How Trump power grab is inflicting havoc on a nation
Mysterious letter received by over 2 million federal workers prior to receiving an intimidating "offer" that they resign.

“Move fast and break things” is a Silicon Valley adage used to describe the ethos of self-described “disruptors” who do business by skirting regulatory and legal safeguards while causing chaos and uncertainty for regulators, investors and workers alike. With Donald Trump’s second term underway, ushered in by dozens of tech oligarchs and billionaires, this management strategy has finally reached the halls of federal government, with predictable results.

A source exclusive to People’s World received their first email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in the early morning hours of January 24th. The subject heading was “Email test” and it was a simple enough message:

“This is a test of a new distribution and response list. Please reply YES to this message.” 

Given the strange message and hours, the source decided not to respond or click the link titled “Office of Personnel Management – Announcement” below the message.

The second email arrived on Sunday afternoon with the subject heading “Second Email Test” and its message was as follows:

“This is the second test of a new email distribution and response list. The goal of these tests is to confirm that an email can be sent and replied to by all government employees. 

Please reply “Yes” to this email, regardless of whether you replied to the first test email. 

If you responded to “Yes” to the first email: thank you. As a reminder, always always check the From address to confirm that an email is from a legitimate government account and be careful about clicking on links, even when the email originates from the government.

Much appreciated,

Office of Personnel Management” 

“The test emails seemed like incompetence and a way to surveil and harass federal workers directly without going through the chain of command,” the source told People’s World. “My general inclination was to not comply unless it was through my chain of command.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. | Mark Schiefelbein/AP

None of these mysterious emails, originating from HR@opm.gov, were sent from a secure address and were unsigned.

Yet, the next email, sent on Thursday, seemed even more stunning in its boldness. Received on Tuesday evening, it offered a so-called “Deferred Resignation Program” that claimed to dangle a “dignified, fair departure” to millions of federal workers if they did not offer full loyalty to Trump’s new administration.

With the subject line “Fork in the Road” the email promised a “reformed federal workforce” built around four pillars:

  1. Return to Office: The substantial majority of federal employees who have been working remotely since Covid will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week. Going forward, we also expect our physical offices to undergo meaningful consolidation and divestitures, potentially resulting in physical office relocations for a number of federal workers.
  2. Performance culture: The federal workforce should be comprised of the best America has to offer. We will insist on excellence at every level — our performance standards will be updated to reward and promote those that exceed expectations and address in a fair and open way those who do not meet the high standards which the taxpayers of this country have a right to demand.
  3. More streamlined and flexible workforce: While a few agencies and even branches of the military are likely to see increases in the size of their workforce, the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force. These actions are likely to include the use of furloughs and the reclassification to at-will status for a substantial number of federal employees.
  4. Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination.

The conclusion? If the worker can’t hack it, then they should resign by replying to the email with the word “Resign” in the body of the email.

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 details of this separation plan can be found below.

If this strange offer sounds familiar, that’s because its language and approach originate from Elon Musk’s disastrous 2022 takeover of Twitter, an acquisition that catapulted the billionaire to the front pages as he opened the gates to previously banned neo-Nazis, racists, transphobes, misogynists and insurrectionists – including Donald Trump himself.

He also cut more than 75% of the Twitter workforce in three stages, one of which was a similar ultimatum delivered by email in November 2022, identically titled: “A fork in the road.” In it, he offered employees a severance package of three months pay if they could not commit to being “extremely hardcore” and “working long hours at high intensity.”

Biographer Walter Isaacson says that Musk himself “did it not only for cost reasons. He preferred a scrappy, hard-driven environment where rabid warriors felt psychological danger rather than comfort.”

While the authorship of the January 28th OPM email is still anonymous, what is known is that Musk has staffed the Office of Personnel Management with acolytes whose only real qualification seems to be their unwavering loyalty to Elon Musk.

The tech publication WIRED reported that among the new staffers are Amanda Scales, Riccardo Biasini, and Steve Davis, all of them executives whose most recent experience is reporting directly to Elon Musk at Tesla, xAI, and Twitter. Also on senior OPM staff are a 21-year-old senior advisor whose previous experience was with Peter Thiel’s Palantir, as well as a recent high school graduate whose previous experience includes camp counselor and summer intern at Neuralink.

Mysterious letter received by over 2 million federal workers prior to receiving an intimidating “offer” that they resign.

Additionally, the new General Counsel for OPM is Andrew Kostler, a former Matt Gaetz staffer who once commented on a blog post on beastiality laws in Germany that “consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish” and, as recently as 2023, publicly posted that he needed “a woman who looks like she just got punched.” In 2022, he was subject to a temporary restraining order on domestic violence charges in Maryland, and was also booked in Collin County, Texas that same year on additional domestic violence charges, and in 2022 in Travis County, Texas for driving under the influence.

As if this parade of horrors weren’t enough, the proposed “Deferred Resignation Program” seems about as shaky as Elon Musk’s first “fork in the road” email to Twitter workers back in 2022. Elon Musk offered similar “buyouts” to Twitter employees, but then reneged on the deal, and the $500 million suit brought by former workers was dismissed in June of last year, leaving them empty handed.

Likewise, in an email to their membership, the American Federation of Government Employees advised federal workers who received this week’s email to not “resign or respond” until they receive further information from their union as even if the program was “interpreted as an implied contract or offer, there is no guarantee that such a claim would be enforceable.”

If not legal and not enforceable, then what is the strategy for Trump, Musk and their army of misogynists, racists, and yes-men?

Vice President J.D. Vance offered insight when he appeared on Jack Murphy’s video livestream in 2021: “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice, [is] fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people… and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say ‘the Chief Justice has made his ruling – now let him enforce it.’”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!


CONTRIBUTOR

Taryn Fivek
Taryn Fivek

Taryn Fivek is a reporter for People's World in New York.

Comments

comments