In the latest episode of what MAGA nihilist Steve Bannon joyfully predicted would be “Days of Thunder” from the new Trump administration, on Tuesday the United States Office of Personnel Management offered all federal employees a buyout offer wrapped in menacing threats. It came on the heels of a directive eliminating the remote-work arrangements many federal employees had developed with their managers amid the COVID pandemic. Thus, the buyout was presented as a way for workers unable or unwilling to “return to work” (suggesting work done remotely isn’t work at all) to keep getting paid until September 30, so long as they resigned by February 6. But it’s very clear the buyout is actually part of a broader mission shared by Elon Musk at the new Department of Government Efficiency, and by Office of Management and Budget director nominee Russell Vought. Both men have expressed their desire to demolish the federal workforce as we’ve known it since the late-19th-century era of civil-service reforms.

Without question, the buyout “offer” is the carrot combined with the stick of various unfriendly administration plans for federal employees. Trump issued an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of positions into political appointments with no civil-service protections. The Republican-controlled Congress is expected to make deep spending cuts to pay for Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and mass deportation, and whatever Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cooks up to redeem its promises of trillions of dollars in federal-spending savings. The buyout message itself, sent........

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