The Senate voted late Wednesday to confirm the nomination of Scott Kupor to become director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) where he will play a big role in the Trump administration’s plans to further reorganize and downsize many Federal government agencies.
Kupor’s nomination was approved by a vote of 49-46 along party lines, with five senators not voting.
Kupor comes to OPM with scant government experience, but on the strength of a 16-year run as managing partner at venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. President Donald Trump named Kupor his pick for OPM back in December 2024, saying that he would “bring much needed reform to our federal workforce.”
Since then, OPM has become one of the nerve centers of the Trump administration’s drive to reshape and downsize many Federal civilian agencies.
President Trump in February issued an executive order that aims to make deep cuts to the Federal government civilian workforce via “reductions in force (RIF)” – more commonly known as layoffs.
In subsequent guidance aimed at executing on that order, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave agencies until March 13 to submit RIF and reorganization plans that feature a “significant reduction” in full-time employees.
In addition to reductions in force, OMB and OPM said that the agency reorganization plans should seek to achieve four goals: 1) better service for the American people; 2) increased productivity; 3) reduced real property footprints; and 4) lower budget toplines.
Since then, however, the administration’s ability to put many of those plans into action has been blocked by Federal district and appeals court rulings. That court logjam appeared to break earlier this week when the Supreme Court gave the administration at least a temporary go-ahead to put those plans into action.
The court did not rule, however, on the ultimate legality of any of those agency-level reorganization and RIF plans and appeared to leave the door open for legal challenges to the individual agency plans.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in April, Kupor told lawmakers that he wants to conduct a “full business review” of OPM’s functions including its data privacy and protection capabilities, and promised that review would be “one of the first orders of business.”
“I think protecting data privacy is incredibly important, and we absolutely want a system where if people have concerns that there is an appropriate way to investigate that,” Kupor said. He added that he would allow the OPM Office of Inspector General to operate without “political interference.”