Trump Orders All Envoys Home

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff “has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day… breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods,” the New York Times reports.

“The mandate — issued ‘without exceptions,’ according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.”