2025 US federal deferred resignation program
"Fork in the Road" is the title and subject line of a memo sent on January 28, 2025, by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to all employees of the U.S. federal civil service.
The memo, the first ever mass message to all roughly two million federal employees, offered a deferred resignation program for those unwilling to work under the second presidency of Donald Trump.
During the 2024 United States presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump proposed downsizing the federal civil service and publicly considered a potential role for businessman Elon Musk.
[2] Several high-profile members of what Politico and Vox call the "tech right", including Musk and Marc Andreessen, have expressed desires to restructure the federal civil service to better support Trump's agenda.
[4][5] Similarly, the administration directed OPM to categorize some employees under the controversial Policy/Career appointment authority, removing competitive service job protections for positions considered "policy-related".
[8] According to the memo, employees who accept the deferred resignation would be placed on administrative leave, retain all employment benefits, and be paid through September 30, 2025, but have no work duties.
[12][3][13][14] A January 28 Wired article uncovered that several high-ranking OPM staff were former employees of Musk, including a recent high school graduate,[15] which Fortune connected to the memo's similarities to that of Twitter.
[16] The Washington Post reported that the memo had been drafted and sent entirely by staff close to Musk, bypassing political officials in the White House.
[20][21] The Department of Veterans Affairs stated that its agencies reserved the option of rejecting resignation requests from those in essential services such as health care, public safety, and law enforcement.
The American Federation of Government Employees stated that the resignation scheme should be viewed as coerced rather than voluntary as it immediately followed the annulment of remote work and other workplace benefits.
