Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit
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One part is what I call "The Great Defederalization". In a myriad of ways, the federal state that was erected between FDR and LBJ is being torn down. That state existed on a group of decisions that allowed independent agencies outside of the direct oversight of the president: the Humphrey's Executor agencies, NLRB, FCC, FTC. The Supreme Court and Congress are very happy to work on rolling them back, and they were constructed on pretty awful jurisprudence to begin with. That can work-- we should engage in creative destruction, the administrative state did restrict economic growth, and it did create carve-outs out of the Constitution. If it made us a more reliable partner, that did come at the cost of flexibility.
But at the same time, this executive isn't defederalizing to defer power to the states-- it's doing it to grant more immediate power to the president, who is in effect weaponizing the armed forces and police forces against non-compliant localities and personal enemies. News like this happening the same week as the president sends the Army to a passive American city in order to plainly provoke a conflict, and directing his DoJ to enact a case on paper thin justification, is troubling, to say the least.
A consequence of centralizing governance in a giant federal bureaucracy is that it’s become dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe.... That was a predictable result of federalization. If the government is run by unelected bureaucrats insulated from the elected officials, then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government.
In classic Trump fashion, he doesn’t care about federalism per se, hence his inconsistent actions on law enforcement and crime. But he has a brain stem level reaction that it’s crazy he got elected President and is expected to cajole a federal workforce of 1.8 million democrats into executing his policies. And he’s not wrong about that.
Regarding the DOJ, Thomas Jefferson personally directed the prosecution of Aaron Burr: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-great-trial-that-tes.... So that part isn’t anything new. As to the merits of the case, 18 USC 1001 is astonishingly (and I’d argue unconstitutionally) broad. I think prosecuting people for “obstruction” without an underlying crime is bullshit, but the government does it all the time. And Comey vociferously defended the practice.
Also, if you're saying that the past 100 years of American history, with all its various technocrats, was the result of a single ideology operating the government... maybe that ideology actually works pretty well?
As recently as 1880s the US was still assigning important civil service roles to whomever donated the most money to election campaigns.
The 1880s - 1970s generally featured a more protected civil service, with both advantages (insulation from changing presidents / legislators, maintaining institutional knowledge and competence) and disadvantages (insulation from performance-based hiring / firing, optimizing for bureaucratic rules became more effective than doing a great job).
The latter of which and anti-government sentiment post-Nixon drove deregulation and more direct executive control of the bureaucracy (e.g. the OPM).
As with all pendulums, we're now again seeing the excesses of affording too much power to the presidency (firing institutional knowledge because their role/expertise isn't currently politically en vogue).
Hopefully post-Trump this will spur reinforcing and insulation of civil service expertise.
The current state of affairs is not some mere disagreement of ideology.
And always with such specious reasoning
No.
You end up balancing the current political desires of voters with institutional expertise.
Or to put it another way, would you say that "competency" is a political ideology or an objective fact?
I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position.
> Aaron Burr
I find myself more and more often in the position of having to look back many decades for precedent of things that are currently happening. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But the variance of what to expect is wider, and I think it's fair to cast out one's net of expectations wider, and possibly darker.
Burr was a complicated man, doing complicated things, in a newly defined nation that was still defining norms. His trial was no stellar example of how to find truth and remonstrate wrongdoing. And I agree, "Lying to a federal officer" is absolutely ripe for misuse. A critical component of any subjective human system is integrity and adherence to justice. I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and see it as the clear-headed and honest pursuit of justice.
I think that’s true! It’s another reason why the federal workforce has come to be dominated by one party. But both point to the same result.
> I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and see it as the clear-headed and honest pursuit of justice
It’s not. It’s tit-for-tat: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-..., https://www.npr.org/2025/08/21/g-s1-84246/civil-fraud-penalt....
I think it’s terrible to go fishing for a technical crimes with the goal of prosecuting a particular person. The criminal laws are written broadly and cannot withstand prosecutors who fit legal pieces together like a puzzle to come up with a legal theory for a prosecution (https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theo...).
So you're admitting that Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to get revenge on his opponents? How does a NY court and jury of his peers finding Trump guilty of a felony justify that?
The facts of the case have been covered at length (including by us in a detailed chronology), and the grand jury’s indictment and accompanying Statement of Facts speak for themselves. The prosecution has said that this case is not just about an affair and hush money payments, neither of which are illegal. Rather, the DA has explained the case concerns an attempt by Trump to interfere in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election outcome.[0]
The hush money arrangement with Daniels occurred just after the Access Hollywood scandal, where Trump boasted about committing sexual assaults, and was finalized on October 27, 2016, twelve days before the election. As described in the Statement of Facts, Trump initially directed Cohen to delay the payments to Daniels until after the election, “because at that point it would not matter if the story became public.” However, “with pressure mounting and the election approaching,” Trump ultimately agreed to the payoff.[0]
- Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)
- New York Election Law § 17-152
- violations of federal, local, and state tax law
> [T]he DA has explained the case concerns an attempt by Trump to interfere in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election outcome.
If the DA himself says that Trump’s crime is interfering with the 2016 election, why doesn’t the DA have to charge the law that covers that, and prove every required element of the crime under that law?
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.[0]
If so, why are you complaining about the Comey prosecution? 18 USC 1001 is extremely broadly written: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
> (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully… (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation
It basically makes any lie about “a matter within the jurisdiction … government” into a felony. No surprise that even a blue state grand jury indicted Comey for this.
> No surprise that even a blue state grand jury
Why would being in a "blue state" matter here? I don't think it's a given that grand juries are politically biased.
The highest level of economic growth (GDP), and total factor productivity growth, was between 1929 and 1973. It was also the time period when income inequality plummeted (post Gilded Age).
All three metrics have gone down hill since 1980 and the mainstreaming of neo-con economic thinking.
That's also the time period that immigration to the US was at its lowest. The Immigration Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants allowed. That law was reversed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Only 5% of the population were immigrants by the 1970 census, the lowest in US history. It's close to 15% now, a level which hasn't been reached since around 1900.
Income inequality plummeted because immigrant labor wasn't allowed to enter the US to drive down the wages of US workers.
H1B labor drives down the wages of US workers. Illegal immigrant labor drives down the wages of US workers. If you care about income inequality, then maybe consider supporting enforcing the immigration laws, and maybe consider supporting ending the H1B and other programs that drive down the wages of US workers and increase income inequality.
* https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-e...
Can you find an example of the opposite? Can you find me a California farmer who is happy with the crackdown on immigration because now his labor costs will decrease? That does not exist, for reasons of reality.
Where is the corporate support for decreased immigration if it will lower corporations labor costs?
What’s more, that time period includes recovery from the crashes of the early 30s, the massive war production of the 40s, and the massive boost that was having the rest of the world’s manufacturing and demand still in ruins in the 50s and 60s.
You could be right— but the data sure is confounded.
It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.
You pretty much have to double spend to get out. Same way ICE is handling recruitment shortfalls.
Government jobs have never had great salaries (but decent benefits) vs the private sector. You need to make those jobs actually competitive.
As a side effect, if they're to lose the next election they leave a corpse on the doorstep of the next administration. That makes it so much easier to pass on the blame.
Aligns perfectly with these people's views that a country is best led like a company not like a democracy. The realistic outcome will be formally (rather than the informal one as until now) corpocracy.
No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors. This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.
Purging your enemies from everything and instead putting your buddies (especially as dishonest and unqualified as the ones this admin brought) will fix the current "unsustainable" situation? Is it even marginally less bad? Because looking from the distance what they're doing is changing from "not great" to "awful" for democracy, and looking close up I'm sure it looks even worse.
There's not a single illegal, abusive, or plain stupid thing that this admin has done where you can't find some "silver lining" that allows you to dilute the problem and make it look like you're part of some solution. "And well, the implementation may not have been perfect but we're trying to fix things".
Nothing about this was for democracy or the country, and who those people donate do doesn't matter. Only who they don't donate to.
Any party? I'm not sure if you realize what's coming next, or if you saw the irony as you typed this. No need for more mental gymnastics rayiner.
For example: true, 99.4% of the donations from the USDA employees went to the Democratic part. 99.4% of how many donations? Less than 3,000. - Source [0] - and that's an overestimate, since that filter will include donations from 2015.
How many employees work for the USDA? About 100,000 [1].
That means that 97,000 people made no donations - to either party.
[0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
[1]
It's not a valid sample because it's not a random selection - statistical sampling isn't only about sample size.
One reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the above numbers is that the Democrats in government are less stingy about donations, or that the Republicans there don't really like the GOP and are there for the money alone.
[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/political-parties
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/donor-demogra...
I'd expect employees who have been there longer, and so are likely making more money, to be both more likely than shorter term employees to make political donations and to be likely to make bigger donations than those shorter term ones that do donate.
> The lopsided donations do not necessarily reflect how the federal workforce is voting. The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.
That went fine (in that the military did in fact follow lawful orders under Democratic presidents, not in that those orders were necessarily good). It also went fine for the civil service under Republican presidents other than Trump. There are a number of explanations for the difference in perceived (and possibly real) professionalism, which I will not try to speculate on here - but this is not a partisanship problem. It seems to be something specific to Trump-as-President.
And in comparison to previous republicans, the difference is two-fold. First, the government has been affected by the same politicization of the workplace that’s happened in corporate America over the last decade.
Second, previous republicans are aligned with neoliberal democrats on certain key cultural issues. Reagan publicly opposed affirmative action, but his government kept implementing and expanding it. Reagan and Bush supported immigration and Reagan granted amnesty. Highly educated democrats were willing to play along with certain issues, but see Trump’s issues as fundamentally moral ones. E.g. Even today, there is almost no partisan politics within the FCC. The career folks will happily go back and forth on net neutrality all day long. Nobody sees it as a moral imperative the way they see immigration.
I think the most charitable interpretation of your argument might be that people would be more inclined to ignore the rules for ideas they believe in, but my data suggests that government employees in general (and not just the military!!) tend to be rule followers. I would argue that most people’s complaints about the government historically could be summed up by this???
Trump is apparently the strong man leader with lots of support but at the same time the weakest leader who can be obstructed by smallest of opposition.
If he cannot get his most ardent detractors to support him then he is not much of a leader.
The sheer amount of complaining is grating and not even backed up with facts. It seemed you ran with the first article you found on Google and didn't read the conclusion:
> in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.
That is maybe Democract are driven more to contribute but in voting there is just 5% difference. So much for "dominated by one party".
And I'm saying this as a libertarian who shares most of those frustrations with entrenched bureaucracy - just one who has become extremely conservative now that open fascism is upon us.
If you admit that the administration is up to "ulterior motives", you have to admit that they are likely to have more than one. There's no reason to assume there's only a single one and we should disregard everything else, no matter how well supported by the facts - looking at the composition of this admin, a drive to corpocracy is a a rather well supported assumption.
On the other hand, if a re-balancing was justified or required, it wouldn't be an ulterior motive, it would be up, front and center because it helps to paint the admin in a good light. The scope and reasons for the imbalance would be widely discussed... something that isn't happening. Also, to avoid disruption, it would be done gradually and absolutely NOT under the diabolical slogan "The Government is Bad".
I think, I practically proved the point of the parent of your comment, and disproved yours.
When you instead match up personnel and voter registration records you get that about half of the federal workforce was Democrats. Republicans were around a third in the late 1990s, but fell to about a quarter by 2019.
Polls of federal workers for specific elections also suggest that it is not nearly as imbalanced as the money totals. For instance in the 2022 midterms 37% of federal workers said they were voting Democrat in Senate races and 33% said they were voting Republican. In House races it 46% voting Democrat, 35% voting Republican.
It is a pretty remarkable strategy to be able to spend decades shitting all over the federal bureaucracy as a party, obviously discouraging conservatives from joining the bureaucracy, and then using party affiliation (obviously further skewed by the fact that federal workers tend to have college degrees, tend to be more racially diverse, and tend to live in the DC metro area) to decide that the whole thing needs to be destroyed.
What happened to merit as a hiring preference?
Not really sure ANY government service runs well. There are maybe one or two but as a whole government run anything never seems to be done well or at a decent cost. Just scan the comments about the massive overspending and poor service we already get as taxpayers.
Trying to get a properly run government program or service has been going on since the country was founded.
Really? You think no government services runs well? None what so ever???
I don't think you have perspective on that. What I'm telling you is that it can be a lot worse. I don't think you realize how much less accountable any private company is and that if you are ever ruled by one you will effectively be under a very abusive dictatorship, for all intents and purposes.
Random example. Google can cut you off from everything Google related and then some (identity, data, purchases, anything external that was linked to Google identity, etc.) with no recourse or justification. How often does the Government do that to you?
It's very easy to complaint when you've never seen the worse alternatives. How many people alive in US today do you think have even lived under them?
I've called the federal government a handful of times (IRS, Savings Bonds, Social Security). The people I spoke with were knowledgeable and empowered. A bit comic promulgating bureaucracy and delays (I think I was once told something like oh your case is only 10 days late being processed so it's not a priority yet), and of course some wait on hold/callback game. But the people I would end up speaking to had my paperwork in front of them, readily answered questions in an intelligent manner, and were empowered to make binding decisions for the government.
There was none of the "your ticket is still open so the only thing I can do is add a note that you called", or "sorry you've reached the wrong department, I can transfer you" buck passing bullshit that permeates corporate phone mazes. It was actually a breath of fresh air compared to dealing with corporate banks and financial institutions (at Vanguard I was told I had reached the wrong department, transferred, and waited on hold again five times before reaching the "correct" department).
I've also represented myself on the phone to my state's tax authority, and they were eminently reasonable as well. On the scheduled phone call (with me, their agent, and his supervisor), we agreed to an amicable solution on the spot. (I had really wanted to hire an attorney but they all played the equivocation game!)
I have relatives that fled the USSR during the heights of communism. I have played soccer with guys who came from South American countries that were mired in Civil War. Two of my best friends fled South Asia during the Pol Pot regime.
Its interesting you tell me I have no perspective without even knowing who I am or what I've experienced in my life. To judge someone like this is pretty offensive.
I'm keenly aware of how dictatorships work. I've heard and seen what an abusive government is capable of. I have yet to see the abuses people I know fled from happen here in the US.
>> How often does the Government do that to you?
Your short term memory must not be very good:
"If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor."
"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
"Take this vaccine or you're going to lose your job."
"This is the govt, you need to remove posts that we don't like."
"We couldn't come to an agreement on a budget so the government is shut down until further notice."
https://mailomg.com/2025/09/17/opinion-the-good-the-bad-and-...
With a second attempt to rectify PAEA’s errors, Congress successfully granted a financial reform of $57 billion dollars through the Postal Service Reform Act in FY 2022. Soon after, Postmaster General DeJoy announced his “Delivering for America Plan” (DFA)
Delivery performance suffered as well, as the new consolidated facilities far underperformed the prior structure, leading to enormous cost overruns and overtime. The infrastructure for new EV delivery vehicles simply did not exist, and the selected manufacturer fell behind implementation times as each facility needed to be retrofitted for EV charging.
Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the kind of consumer-facing services that people think of when they think "government". More than half of all federal employees comprise: the Defense departments (Army, Navy, DoD, etc.), the Department of Homeland Security and the VA [3].
The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.
To be clear, this is not the right way to reduce the size of the federal government, but I'm not "terrified" of losing 100k employees in a government of this size. We need more cutting, not less.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
That's less than it seems though, given that the US population has grown with over 0.7% per year for most of those years.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
So what? Why does government have to grow proportionally with the size of the population? This is not a given in any other organization.
Private organizations have profit constraints, and they're constantly striving to become more efficient, cut what doesn't work, and so on. Government has no such constraint.
The fact that the same order of magnitude number of people can administer an entire country as the number of people that it takes to administer a bunch of stores is actually remarkable.
Government does have a constraint like that - it has to remain solvent. A government as powerful as the United States has many tricks it can use to do that, but at some point even it cannot do anything it wants.
It does not, and did not:
Arguing that it historically has not done so only makes my point. Nor is it an argument that government should not be smaller today.
> The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.
Most of the budget increase (~80-85% depending on whose projections you look at) comes from entitlements (social security, medicare/medicaid) and interest payments on the federal debt rather than any new spending. Of course interest payments are caused by past irresponsible spending, but it's hard to avoid debt if whenever the "party of fiscal responsibility" is in power, it does loud and flashy budget cuts that don't meaningfully reduce federal spending, followed by massive tax cuts to juice the economy. This is basically the equivalent of quitting your job and buying a ton of stuff on a credit card because you won $1000 on a scratch-off.
Again, so what? The entire premise that government should scale with population is questionable. These comparisons with US population are facile.
Again, most of the employees are with Defense, VA and Homeland Security, none of which "should" scale with US population. I could go down the list and identify many other areas that likewise do not obviously scale with population (e.g. Agriculture, Interior, State, NASA, etc.) but this entire line of argument is pedantic. It's obvious to anyone who has dealt with the government that it is a bloated bureaucracy.
We completely agree that the budget problem is, at root, entitlements, but that doesn't mean that the government workforce is anywhere near an optimal level. I remain unterrified of a cut to 100,000 workers.
Well, yes. That's what the DRP was, they were put on administrative leave through 30 September. It's kind of hard to work when you're on admin leave. Are you surprised by the fact that this group of DRP folks are resigning on 30 Sept when that was the agreement they signed under the DRP? Did you expect something else?
The same goes for the other DOGE employment initiative of firing probationary employees. These are mostly either people you have just hired or those that have been promoted. Of course, these are the employees you would most want to keep.
Since Reagan, the Republican party's stance has always been that government can't do anything right, so we should get rid of as much of it as possible, and every time Republicans have had the power to do so, they've sabotaged various agencies, then pointed to the inevitable problems that arise as proof of their claim.
An example of this was decommissioning mail sorting machines during Trump's first term, resulting in mail delays.
If you get rid of the most competent government workers, then obviously, government services will function less effectively, which will serve to bolster claims that those services simply don't work and should be shuttered anyway.
So they're getting out because "it's time I guess. Not much else I can do."
It perhaps says a lot about the current situation in academia in the US that they had to go _outside the US_ (albeit to an American working outside the US) for comment.
As for motive, it's a way for the Trump admin to clear out the federal workforce and install loyalists to make it easier for him to carry out his agenda.
> The resignations—which come as part of a program drawn up by President Donald Trump at the start of his second administration—will happen on Tuesday as Congress is facing a deadline on the same day to authorize more funding or risk a government shutdown.
> If there is no deal, the White House has ordered federal agencies to make plans for the large-scale redundancies.
Genuine question, because I don't know the answer. Was it actually voluntary at the time?
Source: Federal workers I know personally, and numerous public statements from DOGE officials and cabinet secretaries when this offer was made.
> “The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the official said.
- https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/trump-administration...
Flagged as misleading/inflammatory. Most of the comments here are probably bots.