From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Monday, February 3rd.

We'll begin this week with USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers and your calls on the offer to most of the

2.3 million federal workers to resign and get eight months of salary buyout as they try to shrink

the size of the workforce and also increase the percentage of those workers who are remaining,

who are enthusiastically in line with the new administration's policies. And Francesca Chambers, USA Today, White House correspondent,

always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC. Thanks so much, Brian. It's great to be back.

Are there any early results of the buyout offer with three days left for the workforce to take it?

Anything that you're seeing or that they're reporting?

Well, I haven't personally seen inside of this, but I did want to know with respect to what you were saying about those enhanced standards,

that as a part of their memo, the Trump administration also said that they were likely to downsize anyway.

And so one question that is facing federal employees, as you noted, is whether or not they

want to stick around and figure out if they're going to end up being laid off anyhow.

And experts have said that one of the difficulties with this is that you could see career federal

employees leave the government who have expertise that the government needs. The reason that

they're in those positions, they've been in those positions for a long time is because

they're the experts on whatever their issue areas. Here's a text that has come in right away that seems to be in line with the layer cake theory.

Listener writes, I'm a federal employee of AmeriCorps.

I will not be taking this offer.

I took an oath to serve and will continue to do as long as it able to is the way it got written,

but you understand the idea there.

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