On being a federal employee

Unhinged Nazi controls US government

I am a federal employee. And I will not comply with a series of illegal demands and threats, including the Fork in the Road “deferred resignation” program. It's an unenforceable sham, with no money allocated for these payouts.

Everything I write is old news by the time I finish the paragraph

An unelected oligarch has seized control of the US Federal Government. He feels entitled to execute this hostile and illegal takeover because he purchased the presidential election for Donald Trump, who has installed himself as dictator. Trump doesn't have a mandate for anything, despite what he says — he won the popular vote by only a narrow margin (49.8% vs. 48.3% for Vice President Kamala Harris). So now the Christian nationalists at the Heritage Foundation are setting policy for the rest of us, as written in their blueprint for oppression (see Project 2025).


Controlling (and Culling) the Federal Workforce Through Intimidation and Fear

Musk is treating the federal workforce like Twitter employees, meaning he wants to fire 80% of us. The “terms” of the deferred resignation offer (if you can call them that) keep changing:

January 28, 2025  (original Fork)

If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason). 

However, the FAQ says that employees are not expected to work at all, while some sample contracts state that employees are agreeing to work through Feb. 28 (and payment comes with a caveat: “Subject to the availability of appropriations...”).

As the deadline approaches, threats to accept the offer have escalated.

“The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” [an anonymous] official said.

But the response thus far has been underwhelming. Recent news reports indicate that only 1% or 2% of 2.3 million federal workers have accepted the offer.¹ The deadline is February 6, 2025 at 11:59 EST.

DOGE is a Clown Show (until it wasn't)

The Department of Government Efficiency is a make-believe entity. It has no official standing in the Executive Branch and yet issues one illegal memo after another. The most outrageous initial ploy — to “pause” Financial Assistance Programs — has been blocked by temporary stays and restraining orders. The ignorance and ineptitude of DOGE would be comical if critical programs for farmers, commercial fishermen, meat and poultry inspection, veterans, rural economic development, Medicare prescription drug coverage, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, NSF, NIH (and thousands more) weren't stalled for an indeterminate time period.

And the irony is that... 

I would welcome a true department of government efficiency to improve IT capabilities and to reduce the delays and administrative burdens involved in every aspect of research. It's discouraging. But I'm not leaving.

Footnote

¹ Great comment: 

This is not about you—your performance, your value, your contribution to public service. This is about a billionaire panicking because his big idea is collapsing under the weight of reality. He wants you afraid. He wants you to think that staying is a risk, that leaving is the only path to survival. It isn’t.