Andrew Crapuchettes says his employment-matching company is the “anti-woke jobs board.”
He thinks employers should avoid any applicants using they/them pronouns and “screen for values alignment” rather than just skill. More Christians should be in government, he says.
His firm, RedBalloon, won a no-bid $1 million contract to help the State Department recruit candidates earlier this year.
The State Department shed more than 20% of its staff last year as part of the Trump administration’s push to slash the federal workforce. But the agency cited an “unusual and compelling urgency” to bring on new employees in awarding the contract to RedBalloon without any competition. The company had never before won a federal contract. Its subsidiary, Military Hire, a company that helps members of the military transition into civilian jobs, will carry out the work.
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Crapuchettes’ comments on “CrossPolitic,” a podcast with the slogan “Christ over politics,” were first reported by Mother Jones. The no-bid nature of the contract has not been previously reported.
On the podcast, Crapuchettes said RedBalloon was contracted as “the official recruiting arm for their foreign service officers.” He suggested he was taking the department in a new direction and encouraged the podcast listeners to apply for State jobs.
“A lot of the recruiting was focused on DEI. It was trying to get in the guy with a PhD in Black dance, rather than people who can do the best job,” Crapuchettes said. “I would love to see a lot of Christians applying, taking the test, doing the hard work, becoming a foreign service officer.”
In blog posts on RedBalloon’s website, Crapuchettes said applicants using nonbinary pronouns are “more likely to have unsettled emotional issues, and perhaps bring a contentiousness in demanding everyone conform to their version of reality.”
Federal contracts like RedBalloon’s are now the subject of Democrats’ new oversight initiative — one that can really only operate at full force if they win back the House majority in November.
Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently interviewing staff to investigate the cuts at State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the process for deciding which offices to dismantle and the ways to assist impacted staff.
“We’re going to beef up our counsel staff so that we’re ready, because I can’t let folks get away with this,” Meeks said in an interview with NOTUS. “We’re not going to just sit back and let that happen and, when we get in charge, let that go away.”
House Democrats told NOTUS they are already taking steps to investigate, and potentially unwind, the approach State is now taking with Crapuchettes’ help.
“The State Department should recruit from all segments of society and hire people based on their ability to do the job rather than their religious beliefs or personal political views,” Meeks said. “But the Trump administration instead is intent on corrupting and politicizing the State Department and not hiring based on merit, as the law requires, but instead favoring extreme ideologues.
At a press conference last week, Democratic lawmakers and former employees blasted the cuts and vowed to help terminated employees, some day, get their jobs back.
“It’s an effort to try to replace merit-based employees with political hacks,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said of the department’s gutting.
Meeks vowed to put laid-off State employees “back where you belong,” saying he would bring the subject up at every committee hearing going forward. He derided Republican leadership for allowing President Donald Trump to slash and revamp the department without additional oversight or congressional input.
The State Department laid off 1,350 employees last year, including 250 foreign service officers, and has shed more than 3,000 employees in total under Trump. Meeks said he’s been readying his staff to be back in the majority. Last week he cosponsored the Foreign Service Test-Free Reentry Act, which would ease the process by which laid-off foreign service officers could reenter government.
The department has already onboarded multiple foreign service classes since the layoffs last summer.
“We’re going to exercise our oversight responsibilities, and we’re going to start preparing right now,” Meeks said.
Meeks’ preparations mirror those underway by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. NOTUS previously reported that the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, is taking steps to submit subpoenas and otherwise launch investigations into the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, conflicts of interest within the Trump family, rollbacks at the Health and Human Services Department and potentially nefarious contract awards at the Department of Homeland Security.
RedBalloon’s contract could face similar scrutiny.
Crapuchettes operates a political action committee in Idaho — where RedBalloon is based — which says its mission is to “counter the far Left’s unrelenting assault on the very fabric of American values.” Its priorities include securing the U.S. border that “is being overrun,” curbing abortion rights and preventing the influence of “liberal teachers unions” in schools.
Donald Trump Jr. has endorsed the company and encouraged employers to use its services.
A State Department official said the contract would help recruit veterans and that the department is “committed to recruiting the strongest possible pool of applicants to represent the United States.” The official did not respond to questions regarding why the contract was not bid out, nor how RedBalloon got on the department’s radar.
“The department’s recruitment strategy has been restructured to a centralized approach which focuses on the needs of the department and the workforce,” the official said. “The recruiting process is aligned to attract individuals who can defend U.S. interests among the evolving issues of the world through leadership, negotiation, and by embodying American values.”
The State Department last year scrapped its Diplomats in Residence program, which sent senior foreign service officers around the country to engage with local communities about careers in diplomacy. It also added a “fidelity” section to the performance-evaluation process, requiring managers to assess employees’ commitment to “completely aligning oneself and one’s team to the most current [U.S. government] goals.”
Crapuchettes, when reached for comment, said his “schedule is crazy right now” and referred NOTUS to a spokesperson, who stressed that Military Hire’s team would conduct the work. The State Department awarded the contract to Red Balloon, however, which first registered as a federal contractor in June 2025.
The government originally asked potential contractors to find 600 qualified applicants to take the foreign service exam, as well as 100 diplomatic security special-agent recruits. It also, despite Crapuchettes’ plea for Christian applicants, requires all activities related to the contract to “be conducted in full compliance with merit-based hiring principles.”
Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, said a more traditional contracting process may have led the State Department to receive “better services for cheaper.”
“I know their name is RedBalloon, but this raises a lot of red flags as far as why they were selected and how they were selected,” Amey said. “Why couldn’t this be planned and why couldn’t they hold a competition, and what are they doing to ensure they got fair and reasonable prices? When you buy quickly, a lot of times that leads to wasteful spending.”
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