MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Stephani Cherkaoui has a pot of Moroccan tea on the kitchen stove in her townhome, half an hour outside Washington, D.C. Her kids' artwork — her "favorite collection" — adorns the walls. Her cat, Dublin, settles himself on a kitchen chair.
Over the past five months, Cherkaoui has had time to sit in this space and reflect on her decision to walk away from her government career. She's one of more than 150,000 federal workers who took the Trump administration's "Fork in the Road" buyout offer, resigning with pay and benefits through at least Sept. 30.
She agreed to share her thoughts and opinions with NPR, emphasizing that she does not speak for the government.
Cherkaoui's last day at work was April 18. Since then, she has been getting her paychecks on schedule. Her family has remained on her government health insurance. For the first time in her life, she says, she has been able to just live.
"It's goodness that's coming from a very terribly depressing place," she says. "I'm able to just breathe. It's a new kind of feeling that I've never experienced before. But there's definitely a lot of fear."
Months of searching for a new job yielded a few interviews but no offers.
Back in the spring, President Trump called the government buyout "a very generous offer."
Cherkaoui would put it differently.
"I do think it was a fair deal for me — as an individual," she says. "For the American people? No, they got robbed."
A deal offered to nearly the entire federal workforce
It was just eight days after the presidential inauguration when the Office of Personnel Management sent an email inviting nearly the entire federal workforce, more than 2 million people, to resign. The deferred resignation program, as the Trump administration called it, was modeled on a deal that Elon Musk — who was then leading the Department of Government Efficiency — had fashioned for employees at Twitter. Initially, employees had just over a week to decide whether to accept. Questions abounded over whether the deal was even legal.
In late March and April, a number of federal agencies reopened the offer. Doubts over the legality of the deal had eased. Uptake was far swifter.
Now, with months of paid administrative leave coming to an end, those formally separating from the government are confronting a mix of emotions, including regret, resentment and resignation.
Many say they would never have left their posts had they felt staying was an option.
Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, has spoken about the departures in a positive light.
In an interview with the Washington, D.C., news radio station WTOP, he said the team designing the buyout "did as much as they could to be appropriately generous and give people as long of a runway as they could to go transition into something new."
Kupor described this moment as an opportunity to usher in a new culture, where everyone in the government is always thinking about how things can be done differently — and better.
Proud to be doing essential work
Cherkaoui joined the Agriculture Department (USDA) in 2020 after serving as a medic in the Maryland Air National Guard and as a public school teacher, among other roles. As an instructional systems specialist, she managed training for the roughly 9,000 employees of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, who ensure that the United States' meat, poultry and eggs are safe to eat.
"We send inspectors into all of the meatpacking plants across the country," she says. "They're out here doing a thankless job, every single day."
The agency's internal training site covered both routine human resources topics and job-specific tasks, such as how to take samples and get them off to a lab.
"People can do what they do because of people like me. We enable that," she says.
Still, from the day Trump was reelected, Cherkaoui felt uneasy. She had heard him rail about waste and bloat in the government. She feared training would be among the first things to go.
After passing on the first buyout offer, things changed
Cherkaoui did not take the Trump administration's first buyout offer, in late January. She thought it looked shady.
But in the weeks that followed, managers at the USDA sent memos foreshadowing big changes ahead — mass layoffs, relocations and more. Rumors also ran rampant.
"'It might be that we're moving people out. It might be that you could be busted down by two [pay] grades,'" Cherkaoui recalls hearing.
During Trump's first term, some USDA staff members were relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. A move to the middle of the country was a nonstarter for Cherkaoui, given that her entire extended family lives in the Washington, D.C., area.
So when she got the email from the USDA offering a second round of buyouts, in April, she took it.
"It was the hardest button click I've ever clicked in my life," she says. "I went back and forth on it for a couple of days, but I knew ultimately that that was going to be the right choice."
A data analyst in the Midwest regrets leaving
In the Midwest, a data analyst for the Transportation Department was wrestling with the same decision.
"I might have had a minor anxiety attack in the lobby of my building as I was pacing around, considering it," says J., who analyzed crash statistics, road quality, bridge quality and other trends for the government. NPR agreed to identify him by only his first initial because he fears professional repercussions for speaking publicly about a past employer.
Like Cherkaoui, J. did not consider the buyout when it was first offered in January. But within weeks, Trump's Department of Government Efficiency had terminated the lease for his office as part of its broader downsizing efforts.
"Within the calendar year of 2025, we were going to be out on the street," he says. "I really had no idea how that was going to pan out."
Adding to the uncertainty, Trump issued an executive order outlining a consolidation of some IT-related work. J. worried his job could be moved from the Midwest to Washington, D.C.
Given this environment, he had started applying for jobs in the private sector, and by April, he had gotten a couple of offers. So right before the deadline for the second round of buyouts, he accepted the Trump administration's offer, went on paid leave from the government and soon started a new job.
In the months since, things have not unfolded as he had expected. His agency's office lease was restored. His old team has not been slated for a move. Looking back, he feels he was forced into an impossible decision, threatened with changes that never came to fruition.
Meanwhile, he says, his new job is not nearly as fulfilling as his work for the government. While the pay is roughly the same, he forfeited his good federal government health insurance and other benefits.
"Now that it's been a couple of months, I very much regret my decision," he says.
A newcomer to the government leaves before really getting started
While a large share of the people who accepted the buyout offer were close to retirement, some were just starting their federal careers.
Marie had barely gotten through onboarding at the Energy Department when she was faced with the decision over whether to leave. NPR agreed to identify Marie by her middle name only, because she too fears professional repercussions for speaking publicly.
Marie found herself in a particularly odd situation, having been fired in February as part of the Trump administration's purge of probationary workers — those relatively new to the job — and then temporarily reinstated by court order. Fearing her agency would fire her again at the first opportunity, she opted to resign during the second round of buyouts, giving up on her longtime goal of working on energy policy at the national level.
The Energy Department did not end up firing its reinstated probationary employees when the court order was lifted, nor did it conduct mass layoffs of other workers, as many had feared. A department spokesperson told NPR that approximately 3,000 employees participated in the deferred resignation program, roughly 20% of its workforce.
Marie's search for a new job started slowly, despite her years of experience in the private sector. She believes one factor was the economic uncertainty caused by Trump's tariffs. She worried about stalling out her career. Between her onboarding, her firing and her administrative leave, she had not done any substantial work in almost a year.
"I did some part-time research work over the summer, basically for free, because I just wanted to work and use my brain for things," she says.
She was still getting her federal paycheck and benefits, for which she was thankful.
"But as a taxpayer, I feel that it's a long time to pay someone not to work," she says.
Finally, just in the last month, she got not one but three job offers. She accepted a position at a local utility and thinks it could turn into a long career. She hesitates when asked whether she'd ever want to work for the federal government again.
"I don't think it would be something I'd be hurrying back to do," she says.
Hundreds of applications end in "No, thank you"
Cherkaoui, the former USDA training specialist, hasn't been so fortunate on the job front.
It's not for lack of trying. The market in the Washington, D.C., area is saturated with former feds. The state of Maryland, home to several large federal agencies, lost 15,100 federal jobs between January and August, according to the Maryland Department of Labor.
At 40, Cherkaoui has gotten very few interviews, despite her skills and even though she has been applying to jobs nonstop.
"Literally hundreds of jobs," she says. "It's just 'No, thank you; no, thank you; no, thank you; no, thank you; no, thank you.'"
So, she has launched a consulting business, the Sajai Company, and has landed one contract so far. She's also going back to school to get a doctorate in human and organizational learning. She hasn't abandoned her dream of leading training across the USDA one day.
While Cherkaoui is at peace with where she has landed, she's troubled thinking about what others are going through.
Since January, the administration has dismantled entire agencies and halted work mandated by Congress. The president and his appointees have fired people whose work involved holding the government accountable — watchdog agency leaders, inspectors general, Justice Department attorneys and people across agencies tasked with protecting civil rights.
Just last week, the White House Office of Management and Budget told agencies to prepare for mass layoffs of people working on programs that are "not consistent with the president's priorities" in the event of a government shutdown.
Cherkaoui understands why government workers may be reluctant to speak out in this moment, though it saddens her deeply.
"I love my country. Being critical of my country — that's showing love. If I didn't love and didn't care, I would let you act like a damn fool," she says. "You have to be able to say something, and if you can't say anything, you're lost."
Cherkaoui says her former office at the USDA has been disbanded. She estimates that about half of her colleagues left voluntarily, while the rest have scattered to different parts of the agency. These days, she finds herself thinking often of those who remain in government and everything they're enduring.
"It is much more than anything that they've ever had to endure before," she says.
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