Panic across federal workforce as Trump’s resignation deadline arrives
WASHINGTON ― Fear, shock, and uncertainty have taken hold in the federal workforce as 2.3 million employees across the government face President Donald Trump’s deadline by the end of Thursday to decide whether to resign.
The offer came in a surprise email that hit inboxes at 6:04 p.m. on Jan. 28 with a subject line: “The Fork in the Road.”
At first glance, many employees ‒ who serve from one administration to another and take an oath to defend the Constitution ‒ didn’t know whether the email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management was legitimate or spam.
They were offered a choice: Keep their jobs and agree to new “reforms,” including a requirement to work at the office, or hit reply, type “Resign” in the subject line and end their federal government careers. As an incentive to resign, they were offered eight months of pay and benefits through September. They had barely more than one week to make a life-changing decision.
“I see it as a veiled threat,” a 25-year veteran of the federal government told USA TODAY. “You’ve got two choices. That’s it. There’s no hindrance, there’s no legal room. It’s either you’re with us or you’re against us.”
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This worker, like other federal employees quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to speak about their concerns out of fear of retribution from the Trump administration. Federal employees are “walking on eggshells,” the same worker, who is not taking the buyout, said.
More:Donald Trump offers eight-month buyouts to all federal employees
Trump has spent his first two-plus weeks in office taking a wrecking ball to the federal workforce in a push to dramatically shrink the size of the government and replace bureaucrats his team has perceived as hostile to his agenda with loyalists.
“Everybody’s replaceable, and we’ll get very good people to replace them if it turns out to be more than we thought,” Trump said last month of the buyout plan, which the White House calls “deferred resignations.”
Some might take buyout ‘out of fear’
At the center of the dismantling is tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who Trump has empowered to lead the government makeover through his Department of Government Efficiency. Musk has talked about savings of $4 billion a day by the start of fiscal year 2026 in September.
As the buyout deadline arrives, many federal workers told USA TODAY that they don’t trust the promised severance pay and benefits will be delivered if they take the offer. Democratic lawmakers have warned them to turn it down, arguing Trump’s buyout is illegal.
Yet some federal workers wonder whether they could be laid off if they don’t take the offer as Trump seeks to rapidly downsize federal departments and agencies. An OPM memo Tuesday warned federal employees could be furloughed if they do not accept the buyout and that “the majority of federal agencies will be downsized,” with the Defense Department as an exception.
“It pissed me off, more than anything else,” a 27-year-old federal worker said while protesting the plan Monday outside the Washington headquarters of the OPM. She said the offer “ignores all the work that we do day in and day out, on behalf of the American people.”
“I built my career around serving the American people. I intend to keep doing that,” the worker said.
More:‘Fork off’: Protesters gather outside OPM to condemn Elon Musk ‘stealing’ personal data
The decision-making is “flat-out nerve-racking,” said a 41-year-old federal analyst who lives near Salt Lake City, Utah. She’s one of 33,000 federal workers in the state, according to OPM figures.
Since receiving the “Fork in the Road” email, she said she’s had sleepless nights, going back and forth, contemplating whether to take the offer or stand pat.
“They are only giving us until tomorrow, and I feel like because so many people are uncomfortable taking that offer, it’s better to wait,” the federal worker who helps oversee a budget of more than a trillion dollars said Wednesday. “Then again, I have five colleagues tell me on Monday they will take it, simply out of fear.”
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In breakneck speed, Trump has ended diversity, equity and inclusions initiatives across the government, rescinded a 60-year-old anti-discrimination order in government hiring practices and reinstated “schedule F” hiring classifications, making it easier to fire about 50,000 senior-level civil service workers.
Trump and his administrative have fired independent inspectors generals of 17 agencies, purged the Justice Department of attorneys who worked on the criminal investigations targeting him and pushed out top FBI executives promoted by former FBI Director Christopher Wray.
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Trump created DOGE through a day one executive order with a stated mission to cut government waste. Musk and his aides have assumed control of federal IT infrastructure as his team swiftly blitzes through departments and agencies. Trump, with Musk’s guidance, this week gutted the United States Agency for International Development and merged it into the State Department. The president has signaled he might try to eliminate the Department of Education by executive order next.
“They’re putting a shot across the administrative state’s bow,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said last week of the mass federal buyout plan on his “War Room” podcast. “That’s DOGE signaling to you that they’ve got a plan of how to take the personnel down.”
“Fork in the Road” is the same subject line Musk used in 2022 when he gave employees of Twitter a similar ultimatum after buying the social media company and later changing its name to X. Twitter’s staff was rapidly downsized by about 80%.
Federal employees who want to remain in the federal workforce were told in the “Fork in the Road” email they must return to in-person work, embrace new “performance standards” and be “reliable, loyal and trustworthy” in their work. The email also warned that most federal departments and agencies will be “downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.”
On Tuesday, the buyout offer was extended to nearly all employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some federal employees said they were alarmed at the short timeframe they were given to make their decisions.
“I have invested way too much time and energy and interest into my career to just say, ‘hell with it’ and leave when I only have, like, five to 10 years left before I retire,” one federal worker said.
“I’m not taking the the resigning bait. So I guess I’ll essentially just ride down with the ship if they decide to get rid of us,” the worker added, though he acknowledged some less experienced colleagues might take the buyout.
More:CIA offers buyouts to workforce to align with Trump priorities, agency official says
Will mass layoffs be next?
White House officials have projected 5% to 10% of federal workers will take the “deferred resignation” offer, producing an estimated savings of $100 billion. As of Tuesday morning, only about 1% of the workforce, more than 20,000 employees, had accepted the deal.
But a White House official said the number of accepted buyouts is “rapidly growing,” and the White House expects the largest spike in sign-ups to come in the final 24 hours before the deadline.
“It’s getting scary and it’s tough to tell people to hold the line,” the federal analyst from Salt Lake City said. “As of today, my answer is no, but then I don’t know what kind of information I will get that may change my mind.”
More:At least 20,000 federal workers have taken Trump’s buyout offer as deadline nears
Layoffs across the federal government are “likely” if not enough employees take the buyout, Erv Koehler, assistant commissioner of general supplies and services at General Services Administration, said in an email to GSA staff reported Tuesday by the Washington Post.
“Please know that I empathize with the tough decisions you each are having to make,” wrote Erv Koehler said in the email. “Please focus on making the best decision for you and your particular situation.”
Democrats have warned federal workers not to trust the offer. “Don’t be fooled,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said from the Senate floor last week. He compared the buyout to past Trump business ventures that failed. “He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors.”
The initial “Fork in the Road” email caused confusion by its wording because it didn’t explicitly say that federal workers won’t be expected to work through September if they accept the “deferred resignation” offer.
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In a follow-up email titled “Fork in the Road FAQs,” the OPM clarified employees are not expected to work during the deferred resignation period and can accept a job elsewhere while still getting paid through September.
“We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to,” the email reads. “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
Lawsuit from federal employees union
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing about 800,000 federal workers, questioned the validity of the buyout program, noting that Congress did not authorize funds for it.
The AFGE union sued the Trump administration in Massachusetts federal court Tuesday seeking to overturn the buyout, arguing the Trump administration lacks any statutory basis for the “unprecedented offer” and can’t authorize buyout payments through September when Congress hasn’t appropriated funding past March 14. Two other government employees unions joined the lawsuit, which is scheduled to be the subject of a 1 p.m. Thursday virtual hearing to consider a motion for a temporary restraining order.
Everett said federal workers are feeling uneasy and nervous, and believes the broader plan by the Trump administration is to privatize a host of government services.
“He’s trying to get rid of federal employees to make it easier for the government to fail, so that he can contract out those jobs because they got to be done,” Kelley said. “The federal government’s got to issue Social Security checks, right? They got to take care of veterans. And so what he trying to do is make it so corrupt that it fails.”
The buyout plan for federal employees reflects the enormous power Musk exerts over Trump’s federal government. Musk and his aides have taken over the OPM. The executive order that created DOGE instructed department heads to give the new agency “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency…
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