King Musk’s Government Purge Hits a Snag
It is now clear beyond any question that Elon Musk is de facto president of the United States—indeed, not just that, but a ruler who is exercising more power than any president in American history. Central to his effort to consolidate that power further is his ongoing plot to purge the federal bureaucracy and replace anyone not loyal to himself with toadies and cronies, much like how Stalin cemented his dictatorship over the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
The plan follows how Musk ruined Twitter: He is offering a so-called buyout to most government employees, attempting to convince them to leave with a big cash bribe—but with a tight deadline. A recent email to a federal employee provided to the Prospect outlines the details. The “deferred resignation offer—which allows eligible employees to keep their government pay and benefits through September 30, 2025, without any expectation of performing work—expires on February 6, 2025,” it reads. Even CIA employees have received this offer, after Musk initially exempted national-security positions.
Unfortunately for the would-be dictator, almost no one is taking him up on the offer. About 20,000 have accepted the buyout, according to Axios, which amounts to 1 percent of the federal government, many multiples less than normal annual turnover. So to sweeten the pot, The Washington Post reports, Musk cronies are threatening mass layoffs, and the recent destruction of USAID and other purges across the government provide plenty of evidence that they’re serious about it. But four federal labor unions have filed a lawsuit seeking to block Musk’s deferred resignation plan.
The reasons for suspicion among federal workers are obvious. Most immediately, as the National Labor Relations Board Union points out on Bluesky, there is no legal basis for such a buyout, and its promises violate several regulations. One section, for instance, says that employees can seek outside employment before they officially leave work, but this poses obvious potential violations of conflict-of-interest rules. Anyone attempting to get such a job would run considerable legal risk.
More practically, with no legal basis for the agreement, there is no guarantee that the promised wages will actually be paid. Musk, like Donald Trump, is notorious for stiffing people on contracts; last year, he was hit with a $128 million class action lawsuit over alleged failure to pay severance to former Twitter executives. Even if the contract were legal, there is every chance that Musk would break his word and refuse to pay. Indeed, right now Musk (in another repeat of his Twitter takeover shenanigans) is reportedly considering abrogating all federal leases under the General Services Administration. Another Musk crony is fiddling with the highly delicate federal payments system, which disburses about $5 trillion annually, in a possible effort to set up some way to block payments to politically disfavored groups.
Such suspicion is only strengthened by the wording of the buyout agreement, which not only seems to contradict itself, but also contains a stipulation that appears to block workers from legal action if the government violates its own agreement. The description of the agreement states that “pay will be protected even if there is a lapse in appropriations,” but later that the administrative leave it describes will be subject “to the availability of appropriations.” Well, which is it? That’s not a rhetorical question, since current appropriations run out on March 14, even as this agreement purports to pay people out through September 30.
Later, it states that an employee taking the agreement “forever waives … any action against [the agency] that is based on, arising from, or related to Employee’s employment at [the agency] of the deferred resignation offer.” It further requires that an “Employee similarly waives any claim that could be brought on Employee’s behalf by another entity, including Employee’s labor union.” As the NLRB Union concludes: “Essentially, it would be nearly impossible to enforce this contract against the Agency in the event of a breach or violation of its terms by the federal government.”
More broadly, as my colleague David Dayen points out, the entire buyout idea flagrantly violates both federal employment law and the union agreements at federal agencies. There are elaborate rules about hiring and firing federal workers having to do with position, seniority, ethics, political influence, and so forth. This isn’t like some Silicon Valley startup where workers can be fired en masse on a whim. One of the reasons federal workers—who are generally highly educated and skilled, and could probably get more money in the private sector if they wished—take these positions is job security. Musk is trying to burn that promise to the ground.
In short, you’d be a fool to take this deal. It’s both wildly illegal and almost certainly a lie.
All this is why the unions have filed their lawsuit. Musk’s “buyout” offer is so wildly at odds with federal law and regulations that any honest judge would rule in their favor practically automatically. Whether the Trump appointees filling the Supreme Court will do so, of course, is another question.
Finally, it is clear to many in the federal workforce that they are the targets of an authoritarian attempt to abolish democracy and the Constitution. Federal workers, in addition to their numerous ethics and security requirements, are required to swear an oath to the Constitution—something neither Musk nor any of his goons have done. Likely Musk could have eased current workers out over time and gradually built up his own cadres without such a dispute, but being so aggressive in a baldly illegal manner will only inspire backlash. In fact, civil servants are organizing against the buyout, starting with a memo making many of the points in this article.
Who knows where this will all end. But this is where we are as a country: An unelected foreign billionaire who bought the presidency wholesale is attempting to make himself emperor of the United States by turning the federal government into his own personal plaything.
Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of ‘How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics.’ He was previously a national correspondent for The Week.
Used with the permission © The American Prospect, Prospect.org, 2025. All rights reserved.
Read the original article at Prospect.org: https://prospect.org/labor/2025-02-05-king-musks-government-purge-hits-…
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