FIRST ON FOX: The State Department has added business formal dress code guidance to its internal policy manual for the first time, establishing department-wide standards for employee attire.

The changes, implemented in recent days in the Foreign Affairs Manual — the department’s central repository for policies — mark the first time the agency has formally codified expectations for how diplomats and staff should dress in official settings.

“Representing the United States of America is an honor — and this new policy ensures our diplomats project credibility, respect, and the dignity of the nation we serve,” Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson told Fox News Digital.

The updated policy applies broadly across the department for both civil service and foreign service employees.

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The move underscores a broader recalibration at the State Department, where Trump administration officials have sought to impose clearer standards around discipline, appearance and adherence to policy. 

A State Department official said the change was driven in part by concerns that some diplomats had been dressing “pretty informally” in recent years. 

“This should have happened a long time ago,” the official said. 

The formal dress code represents a shift away from Biden-era personnel policies that prioritized flexibility and cultural inclusivity, toward a more uniform and prescriptive standard for how U.S. diplomats present themselves.

“Appropriate attire and appearance will depend on the duties performed, the work environment, and the level of interaction with foreign interlocutors and other external stakeholders,” reads the manual, viewed by Fox News Digital. “For staff participating in meetings or other official engagements with foreign interlocutors, dress is Business Formal and personal appearance is polished and professional unless otherwise specified.”

The dress code update follows other recent changes to how the State Department evaluates and manages its workforce, including revisions to hiring and promotion criteria for Foreign Service officers. 

Earlier in 2026, the department replaced diversity, equity and inclusion-related benchmarks with a new core precept focused on “fidelity,” emphasizing adherence to U.S. government policy and chain-of-command authority.

Under the updated guidance, mid- and senior-level diplomats are expected to demonstrate loyalty by “zealously executing U.S. government policy” and resolving ambiguity in favor of leadership direction, according to internal documents previously reported by Fox News Digital.

Those changes came alongside broader efforts to restructure the department’s workforce, including plans to reduce staffing and consolidate offices, signaling a shift toward more standardized expectations for diplomatic personnel. The addition of a formal dress code marks the latest step in that direction.

A week after President Donald Trump urged Sydney Gruters to run for an open GOP-held congressional seat in Florida, the former executive director of the state’s New College Foundation and wife of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Joe Gruters declared her candidacy.

“As a working mother of three, I see firsthand how much pressure rising prices are putting on families across Southwest Florida,” Sydney Gruters said as she launched her campaign on Thursday. “From groceries and gas to housing and insurance, too many families, seniors and veterans are being stretched thin. I’m running for Congress to protect our conservative values and fight for the people of this district and give them a strong voice in Washington.”

With Trump’s support, Gruters is considered the clear frontrunner to succeed retiring longtime GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan, her former boss, in Florida’s right-leaning 16th Congressional District, which stretches from Tampa’s eastern suburbs south to Bradenton. Republicans currently control the House 218-214 and will be defending their fragile majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Trump, in a social media post on March 24, emphasized that Gruters would “fight tirelessly.”

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“Should she decide to enter this Race, Sydney Gruters has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, SYDNEY, RUN!” the president declared.

While her husband, a Florida state senator and top Trump supporter in the Sunshine State, is well known nationally as he steers the RNC, the 44-year-old Sydney Gruters is well known in her district and very familiar with Congress.

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Gruters served as Buchanan’s operation director for a decade (2007-2017) and later as district director to GOP Rep. Greg Steube (2019-2023) in the neighboring 17th Congressional District.

In-between her two congressional stints, she served in Trump’s first administration as state director for Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Department of Agriculture.

Prior to launching her congressional campaign, Gruters finished up her tenure as vice president of advancement and executive director of the New College Foundation.

Gruters took her position at the smaller liberal arts state college in Sarasota soon after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a conservative board of trustees at the school. The one-time progressive-minded college subsequently created a classical education curriculum, which emphasizes liberal arts and Western teachings. Last autumn, the college was among the first to sign on to Trump’s education compact, which offers schools federal funding for backing his education priorities.

As she launches her congressional bid, Gruters is also backed by Maggie’s List, a political group that works to elect conservative women to Congress.

Three other Republicans, as well as three Democrats, are also running to succeed Buchanan.

Joe Gruters, in a statement to Fox News Digital, said he’s “incredibly proud of Sydney as she launches her campaign, and it’s an honor to see her earn President Trump’s support. As always, the RNC remains neutral in Republican primaries, so any support I offer will be purely in my personal capacity.”

Trump won 57% of the vote in the district in his 2024 presidential election victory. And Buchanan grabbed nearly 60% of the vote as he won re-election. But the seat may be refigured ahead of this year’s midterms, as the GOP-dominated Florida legislature meets in a special session later this month to deal with congressional redistricting in the red-leaning state.

The 48-day Department of Homeland Security shutdown is one step closer to ending after the Senate moved to fund most of the department Thursday morning.

The Senate agreed via voice vote to send a bipartisan deal funding the whole department except for President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement and border security efforts to the House for consideration.

The chamber is not expected to vote on the legislation until House lawmakers return to Washington on April 13. 

The Senate vote follows GOP leaders endorsing a two-track approach to funding DHS on Wednesday, with President Trump giving lawmakers a hard deadline to end the record-breaking funding lapse. 

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The Senate bill accomplishes the first phase of the plan by working with Democrats to fund as much of DHS as possible on a bipartisan basis. However, it would zero out funding for ICE and much of the Border Patrol, save for $11 billion in customs funding going to the agency. Additionally, $10 billion teed up for ICE won’t be funded under the measure.

As for ICE and the Border Patrol, Republicans have said they will seek three full years of funding for both of these agencies in a party-line budget reconciliation package that will bypass Democrats’ opposition. Trump says he wants the forthcoming bill on his desk by June 1.

“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. 

The Senate bill’s passage on Thursday was a déjà vu moment for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who helped steer the same measure through the upper chamber last week.

But House GOP leadership sharply rejected it, calling the measure’s exclusion of ICE and CBP money a “crap sandwich” and warning about the risks of funding those entities using the budget reconciliation process. The chamber then put forward a rival proposal that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made clear was “dead on arrival” in the Senate. 

Thune said shortly after the vote that he was hopeful the House would move onto the bill quickly, and that the next step would be budget reconciliation. Still, he blamed Senate Democrats, and not Republicans in-fighting at the finish line, for the current position Congress was in. 

“I think this whole where we are is just a regrettable place. We have the Democrats who are holding the appropriations process hostage and their anti-law enforcement, open borders, defund the police wing is the ascendant wing,” Thune said. “And there, I think everybody’s afraid of them, and so we’re stuck in a spot that’s just not good for the country, the future of the appropriations process, or, for that matter, the future of the Senate.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appeared to relent Wednesday after Trump issued a statement outlining an end to the shutdown that appeared to side with Thune’s two-part approach to funding the department. 

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As the DHS shutdown drags on, Trump and congressional Republicans are gambling that budget reconciliation will be the way to fund immigration enforcement for several years to come. Some Republicans have floated funding ICE not just through Trump’s term, but for up to a decade.

The GOP used the same process to fund ICE last year, teeing up $75 billion for enforcement operations for the next four fiscal years.

But the party-line process comes with a host of challenges that could test Republican unity in an election year.

GOP lawmakers will have to identify spending cuts to pay for it. When Republicans used the process to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, lawmakers nearly stumbled at the finish line over disagreements on cuts to federal Medicaid spending and food assistance programs.

Without a looming deadline like the expiration of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that Republicans extended in July 2025 through the “big, beautiful bill,” some GOP lawmakers have voiced concern that the party will stay unified.

Republicans have proposed adding other issues into the reconciliation mix, including supplemental funding for the Iran war, affordability measures, the president’s tariff regime and pieces of the election integrity-focused SAVE America Act.

The budget reconciliation process allows a party with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to pass tax and spending priorities with a simple majority threshold, though the process is governed by stringent requirements for what is eligible to be included.

Punting ICE and CBP money to a future spending bill could also negatively affect support staff employed by both agencies who have not been paid during the seven-week shutdown.

Democrats have repeatedly blocked funding for ICE and the Border Patrol in the Senate since the beginning of the shutdown in mid-February. Though none of their proposals to reform immigration enforcement have been adopted, Democratic leaders claimed victory on Wednesday. 

“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday. “We were clear from the start: fund critical security, protect Americans, and no blank check for reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement. 

“We were united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win.”

The Senate deal funding most of DHS could still face roadblocks in the House. A handful of conservatives have already said they will vote “no” while using the same messaging employed by House GOP leadership to oppose the bill last week.

“Let’s make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., wrote on social media Wednesday. “If that’s the vote, I’m a NO.”

President Donald Trump said he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of NATO over the alliance’s refusal to join his administration’s efforts in the Iran conflict, according to a report.

“I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump told The Daily Telegraph in an interview published Wednesday.

The president, long a critic of the military alliance, which has been pivotal in maintaining global order since World War II, said reconsidering the matter was “beyond consideration.”

“I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told the British outlet.

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The comments come after European nations reportedly rejected Trump’s request that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply travels. Iran has threatened or moved to restrict access to the strait in reaction to the U.S. offensive against Iranian targets, raising concerns about global energy markets and economic stability.

“Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey,’ you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic,” Trump said.

“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”

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The president also criticized the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not participating in the conflict.

“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” Trump said.

Responding to the president’s comments, Starmer said Britain is “fully committed to NATO,” calling it “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.”

Starmer told reporters that “whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I am going to act in the British national interest in all the decisions I make.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.