The Not-So-Secret Society Whose Members Run State

[justaprogressive]

f you want to know who’s running the State Department these days, it helps to peruse the website of a relatively new, conservative-leaning organization called the Ben Franklin Fellowship.

The group’s roster includes Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, top officials in bureaus such as consular affairs, and even an acting undersecretary or two. The fellows include current and former members of the foreign service, as well as other international affairs specialists. And while the Fellowship describes itself as nonpartisan, its right-of-center views are obvious: It emphasizes goals such as border security; opposes typical diversity, equity and inclusion practices; and advocates for the careful use of U.S. resources abroad.

I have had a number of conversations with founders of the Fellowship, and they clearly cast it as a refuge for a group they believe is marginalized in U.S. diplomacy.

“It is a network of people who are not progressive and who have felt as though they’ve not had a forum like so many others in the State Department over the decades,” said Matthew Boyse, a Fellowship founder and a former foreign service officer.

But many career U.S. diplomats are suspicious of the organization.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/24/the-not-so-secret-society-whose-members-run-state-00367565

[SheltieLover]

1. Now repukes are besmirching Ben Franklin's good name?

[sop]

2. Benjamin Franklin was essentially a loyal British royalist for most of his life.

Franklin (Albany Plan) wanted British America to be governed by a president-general appointed by the King. The Fellowship wants the same thing, only with Trump as king:

"We very much believe in the constitutional order, which is that the federal bureaucracy works for the president, and it doesn’t have a policy interest, a legitimate policy interest, outside of what the president wants to do."