Ferment escalates in the federal workplace
Fellow workers applaud recently laid-off U.S. State Department employees as they walk out of the Harry S. Truman Federal Building on July 11, in Washington. Credit: Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker
The emerging public presence of Scott Kupor, and how he became director of the powerful U.S. Office of Personnel Management, aligns perfectly with President Donald Trump’s adversarial view of the sprawling federal workforce. Kupor comes from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Andreessen Horowitz. According to Bloomberg News, he'd never heard of OPM, which oversees the federal government's employment policy, before seeking a post in the administration.
Regarding long-standing civil service protections for employees, he says: "I think everybody should be at-will employees," meaning they can be terminated without just cause. "I know that’s not going to happen," he said, "but I think we need to get closer" to linking jobs to "performance."
Unsurprisingly, Kupor, 53, didn’t need to rise in the public sector by passing the customary tests and earning promotions. A Trump 2024 backer, he contributed to cryptocurrency industry political action committees. He said he contacted his firm’s connected partners Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz indicating interest in a government post. He was sent to Long Islander Howard Lutnick, who’s now commerce secretary.
Kupor’s assignment, like others’ in the MAGA circle, consists of helping to bend the workforce to the stated ideology, authority and edicts of his top boss in the White House. The road to that goal will be controversial, and it is far too soon to tell if the current system of hiring and firing will be decimated as the administration desires.
More importantly, nobody knows what might replace that system, and whether, as critics worry, partisan patronage could become as prevalent in Washington as it was before "merit" reforms of the late 19th century.
The ways of the Swamp’s complex and sclerotic bureaucracy have long been viewed as needing reform. That’s why it was unsurprising, to those who read the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, that the administration at the outset took a big buzzsaw to the payroll with an ad-hoc Department of Government Efficiency headed early on by billionaire Elon Musk.
The government has lost more than 84,000 jobs since January, it was reported last month. In a haphazard and disorderly way that critics called reckless, Trump’s team fired and rehired people evidently without too much regard for merit or policy priorities.
Trump has moved to cancel by executive order the collective bargaining rights of federal unions, to halt grievance proceedings, and to bar payroll union dues collection. Unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees are set for a protracted legal battle.
Cuts and crackdowns aside, the missions of agencies are at a standstill. The Environmental Protection Agency, headed by Long Islander Lee Zeldin, is one operation roiled by internal policy dissension. Workers' union contract agreements there have been canceled in part under a legal provision that allows agencies to do so as a matter of national security, according to published reports.
"Make no mistake, this move isn’t about government efficiency or national security. It’s about silencing workers and clearing the way for more deregulation so corporate polluters can have free rein," the AFGE’s Council 238 president, Justin Chen, said last week.
Nobody knows how lasting the Trump approach in the name of reform, carried out by subordinates like Kupor, will be — or how much it will ultimately save taxpayers or alter the aims of government agencies. As on many current issues, future reactions by the federal courts and by Congress may block or clear the path to the administration’s goals. The civil service storm is raging.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
