After months of haphazard and destructive efforts to slash the federal workforce, the Trump administration is seeking to grow it again — with help from conservative influencers. Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor has embarked on a nationwide tour of college campuses and right-wing media broadcasts with the aim of “reshaping America’s workforce,” appearing alongside the likes of influencer Benny Johnson and Charlie Kirk Show host Andrew Kolvet to tout the benefits of a career in public service.
On September 8, 2026, OPM’s official X account posted a video first announcing Kupor’s tour. It featured a dramatic score and a wide array of footage, including an image of a person in a Mickey Mouse costume posing with soldiers in fatigues and Delta Zeta sorority members dancing in USA-themed attire. “We’re clearing out the old machine, and handing the keys to the next generation,” a narrator intoned.
The following week, Kupor appeared at the University of Florida with Johnson, a prominent right-wing influencer.
Johnson, who facilitated a “fireside chat” with Kupor and UF students, also hosted Kupor on his podcast “The Benny Show” the same week. “What we’re really doing is a reshaping of the workforce, quite frankly,” Kupor told Johnson.
“What I really want to see is more people like ‘Big Balls,’ or Ed,” said Kupor, referring to former DOGE staffer Edward Coristine.
The 20-year-old Coristine and his unique nickname repeatedly made headlines in early 2025 as reporters tried to piece together the impact of DOGE’s rampage through the federal government. Among other stories, a whistleblower accused Coristine of having a hand in uploading a copy of a Social Security database with the personal information of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server.
OPM did not respond to a request for comment about Kupor’s appearances alongside right-wing influencers.
Former Chief Human Capital Officer for the International Revenue Service Traci DiMartini says Kupor’s rhetoric on this tour makes her “blood boil.”
“I understand the coded language of political appointees,” DiMartini, who served in the federal workforce for 22 years, said. “And what I hear Scott Kupor saying is, ‘We want more white Christian nationalists in federal service.’”
The showy, right-wing influencers with whom Kupor has appeared have made explicitly clear that, at least in their eyes, the goal of the media blitz is to recruit their fans.
“Everyone who wants a federal government that is small enough to drown in a bathtub” should apply, Johnson said while interviewing Kupor.
It has also put Kupor alongside figures who, despite their centrality to Republican politics, espouse extremist views.
Immediately after Kupor’s segment on the Benny Show ended, for example, Johnson pivoted to discussing GOP Texas candidate for railroad commissioner Bo French’s now-infamous post complaining about South-Asian students at a University of Texas football game, declaring that “Americans have been displaced by foreigners.”
Johnson took a decidedly pro-Bo stance, stating, “white Christian people are the indigenous people of Texas. Their indigenous culture built Texas and created the Texas culture that is renowned and loved.”
Johnson then proceeded, dead-pan, to list the fruits of this “culture” supposedly created by white people while staring into the camera: “Cowboy hats, boots, spurs, horses, country music, football, oil, rattlesnakes, Whataburger, Dallas Cowboys.”
“White people are now the indigenous people that have been replaced, colonized and oppressed,” Johnson declared.
Kupor’s appearance on a show with an influencer who has the express goal of saving “Western civilization” in order to recruit early career federal workers is, in effect, a “signal” to young white nationalists, according to DiMartini.
“ I think that the workforce really looks at that as a signal of what is considered acceptable in the federal government,” DiMartini said.
DiMartini was forced to leave her role at the IRS after refusing to sign a letter firing probationary employees during the beginning of the DOGE purges, which Kupor has cited approvingly.
“ They recklessly went in to take a wrecking ball to the employment of civil servants on the premise that we were all fat, lazy, and dumb,” DiMartini said of DOGE. “They used AI to identify places that they felt went against the Trump agenda without fully appreciating what some of these contracts might have been or what these offices did.”
Pressed by student journalists at the University of Florida on his efforts to remake the federal workforce — he said in 2025 that all government employees should be “at-will,” fireable at any time — Kupor deflected, saying his focus was on accountability, and describing a hiring process that involved AI selecting qualified candidates.
“I don’t think we will ever get to at-will employment. Certainly, it’s not something we can do at the agency level. It would require legislation,” he told journalists for the University of Florida Alligator. “But to me, in the absence of that, is, how do you increase the accountability of the organization and hopefully make it as successful as possible?”
Johnson then, according to the report, burst into the room, and the interview ended.
Kupor has also hosted “fireside chats” at Texas A&M University, where he appeared with A&M alum and Bush Foundation CEO Alice Gonzales Yates, at University of Austin, the private institution founded by Palantir mogul Joe Lonsdale (Lonsdale co-hosted Kupor’s chat with students), at Stanford University, and, most recently, at Arizona State University.
Kupor has also taken his tour to the Charlie Kirk Show. In an October 22 episode, titled “OPM CHIEF GUTS BUREAUCRACY, DRUG CZAR TARGETS CARTELS,” Kupor stated “part of what we have to do now is, we have to take the work that DOGE did and we have to institutionalize it.”
Kolvet, the host of the show, prompted Kupor to share more information on how to join the government for Turning Point USA’s young audience: “If you are one of our students at one of our chapters across the country and you’re interested in working in Washington… it’s a great opportunity and I want our students especially to hear this.”
Kupor, sitting in front of a poster of Charlie Kirk that reads “may Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving Savior,” responded with the familiar line, “we are reshaping the federal workforce.” Kupor then claimed that only 7% the federal workforce is under the age of 30, and called for “patriotic people” to join the federal government.
While Kupor pushes to recruit and hire students alongside conservative celebrities and at conservative schools like UATX, career civil servants are being re-trained in a collaboration with Hillsdale College, a private, deeply conservative Christian college in Michigan.
A YouTube video posted by OPM offering “a glimpse into OPM’s Senior Executive Development Program” features several Hillsdale professors speaking about America’s founding and the separation of powers.
Hillsdale College is known for its staunchly insular institutional structure. Famously, Hillsdale’s trustees were so opposed to federal civil rights legislation like Title VI and programs, which mandate public reporting on racial integration, that the college ceased to accept all federal and state funding. To this day, the college is funded solely through private donations. The college is also a member of the advisory board of Project 2025.
OPM did not respond to questions about its work with Hillsdale.
One of the two training programs, as Federal News Network first reported, is titled “Leadership for an Efficient and Accountable Government.” A combination of in-person and online trainings for high-ranking career federal executives, the tuition fee is $8,500 per registrant.
In a memo, OPM said the training included modules focusing on “President Trump’s executive orders and other executive branch priorities.”
“None of it is rooted in the Constitution. It’s all rooted in their own personal narrative,” said DiMartini
As Kupor continues his college campus tour, OPM is hosting a mass-hiring event this week. Promoted by Kupor on the Charlie Kirk show as an opportunity for young, early-career workers, the goal of the event is to “literally give job offers on the spot on October 29 to people who qualify.”
Great article about a subject that is undoubtedly down in the weeds for a lot of people, but which is important to all of us.
Really liked the translation by DiMartini of what was being said. That’s also important.
On Fascism and the State
“white Christian people are the indigenous people of Texas…"
That’s gonna come as a surprise to some folks.
I’m going to guess that these people miss a lot of the things going on right now that will affect their wish list. Our local news this morning pointed out that the L.A. public schools enrollments were down over 50% and that schools would be closing. Mostly Hispanic, the families are leaving. In 10 years, that’s a huge work force that will be scrambling to fill positions of every variety and skill level. The present policies of Trump are not going to create a workable society that can keep up with the needs of our cities, states, or Nation.
So Tejanos are considered White?