Unprecedented: Trump Gives Obama's Ambassadors Eviction Notice

In an unprecedented move, President-elect Donald Trump has ordered all ambassadors appointed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, refusing to provide “even the briefest of grace periods,” the New York Times reported late Thursday.

“The mandate—issued ‘without exceptions,’ according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said—threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada, and Britain,” the Times observed.

As is custom, Obama had directed his appointees to issue a resignation by January 20. But political appointees have typically been permitted to remain at their posts for weeks or months after the new president is sworn in, which Politico notes, is partly done “out of personal courtesy for their family situations, but it can also help allow for some continuity as the new administration moves to fill a vast number of postings stateside and abroad.”

But with Trump’s “mission of dismantling many of his predecessor’s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements,” as the Times put it, that consideration has been shunned.

A State Department official confirmed to Politico that even in the case where ambassadors request extensions, the Trump transition team said no exceptions would be allowed.