The illegal buyout fiasco
According to 2024 data, 375,000 federal employees, not counting the armed services or the Postal Service, live in the Washington, DC, northern Virginia, and southern Maryland area. They make up sixteen percent of the total federal workforce. Of that group, 200,000 live in DC.
Of the top-level managerial and supervisory federal workforce — at the GS13, 14, and 15 levels, all making over $100,000 per year — 40% work in DC.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has taken over the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), according to reporting in Wired, sent an employment buyout offer in an email to all federal service civilian employees two weeks ago with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” It gave federal employees just nine days to decide their fates. They could either accept the buyout with a promise of seven months severance through September, or risk immediate layoffs.
The Musk/Trump buyout plan aims to reduce the federal workforce by at least 10%. If this were to occur, 37,500 employees in the nation’s capital would be out of a job. This would be more than 1% of the entire three-state population.
Nationally, if Trump and Musk reach their goal, the federal workforce would be reduced by about 230,000 people. But yesterday, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, for the second time, threw sand in the gears of the plan. His order puts the plan on hold again “until further order of the Court.”
Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen shows how the the DOGE, excuse me, make that OPM, email paints a miserable future for employees who refuse the buyout offer.
The Trump administration is requiring a return to the office, and stripping thousands of employees in policymaking roles of civil service protections. Because of expected divestitures of physical office space, many workers would have to relocate into new offices or maybe even new cities. Because of promised reductions in force, many workers who choose to stay could be furloughed anyway: “At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency,” the email reads. Moreover, there are statements about higher performance standards and an emphasis on being “loyal” and “trustworthy.”
Putting aside the possible consequences of what the loss of 37,500 jobs in DC and another 230,000 around the country might do to governmental functioning, just for a moment imagine the effect such a loss might have on our economy, not to mention the lives of the workers cast out into the darkness.
This becomes even more sobering when one considers that neither Trump nor Musk seems to have any kind of a plan for what happens to those folks on the day after.
Finally, it does not appear any of this is legal, not even a little bit. According to the Constitution, Congress establishes funding, and it has set not a penny aside for any of this. In fact, the OPM website clearly states that the limit for incentive packages for voluntary resignations is $25,000, far less than seven months’ pay for the average federal worker.
The freeze that isn’t
Immediately after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Office of Personnel and Management issued an order appearing to halt all federal grant spending. That order was rescinded amid a political backlash, and a federal court blocked a broader funding aid freeze, too.
In a five-page ruling yesterday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell, Chief Judge of the Rhode Island District Court, said the administration is violating the “plain text” of his initial restraining order.
Judge McConnell issued his ruling after reviewing complaints from several Democratic state attorneys general that the Trump administration has continued to withhold funds anyway.
The continued violations of the restraining order are manifesting in several areas, such as the Department of Agricultural, where farmers have had funds for energy improvements cut off. Also, the National Institutes of Health has slashed billions of dollars in “indirect” costs for biomedical research, funding which was to go to studies into disease prevention and treatment. Last night, another federal judge, this one from Massachusetts, blocked the halt in biotech spending hours after it went into effect.
This could become even more serious, because it is setting up a war between the Judiciary and Executive branches. One need only consider Vice President JD Vance’s reaction to US district court judge Paul Engelmayer’s injunction stopping Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing the treasury department’s central payment system in search of supposed corruption and waste.
Following Engelmayer’s ruling, Vance wrote that judges “aren’t allowed” to control the president’s “legitimate power.”
“If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
But this is simply not true, and JD Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, should, and does, know better. In fact, Article III of the US constitution confers a power known as judicial review, which gives federal judges the authority to rule on cases involving the president, as well as other branches of government.
My friends, we are entering a constitutional crisis, and the sooner everyday citizens and members of Congress recognize it for what it is, the better.
So, who’s in Musk’s Mafia?
The oldest person in Elon Musk DOGE rat-pack is reported to be 25 years old; the youngest, 19.
The 19-year-old goes by the online soubriquet, “Big Balls.” If you can believe it, Big Balls has reportedly been appointed senior adviser both at the State Department and at the Department of Homeland Security, raising concerns among diplomats and others about his potential access to sensitive information. He also works out of the Office of Management and Budget. The young man gets around.
Big Balls has a real name, and it is Edward Coristine. Coristine briefly worked for Musk’s brain chip start-up Neuralink and must have distinguished himself to the boss, because he’s now wormed his way into the sinews and synapses of government.
Coristine was fired from an internship at Path Network, Bloomberg News reports, because of leaking information to a competitor.
Former FBI agent EJ Hilbert told Wired last Thursday: “If I was doing the background investigation on him, I would probably have recommended against hiring him for the work he’s doing.”
“Probably?”
The oldest member of Musk’s DOGE team, 25-year-old Marko Elez, resigned last week after a report from the Wall Street Journal linked him to a now-deleted social media account that shared racist content and advocated for eugenics.
According to the Journal’s review of archived social media posts, Elez posted on X in July: “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”
The account also reportedly shared a post calling to normalize “Indian hate,” suggested Gaza and Israel be “wiped off the face of the Earth,” and said: “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Following the Elez resignation, JD Vance urged Musk to rehire him, saying, “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”
Musk then polled his Twitter followers on rehiring Elez, which seems to me a rather interesting, if weird, way to make personnel decisions. At any rate, Must rehired Elez last Friday despite his social media baggage.
If it weren’t so serious, one could be forgiven for thinking Musk’s DOGE adventure looks like a frat house project gone wrong.
Final thought
Some important questions facing America are: What will the Trump Administration do in the face of the Judiciary getting in its way? What will happen if the answer is: Ignore the rulings. In that case, what will all those judges do? Issue Contempt of Court rulings? Try to have somebody arrested?
What?
And what happens after that, whatever “that” is?
We’re about to discover whether Donald Trump has made the Constitution irrelevant. If so, it only took him three weeks to do it.
