(AFP) – US federal workers face another deadline Monday to accept a mass buyout from their government jobs as a judge holds a key hearing on whether the offer is legal. The proposal to two million federal workers is part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk to drastically cut back on spending that they say will transform the government.
In his first three weeks in office, the president has unleashed a flurry of executive orders aimed at slashing federal spending, appointing SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk to lead the efforts under the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump’s sweeping plans have now opened legal battles on several fronts, with lawsuits filed across the country aimed at stopping the Trump initiatives that critics say amount to an illegal power grab.
The Democrats are trying to build momentum against the Trump onslaught on government, and on Monday announced a new portal for whistleblowers to report potential law-breaking by Musk and his associates. The legal battles intensified Saturday when a US judge blocked Musk’s team from accessing Treasury Department data on millions of Americans. The Trump administration has appealed, calling the order “impermissible” and “unconstitutional.”
Musk’s team has moved aggressively through federal agencies, freezing aid programs and pushing workforce reductions through legally unclear buyouts or threats of termination. The Trump administration has effectively shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency long criticized by Republicans as overreaching. Questions are rife over the buyout, including whether Trump has the legal right to make the offer and whether his administration will honor it.
The plan was first announced on January 28 in an email to much of the vast federal government and titled “Fork in the road” — the same phrasing as the note Musk sent to employees at Twitter when he bought the social media platform in 2022 and renamed it X. The original deadline was Thursday, but unions representing more than 800,000 civil servants filed a lawsuit against the offer. Federal Judge George O’Toole last week said he accepted the case and will hold a first hearing in a Boston courtroom at 2:00 pm (1900 GMT) Monday.
In response, the US Office of Personnel Management, which is run by Musk associates, extended the decision deadline until 11:59 pm. – ‘Not canceled’ – In a post on X, OPM maintain that the program was “NOT blocked or canceled” and the White House urged workers to keep considering “this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer.” Last week, US media reported that at least 65,000 federal workers had opted into the so-called deferred resignation program. This represents some three percent of the roughly two million federal employees who received the offer. The White House has said its target is for between five and 10 percent of employees.
Unions warn that without Congress signing off on the use of federally budgeted money, the agreements may be worthless, especially since current government spending is only agreed until mid-March. “OPM’s Fork Directive is a sweeping and stunningly arbitrary action to solicit blanket resignations of federal workers,” wrote lawyers for the unions. “Defendants have not even argued — nor could they — that the Fork Directive was the product of rational or considered decision-making.”
– Alex PIGMAN
© 2024 AFP
