In interviews, federal employees expressed dread and uncertainty over the looming deadline to tell the Trump administration whether they\u2019ll accept a buyout \u2014 or stay on the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The future of millions of federal workers was plunged into another day of chaos Thursday as they faced fresh uncertainty over an unprecedented program pushing financial incentives in exchange for quitting their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All they\u2019d need to do, the Trump administration told them, was reply to an email with the word \u201cresign\u201d in the subject line. As many fretted over the 11:59 p.m. ET deadline to make a potentially life-altering decision, a federal judge stepped in with a temporary reprieve \u2014 there would be a block on the program pending a hearing on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came the memo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sent from the acting director to government agency heads, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management directed them to turn over information<\/a> about any employees who have had poor performance reviews over the last three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their employer, he said, was \u201cdeveloping new performance metrics for evaluating the federal workforce that aligns with the priorities and standards\u201d of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adding to the anxiety, the workers who decide to remain in their jobs could still be dismissed at a later date as the White House seeks to trim as much as 10% of the workforce in a sweeping push to shrink and remake the federal bureaucracy \u2014 an effort that is being led in part by one of Trump\u2019s top advisers, billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>, and his Department of Government Efficiency. It also remains unclear whether the terms of the offer will be honored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump administration officials have presented the dramatic downsizing effort as a way to save taxpayer money and tried to sell it to workers as a good deal: quit working while still collecting salaries and receiving benefits until Sept. 30. That\u2019s according to a memo from the OPM, effectively the human resources department for the federal workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview Thursday, an IRS employee who is based in Texas said he had decided to accept the buyout \u201cbecause of the fear I would be fired regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe culture has changed so much in such a short amount of time,\u201d said the IRS worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. \u201cEmployees are demoralized. Some new hires cried at their desks.\u201d He said one employee who had moved to Texas for his position wept in a men\u2019s bathroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An employee at the Commerce Department who lives in the Southwestern U.S. said they accepted the offer to resign out of fear they would not be able to continue working from their home far from the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy walking away, I feel like I\u2019m abandoning my colleagues, and that\u2019s a weight I hate carrying,\u201d the worker said. \u201cThis was a choice I felt forced to make. What\u2019s nagging me is the suspicion that this is all a scam. There was very little in terms of official documentation or assurances that I will continue to be paid through September or that I will retain or be reimbursed for my retirement contributions. It\u2019s a pretty scary situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump administration officials have turned the deferred resignation offer into a formalized contract, a copy of which was sent to Justice Department employees and shared with NBC News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The contract lays out the terms of the separation, which includes a clause stating the employee was not coerced into signing the agreement. Democratic lawmakers and federal employee unions have cautioned workers against accepting the offers, saying in part that they are legally questionable and not authorized by Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the sun even rose in the nation\u2019s capital Thursday, an email once again went out widely to federal employees prompting them to resign. The email, carrying the subject line \u201cFinal Day Fork in the Road<\/a>,\u201d cautioned workers that \u201cthere will not be an extension of this program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The so-called \u201cFork in the Road\u201d resembles an ultimatum<\/a> that Musk sent employees when he took control of Twitter (now known as X) and told them to make a choice: stay and work in an \u201cextremely hardcore\u201d environment \u2014 or head to the exits with severance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a message to Education Department employees Wednesday, the American Federation of Government Employees called the resignation package pitched by the Trump administration \u201ceerily similar to the situation at Twitter, where employees are still suing Elon Musk for severance pay promised under his own \u2018Fork in the Road\u2019 offers.\u2019 \u2026 We must not fall for the same trap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 60,000 workers had already accepted what\u2019s formally known as a \u201cdeferred resignation\u201d as of Thursday afternoon, according to a senior administration official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But large numbers of federal workers intended on resisting the mounting pressure and staying put. More than a dozen employees who spoke to NBC News in the last week said they were not even considering taking the offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m not giving in no matter how many emails were sent today hounding us,\u201d one employee at Veterans Affairs said earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An employee at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency struck a similar chord: \u201cThe offer and those that are offering it assume that a large enough portion of the federal workforce is motivated primarily by money. While salary is important, we are driven by our commitment to the mission to protect our country and by our oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, large swaths of workers remain unsure how to proceed. In an interview, a human resources supervisor under the Department of Health and Human Services said she was \u201con the fence about the buyout and may take it.\u201d The sense of fear and confusion was rampant across her workplace; one colleague \u201ccalled me yesterday for an hour crying, trying to decide and overwhelmed\u201d about whether to accept the proposal from the OPM, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The human resources supervisor \u2014 who, like many federal workers who spoke to NBC News, asked not to be named \u2014 said she was worried the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive push to cut down the federal workforce and remake the architecture of the national government could create lasting harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEveryone is saying, \u2018This isn\u2019t legal.\u2019 But ultimately, it doesn\u2019t matter whether it is. The entire system is being broken with no consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shelly, an information systems security manager who asked that her last name and government agency not be specified, said she thought the first buyout email in her inbox might be junk because it looked unprofessional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe very first message that came out, I thought it was spam,\u201d Shelly told \u201cNBC Nightly News\u201d this week. \u201cI thought it was a phishing message, and a lot of people thought the same thing. \u2026 I\u2019m the information security person, and we basically sent it to our security operations center because it did not look like normal information we get from OPM. It looks so unofficial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the General Services Administration, which handles real estate and building services for the federal government, one employee said Wednesday the pressure to resign was unlike anything he previously experienced at a workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery two, three hours, we\u2019re getting these messages telling us to resign or face consequences,\u201d the GSA employee said. \u201cAnd we had staff meetings yesterday afternoon and this morning, and we were told, basically, not enough people have taken the resignation offer, therefore they\u2019re going to go ahead and start looking to implement reductions in force.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd they just keep telling us, \u2018take the offer to leave\u2019 and \u2018take the offer to leave,\u2019\u201d the person added. \u201cThat it\u2019s a better offer than what\u2019s coming down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In at least one instance, federal workers were notified about the \u201cfork in the road\u201d just days before the deadline. National Security Agency employees received emails offering a voluntary early retirement option on Tuesday night, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a subsequent town hall meeting with the director of the agency Wednesday, staff members did not get much clarity on whether people who accept the offer would receive the benefits and pensions to which they\u2019re entitled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of at least one federal agency, employees have reason to suspect the government will not hold up its end of the buyout bargain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Top officials at the Education Department told staff members Wednesday that if they say yes to the administration\u2019s deferred resignation package, Trump\u2019s education secretary may later cancel it<\/a> \u2014 leaving employees without any recourse and potentially depriving them of promised pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not immediately clear whether that caveat applied to other federal agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n