A federal judge has paused President Donald Trump’s attempt to cut-down the federal workforce through buyout offers.
Late last month, millions of civil servants received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” The email offered current federal employees the option of around eight months of severance pay, in exchange for an immediate resignation. The message echoed language used by billionaire Elon Musk in similar emails sent to staffers at Twitter (now X) after he purchased that social media app.
Musk has been at the helm of a host of potentially illegal initiatives aimed at reducing the size of the federal government through his Department of Government Efficiency. At least 50,000 workers took the administration up on the offer, the White House claims. The deadline for a response was set for February 6.
US District Court Judge George O’Toole Jr. halted the Musk-pushed severance plan until a hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon.
“I enjoined the defendants from taking any action to implement the so-called ‘Fork Directive’ pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” said O’Toole in a hearing on Thursday. “I believe that’s as far as I want to go today.”
O’Toole’s stay comes after the American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO filed suit against the Trump administration earlier this week. Advocates and federal workers’ unions say the buyout offer is too good to be true.
“Despite claims made to the contrary, this deferred resignation scheme is unfunded, unlawful, and comes with no guarantees,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said in a statement on the suit. “We won’t stand by and let our members become the victims of this con.”
The Trump administration argued in response that pushing back the Thursday deadline could “disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce.”
The stay is the latest legal setback for Trump and Musk, as they have looked to implement a smash-and-grab government via executive orders and questionably legal maneuvers.
Trump’s executive order redefining the 14th Amendment’s language granting birthright citizenship was indefinitely stayed by a judge on Wednesday. His administration was further stymied when US District Court Judge Loren AliKhan issued a temporary restraining order on a sweeping freeze of federal spending. AliKhan said in her ruling that the admin’s “actions in this case potentially run roughshod over a ‘bulwark of the Constitution’ by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds.”
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