The Trump administration has offered a buyout to around 2 million federal employees and claims they can stop working and still receive pay through the end of September, but workers are rallying each other on Reddit to stay onboard, arguing their presence is “the last line of defense against fascism.”
“We watched this goon try to overthrow the government on live tv four years ago,” one poster, whose comments have been upvoted tens of thousands of times on r/fednews, wrote. “Now, we are witnessing him try to overthrow it from within.”
“I didn’t dedicate years of my life serving this great country to be bullied into quitting my career by a bunch of fascists,” the user, Odd_Rough_9723, wrote. “We are being led by the same types of people our grandparents fought against in WW2. They don’t care about us, regardless of the fact that one-third of us are veterans and many are military family members.”
Another popular post about the buyouts is an image of the Statute of Liberty with the slogan, “Hold the Line! Don’t resign!”
The chatter online eventually seemed to get Trump ally Elon Musk’s attention, who shared a post on social media complaining federal employees waste time at work by complaining on social media.
Checks out https://t.co/cDCK2IBkaL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2025
The Trump administration has argued it’s seeking to “get control of government” by wresting power from career federal service workers, who it believes are “far left, left-wing.” It claims resignations could cut up to 10 percent of the federal workforce and save $100 billion a year.
As part of the Trump administration’s non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency initiative, Musk has also spoken about encouraging a “wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”
The American Federal of Government Employees, a union which represents federal workers, argued the buyouts were hardly voluntary.
“Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement on Tuesday.
Some on the federal workers subreddit argued the mass resignations would have unintended consequences, including harming industries across the world where Trump-aligned “broligarchs” like Musk do business.
“There are people in my agency that are the best in the world at what they do, and maintain facilities that are an essential backbone to almost all U.S. (and many foreign) industry,” one federal employee wrote. “Maybe you can replace a body, but you cannot replace a mind. If these people are replaced, it is a loss for the whole country, but will certainly affect the companies these broligarchs own.”
Others expressed doubt that the terms of the Trump offer were even real.
“Don’t trust this email, there is no guarantee they will pay you, and they most likely won’t!” one commenter said. “Look at what happened to Twitter employees. They want you to quit, show them you won’t back down. Solidarity in numbers.”
Indeed, there are a number of parallels between the mass layoffs at X/Twitter and the resignation offer.
A fork in the road https://t.co/vzk1RYbM5u
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 28, 2025
Both involve Musk, and they even share a tagline. In 2022, as X began what would eventually become an 80 percent purge of its workforce, employees received a memo titled, “Fork in the Road,” the same title the federal Office of Personnel Management is using to describe the Trump buyout offers.
As The Independent reported, the X layoffs brought chaos and multiple lawsuits from former staff members, and there’s a suggestion there could be more uncertainty to come around the federal buyout plan.
Most importantly, it’s not clear the Trump administration has the legal authority or funds to even ensure its promises, according to some.
“The president has no authority to make that offer,” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, argued Tuesday in a floor speech. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work.”
He pointed to Trump’s long history of allegedly withholding payment from contractors on his business projects and urged federal employees to decline the buyout.
“Don’t be fooled,” Kaine continued. “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. He doesn’t have any authority to do this.”
There’s also the small matter of a looming shutdown unless Congress can hammer out a deal to keep funding the government past a mid-March deadline, raising questions about how the Trump administration will pay resigned workers through September 30 as promised.
Even if the buyout offers don’t materialize, or federal employees choose to “hold the line,” the Trump administration is eyeing other ways to shrink the federal workforce.
Last week, the administration put all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion workers on leave, and attempted to freeze billions of dollars in federal assistance across government agencies, though by Wednesday it abruptly rescinded this latter directive.
