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U.S. President Donald President Trump speaks after it was announced Bahrain has joined the United Arab Emirates in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel during a brief appearance in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 11, 2020.
DOGE deal and funding deadlines create chaos in Washington
Thursday is the deadline for federal employees to accept the Trump administration’s offer of eight months of pay and benefits in exchange for abandoning their posts. As of Wednesday, more than 40,000 employees, less than 2% of the federal workforce, had reportedly accepted the buyout.
The offer has pitted the Office of Personnel Management – which is working in conjunction with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency – against unions and lawmakers who are advising people against taking the offer, citing its vagueness, that it waives employees rights to challenge the terms of the deal in the future, and questions about where the money for a new, expensive buyout program will come from – especially since the government is only funded through mid-March.
And the budget battles are already heating up. The odds that the government shuts down on March 14 are high, as neither side has yet to even agree on what the top-line budget 2025 amount should be. Republicans disagree on the size and scope of Trump’s ambitious demands for cuts, and razor-thin margins in the House mean they can’t afford any defections. Just last week, they had to table a preliminary vote on advancing Trump’s agenda over disagreements about how much spending could be cut.
Meanwhile, any budget bill will need to be bipartisan to pass the Senate (the partisan breakdown is 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two independents who normally caucus with the Dems, and 60 votes are required). Democrats, who are outraged over Trump’s efforts to freeze funding that was previously allocated by Congress, want to use the deadline to push back on Trump's agenda.A view of the USAID building in Washington, DC, on Feb. 1, 2025.
Musk says USAID is being shut down
The website for the US Agency for International Development, aka USAID, went dark without explanation Saturday following President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid and a cryptic post on X by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Watch USAID tonight,” he wrote Friday.
Democrats have been warning that Trump was planning to dismantle USAID and fold it into the State Department — a move they say he lacks the legal authority to make. Murphy called it an attempt to “steal taxpayers’ money to enrich [Trump’s] billionaire cabal,” including Tesla CEO and presidential advisor Elon Musk, who has referred to USAID’s potential dissolution as “efficiency.”
Early Monday, Musk announced on his social media site X that he and Trump were shutting down USAID. The White House has not yet responded, and it remains unclear whether Musk or Trump have the legal authority to take such a step.
The funding freeze has halted billions in US-funded humanitarian, security, and development programs around the world. Hundreds of USAID employees and contractors have been furloughed or put on paid leave, and thousands more jobs are at risk.
DOGE data dump? On Sunday, meanwhile, it was reported that the Trump administration has given Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payments system, which oversees the disbursement of trillions of dollars in government funds, including social security and welfare payments. The system also contains the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans, raising concerns about potential misuse of the data.Elon Musk departs the office of Senate Minority Whip and incoming Senate Republican Leader-elect John Thune (R-SD) after a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. December 5, 2024.
GZERO Explains: How will DOGE work?
How will it work? The executive order requires every federal agency to hire at least four DOGE employees – a team lead, engineer, human resources specialist, and attorney – to identify potential spending, regulations, or jobs that can be slashed. Musk has said he aims to cut $2 trillion from the $6.75 trillion federal budget. How it will determine what can be cut has not been made public.
Can DOGE actually fire people? Right now, DOGE appears likely to operate in an advisory capacity to the White House, making recommendations to the Trump administration on where cuts might be made. When Trump implemented a hiring freeze on Jan. 20, he ordered the Office of Personnel and Management to work with DOGE to reduce the size of the government. Then, on Jan. 21, 2025, Trump reinstated Schedule F – a policy he tried to implement during his first term, only to see it rescinded by Joe Biden — reclassifying some policy-level federal employees as “at-will” employees. This strips them of some protections and makes it easier for Trump and his appointees to dismiss them.
Since then, anonymous reports from OPM employees claim that the agency is reporting to and issuing communications from DOGE staffers, making it appear that the two offices are working closely to reduce the number of federal employees.
Why does it matter? DOGE wants to modernize, and minimize, the federal government, which employed 2,260,ooo civilian employees as of 2023. However, it is expected to face backlash from judges, unions, federal employees, and the beneficiaries of services or agencies that are sent to the chopping block.
Then-President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, in November 2024.
GZERO Explains: You’re Fired! “The Apprentice” comes to Washington
It’s not a reality TV show, but it sure feels like one. On Tuesday, the US government kickstarted a plan to slash the public service by offering a “deferred resignation program” to approximately two million civilian full-time federal employees. The offer came in the form of an email from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, with the subject line, “A Fork in the Road,” similar to one sent by X CEO Elon Musk to Twitter employees after he acquired the company in 2022. Musk was behind the effort, which reportedly blindsided some of President Donald Trump's advisers and budget officials.
What’s the deal? Employees who choose to resign by Feb. 6 would receive eight months of salary and benefits, remaining on the payroll until Sept. 30, possibly with reduced or eliminated responsibilities, and without having to work in person. Recipients were asked to respond to a government email address and type the word “Resign” if they accepted. They were also told that if they did not quit, there was no guarantee their job might not be eliminated in the future.
Who’s in the crosshairs? The OPM said the offer was available to “all full-time federal employees,” apart from those working in the post office, military, or on immigration or national security.
Why is this happening? During his campaign, Trump promised to radically cut the size of government and appointed Musk to head the Department for Government Efficiency. But Trump is also seeking to root out the “deep state” and remove opponents to his agenda within the civil service. The American Federation of Government Employees says the program pressures employees perceived as disloyal to leave.
In that vein, Trump also signed an executive order on his first day entitled “Schedule Career/Policy,” which reclassifies thousands of civil servants as political appointees, removing job security and making it easier to hire and fire them. Trump signed a similar order, Schedule F, late in his first term, but it was rescinded by Joe Biden when the former president took office.
Can Trump (or Musk) do this? As president, Trump has the authority to propose and implement workforce restructuring within the federal government. However, his actions must comply with federal laws and regulations. That includes standards enforced by the US Merit Systems Protection Board, which require managers to justify disciplinary actions like firings and give employees the right to respond before any action is taken.
But aren’t these “voluntary” resignations? The government is framing them this way and has various tools available. These include:
- Voluntary Early Retirement Authority: This allows employees to retire before meeting the standard age and service requirements, and is usually used during restructuring or downsizing, such as when an agency is eliminated.
- Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments: This policy offers lump-sum payments to incentivize employees to voluntarily “separate” from the civil service via resignation or retirement. Trump’s current “deferred resignation program” appears to be a form of VSIP, albeit with a twist, in that employees may not have to have to perform their duties.
This led Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to call the offer a trick, claiming the president would “stiff” workers. “The president has no authority to make that offer,” Kaine said. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work.”
That concern is echoed by researcher Natasha Gaither of Eurasia Group, “The offer is structured in such a way that it will probably withstand legal scrutiny, as it purports to make use of the funds that would otherwise go to paying workers' salaries,” she says. But, she adds, “this arrangement relies on the tacit assumption that Congress will appropriate funds to cover all the currently eligible federal workers when the continuing resolution expires in March.”
“Basically, federal workers who take the buyout now will be placing their faith in GOP congressmen (and the Trump administration) that they will continue to receive deposits through September.”
What could the impact be? That depends on who accepts the offer. The broad range of employees affected means that anyone – from food inspectors to frontline health workers – could stop work and stay home, potentially impacting thousands of departments and services. For example, if statisticians at the FDA who oversee clinical trials quit, there would likely be an immediate slowdown in drug approvals. Losing medical staff at Veterans Affairs would undermine the functioning of hospitals and clinics and possibly force veterans to turn elsewhere.
One senior administration official estimated that 5-10% of federal workers might resign, saving the government $100 billion – but punching a big hole in the capacity of the civil service at the same time.