The Trump administration has announced a series of sweeping changes to the Foreign Service. These are much-needed and past due. They promise to ensure that our nation’s top diplomats will be better prepared to advocate for America’s national interests abroad.

On April 1, the State Department announced “modernization reforms” to one of the country’s oldest and most storied agencies. Long regarded as one of America’s premier institutions, the department set that standard early, beginning with George Washington’s appointment of Thomas Jefferson as the first secretary of state. Many of Jefferson’s immediate successors went on to glittering careers in diplomacy and statecraft. James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, William Seward, and John Hay, among others, advanced American prosperity and security and set the United States on the path to becoming a continental and eventually world power.