The Federal Workforce Is Being Rebuilt, Not Restored

In March, Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, offered what sounded like a mea culpa. The administration had just purged 387,000 federal workers through DOGE. Now it was hiring some back. Kupor acknowledged the overreach in plain terms.

We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly. — Scott Kupor

In the same appearance, he explained the logic.

The president has certain priorities in the administration, and when we decide to actually exercise and do those priorities, people may call that political. But to me, thats the way the process was designed. — Scott Kupor

Three months later, in June, Kupor signed an executive order reclassifying 8,000 senior federal employees as at-will — strippable without cause, removable for views that interfere with carrying out presidential directives. He called the move a restoration of the democratic process.

It's also about a restoration, in our mind, of the democratic process. — Scott Kupor

The arc between those two statements — from "sometimes you over-restructure" to "a restoration of the democratic process" — is not a course correction. It is the architecture of a state being rebuilt. What has been dismantled is the professional civil service. The federal workforce now stands at its smallest since 1966: over 352,000 employees gone, departures up 80.8% in 2025 while new hires dropped 55.6% ^[1]. The structural protections that made the old bureaucracy resistant to political control are being stripped away, layer by layer. The June executive order created "Schedule Policy/Career," reclassifying 8,000 senior employees — GS-15 and above — as at-will, with OPM estimating up to 50,000 could eventually be covered ^[2]. Kupor was explicit about the criterion.

In order to affect the policy priorities of the administration, we need to have people who are in these senior policy making decisions willing to and capable of obviously carrying out those directives. — Scott Kupor

A March 2025 executive order had already terminated collective bargaining rights for over one million federal employees and scrapped minimum wage rules for federal contractors ^[3]. In May 2026, OPM proposed a government-wide non-disclosure agreement for all federal employees — voluntary in name, but refusal could lead to removal or criminal penalties. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called it what it was.

This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud and abuse. — Everett Kelley

To fill the vacancies these purges created, the administration lowered the gates. The FBI shortened training, waived interviews, and promoted less-experienced agents to leadership; the DOJ suspended the one-year experience requirement for prosecutors and enlisted military lawyers when career attorneys resigned en masse ^[4]. Over 230 lawyers were fired for working on January 6 cases, counterterrorism, and civil rights, and the DOJ's Public Integrity Section was cut from 36 lawyers to 2 ^[5][6]. The rebuilding is not distributed evenly across the government. It is concentrated in the instruments of coercion, while the instruments of regulation, science, and service are left to atrophy.

The asymmetry in federal capacity

Enforcement and coercion: Military recruiting at a 15-year high, 103% of targets across all branches, 26,100 new troops authorized, $500 billion defense boost proposed ^[7][8]. CBP adding 3,000 Border Patrol agents, academy at highest enrollment since 2009 ^[9]. ICE recruitment drives using language and imagery designed to attract white nationalist groups ^[10].

Regulation, science, and service: CISA furloughed 65% of staff; NIST retained 34% ^[11]. Over 10,000 STEM PhDs exited federal service since 2017 ^[12]. Environmental research grants down 78.9%, public health R&D contracts down 49.4%, NASA/NSF/NIST funding down 23.4% ^[13]. USAID shut down entirely. State Department: 110 of 195 ambassadorial postings vacant; 6 of 75 nominated ambassadors are career diplomats ^[14].

The proof of concept is already operating. National Guard and Marine units have been deployed to Democratic-led cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Washington, D.C. — to support ICE raids and conduct street patrols ^[15]. The Pentagon stated it is confident in their collective ability to carry out any and all orders by President Trump.

confident in their collective ability to carry out any and all orders by President Trump. — United States Department of War

"Any and all orders" — not "lawful orders." The distinction is not semantic. It is the difference between a military bound by law and one bound by loyalty. Internal dissent has surfaced: Ohio Guard members used encrypted chats to question the legality of deployments, and over 100 service members sought ethical guidance from the nonprofit About Face ^[15]. But the machinery is in motion.