Millions of federal workers face deadline today over whether to resign. Here’s what to know.

More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight Eastern time on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a “deferred resignation” offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.

That decision, one affecting the careers and livelihoods of Americans around the U.S., is fraught, employment attorneys and government watchdogs said. The offer, from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), includes a number of provisions that are unclear and not guaranteed, posing financial and professional risks while leaving workers in danger of not getting what they signed up for, experts told CBS MoneyWatch

The Trump administration also may lack authority to extend such a deal, and as such the deferred resignation allegedly breaks numerous laws, a Feb. 4 lawsuit filed by several federal employee unions alleges. The plaintiffs in that suit are asking a court to block the government’s offer, which they describe as “arbitrary, capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a 1946 law governing how federal agencies implement regulations. 

The deferred resignation offer is the brainchild of the second Trump administration, which has ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a week while directing government agencies to end remote work arrangements. The White House expects to persuade up to roughly 10% of the federal civilian workforce to resign, saving $100 billion a year in costs. 

So far, about 40,000 federal workers have accepted the deal, or some 2% of the federal workforce, according to a CBS News source familiar with the matter, although that number could rise as the deadline nears.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Jan. 28 described the offer as aimed at “making our government efficient and productive again.”

“If [federal workers] don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of eight months,” she said.

Risks to workers

OPM’s offer includes many gray areas that could present pitfalls to employees who accept it, experts said. 

“There is a risk for employees to take this without knowing what would happen down the line,” said Ryan Nerney, managing partner at law firm Tully Rinckey and an expert on federal employment law. “If you decide to take this, and let’s say there’s a reduction in force and your job is eliminated, there is no guidance on what would happen in a circumstance like that. Would you still get paid through Sept. 30?”

The agency’s email lacks specifics and guarantees about the offer, adding to government workers’ confusion, Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told CBS MoneyWatch.

“It’s very confusing — it says you won’t have to do your position duties anymore, but there is a caveat that says if they need you, you have to keep doing that,” Greenwald said, referring to the resignation letter that says employees aren’t expected to work except in “rare circumstances.” 

Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” 

Federal workers received the Trump administration’s offer in an email last month entitled “A Fork in the Road,” mirroring the subject line of a 2022 message sent by billionaire Elon Musk to employees at Twitter, the social media platform he bought in October 2022 and later renamed X.

Like Twitter’s earlier deal, OPM’s offer includes a demand that federal workers make a decision by a specific date. In his 2022 email, Musk told Twitter employees they had one day to decide to either agree to work in a “hardcore” style or quit and get three months of severance.

Musk is spearheading the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force tasked by President Trump with slashing federal costs. The Tesla CEO has touted the government’s deferred resignation offer on X, claiming that employees who accept it can do “whatever you like, including obtaining a new job” while receiving government pay and benefits through September. 

Although that could strike some workers like a good deal, the unions’ lawsuit claims OPM may not have the financial authority to make that offer. For instance, the agency’s email states it will pay workers who agree to resign by Feb. 6 through Sept. 30, but funding for most federal agencies expires on March 14.

That indicates the Trump administration is planning to spend money “before an appropriation is authorized,” the suit claims. If so, that could violate The Antideficiency Act, a law that prohibits federal agencies from spending above their appropriated levels, the complaint alleges. 

The deferred resignation offer allegedly also violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the lawsuit claims. That law says courts can find government agency actions to be unlawful if they are “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

It’s also not clear what could happen to federal workers who accept the offer if it is then found to be illegal by the courts, said Robert Weissman, co-president of government watchdog group Public Citizen. “I could imagine going back to work and being told you did not work, and we’re not going to pay you for an illegal program,” he said.

Government employees should “be skeptical about what is actually going to be delivered through this offer,” Weissman added.

Impact on federal services?

The offer also fails to consider the impact of widespread resignations on the government’s ability to provide services to Americans, the union suit alleges. Twitter (now X) suffered from a number of issues after Musk cut the majority of its workforce, including a decline in advertisers and sharp drop in its valuation, the complaint states.

A sweeping job-cutting measure could cause chaos if government agencies lacked enough staff to handle some services such as tax refund processing, Social Security verification, or providing health care through Medicaid and Medicare, experts say.

“There is no 10% across-the-board slush fund of employees that [the public] would not feel any harm by this,” Greenwald said. “The federal government is not Twitter — it is funded by Congress and budgeted by that process, and it is set to uphold the laws that Congress has passed.”

Federal employee unions are also chafing at the OPM’s nine-day window for workers to make a decision, with the lawsuit calling it “an arbitrary date … selected to put maximum pressure on the federal workforce so that they would accept the offer, in many cases contrary to federal agency and federal employee interests.”

Giving federal employees just over a week to make a weighty career decision is a departure from previous voluntary resignation offers, with buyouts in the Clinton administration providing one year for workers to accept a deal, the lawsuit points out. 

Still, despite the unknowns in OPM’s offer, it might make sense for some government workers, such as people who were already planning to retire soon, Nerney said.