With the painful layoffs in advance, the agencies push the incentives to stop

Federal agencies have accelerated their efforts to cut thousands of jobs, offering acquisitions and eliminating entire offices as the deadline of the Trump administration to resize the approaches.

At least six federal agencies have extended in the last few days an offer of “deferred resignation” which has been originally launched to the government’s employees in January as one -off opportunity that would allow employees to resign but continues to be paid for a period of time.

The last offer was sent to employees of the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Housing and Urban Development e Transportas well as the administration of the general services, according to the e -mails received by the workers of these agencies examined by the New York Times.

The employees of these agencies must make their decisions between Monday 7 April and 11 April, depending on the agency, said and -mail.

President Trump and his best councilor in downsizing the government, Elon Musk, ordered almost all agencies to reduce staff in a greenhouse deadline to revisit the government, partly eliminating the programs that the president considers ideologically questionable. Mr. Musk and his government efficiency department promised significant savings to American taxpayers, however, wages and benefits for the federal workforce It is equivalent to only 4.3 percent of the federal budget of $ 6.3 trillion, according to the Congress’ budget office.

Mr. Trump gave Mr. Musk wide latitude to make the change, allowing him to effectively close the agencies.

Yes, tens of thousands of workers have been fired or taken a previous acquisition offer. And the agencies said that even more layoffs must come. Two federal offices, management and management of the budget and staff, have ordered agencies to produce detailed plans for what is called a “reduction in force” by April 14.

On Tuesday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services fired thousands of workers, in some cases eliminating entire departments, as part of this plan. Last week, the Department announced that it would submit 10,000 employees. For some, the news came when they arrived in the office and their building badges no longer worked.

Senior managers and scientists were also fired, leaving external experts and former dismayed officials of what they said was an immeasurable loss of competence.

The reductions in force have specific steps that if not followed could open the administration a additional legal challenges In addition to over 200 cases, he is already fighting.

The agencies that moved to reopen a voluntary resignation program have noticed in the E -mail to employees who were trying to offer workers more opportunities to leave so less that they should have been fired.

Trump said he feels bad that so many federal workers are losing his job, but he insisted without evidence that many people on the government payroll “do not work at all”. Administration officials, including the Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., insisted on the fact that the reductions will save the huge sums of money to taxpayers.

Max Stier, the president of the partnership for Public Service, a non -profit organization that promotes the best practices in the government, has doubted the reasoning of the administration, underlining that the savings that could derive from the work cuts are equivalent to a fraction of the overall expenditure of the government.

At the Health Department, for example, less than 1 percent of his expense goes to the staff.

“There is no strategy here,” Sterier said. “What we are looking at is a devaluation of competence, and this is a profound error.”

In a serious blow, the Health Department has cut entire offices, including those who study environmental diseases and problems, a Research program on vaccines Aimed at preventing the next pandemic and veterinarians who guide the agency’s response to avian influence. Some senior leaders have been reassigned to the Indian health service, a division with offices in much more remote parts than the country than the Washington region, DC.

While the health employees comforted each other through tears on Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy published a video On social media that have shown him to cure in two new agency heads. “The revolution begins today,” he said.

Federal fires started immediately after Trump returned to the Oval Office, at the beginning of people who had been taken in positions designated on diversity, equity and inclusion in a push to eliminate all these programs throughout the government. But those cuts were nothing compared to what was supposed to come.

In January, millions of federal employees were offered a sort of acquisition In one and -mail with the “Fork in the road” object. The message came from the office for personnel management, the government’s arm of the government, who had not sent the government employees to this year. The E -mail reflected a Mr. Musk sent to Twitter employees after purchasing the social media platform, which is now called X.

About 75,000 people took the first offer, according to the office. Those who accepted him was said to respond to -mail with the word “resign” in the line of the object.

In February, the office for the management of the staff ordered the agencies to shoot thousands of supervised employees – workers who were in their position for less than a year or two years and were missing from the protections of the civil service of those who had been in their work longer. The challenges of the court led to the restoration of most of the workers of supervised freedom, although many are in limbo on administrative leave and expect to be fired again in the next phase of the layoffs now in progress.

The latest offer of deferred resignation was sent to employees directly by their individual agencies, rather than the office management office.

In some of the new offers, employees have been told that another e -mail from their human resources division to guide them can be expected through the process of acceptance of the offer.

The transport department told employees that if they had accepted the offer, they would not have been subjected to an “involuntary separation, as a reduction in force”.

In recent weeks, some agencies have encouraged employees to retire or retire early, with the aim of having to shoot less people.

“It is the goal of the DOD to avoid involuntary reductions widespread in force,” wrote Zev Goldrich, head of civil staff policy at the Defense Department, in a note in mid -March to employees. Then March 29thPete Hegseth, the defense secretary, offered another lap of deferred resignation.

When The offer of original deferred resignation Arrived, many considered him as a front assault on federal bureaucracy. However, some employees who have not accepted him at the moment expressed regret.

This is the case of a high official at the National Security Department which has recently been put on administrative leave as part of the working cuts that Enthralized three of its guard agencies last month. The official said that in hindsight he wanted to have accepted the offer.

Initially, the employee said, he was skeptical about the fact that the offer was real and if the new administration would honor the agreement and paid it. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of punishment while he is still on the agency’s payroll.

In addition to the offers of fires and resignation, Mr. Trump asked for January 20 for a Back to the In-Government Office Work. He said the order will probably lead to resign rather than to improve their daily routines. “And therefore our government will become smaller and efficient,” Trump said on January 29th.

The constant threat of being fired weighs heavily on many federal employees. And other taped orders of the Mr. Musk team led federal workers to look for tasks completed outside the descriptions of the work, such as cleaning the bathrooms. Consequently, the workers described a decrease in productivity.

The latest offer of deferred resignation will be added only to chaos, said Stern.

“He will worsen more and more,” he said.

Brad Plume, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sarah Kliff AND Madeleine NGO Contributed relationships.