Tim Kaine Warns Federal Workers to Beware of Trump “Buyout” Offer

Tim Kaine has a warning for any federal workers considering Trump’s buyout offer: It’s a scam.

The president announced on Tuesday that federal workers must return to the office full-time, or they can resign by next week with a buyout and severance pay through September 30. This is part of his effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in his own image, and with his own supporters.

“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the email read.

Aside from angering federal workers, the buyout raised immediate red flags for Democrats, and Senator Kaine particularly.

“The federal employees received an interesting email at the end of the day today,” Kaine said on Tuesday, referring to the buyout email. “So tender your resignation, and then boy it’s just gonna be a gravy train, you’re just gonna get paid for seven months without working. The president has no authority to make that offer!

“There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,” Kaine continued. “My message to federal employees who received this is: Yeah, the president has tried to terrorize you for about a week, and then gives you a little sweetheart offer if you resign in the next week.… Don’t be fooled! He’s tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.… That promise is worth nothing.”

Some federal workers seem to be heeding Kaine’s warning.

“You can’t buy me off, scare me away, or intimidate me into resigning. I’m angry, spiteful, and resolute in holding the line and outlasting anyone trying to destroy the agency whose work I believe in and a mission I take to heart,” said one user in the popular r/fednews subreddit.

Donald Trump’s petty crusade for revenge continues: General Mark Milley will be the next of the president’s former advisers to lose his security detail.

Fox News reported Tuesday that according to multiple senior officials, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will announce that he is “immediately pulling” Milley’s security clearance and personal security detail.

Hegseth will also direct the inspector general to determine whether Milley should be stripped of a star in retirement for undermining the chain of command.

Milley refused Trump’s orders in 2020 to send the military to crush protesters in Washington in the wake of George Floyd’s death. He has also described Trump as a “fascist” and a “wannabe dictator.”

Ever since entering the White House, it seems Trump just can’t stop thinking about the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Within minutes of being sworn in, Milley’s portrait was stripped from the wall of the Pentagon. Last week, Trump posted that his presidential personnel office was “actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration,” including Milley, whom he listed by name.

Trump has already pulled the security details for some of his other former colleagues turned political adversaries, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo. Each one has publicly criticized Trump, and the latter two had their security details removed despite warnings from the Biden administration that they were still receiving threats from foreign adversaries.

Tulsi Gabbard is facing more scrutiny over her foreign travels, specifically a trip she made to the Middle East while a member of Congress.

In 2017, as a member of Congress representing Hawaii, Gabbard made a trip to Syria and Lebanon to meet with Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad. But shortly after her visit, The New York Times reported, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted a call between two Hezbollah officials in which they said that she met with “the boss” or “the big guy.”

Intelligence officials assume that the person in question was a senior Hezbollah official, or a high-ranking Lebanese government official with strong ties to Hezbollah. Gabbard denied meeting anyone from the militant organization and political party but acknowledged that she met with different Lebanese officials on her trip, including some close to Hezbollah, such as the head of Lebanese intelligence at the time. 

The Times spoke with unnamed people close to Gabbard who said that she disclosed all of her meetings from the trip and that the reports were misinterpreted. But this latest revelation is sure to introduce another snag into Gabbard’s confirmation process to serve as director of national intelligence. Gabbard hasn’t yet won over the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, nor influential Senator Mitch McConnell. 

The report also notes that Gabbard found herself under additional scrutiny from a federal agency that protects flights, thanks to a trip she made to the Vatican for an event organized by a European businessman on the FBI watchlist.

Trump’s allies are trying to force the normally secret committee vote to be made public in the hopes of forcing skeptical Republicans, like Senators Susan Collins and Todd Young, to back her. Gabbard can’t afford to lose a single committee vote, stacking the odds against this particularly quixotic Cabinet choice. 

Trump’s ultimatum to federal workers is backfiring—making them vow to stay in their positions out of sheer spite. 

On Tuesday, the president announced that he’d be giving federal workers a choice: return to the office full-time or quit with a buyout and severance pay through September 30. This is part of his effort to revamp the federal bureaucracy in his own image, and with his own supporters.

“The President required that employees return to in-person work, restored accountability for employees who have policy-making authority, restored accountability for senior career executives, and reformed the federal hiring process to focus on merit,” a mass email said. “As a result of the above orders, the reform of the federal workforce will be significant.

“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the email continues.

Federal workers aren’t taking this lying down.

“I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell,” said one user in the popular r/fednews subreddit. “But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible, RTO be damned.”

These sentiments were echoed throughout the thread.

“I’ll continue to do my job and fight for the position I’ve earned,” another said. “It took me 10 years of applying and 20 years experience in my field to get here. I will not be pushed out by two billionaire trust funds babies. I’M NOT LEAVING!”

“I’ve never been more motivated to stay. Before the ‘buyout’ memo, I was ready to go job hunting, but then a revelation hit. I took an oath under this position to the American people and leaving my job under the current state would be failing to maintain my oath as civil servant,” another worker wrote. 

“You can’t buy me off, scare me away, or intimidate me into resigning. I’m angry, spiteful, and resolute in holding the line and outlasting anyone trying to destroy the agency whose work I believe in and a mission I take to heart,” one comment stated. “My colleagues feel the same way and we’re not leaving, you’ll have to drag us out. We’ll continue to follow mission we’re charged with executing and serving the individuals we’re charged with serving.… We will be here and continue to be here.” The user also noted that he and 12 other co-workers would be wearing “Rebel Alliance” T-shirts under their work clothes every Friday in the office.

“They just created the imaginary deep state they convinced everyone they were fighting against, oh the irony,” another user noted.

Federal employees also noticed that the memo announcing the buyouts was eerily similar to the one Elon Musk sent Twitter employees in 2022.

A judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s move to freeze funding for all federal grants and loans. 

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered a brief administrative stay on the Office of Management and Budget’s effort to stop funding to federal grant contracts.

AliKhan’s order, which landed just as the freeze was to begin at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, will go into effect immediately and last until 5:00 p.m. on February 3—little less than a week. 

A hearing for further arguments has been scheduled for Monday morning. 

“I think there is the specter of irreparable harm,” said AliKhan, according to Politico. 

The Trump administration’s decision to pause all funding caused widespread chaos and confusion Tuesday as officials across the country reported that they’d been locked out of  essential government services, such as Medicaid and Head Start. 

The sweeping memo from OMB will affect 2,600 accounts across government, holding hostage the funding for essential government agencies, programs, and nonprofits until they’re willing to answer questions about their commitments to environmental justice, “gender ideology,” and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Lawmakers from across the country warned Tuesday that the systems for crucial programs such as Head Start were shut down as a direct result of the funding freeze, forcing the organizations to grind to a halt. Medicaid portals were down in every single state.

But OMB insisted that certain programs  would not be affected by the order. The White House claimed that the Medicaid portal had experienced an “outage” and that they expected it to be up and running “soon.”

Attorneys general from at least 23 states joined a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Trump to oppose his freeze on vital health services. 

This story has been updated.