Nick Gioia was terminated from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in February as part of President Donald Trump and tech mogul Elon Musk’s effort to slash the size and cost of the federal government.
Gioia was then reinstated and placed on paid leave after a court ruling. Now, after a second round of buyout offers were emailed in recent days to government workers in at least half a dozen federal agencies, the U.S. Army veteran decided to take it.
“For some of us, the time has come to step away before this experience completely erodes what remains of our well-being,” Gioia told Reuters.
Several other federal employees told Reuters they are taking this second buyout offer, saying that many civil servants are suffering from nervous exhaustion after three months of chaos and cuts driven by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
I am a government worker who was supposed to get a promotion at the start of this year.
Not anymore after the hiring freeze!
Now my pay is stagnant and I will be losing money while working full time by the end of the year.
The really annoying part is I don’t want a new job, I want my promotion and COL adjustment, and to keep supporting the program I’m working in.
We’re going to lose so much when people like you leave, but some people only learn by pain, and the rest of us are along for the ride. That you for your work though, friend.
A close friend/former guildie of my wife’s is a very wholesome and well-accomplished person who secured her dream job with the CDC during Biden’s administration, just to have that job abolished by Trump/DOGE pretty much immediately. It was a very high-up/directoral position involving the outreach of sexual education/awareness for special needs individuals, who are often the unwilling/misunderstanding partipants of sexual abuse. Her entire department was ruled non-essential and was eliminated overnight. I guess it fucked her up pretty bad. She’s okay now, but is back to square one, searching for a suitable job.
Fuck Donald Trump and fuck DOGE.
are they even getting the money though?
In all seriousness, yes. My wife was basically forced to take the first buyout due to the commute (remember they also removed most remote work). We have been getting paid still.
That being said, I don’t have much faith it’ll continue as long as they promised.
So far? Yeah, I think so - I’ve heard of many people taking the deal and haven’t heard anything about people not getting the money
I think they’re basically just keeping them on the payroll. Is it legal? Will it continue until September? Who knows
They get the hollow promise to maybe not get sent to a concentration camp in the immediate future (maybe). /s
So how much longer until shit really hits the fan. I’ve noticed at work the confusion or absence of grants being talked about but nothing more. I’m not trying to deny the situation but when do we feel these absences in government?
Probably when people stop being able to afford rent en masse. Maybe if we see police commit some kind of horrible atrocity like another Kent State or George Floyd.
That’s the landscape that started the BLM riots.
soon as the debt ceiling can’t be funded
we’re on borrowed time as we speak
Year 2 of the Trump reign will be a complete collapse of the government.
You’re assuming we last two years, imperial collapse is compounding issues building up over time. If you have ever played a colony builder or a grand strategy game ya know it isn’t the problem that happened five minutes ago it’s every issue over the last hour. Given the fact Trump and Co are manufacturing issues to sap away as much power and money as possible plus the issues going back hundreds of years in some cases, well let’s just say there is a lot more weight on whatever load bearing elements still exist we may see a collapse by winter.
I don’t even think we have that long.
Well, I’ll rephrase that: I don’t think I have that long being on SSDI, Medicaid, and in HUD housing. I have no doubt I’ll be disappeared as a “parasite” long before the collapse. I do have a cane and I’m not afraid to use it for what it wasn’t intended for so I won’t go down without a fight.
But given the fact that nearly half of Project 2025 has been implanted in a little less than 4 months it might happen at the end of summer – especially if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised.
A winter collapse is gonna suck for American refugees trying to flee to Canada. There’s been more than a few who’ve tried to cross and died or lost fingers, hands and/or feet in the trying.
Sure but I’m in good old SoCal, if the feds implode in the winter that means whatever fighting I get stuck in the temps will at least be comfortable.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I see veterans taking buyouts or capitulating to Trump, it upsets me. They took an oath to defend the Constitution and yet they can’t stay in a job to making the incoming fascists work just a little harder? If they’re still referring to their time in the army or are eligible for VA benefits, they should be fighting fascism. We’re all trying our best, and I’m not asking everyone to stay, even though that’d be great if they could, but way to fold like a wet napkin.
As a former soldier (veteran by technicality but not retired or wounded), I think I can tell you the federal government isn’t what any of us were expecting to fight when we swore to defend against enemies foreign and domestic. Many of us were young kids who could spend our lives in a fight against an enemy , but 20, 30 years down the road we have children and family to take care of. Homelessness and suicide is rampant among vets. No one is stepping forward to volunteer for that.
A sacrifice for your brothers and sisters in arms carries honor. A death by starvation or because you got knifed trying to defend your shopping cart of worldly belongings is sad but you just get rolled into a statistic. You know what I’m saying?
We swore to defend our nation, but not that way. We fight strategically. There is no honor in simply being the first to throw away everything in return for nothing. Are you going to take care of my wife and kids?
To be clear, this layoff is not affecting me or my family. I currently don’t work for the government and wouldn’t work for this one. But I’ve been a government contractor and I’ve worked with veteran civilian employees. I can’t speak for everyone, and maybe I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but this is my take.
I guess my main issue is that there are plenty of civilians who are making a stand who have not sworn any such oath.
I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but “I was young then - I have a family now” doesn’t really mean much to me, seeing as that applies to plenty of other people who are doing something. The alternative is not “get fired today”. I know government employees who were unceremoniously let go and offered nothing. This is not the choice these people were facing. My opinion of these people means nothing, and certainly means even less than nothing when compared to keeping their family safe, but this is not an SS officer demanding to know where you’re hiding the undesirables or they’ll kill your family. This is the party asking if you’ll kindly step aside so that they can install a nazi in your place. Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of faith in the ethics and morals of vets anyway. Veteran status is the second best single predictor of candidate choice (next to education), to my knowledge. So I guess I don’t really expect them to be any better than average, but it’s just sad to see that assumption is accurate.
For what it’s worth, your/their family will continue to be eligible for VA benefits regardless of where you’re/they’re currently employed. Most of those benefits have no civilian counterparts, so most civilians making that choice have even less safety net. I know Trump/republicans have been working hard to make sure you all don’t have a safety net either, but stepping down politely when asked isn’t making it harder for him to do that.
I truly hope martyrdom is not needed, but people will die because of Trump and they will not have the luxury of a choice. There will be people that stand in Trumps way, and those will unsurprisingly not be people who swore to protect the nation and its people. They’ll just be people choosing to do what they can when they can.
I do appreciate you sharing your perspective.
it has always been this way
until a critical mass is starving nothing will stop
Maybe that’s why France gets their asses out immediately when the gov’t crosses the line. They’ve hit critical mass a few times in the last 400 yrs.
