By Tim Reid and Nate Raymond
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge will consider on Monday the fate of President Donald Trump’s buyout offer to two million federal workers as Trump presses ahead with an unprecedented effort to dismantle government agencies and downsize the federal workforce.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by federal workers’ unions which claim the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to government civilian employees is illegal because the U.S. Congress has not approved funding for the scheme.
Trump has tasked Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, with overseeing the purge of employees through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The actions of DOGE, which is not a government department, have sown panic in Washington and triggered public protests and a flood of calls from angry voters to Congress worried about the access Musk’s team has been given to sensitive information in government computer systems that contain data on government payments to Americans and personal details of federal workers.
Musk aides have taken senior positions at key government agencies while the billionaire has pushed for the dismantling of others, including USAID, America’s humanitarian and development aid agency, and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog set up in 2010 after the global financial crisis.
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON NEXT
Opposition Democrats and federal employee unions have decried the power Trump has bestowed on South African-born Musk, who appears largely unaccountable except to Trump himself. Trump says Musk does not operate unilaterally but only with his blessing.
Musk and his team of young staff appear to be far exceeding the mandate given to them by an executive order Trump signed when he took office on January 20, in which DOGE was asked to provide recommendations on how to modernize technology used by the federal government.
Last week Judge O’Toole temporarily paused the Thursday deadline for workers to accept Trump’s buyout plan, which offers employees pay through September if they resign now.
While unions have urged members not to accept the offer, saying the Trump administration cannot be trusted to honor it, more than 65,000 government employees have so far opted to take it as of Friday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify that number, which does not include a breakdown of workers from each agency.
O’Toole could decide on another temporary pause to the program, bar it outright, or allow it to proceed.
A CFPB employee sounded downbeat on Sunday, saying even if the judge blocks the buyout program, he and fellow staff believe they will likely lose their jobs anyway.
Russell Vought, Trump’s new acting director of the CFPB, sent an email to workers on Saturday night ordering them to cease virtually all work. On Sunday, workers received another email telling them the agency would be closed for a week starting on Monday.
A labor union that represents CFPB workers filed a lawsuit late on Sunday to block Vought’s actions, arguing that he was violating Congress’ authority to set and fund the agency’s mission.
The agency regulates consumer financial products and has long incurred the ire of conservatives, who view its existence as government overreach.
On Friday, the same day his staff were reported to have entered the agency, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X, his social media platform.
Trump said on Sunday he expected Musk to find billions of dollars of waste in military spending once he instructs the billionaire to turn his sights on the Pentagon.
The aggressive moves by Trump and Musk are bringing new lawsuits on an almost daily basis.
An effort to hollow out USAID is partially on hold after a judge’s ruling, and Trump’s effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal loans, grants and other financial assistance has also been paused in a separate case.
On Saturday a judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments at the Treasury Department.
(Reporting by Tim Reid in Washington; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond, Andy Sullivan and David Shepardson, Editing by Ross Colvin, Andrea Ricci and Richard Chang)
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