U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) criticized the Trump administration for announcing that the State Department plans to “reform” the foreign service test by including “America First” curriculum for orientation and eliminating questions “intended to test alignment with the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.”
[NOTE: The Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT), which requires U.S. citizenship, is the first step to becoming a U.S. diplomat, assessing skills in job knowledge, English expression, and logic.]
I’d like to see Trump pass a U.S. foreign service test.
Politicizing who represents America abroad will only weaken our diplomacy and national security.
This regime isn’t attacking just diversity; they’re undermining our leadership and strategic advantage on the world stage. pic.twitter.com/yGvN8MmsKn
— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) April 19, 2026
Hirono wrote: “I’d like to see Trump pass a U.S. foreign service test. Politicizing who represents America abroad will only weaken our diplomacy and national security. This regime isn’t attacking just diversity; they’re undermining our leadership and strategic advantage on the world stage.”
The new ‘America First’ curriculum for the test includes lectures, speeches, and writings from past presidents (George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and James Monroe), the Federalist Papers, and works from former diplomats, including the late former Foreign Service officer, State Department official, and short-lived U.S. Ambassador to Russia, George Kennan.
[NOTE: One of the architects of the Cold War “containment” policy that sought to block the spread of communism, Kennan may be a strange choice as a pillar of “America First” foreign service protocol, as a man who once wrote to his sister, “I hate democracy; I hate the press… I hate the ‘peepul’; I have become clearly un-American.”]
Hirono doesn’t address the changes to the exam, but instead uses the announcement to skewer Trump over his respect — or lack thereof, as she sees it — for U.S. foreign service protocol. In the comments, which are especially dismissive of the Senator’s challenge, Trump’s defenders say both that he could pass the test and that he shouldn’t need to.
[NOTE: In 2021, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who served in the Biden administration and appointed a chief DEI officer, said in order for the State Department to represent the American people to the world, “we must recruit and retain a workforce that truly reflects America. Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative.”]