The Forced Fork and the Choice to Stay

Hearing from federal government employees as they make sense of their future

A fork or a hammer?

Don here: Last week a federal court extended the Trump administration’s deferred resignation deadline until February 10, while also raising questions about its legality. The offer is bad for public sector capacity, undermining its ability to deliver public services to us. I don’t envy federal employees being put in the position of making the choice. Many believed they will be fired, or forced to move in order to keep their jobs. Some who submitted their resignation are already concerned about whether they have made themselves a target even if the program is deemed illegal. I am sharing below a letter from an anonymous federal government employee. While it is addressed to fellow federal employees, we are all stakeholders here, and I urge you to read it.

To My Fellow Federal Employees:

After an extension, on Monday we again face an impossible decision: Take the so-called “buyout” now, or stay and risk being pushed out later—working in an environment of fear, uncertainty, loyalty tests and where our public mission is treated with contempt, or, at best, an afterthought.

That so many of us will choose to stay, despite everything, speaks to the power of public service.

Let’s be clear—this choice is a manufactured one, with incentives and threats intended to make us forget why and who we serve.

But we haven’t forgotten. And, at least for now, Feds still have a choice.

Bullying as Strategy

Framed as a generous offer, deferred resignation reads more like a threat.

Official emails, straight out of a used-car-salesman’s playbook, urge us to resign with a single click. Entice us to “travel to our dream destination” while collecting a federal paycheck, as if that was our goal all along (or legal). Trivialize the entire foundation of public service compared to “higher-value” private sector jobs. And in the next breath, a thinly veiled threat: take the deal now, or risk being fired anyway. The multiple reminder emails, taunting “NO extensions,” feel like the final, desperate pitch.

Layer on a blanket return-to-office mandate that disregards the lives (and agreements) built around remote work—families, caretaking responsibilities, sudden job reclassifications, and both overt and subtle pressure to report on colleagues, and you create an atmosphere thick with fear and paranoia. It’s been heartbreaking to walk the corridors and see the anxiety, exhaustion, and yes, tears of colleagues and friends who have dedicated their lives to public service.

The worst part? I suspect that this is the point: undermine the public service mission, replace trust with suspicion, and turn coworkers against each other. It’s a deliberate effort to make survival feel more important than service, all in the hopes that federal employees will leave on their own—saving them the more difficult path of pushing them out.

This could almost be Severance fanfiction—the Apple TV+ show about a dystopian workplace—if only the stakes weren’t so painfully real.

“Efficiency,” Really?

The idea that this buyout has anything to do with efficiency is deeply disingenuous.

No workforce planning. No assessment of the disruption to critical public services. No strategy to retain top talent or fill hard-to-fill roles. No plan to address underperformance or uphold merit. Not even a nod to a legislative strategy to make these so-called reforms, you know, legal.

Instead, we get a rushed deadline, vague promises, and the absurd idea that gutting institutional knowledge and traumatizing federal employees somehow benefits the public. The cruelty is clear—not just in the policies, but in the silence from agency leaders, the treatment of USAID employees, and X posts framing public servants as “opponents” and “criminals,” not partners.

And just in case anyone was wondering—federal employees aren’t afraid of high standards. We came to government to tackle hard problems and build something that lasts across administrations. Trust me, no one is more frustrated by bureaucracy than the people who work in it—we’d probably give Elon Musk a run for his money on that front. If this were really about performance, there’d be a serious plan to strengthen the workforce and address the internal bureaucracy that hampers our ability to serve, not discard the very people trying to make it work.

I take OPM at its word that it intends to honor the buyout. But offering this “deal” before securing the legislative and regulatory changes to guarantee it, while there are actual legal authorities they could have used? That’s just plain irresponsible.

At its most generous, this is “move fast and break things” applied to government. But this time, the short term pain isn’t a buggy website—it’s the Americans who rely on government and the public servants who have dedicated their careers to them, being tossed into the woodchipper.

No serious organization—public or private—would call this strategy. But here we are.

For Those Who Choose to Leave

For some, leaving may be the right decision, and I understand why. The abrupt and arbitrary return to office, the uncertainty, the contempt, and the exhaustion of waiting for the next blow—it’s a lot. It’s not your fault you were given this impossible choice.

If you choose to go, I hope it’s on your terms, not dictated by fear. And please know—this choice does nothing to erase your service to the country.

For Those Who Choose to Stay

To those staying—you are also making the right choice, no matter what comes next.

This forced deadline and cruel treatment are meant to distract us from why we chose public service, and distance us from our colleagues. But a few patronizing emails can’t diminish the enduring power of a nonpartisan, career civil service—the backbone of any functioning democracy. Every federal employee who refuses to be pushed out by insulting incentives and implicit threats helps protect not just their role, but the very foundation of democratic governance.

Yes, we, myself included, may lose our jobs anyway. We may face harsh working conditions. And there may be moments when, financially at least, we might regret not taking the offer.

But we also know the right choice isn’t always the easy one—our oath of service taught us that.

We All Choose

At the end of the day, we are each responsible for our own choices—including those in power who forced this “fork” on 2.3 million federal employees.

If you’re still unsure about what to do, remember this: Staying doesn’t have anything to do with politics or resistance. It’s about service. It’s about focusing on what we can control—our integrity, our commitment, our work—because that’s all we can do.

No matter what happens next, doing the right thing—despite unfair choices, open disdain, and a lack of appreciation—is always the right choice. And if public servants know anything, it’s how to do just that.

Don again: Last week I joined an event that included numerous federal employees. The atmosphere was understandably grim. Employees who had recently started new jobs now expected to be put on administrative leave within hours, and fired shortly afterwards. Someone who played a role in an initiative related to equity that was started under the Trump administration saw no future in government. Some had given up more lucrative careers in the private sector. At a personal level, they struggled with the sense of sheer unfairness — their careers would be ended by people who did not understand what they did, and did not care to learn, with an absence of basic due process. They also saw the broader damage. How will government gain back the talent it has lost? How to persuade the next generation of public servants that they will be treated fairly? What happens to the beneficiaries of the program that they helped to run?

I’m going to share some other thoughts from federal employees who have contacted me. From a National Parks Service employee

In general, everyone I've talked to has scorned the "deferred resignation" threat/offer, but we're all scared and exhausted, close enough to the actual front lines of this coup (at places like USAID) to internalize what's happening but far enough that we don't feel there's much we can do other than carry on with our mission as best we can and build networks in case of emergency. Working in and around the federal government for years has impressed on me just how fragile the systems we rely on are after decades of stripping them to the bone.

An employee at the Department of Commerce felt that the Fork in the Road email backfired, saying it:

galvanized us into staying. The week before that came out I was reviving old networking contacts; this week I decided they’ll have to literally throw me out: I have a job I love working for the country I love. They can’t get rid of me that easily!

While employees viewed the deferred resignation offer as untrustworthy, people might still leave. A Census Employee said

I expect a flurry of resignations in the coming days from managers who had their telework agreements cancelled or have caretaking obligations and can't do 5 days a week in the office with only a few days notice.

A GSA employee told me

Many coworkers are looking for the door, most often those with more institutional knowledge, but often those with the most risk factors: family, those that don’t live near an office, those whose work is being removed from publication. All these baseless attacks on dedicated civil servants has the effect of undermining the work we do, sometimes making it impossible for normal work to proceed. Even realizing that the point is to undermine the system, which will prove the point they make about it not working, it’s hard to ignore and make any progress when we’re constantly interrupted with some new dictate or mandatory request, like the interviews about what exactly it is we do and budget reductions and needing to make plans due to contracts being frozen

On this last point, for all this talk about efficiency, turning the entire federal government into conditions of chaos and fear does little to help public organizations succeed. This feels less like a goal-driven disruption, and more like the fulfillment of promises of retribution and trauma made by Trump and his lieutenants.

Here is some more great coverage of the effects on employees from the New York Times.

If you are a federal employee who wants to share your experiences, I am now on Signal dmoyn.01. Bear in mind that I am not a real reporter, and if you have a major story that you want to share, look at independent reporters (e.g. Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket) or in traditional outlets, like the NY Times or Washington Post. Reporters from ProPublica and Wired have been doing incredible work. Be careful that you avoid sharing in ways that puts you in legal jeopardy.

For employees who leave, and feel comfortable doing so, it would be incredibly useful to share with the public or local outlets your experiences. As a country there is simply a deep lack of knowledge about what government does, which has made it easy to demonize.

We need a long-term program that educates the public about what it is that public servants do, although I fear that some of that education will come when it is impossible to notice that core services no longer work so well, and that public values are blatantly violated.