Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The State Department’s entire senior-level management staff resigned on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported. CNN later reported that the officials were actually fired by the Trump administration as part of an effort to “clean house.” Patrick Kennedy, the under-secretary for management, was reportedly aiming to stay with the department, but resigned suddenly on Wednesday along with his top staffers described by the Post as “career foreign service officers.” It was unclear why exactly Kennedy, who was working closely on the department’s transition after Donald Trump was elected president, decided to call it quits. David Wade, former chief of staff for John Kerry, called it “the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate.” He added that such positions are extremely difficult to fill. Those who left were reportedly career foreign-service officers who’ve served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.