President Donald Trump’s offer for federal employees to resign from their posts has already been accepted by more than 50,000 workers, according to a person familiar with the effort.
Now the administration is signaling a tougher posture in its bid to shrink the government’s workforce, asking federal agencies to draw up lists of their poorest performing employees by March 7.
The Office of Personnel Management has instructed agencies to provide lists of “all employees who received less than a ‘fully successful’ performance rating in the past three years.” The memo, from OPM acting director Charles Ezell, said the list would be used to ensure that agencies can “swiftly terminate poor performing employees.”
“OPM is developing new performance metrics for evaluating the federal workforce that aligns with the priorities and standards in the President’s recent Executive Orders,” Ezell wrote in his memo.
He also asked agencies for any policies, such as union contracts or pending arbitration cases, that would prevent them from “making meaningful distinctions based on relative employee performance.”
The memo is the latest in a series of directives implementing Trump’s executive orders demanding sweeping changes to the federal workforce. The president has already ended diversity programs, and sought to reclassify potentially thousands of jobs as political positions — a change that would make it easier for him to dismiss workers and replace them with loyalists.
Trump has tapped billionaire backer Elon Musk to spearhead an effort to improve government efficiency and reduce spending. As part of that effort — called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — the administration has offered federal employees a deferred resignation plan to allow them to get paid through the end of the fiscal year even if they quit in February.
A federal judge blocked the implementation of that plan — which has been characterized by many as a buyout — until at least Monday, so that he can hear arguments from federal employee unions who say the program is illegal.
Employees can continue to submit their resignations through the hearing on Monday, according to a person familiar who shared details on the process on condition of anonymity.
