Some U.S. diplomats stage quiet revolt amid tensions with Trump

On Monday, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Beijing, David H. Rank, announced his resignation after telling his staff he could not defend the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

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A day earlier, the acting ambassador to Britain, Lewis A. Lukens, tweeted his support of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, in the wake of a deadly terrorist attack there. On Sunday morning, President Trump had picked a fight with the mayor on Twitter.

Last month, the ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, reacted to Mr. Trump’s dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, by tweeting, “Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions.”

The State Department has been a hotbed of resistance to the Trump administration’s policies from the start. About 1,000 staff members signed a cable protesting the temporary ban on visas for visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries the administration tried to impose in January. There has been a small exodus of senior diplomats, which, combined with the slow pace of appointments, has left the State Department’s headquarters noticeably depleted.

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