Trump HR Chief Says Resignations Cut Too Deep for Some Agencies

The Trump administration’s offer to let employees stay on paid leave before resigning at the end of September resulted in key federal workers leaving the government, causing some agencies to backpedal, President Donald Trump’s top human resources officer told Bloomberg Law.

“There may be some critical area or organizational area where they feel like, ‘ok, maybe, you know, we kind of cut this one too close to the bone,” Scott Kupor, director of the White House Office of Personnel Management, said in an interview.

Kupor’s comments were a rare acknowledgment from a senior Trump administration official that the resignation incentive, headed by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, went too far in some cases. He said these cases were not the norm, however, and that most employees who took the incentive will not return.

The Internal Revenue Service and the US Department of Labor have taken steps to rehire workers who took the deferred resignation offer. The DOL is considering rescinding about 100 deferred resignations in “mission-critical roles,” a spokeswoman said last week, while the IRS is hiring back an unspecified number of the 26,000 workers who accepted the incentive.

The about-face raises questions about whether a program designed to save taxpayer dollars instead wasted them, in some cases. Kupor was confirmed by the Senate in July, after the program was underway.

The scope of the rehirings is still unknown. Agencies are required to notify the OPM whenever they reverse a deferred resignation, Kupor said. He declined to say how many notices he had received, but said it’s “very small” compared to the roughly 150,000 people who took the incentive.

“It’s not a meaningful number,” he said.

Agencies are on track to meet Trump’s executive orderlimiting one new hire for every four workers who leave, Kupor said, demonstrating that the administration has successfully shrunk government. As of last month, there were 97,000 fewer workers in the federal government than there were in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The development comes as the Trump administration and government unions continue to spar in court over the legality of Trump’s mass firings. The Supreme Court in July allowed Trump to continue axing federal workers while the legal challenges move forward, a move critics say will be hard to reverse even if the high court rules in their favor.

Agencies are also bracing for a possible government shutdown as congressional Democrats engage in a standoff with Republicans over funding the government past the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

“Whenever you take actions, there’s always, you know, a risk,” Kupor said. “There’s a risk that you don’t go far enough. There’s always a risk that, look, there may be critical areas where you’ve had talent that was kind of single-threaded that you need back.”

“It’s within the discretion of the agencies,” he added.