#us-state-department

#us-state-department

After significant deliberation, taking into account both the affected public's concerns regarding the cost of the fee and the not insignificant anecdotal evidence regarding tax-related difficulties many US nationals residing abroad encounter, including in part because of FATCA, the Department made a policy decision... to propose alleviating the cost burden for those individuals who decide to request CLN services by returning to the below-cost fee of $450.

Last summer, the Dalai Lama was having a party in Dharamshala for his 90th birthday, and Bethany Morrison, a newly appointed State Department official, was eager to meet with him there. Inconveniently, the United States had recently canceled about $12 million worth of annual foreign aid benefiting Tibetan-exile communities as part of the implosion of USAID. This, Morrison and other State officials thought, would not make a particularly good impression on His Holiness, according to a former State and a former USAID official.

The US government has rolled back a policy that threatened to invalidate passports showing trans people's correct gender identity. Less than a week after the change was discovered, a section of the State Department's website was modified to remove the threat that trans people's passports would be invalidated if the document did not detail their "biological sex". An update on the website's page regarding passport sex markers, originally discovered by Transitics reporter Aleksandra last Thursday (13 November), said it no longer issued passports or other documents with a gender-neutral "X" marker or markers that did not match a person's "biological sex at birth".

The U.S. State Department announced a halt to all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza to review the procedures for granting medical-humanitarian visas.

The Department of State has established the Middle East task force to help coordinate support for U.S. citizens, our U.S. diplomatic missions and our diplomatic personnel and diplomatic engagement.

The State Department confirmed a reduction in its diplomatic presence in Iraq amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, particularly concerning stalled nuclear talks with Iran.

According to initial reporting in Politico, consulates slated for closure in Germany as part of President Donald Trump's sweeping plans to downsize the US State Department include Dusseldorf, Leipzig, and Hamburg.