The White House’s severence offer for virtually every federal employee boils down to an easy way for Trump’s folks to identify who likes Trump and who doesn’t
Don’t fall for it!
Trump’s supposedly offering pretty much all federal employees a generous severance package if they indicate within the next week that they’re willing or want to leave. And to that end, the White House has sent them all an email offering a “deal”. White House HR is calling it a “Fork in the Road.”
But it’s not real.
So unless you’re less than a year from retiring anyway, or are already on your way to getting fired, and want the possibility of a nice vacation, don’t take the bait!
How am I so sure of that?
The memo outlining the program makes it damn clear there’s no mechanism for implementing it, for one. People who want to try to take the severence are asked to reply to the email with “resign” in the subject line.
There’s no guarantee though, that your resignation will be accepted. Partly because the offer is coming from White House HR, not your HR department of whatever department or agency you may be working for.
It’s also pretty clearly illegal and not in any budget. Although I wouldn’t make too much of that fact because Trump doesn’t seem to give a crap about doing illegal stuff. And actually the Supreme Court has said he can do whatever illegal crap he wants, as long as it’s him doing it.
Still, it’s sure to get challenged in court, which will cause a delay, and could even give Trump an excuse for stiffing everybody who signed up for it, while blaming his decision not to pay on some “liberal judge”.
Or Trump could just wake up one day and say “these people hate Trump–they just said so–and they hate America, so I’m not going to give them anything”.
I noticed Democratic Senator Tim Kaine brought up this very scenario, and obviously I think he’s right.
So like I said: it’s an internet survey. That’s it. Do you like Trump? Do you not like Trump? Or do you maybe think he’s meh? That’s really the only thing that’s being assessed.
And getting non-Trump supporters to rat themselves out is a hell of a lot easier than trying to root them out through interrogations and investigations. Make Trump’s team do that. Don’t give them an easy way out. Because really you can already see it’s not an easy way out for any government employee.
I would even go so far to suggest unless you’re under oath, or being questioned by the FBI, or being threatened with transfer to a federal government division you find morally repugnant, all your public statements to Trump team members should be “yeah, let’s kick ass the Trump
way! MAGA!” And let them figure it out.
Because what there is a mechanism for, courtesy of the folks at Project 2025, is broad plans to onboard thousands of young Trump fans into the federal government. Many of them will be totally inexperienced and maybe even stupid. That also increases the chances career bureaucrats will have to stay on in some capacity until they get shafted. (The email offer suggests this as a possible scenario). No severence for you!
I’ve read lots of articles comparing the move to Elon Musk firing 75% of the staff when he bought Twitter, now X. However, aside from Musk clearly having a hand in this too, there’s no comparison at all.
X is at its most basic, just a feed. It would only need about 1 person to run it, if it didn’t give a crap about anything. Maybe even zero, for short periods of time. Musk also became famous for not paying the severence he promised.
The federal government’s not like that.
Let’s end with this point: how can someone offer something to everybody, which if everybody takes, leaves the federal government with close to zero existing employees and zero institutional knowledge?
You can’t. It’s not real.