiting for decisions to crawl up to Washington through endless memos.

“We want to get to a situation where we are empowering ideas and action at the embassy level,” Rubio said. “Those are literally the front lines of American diplomacy.”

The absorption of USAID ends a decades-long structure in which America’s foreign aid and diplomatic missions often operated in parallel, sometimes at odds. USAID had come under increasing criticism during the Biden years for bloated budgets, questionable foreign aid priorities, and entangling taxpayer money in ideological projects under the banner of “development.”

Rubio made clear that while America will still provide aid where appropriate, it will do so with a focus on U.S. interests, ensuring that American contributions abroad are known, visible, and aligned with strategic diplomatic goals.

The new structure also seeks to dismantle nearly half of the State Department’s existing offices and bureaus, reducing its 700 entities by over 300, in an attempt to streamline U.S. diplomacy and eliminate redundancies that had allowed sprawling initiatives to drain resources without accountability.

For Trump, the effort aligns with his long-standing “America First” doctrine. From his earliest campaign days to now, Trump has argued that the U.S. should not be “the world’s piggy bank,” and that American generosity abroad should come with clear credit and a return on investment for U.S. interests.

Critics are already claiming the rebrand and cuts will reduce America’s “soft power” and hamper humanitarian efforts. But Trump allies argue that delivering foreign assistance with a clear American identity strengthens deterrence and ensures taxpayers see a direct connection between their money and America’s image abroad.

With the flag now set to wave above every project, embassy, and diplomatic mission America funds, the Trump administration is betting that a leaner, clearer, and unapologetically American State Department will be better equipped to navigate the turbulent waters of 2025 geopolitics—and to show American voters exactly where their money is going.