Federal Workforce Facing Uncertainty Amid Trump Administration’s ‘Buyout’ Offer

A federal workforce of some 2 million people is still reeling after receiving a mass email that offered them a chance to preemptively resign ahead of additional and unspecified Trump administration efforts to shrink government.

With the terms of a stark but murky ultimatum unclear and likely subject to legal interpretations and challenges, upwards of hundreds of thousands of individual employees were struggling with what to do, increasingly uncertain about the stability of their jobs and their agencies.

Chaos and Confusion Among Federal Employees

“Chaos, mistrust, confusion,” said one employee at the Department of Justice who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation without fear of retribution. “There’s also a deep suspicion, especially among people who think they may be on the chopping block, that this is the last lifeboat in town.”

Trump, who spent years decrying the “deep state,” has long wanted to reduce the government’s footprint. Frustrated over what he saw as overly lenient work-from-home policies nearly five years after the Covid-19 pandemic began, Trump has empowered Tesla CEO Elon Musk to help streamline government. But the vague order has nearly ground the massive bureaucracy to a halt, and has the potential to create the kind of crisis that might backfire politically.

Potential Consequences of the Buyout Offer

“The blanket approach, which is pure Elon Musk, is going to have unintended consequences down the road,” said Elaine Kamarck, a government studies fellow at the Brookings Institution who oversaw President Bill Clinton’s initiative to reform government in the 1990s. “What if a third of the nation’s air traffic controllers take this buyout? Or all the CDC scientists leave for the private sector and then there’s a tuberculosis epidemic? That’s the risk with the way they’ve done it, sort of using a blowtorch for a very small issue.”

The email, sent Tuesday evening by the Office of Personnel Management, offered recipients the option to resign and be paid through September but offered no guarantees about future employment if they chose to stay.

In fact, the subject line was the exact same one he used in 2022 when giving staffers at Twitter a similar ultimatum to either become more “hardcore” or leave the company: “Fork in the road.”

Union Response and Employee Skepticism

Over the course of the day Wednesday, unions representing federal workers mobilized and implored members not to take the deal, denouncing it as a shady and slapdash attempt to scare workers into leaving on their own. Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said that most members “don’t trust this administration to hold up their end of the bargain, and others don’t see how this is legal.”

The American Federation of Government Employees emailed members a lengthy FAQ about the OPM resignation program, warning that it “should not [be taken] … at face value.”

Employee Dilemmas and Decision-making

“It really felt like we were being asked to resign, and, if we decided not to resign, like we were being asked to swear allegiance to a new form of government,” said one employee. “It seems very clear that if we do not take that and resign, that our jobs are in serious jeopardy.”

A single parent, that employee was struggling with whether to preemptively abandon a decades-spanning career doing work they felt was important in order to ensure their ability to provide for their family.

“I am not a risk taker,” they said. “And every single option right now is a risk.”

Employee Resilience Amid Uncertainty

That DOL employee added that, for now, they aren’t planning on opting into the resignation program. “I’d rather be fired for resisting and making their lives hell,” they said.

And a number of federal employees expressed similar sentiments anonymously on public platforms.

“[B]efore that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell,” one employee wrote. “But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible, [return to office] be damned.”

Another employee responded to that post in kind: “I was chill and laid back prior. Now I’m digging my heels in out of spite.”

The federal workforce faces unprecedented uncertainty as the Trump administration’s ‘buyout’ offer creates waves of skepticism and fear among government employees.