A federal judge has put a pause on the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” buyout plan for federal employees, holding off on any moves until at least Monday afternoon.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. scheduled a hearing for Monday afternoon to dive deeper into whether to keep the buyout offer on hold. “I enjoined the defendants from taking any action to implement the so-called ‘Fork Directive’ pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” said O’Toole. “I believe that’s as far as I want to go today.”
The judge referred to the quick hearing as a “table setting session,” mainly to line up arguments for Monday afternoon. He didn’t delve into the details of the buyout dispute itself. Meanwhile, attorneys from the Department of Justice stated that they would inform all federal employees affected by the buyout offer.
Over two million federal employees were up against a midnight Thursday deadline to accept the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer while O’Toole weighed an urgent request to halt the buyout.
Three unions, representing around 800,000 federal workers, contended that the offer is illegal, capricious, and poses a “dangerous one-two punch” to the federal system.
The judge scheduled the Thursday afternoon hearing to review a request from three federal unions seeking a temporary restraining order. This order would pause the Thursday deadline for the buyout and compel the Office of Personnel Management to justify the unprecedented offer, which promised to keep paying federal employees through September 30, 2025, if they resigned by Thursday at 11:59 p.m.
“First, the government will lose expertise in the complex fields and programs that Congress has, by statute, directed the Executive to faithfully implement,” the lawsuit said. “And second, when vacant positions become politicized, as this Administration seeks to do, partisanship is elevated over ability and truth, to the detriment of agency missions and the American people.”