Largest Mass Resignation in US History as 100k Federal Workers Quit

Nature of the “Mass Resignation” / DRP Mechanics

• Many commenters argue the headline is misleading: the ~100k “resignations” are from a Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) agreed to months ago, not people suddenly walking out.
• Under DRP, employees voluntarily (on paper) agreed to resign effective Sept 30 in exchange for ~8 months of paid leave; most stopped working in March.
• Experiences differ on how voluntary it felt:
  • Some agencies reportedly presented it as a no-pressure option.
  • Others framed it as “take this or risk being fired later with worse terms,” making it effectively “jump or be pushed.”
• DRP coincides with broader return‑to‑office orders, performance crackdowns, and threat of later layoffs.

Motives and Political Strategy

• A major theme: this is seen as a deliberate project to hollow out the civil service, make government perform worse, then use that failure to justify further cuts and privatization.
• Some see it as part of a longer Republican pattern: sabotage agencies, then cite dysfunction as proof government can’t work.
• Others argue there is an “ulterior motive” of purging a workforce perceived as aligned with the opposing party.

Scale, Impact, and Government Size

• Some are “terrified” of losing institutional capacity, warning of a tipping point where core functions stall and are hard to rebuild.
• Others say 100k in a 2.4–3M workforce is manageable and even desirable given perceived bloat; they note the overall federal workforce has grown in absolute terms.
• Counterpoint: relative to population, federal workers per capita have fallen, and many roles (infrastructure, regulation, health) plausibly should scale with population.

Partisanship of the Civil Service

• One camp claims the bureaucracy is heavily skewed toward one party (citing donation data) and that this is democratically unsustainable.
• Critics respond that donation data is a biased sample, polls show a smaller partisan gap, and that decades of anti-government rhetoric by one party self-selected the current composition.
• Some argue an “independent but ideologically skewed” civil service is dangerous; others see insulation from presidents as a safeguard for competence and rule-following.

Program Design, Brain Drain, and Service Quality

• DRP is widely criticized as selecting for the most employable (often best) workers to leave, plus those about to retire anyway, accelerating a “brain drain.”
• Several note that older, experienced staff at key agencies are disproportionately exiting, taking institutional knowledge with them.
• There is debate over whether government services are generally poor and should shrink vs. examples of federal agencies providing more competent, empowered service than many large corporations.

Broader Administrative-State / Constitutional Concerns

• Some frame this as part of a wider “defederalization” or dismantling of the New Deal/Great Society administrative state.
• Worry: power is not really moving to states but being centralized in the presidency, with risks of politicized law enforcement and patronage-style hiring.