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.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I see veterans taking buyouts or capitulating to Trump, it upsets me. They took an oath to defend the Constitution and yet they can’t stay in a job to making the incoming fascists work just a little harder? If they’re still referring to their time in the army or are eligible for VA benefits, they should be fighting fascism. We’re all trying our best, and I’m not asking everyone to stay, even though that’d be great if they could, but way to fold like a wet napkin.
As a former soldier (veteran by technicality but not retired or wounded), I think I can tell you the federal government isn’t what any of us were expecting to fight when we swore to defend against enemies foreign and domestic. Many of us were young kids who could spend our lives in a fight against an enemy , but 20, 30 years down the road we have children and family to take care of. Homelessness and suicide is rampant among vets. No one is stepping forward to volunteer for that.
A sacrifice for your brothers and sisters in arms carries honor. A death by starvation or because you got knifed trying to defend your shopping cart of worldly belongings is sad but you just get rolled into a statistic. You know what I’m saying?
We swore to defend our nation, but not that way. We fight strategically. There is no honor in simply being the first to throw away everything in return for nothing. Are you going to take care of my wife and kids?
To be clear, this layoff is not affecting me or my family. I currently don’t work for the government and wouldn’t work for this one. But I’ve been a government contractor and I’ve worked with veteran civilian employees. I can’t speak for everyone, and maybe I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but this is my take.
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.
it has always been this way
until a critical mass is starving nothing will stop
Maybe that’s why France gets their asses out immediately when the gov’t crosses the line. They’ve hit critical mass a few times in the last 400 yrs.
some of that is for sure culture/history but America had that too
France hasn’t had fox news and talk radio spewing propaganda and hiding their roots, plus the two party system fucks us
and working mostly with RUSSIA propaganda networks, that focuses mainly on the USA. its also easy when USA is also a right wing country to begin with, makes it more susceptible to propaganda,
America has never had multiple revolutions that included beheading the aristocracies.
plenty of violence fighting for independence and later civil/worker rights
is the argument on the flavor or the degree because we don’t have royals so the literal is kinda out
America has had one revolution. France has had multiple revolutions. That’s the difference.
didn’t realize there was a minimum requirement lol