Federal-Worker Buyouts May Make Government As Broken As X

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Elon Musk’s unlikely new lair. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post/Getty Images

In the latest episode of what MAGA nihilist Steve Bannon joyfully predicted would be “Days of Thunder” from the new Trump administration, on Tuesday the United States Office of Personnel Management offered all federal employees a buyout offer wrapped in menacing threats. It came on the heels of a directive eliminating the remote-work arrangements many federal employees had developed with their managers amid the COVID pandemic. Thus, the buyout was presented as a way for workers unable or unwilling to “return to work” (suggesting work done remotely isn’t work at all) to keep getting paid until September 30, so long as they resigned by February 6. But it’s very clear the buyout is actually part of a broader mission shared by Elon Musk at the new Department of Government Efficiency, and by Office of Management and Budget director nominee Russell Vought. Both men have expressed their desire to demolish the federal workforce as we’ve known it since the late-19th-century era of civil-service reforms.

Without question, the buyout “offer” is the carrot combined with the stick of various unfriendly administration plans for federal employees. Trump issued an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of positions into political appointments with no civil-service protections. The Republican-controlled Congress is expected to make deep spending cuts to pay for Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and mass deportation, and whatever Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cooks up to redeem its promises of trillions of dollars in federal-spending savings. The buyout message itself, sent out via email in a way that made many recipients wonder if they were being spammed or phished, echoes multiple calls from MAGA-land for massive purges of “deep state” operatives who don’t loyally support the new commander-in-chief. It reads:

The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination.

The email also confirmed the suspicion that the buyout was inspired by, and perhaps planned by, Elon Musk. Wired recently reported that OPM has become a landing site in the federal government for many Musk acolytes. His influence was particularly reflected in recent OPM directives that federal employees inform on fellow workers who supported suddenly illegal DEI efforts (DEI being a major Musk obsession). Then the buyout initiative arrived, looking very familiar to Musk-watchers, as Business Insider explained:

The parallels to Elon Musk’s tumultuous takeover of Twitter, now X, are impossible to ignore. In 2022, the tech billionaire sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” schedule or leave. The subject line was “A fork in the road” — the same metaphor referenced by the Trump administration on Tuesday.

These are bets that aggressive workforce cuts, relentless productivity demands, and a culture of loyalty and long hours can reshape institutions. The question is whether Musk’s playbook for Twitter can work for the U.S. government.

Many reject the idea that “Musk’s playbook for Twitter” actually worked for Twitter. A summary from The Verge about the experience of Twitter workers and users after the Tesla/SpaceX CEO took it over is a pretty good reflection of sentiment at the time:

Buttons break, functions disappear, power users flee, site errors abound: Twitter fell apart faster than even the pessimists anticipated. By the time we arrived on the scene, the damage was already irreversible: Many of the tweets that made Twitter so iconic were already deleted, removed, or made private. It happened so quickly, we could barely comprehend what it was that we actually lost. 

It’s hard to determine at this point whether it was these reductions in functionality or Musk’s reorientation of the platform’s politics that led to the widespread abandonment of X by users (one estimate is that it has shed 7 million users since 2022, with the brand value declining from $5.7 billion to $673 million). And even if you consider Musk’s X makeover a success, it’s unclear if it’s replicable in the federal government. The Trump administration cannot, to be clear, emulate the 80 percent staff cuts that Musk imposed on X. In either case, running off employees with threats and buyouts doesn’t lend itself to the sort of careful restructuring of an enterprise, public or private, that even some Democrats believe the federal government needs. There are also numerous questions about the legality of the buyout (and other drastic personnel-management steps by Team Trump).

From the point of view of federal employees looking down the barrel of potential firings and radical new demands for political loyalty, the buyout may look tempting. But it could be a bad bet on a shaky promise, as political scientist Don Moynihan bluntly warned:

We have not seen confirmation from the Office of Management and Budget that the offer will be honored. If this is Elon’s employees making a DOGE play, not coordinated with OMB or even other parts of OPM, the offer may be as credible as a random Musk tweet.

Trump has a reputation for reneging on payments to people who worked for him. Musk is also being sued by former executives and employees for failing to honor their Twitter compensation packages. These are not honorable men, bound by their word.

It’s also kind of a lose-lose proposition. If the Trump-Musk plan for using buyouts to slash the federal payroll fails to attract a sufficient number of resignations, it will have created a lot of chaos for no good reason. If it does work, the country will be dealing with a gutted public sector that will require a careful rebuilding over a long period of time. Unfortunately, unless the courts step in, federal employees have just over a week to make a potentially life-changing decision on their futures, with taxpaying Americans being mere bystanders in a grim game of intimidation sponsored by the unelected edgelord Musk and his presidential enabler.