The Trump administration on Tuesday offered roughly two million federal workers the option to resign but be paid till end of September, in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal work force and push out people who do not support President Donald Trump’s political agenda.

In an email, the Office of Personnel Management, an agency that oversees the federal civilian work force, gave employees the option to leave their positions by typing the word “resign” into the subject line of an email and hitting send. Workers have until February 6 to accept the offer.

The email, with the subject line “Fork in the Road”, said that the majority of federal agencies would probably be downsized and that a substantial number of employees would be furloughed or reclassified to “at-will status” — essentially making them easier to fire. Most people who have been working remotely will be required to work from their office five days a week, the email said, and some physical offices will be consolidated, causing some people to be relocated.

The message also said that “enhanced standards of conduct” would be applied to ensure that workers were “reliable, loyal, trustworthy” and warned that “at this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency”.

The email amounted to a frontal assault on the federal bureaucracy, which Trump has long derided as the “deep state” and has sought to bend to his will. In making the move, the President was testing the limits of his power, trying to push past the federal law that governs payouts and rules that have long protected the civil service from political interference and pressure.

The move also risked gutting the staffs of a wide array of federal agencies that Americans depend on, though federal unions immediately condemned the offer, and many federal employees viewed it as a trick.

The message echoed an email that the billionaire Elon Musk, a constant companion to Trump in recent months, sent to Twitter employees after buying the social media platform in late 2022. Musk’s email shared the same subject line and offered employees three months of severance.

Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency, does not officially work at the Office of Personnel Management. But the agency has hired several of Musk’s allies in recent weeks, including Amanda Scales, who until this month worked at Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, and is now the OPM’s chief of staff.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Musk’s America PAC said the move to offer severance packages could lead to billions of dollars in savings. He recirculated the post on X. Employees who accept the offer will “promptly have their duties reassigned or eliminated”, according to a guidance memo published by the OPM on Tuesday.

New York Times News Service