Trump administration offers buyouts to federal workers

By Alayna Treene and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, CNN

(CNN) — Federal workers who don’t want to return to the office are being offered buyouts, according to a memo posted to the US Office of Personnel Management’s website Tuesday night.

CNN previously reported the buyout offers were expected, according to a Trump administration official and an OPM spokesperson.

The administration has ordered federal workers, many of whom had flexible work arrangements following the pandemic, back to the office to work in person. Workers who accept the buyout will need to resign by February 6 and would receive severance paid through September 30.

Federal agency heads were told within the last day that this would be coming, the official said.

The memo outlining the new policy states that the agency emailed federal employees “on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer.”

The email was sent from hr1@opm.gov using the Trump administration’s new mass email system.

The email said, “The President required that employees return to in-person work, restored accountability for employees who have policy-making authority, restored accountability for senior career executives, and reformed the federal hiring process to focus on merit. As a result of the above orders, the reform of the federal workforce will be significant.”

Employees who do not take a buyout cannot be given “full assurance regarding the certainty” of their position or agency, the email continued, but should their job be eliminated, they “will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.”

The program begins effective January 28 and is available until February 6.

“Folks are variously stunned, pissed, baffled and a bit scared,” one federal employee who received the email told CNN.

All employees across the federal government are being offered to go on what the OPM spokesperson described as paid administrative leave. The Trump administration argues the move could be an off-ramp for federal employees who do not want to return to the office full time, but any government employee can take the buyout, the OPM spokesperson said.

However, there are some exceptions to the buyouts: Postal workers, members of the military, immigration officials, certain national security roles that the administration wouldn’t specify and any other role that agencies deem as being necessary will not be able to opt in, the sources said.

Axios was first to report on the buyouts.

Tuesday’s email to federal employees also noted the move to create a more streamlined and flexible workforce is likely to include “the use of furloughs and the reclassification to at-will status for a substantial number of federal employees.” CNN previously reported Donald Trump’s plan to reclassify tens of thousands of civil service workers as at-will employees would make it much easier to fire them.

In a separate memo providing guidance on the buyouts, OPM asked agency heads to provide information every week through September 30 on the number of workers who are resigning and retiring.

‘Fork in the Road’

The subject line of the email to federal employees was “Fork in the Road,” the same subject line of an ultimatum message Elon Musk sent to his employees at Twitter in 2022. On the campaign trail, Musk frequently talked about downsizing the federal government. He has played an integral part in the rollout of the federal government buyout, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration.

“We will reduce a lot of government headcount, but we’re going to give very long severances,” Musk told a Philadelphia rally in October. “Like two years, or something like that.”

The offer extended to federal employees Tuesday fell far short of that time period.

The move comes as the Trump administration tightens its grip on the federal bureaucracy, which the president has long characterized as the “deep state” and vowed to dismantle.

The orders have alarmed federal workers and the unions that represent them, leaving employees worried about their jobs and their ability to carry out the missions that lured them into public service, CNN previously reported.

The National Treasury Employees Union sent a message to workers Tuesday saying the buyout offer was a scare tactic and urging them not to resign.

“Make no mistake: this email is designed to entice or scare you into resigning from the federal government,” the message said. “We are reviewing the email closely and will have more information tomorrow. However, we strongly urge you not to resign in response to this email.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, argued Tuesday that the buyouts were part of larger plan to get rid of civil servants.

“This offer should not be viewed as 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.

And Max Stier, the CEO at the Partnership for Public Service, said that the Trump administration’s efforts are “perplexing, of questionable legality and dangerous.”

“Americans rely on federal workers to fly safely, help veterans and seniors access their benefits, keep our food and water safe, protect public health, respond to natural disasters, and maintain the rule of law,” he said in a statement. “Stripping away expert talent through such a non-strategic approach puts all of us at risk in a profound way.”

CNN’s Tami Luhby, Sarah Dewberry, Sean Lyngaas, Jeff Zeleny and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.

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