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 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.