Wednesday, 09 July 2025

State Department Receives ‘America First’ Makeover Just In Time For Independence Day


With the 4th of July just around the corner, patriotic Americans far and wide are flying their flags with pride.

And in the spirit of that holiday, the US Department of State announced this week that its look is getting a revamp — with an emphasis on the Stars and Stripes.

Specifically, Fox News reported that all of the agency’s logos will be refreshed to display the US flag and highlight its “America First” mission:

Whereas separate logos existed previously for offices, including embassies, bureaus and programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development, the rebranding effort seeks to establish “consistent branding” across all these platforms to best reflect American contributions abroad, according to a State Department official.

“The redesign is very simple, and that was to recenter and re-anchor the visual identity of American efforts overseas in the American flag,” Darren Beattie, undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department, told Fox News Digital Tuesday.

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Beattie said that inconsistent branding across State Department offices and programs has meant that sometimes U.S. efforts abroad aren’t as widely recognized, while other countries that do have uniformity in branding receive greater credit.

“There’s some things you look at it, and you have no clue that’s associated with the United States government at all, and that’s obviously contrary to our purposes,” Beattie said. “If we’re contributing something great overseas, we want that positivity and that contribution to be immediately visually distinguished as something associated with the United States.”

The State Department rolled out guidance on the rebranding effort Wednesday — just a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID would officially no longer continue to provide foreign assistance.

This is just the latest in a series of announcements from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top department officials, who have emphasized the need to refocus on the State Department’s core mission after four years of the Biden administration:

Rubio addressed the ongoing initiative earlier in the week when he confirmed the elimination of USAID, as the Daily Signal reported:

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” Rubio proclaimed. “Under the Trump administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency.”

Rubio’s article announcing the end of USAID, titled “Making Foreign Aid Great Again,” represents the culmination of the Trump administration’s effort to bring USAID, and its constellation of nongovernmental organizations and client states, to heel. In the post, the secretary dispatches with the Left’s claims that the Trump administration is heartless for holding USAID accountable for its litany of failures in detail.

After Rubio’s announcement, a senior State Department official told The Daily Signal that “today the State Department, at the direction of Secretary Rubio, has launched a new chapter of America First foreign assistance that will be focused on prioritizing the core interests of the United States above all else.”

Nevertheless, Rubio assures skeptics that effective, results-oriented foreign aid programs will continue under the supervision of the State Department, but those results will focus on furthering America’s interests, rather than the interests of the contracting class of NGO middlemen: “We will not apologize for recognizing America’s longstanding commitment to life-saving humanitarian aid and promotion of economic development abroad must be in furtherance of an America First foreign policy.”

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The State Department shakeup also reportedly includes a number of DC-area layoffs, as this recent report explains:

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport.

View the original article here.


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