Updated April 08, 2025 at 17:45 PM ET
It was late January when Marie received the Trump administration's first offer to resign from her job. The email, sent with the subject line "Fork in the Road," invited nearly the entire federal workforce to resign and keep their pay and benefits through the end of September.
Marie had doubts. (NPR agreed to identify her by her middle name because she fears retaliation for speaking out.) At the time, there was deep skepticism about whether the Trump administration would honor the terms of its deferred resignation program. There was also great confusion about what those terms actually were. The offer resembled one Trump adviser Elon Musk had given Twitter employees, which is the subject of ongoing litigation.
Marie had also just started at the Department of Energy a couple months earlier. After a career in the private sector, she was excited about her role focused on energy policy.
"Working with the federal government was one thing that was kind of on my career goals – like, go to the source of where policy is implemented and analyzed," she says. "That's why I kind of felt more committed to try and stay."
The deadline for accepting the deferred resignation offer had just passed when she was separated from her job for another reason. The Trump administration had directed agencies to terminate probationary employees, typically those within their first year or two on the job. Marie was one of tens of thousands of federal workers fired over several days in mid-February.
Most probationary employees have since been reinstated under two different federal court orders. Marie has gotten her badge and computer back. But since the Department of Energy reopened the deferred resignation offer on March 31, she's been trying to game her odds.
"When I talk to other probationary employees, we're kind of all assuming they're going to fire us again," she says.
Indeed, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued a stay on one of those court decisions — meaning the Trump administration has another chance to fire some probationary workers, at least temporarily.
Marie's status should not be affected by that ruling. Regardless, she knows big cuts are coming to the Energy Department, as part of the Trump administration's plans to massively downsize the federal workforce. But she doesn't know where those cuts are going to fall.
She can't wait to find out, because the department gave employees little more than a week to decide whether to resign. The deadline is midnight Tuesday.
"It's just hard because the job market is so uncertain right now," says Marie. "I think that adds a lot of fear to people who are like, 'Okay, I'll just resign … this career is not going to happen.' "
She also worries the U.S. might be headed into a recession. "How long will it take to get another job?" she wonders.
Less skepticism this time, but questions linger
The Trump administration says 75,000 federal employees took the original deferred resignation offer, but the number of people who were accepted into the program and are now on paid leave could be far fewer. Many agencies exempted large groups of people, angering those who felt the government had reneged on a promise.
Now, agencies including the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Interior, Treasury, Agriculture, Labor and a number of others have rolled out the deferred resignation program for a second time. It's part of an effort to get people to leave voluntarily ahead of mass layoffs, which can be cumbersome given complicated civil service rules that govern how they are carried out.
The offers have forced thousands of employees to make a major life decision with little information and little time. Given the lack of detail their agencies have provided about which jobs might be spared in Trump's dismantling, many employees are basing their choices on mere rumors.
While the first offer came from a mysterious Office of Personnel Management email account, this time, the offers are coming from the agencies themselves, lending them more credibility. Some agencies have identified specific roles or offices that are excluded from the deal.
Gone are the earlier concerns that a government shutdown might prevent the Trump administration from following through on its promise to provide pay and benefits through September, since Congress has now funded the government through the end of the fiscal year.
Many federal workers also know people who took the deal the first time around and have since been put on paid administrative leave as promised.
But some still have lingering concerns about the terms of the deal. To opt-in, employees must sign an agreement waiving their rights to any claims against the government, including those that might be brought in the future by a third party, such as a labor union.
"So if you have, say, a discrimination complaint or a grievance or an appeal pending, you'll be waiving all those claims or potential claims by signing this agreement," says Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group who represents federal employees in employment disputes.
Other federal workers remain broadly distrustful of the Trump administration, given how sloppily the first deferred resignation program was rolled out and the havoc the administration has wrought across the government, whether by freezing Congressionally-approved funds, shutting down whole agencies, or summarily firing employees, all of which are being challenged in court.
Vivian Wang, until recently an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of California, tried to take the deferred resignation offer the first time but was verbally told she would not be approved, because her office was already 25% understaffed, and due to the hiring freeze, they would be unable to replace her if she left. She says she never received any written notification of her rejection.
While the original offer stated that agencies could exclude employees from the deal, Wang was bewildered that she and her colleagues had received the offer at all.
"Nothing I've experienced in my time working for the federal government felt like this," she says. "I was really surprised at how shady everything felt."
After three years in the federal government, Wang quit her job.
"The mission is so critical"
For federal employees who are weighing their options now, there are new considerations to factor in.
Two and a half months into Trump's second term, Carrie, who's worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 15 years, says work has been terrible.
(NPR agreed to identify her by a nickname given she, too, fears retaliation for speaking publicly.)
Her job involves ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable Americans have housing. "I love my job. I think I'm good at my job," she says. "The mission is so critical."
Since January, she's grappled with Trump's freeze on grant funding and the constant threat that her office will be shuttered.
"Dealing with the panic in communities, but not actually even being able to tell them anything has been really hard," she says.
At one point, her office was told to prepare for staff cuts of 84%. She expected to be escorted out at any moment.
Carrie has worked under every administration since Obama, including Trump's first term.
"In all of those administrations, we did really good work," she says. "Different policies, different politics through all of them. But we really did move work forward, and the need is just even greater now."
At the moment, she's leaning toward staying. She's done some calculations and found that with 15 years in the government, her severance if she's laid off would be roughly the same as what she'd get if she voluntarily resigned now.
But she has doubts over whether the work can continue. Quite a few of her colleagues have told her they're opting to resign now, ahead of layoffs.
"Who's going to be here? Are we going to be able to do anything?" she wonders. "Will there be anyone to do that work?"
She has until Friday to decide.
Copyright 2025 NPR
