One former U.S. State Department employee who served under Donald Trump’s first presidential term is now publicly speaking out to call on all current federal workers to take the buyout offer that’s currently on the table from Elon Musk and the Trump Administration and flee Washington without ever looking back.
Chuck Park served as a US diplomat for a decade before resigning from the Foreign Service out of pure disgust in 2019. At the time of his resignation, Park penned an opinion piece with The Washington Post to explain his decision to leave his federal career — writing that he refused to be a part of Donald Trump’s “complacent state” any longer.
Now, with Donald Trump in power once again, Park has penned a new opinion piece with The Post, urging others in federal positions within the Trump Government to follow in his footsteps.
In his piece, pointedly titled “I’m a former federal worker. You should be, too,” Park references the now-infamous “Fork In The Road” email that was pumped out by “first buddy” Elon Musk on January 28th, in which the tech billionaire urged federal employees to take a “deferred resignation offer” — i.e. a buyout to shut up and go away.
Park tells federal workers: “Here’s my advice to civil servants: Take the fork.”
“My breaking points were scenes of crying children at the border and a horrific episode of violence against immigrants in El Paso. Now the nation seems poised to repeat such cruelties,” Park pens in his stunning piece, noting that his fierce opposition to the policies he saw in Trump’s first term was his signal to jump ship.
“It isn’t noble to resist from within. It’s not public service to hide and bide your time within the vast machinery, ticking down the days until the next presidential election or the day your pension kicks in,” he argues. “If you can’t execute this administration’s policies (the lawful ones, that is), then it is your duty to leave. To be a part of some hostile ‘deep state’ or mire the administration in ‘the swamp’ only erodes Americans’ faith in government. That’s part of what got us here in the first place.'”
According to Park, quitting does not equate to surrendering. In fact, leaving his federal position to champion immigrants’ rights actually became “the most powerful resistance.”
“Many civil servants played heroic, steadying roles in the first Trump transition, from securing nuclear material to forecasting destructive hurricanes,” Park writes. “This time around, the difference is that the president has two hands firmly on the steering wheel. His administration is moving with intention, not abandon. And it’s the responsibility of Congress, the courts, and civil society — not the executive agencies — to resist his dangerous lurches.”
You can read Park’s full, stunning opinion piece with The Washington Post here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0