Contact Jordan LaPier Director (202) 495-3320 jlapier@ourpublicservice.org Investigation: Vacancies in Trump’s State Department Allow Career Bureaucrats to Take Charge November 26, 2019 A quarter of America’s nearly 200 embassies around the world have vacant ambassadorships, leaving foreign policy in the hands of career Foreign Service bureaucrats like Bill Taylor, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of State Department records found. That includes ambassadorships for countries as significant as Japan, Russia and Canada.