Thank Trump’s Iconoclasm for the ‘Deferred Resignations’ Masterstroke

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

 

Donald Trump’s fans and critics alike acknowledge that the president’s contempt for orthodoxy guides his decision-making and policy preferences. To his fans, that characteristic serves him well. Among his critics, it is a prejudice that drags his administration and the country through crisis after crisis. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. The president’s iconoclasm creates its fair share of headaches both for Trump and his supporters. But it’s not without its upsides.

 

The Trump administration’s experimentative approach to identifying and excising government waste has been many things, but unenthusiastic is not one of those. The executive branch’s approach seems to have been to shut off as many spigots as they could all at once and wait to see which wheeze first. That approach produced a lot of wheezing, and some of the administration’s most controversial (and legally dubious) maneuvers have already been paused.

 

“This is a really sloppy way of doing this,” said Wall Street Journal opinion writer Bill Galston of the administration’s efforts to halt the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funds. “This is just classic Trump. He believes it’s better to be fast and sloppy than slow and precise.”

 

True enough, and the lawsuits surrounding this administration’s headlong rush to control wasteful spending may haunt this presidency. And yet, there’s a lot to like about the president’s decision to offer a “deferred resignation program” to every member of the executive branch save military personnel, the U.S. Postal Service, immigration enforcement, or other roles relating to national security.

 

On Tuesday evening, federal employees received a terse letter with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” It informed them that they would be expected to report back to the office full-time and in person (something only 6 percent of federal employees do at present), that their roles may yet be eliminated, and the offices in which they worked may be auctioned off. And if the discomfort or uncertainty of all that is too much to bear, they were invited to resign.

 

“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the letter read.

 

A federal freakout followed.

 

“This offer should not be viewed as voluntary,” the head of the public sector union, American Federation of Government Employees, said in response to the edict. “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.”

 

Two unnamed federal employees filed an immediate request for relief from the courts in the form of a class-action lawsuit alleging that it is somehow outside the purview of the president to retain “information about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch” for the purposes of . . . emailing them.

 

Others insisted that the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) program cannot be described as a buy-out (which OPM did not) because employees who take advantage of it are expected to work until the end of the fiscal year. But they don’t have to work at all — not until they find employment elsewhere. “Except in rare cases determined by your agency, you are not expected to work,” the very first entry on OPM’s FAQ on the program read.

 

The Trump administration estimates that up to 10 percent of the federal workforce — roughly 200,000 government employees — may take the offer, saving the feds $100 billion in the process. That won’t avert the fiscal crisis this country is heading toward, but every little bit helps. Moreover, Trump’s maneuver is likely to be well-regarded by voters — at least, initially. Of the 15 executive orders Reuters/Ipsos put to respondents in its latest survey, “Downsizing the federal government” was by far the most popular. Sixty-one percent of those polled approved of that objective, while only 35 percent opposed it. No other initiative achieved anything like that level of acclaim, which suggests “deferred resignations” aren’t cutting against the cultural grain but with it.

 

Moreover, given the form in which opposition to this initiative has taken, the federal employees displaced by this program shouldn’t count on the public’s sympathy. “Many described conditions as reminiscent of the McCarthy era,” a recent New York Times report on the rampant hyperbole sweeping through the executive branch read, “and were despondent to see how quickly their office’s leaders acquiesced.” Department of Labor staffers were said to be inconsolable to learn that “a former political appointee” would be compelled to relinquish her civil service role. “Afterward,” the Times reported of one distraught DOL official, “she went into a closet, called her mother, and wept.”

 

There are bumps in the road ahead. This initiative might become less popular over time if it contributes to unresponsive or suboptimal government services. The federal employees who take advantage of this opportunity are likely to have prospects elsewhere in government or in the private sector, leaving a lower caliber of employee behind. Wholly unhelpful but typically intemperate comments from White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, asserting that “federal government [employees] are overwhelmingly left of center” and that “it is essential for [Trump] to get control of government” will support the inevitable legal contention that this personnel shakeup was not value neutral. The president is entitled to the administration he wants, but political discrimination is still a violation of federal law.

 

For now, however, the maneuver looks like a masterstroke. And although Trump’s supporters are too quick to attribute his eccentricities to genius, it is hard to imagine a more conventional president of either party taking such a leap. And if, in its wake, this step shrinks the federal government and limits its reach into private affairs in which it should have no role, it will be a conservative reform that conservative reformers should welcome.