Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers

Driving the news: The Office of Personnel Management described the offer as administrative leave with pay and benefits.

• More information was shared by OPM later on Tuesday online in a memo titled, "A Fork in the Road."

State of play: Employees who wish to resign were told: "1) Select "Reply" to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account other than your .gov or .mil account will not be accepted. 2)Type the word "Resign" into the body of this reply email. Hit "Send."

• The subject line, and some of the wording, echoed an email Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2022 giving them a similar ultimatum: to either leave, or stay and become "hardcore," The Verge points out.
• Musk himself appeared to acknowledge this in a post on X Tuesday evening.

Zoom in: "The government-wide email being sent today is to make sure that all federal workers are on board with the new administration's plan to have federal employees in office and adhering to higher standards. We're five years past COVID and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office. That is unacceptable," a senior administration official tells Axios.

• The White House expects 5% to 10% of federal employees to accept the offer, which would potentially mean hundreds of thousands of people.
• The administration projects the buyouts could ultimately save taxpayers up to $100 billion a year.
• The offer applies to all full-time federal employees, except for military personnel, the Postal Service, and those working in immigration enforcement or national security.

The big picture: The memo is just the latest step in the White House's unprecedented move to push career federal workers out of their jobs, and, observers say, replace them with loyalists — a return to a patronage system that federal law sought to banish more than a century ago.

• On Monday, the administration offered more details on its plan to reclassify thousands of federal civil servants, stripping them of legal protections from firing, in a memo to agency heads.
• The executive order and the guidance is a way to make it easier to fire civil servants and turn what had been career jobs into patronage jobs, said Sharon Parrott, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former Office of Management and Budget appointee under Obama.
• The moves "will almost surely lead many expert, knowledgeable career civil servants to withhold their best advice," Parrott tells Axios.

Between the lines: Many federal workers are already feeling scared about the administration's crackdown on DEI, its return-to-office policy and the reclassification efforts.

• That unease could increase take-up on this new offer.
• The offer could also spur the most talented federal employees with the best private-sector prospects to leave, according to Terry Clower, an economist who studies the capital region at George Mason University.
• "So how does that work if you're trying to accelerate government efficiency if who you drive away are your best workers?" Clower tells Axios.

What they're saying: The largest federal employee union, known as AFGE, denounced the buyouts.

• "Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration's goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to," its president Everett Kelley said in a statement.

Reality check: The White House claim that only 6% of federal workers are in-person is widely disputed, and contradicted by data released by the Biden administration last month.

State of play: Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has the authority to fire federal employees.

More from Axios:

• Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt vows to hold media accountable for "lies"
• Trump's funding freezing temporarily halted by federal judge
• Scoop: Pete Buttigieg taking "serious look" at Michigan Senate race in 2026

Editor's note: This story has been updated with confirmation from the Office of Personnel Management, details of an OPM memorandum and further context.

Cuneyt Dil contributed.