[Intro music plays... Record abruptly scratches to a halt.]

Jill: 	What the fork!? 
Philip:	Okay, okay. Let's try this again... Welcome to Forking Off, the podcast for people who said no to "just following orders," where we explore the very personal decisions behind leaving federal service—whether by choice or by force every departure has a story and we are here to share them. 
Jill:	Hi, and welcome to this our very first episode of Forking Off. I'm Jill Fields
Philip: and I'm Philip Fields. Let's tell people a little bit more about ourselves Jill.
Jill:	We were intelligence analysts at the FBI, and we took the deferred resignation, or the "Fork in the Road." Although we'd dedicated our lives to public service, our morals and our ethics were pushed to the limit with changes in the national security mission and the FBI's priorities.
Philip:	You worked under three at least three presidents right? Around what year did you join?
Jill:	I joined in 2016.
Philip: Okay, so you've been around a while.
Jill:	Not as long as you! When did you join, Philip?
Philip: That was in February of 2012
Jill:	How did we get here, Philip?
Both:	[long sigh] 
Philip:	Do want to talk about...? 
Jill: 	I think let's just talk about the DRP.
Philip: Okay. So, on January 28th of 2025 the new administration decided to wheel an email server into an OPM building and blast out to every federal employee an email titled "Fork in the Road." That fork in the road was also known as the deferred resignation program, and it was offering federal employees administrative leave that allowed them to stay at home and get paid through the end of the fiscal year, which in the government that's the last day of September. So, that offer was initially open... I don't remember how long it was supposed to be. I think... 
Jill:	I think it was open for like a week or so.
Philip:	Yeah, but then there was a challenge in the courts that kept it open until February 12th, the day that the court ruled that they could go forward with this offer. It was only right before we started recording today that I realized everybody was told they could reply up until 7:20 Eastern Time, which...
Jill:	We all know is actually 4:20 Pacific Time.
Jill:	Which isn't that just... 
[sad trombone plays]
Jill: 	So... Philip you took that first deferred resignation.
Philip:	I did, and then you took the second.
Jill:	Yeah I thought I could hang on, but... 
Jill:	So we took the fork, but we had talked quite a bit about, "Okay. Well what are we doing now?" And, Philip you want to tell more about how we came up with this idea?
Philip: Yeah, so I don't know who said the word 'podcast' first or when that happened. I do recall like even before the idea fully formulated, we had joked like, "Oh, yeah. We should start a podcast." Then we were at Barnes and Noble one day, and I saw this like 'how to start a podcast' book from NPR, and it just clicked. I was like, "We've got to do it!" 
Jill: 	Yeah, you were like, "Look! Look! Jill I got us a book."
Philip:	I think you were in a different part of the store, so I took a picture and I was like, "We should start a podcast! We can call it Forking Off!" 
Jill:	Yes. I know, and I know we spent several evenings like sitting on the couch talking about it too. But, yeah. You found a book, and we said, "Okay. We'll try that. We'll do this." 
Jill: 	We have talked to so many great people. There are so many stories out there. There are so many people who have taken the deferred resignation. Some of them took it because they were gonna be pushed out anyway for the RIFs, the reduction in force. It's just like... Every day it was someone new. The stories that they were telling, even just like the little short blurbs... It was heartbreaking, but it was also so telling of where we're going. We were like, "We should try to get these stories out there." So, this first season of Forking Off we're gonna be doing interviews with different federal employees who have left the government; whether they were fired; whether they took deferred resignation; whether they were RIFd; or they just left; or they left a long time ago because they saw the writing on the wall and knew that it was time to leave.
Philip:	I think we've both noticed a lot of commonalities among the people that we've been talking to and among ourselves. Like I've identified a lot with the things that people have been saying. Let's go through some of those. What stands out the most to you, Jill?
Jill:	There is definitely an overall theme of... These are people who want to help people. That's all. That is all they've ever wanted to do is help people. So that's been a big one, but then just how many people were saying, "I left my dream job." What about you, Philip?
Philip:	Those are phrases that nearly every person has said. You know. 
	Why did you get into public service?
	I always wanted to help people. 
	Tell me about your job.
	It was my dream job.
Jill:	There was a big emphasis on their commitment to their oath. There's also a few people mentioned like they felt very compelled to write; to get everything out. The word 'trauma' comes up. Sadness. Frustration. 
Philip:	I can't imagine why anybody associated the word 'trauma' with what has been happening to federal employees lately.
[Russell Vought clip plays]: We want to put them in trauma. 
Jill:	Hmm... Anyway. There's a common sense of 'things felt different this time around with the second Trump administration.' It's definitely a different feel. A lot of the people we talked to did work under the previous Trump administration. 
Philip:	Yeah. I felt it as well. 
Jill:	Yeah, and it was... I mean because public service, federal service, is supposed to be apolitical. Federal employees go to work every day knowing that it doesn't matter who's in office. The work's gonna get done. You do your job, no matter who's in office. 
Philip:	Yeah and you do it the same and it's... 
Jill:	You uphold that oath.
Philip:	Yeah, absolutely. There's never been a time before this where I have felt like, you know, my job was going to change significantly based on who the President of the United States was. 
Jill:	We talked with somebody who had said that it became obvious very quickly that things were changing, and it was like whiplash. There were also a lot of people were worried the work wouldn't get done. The necessary work wouldn't get done. But, what we've heard from people we've talked to is they felt like they're morals and their ethics were being pushed to the limit. These people have left the government whether they were pushed out; whether they chose to leave, which most people when they chose to leave, we felt like we were being pushed out. 
Philip: The choice wasn't: Do I want to keep coming to work and doing my dream job, or do I want to leave? 
	It was: am I willing to sacrifice my morals, my ethics, my values, and continue to take part in very questionable activities on behalf of the United States government.
Jill:	Yeah, or will I leave? Or, will I leave? Will I continue to let this take a toll on my mental and physical well-being?
Philip:	While also negatively impacting other people's physical and mental well-being by removing parents from their children and shipping them off to third countries.
Jill:	Yeah.
Philip: The answer's 'no.' 
Jill:	No. No. 
Philip: So, the last commonality would probably be the sense of 'what do I do now,' and I think a lot of people were struggling with the job market, and the way things are right now. I think when people are trying to navigate the job market a lot of the advice that you normally get, the advice that everybody knows, isn't enough, and so they feel like, "I'm doing all of the things, but this is all just crazy." 
Jill:	Yeah, but there's also a lack of understanding of what federal employees were doing, and a lack of understanding that these are extremely hardworking people, and these usually are your experts. These are your people that have spent years honing those skills, refining those skills, and becoming the experts. 
Philip: It's hard for people who are coming from our background. I think just because we're used to being driven by sort of different principles and ideals. 
	That's something that we've been looking to preserve in our next endeavor. So we've been looking at starting up a co-op that provides security consulting services. What we're looking at is something that has democratic ownership and is driven by like the civic virtues of the employees who are coming in. So, these would be people coming in from a federal background or the IC, and we want to enable them to focus on doing the mission, while keeping in mind their ethics and their values and their morals and keeping the focus of the business and how the business gets done on those concepts and those ideals, and a co-op is one of the only ways that we can really accomplish that without eventually going down the road of, you know, "Security is not a profit maker for the company. It's a cost center." That mentality is exactly why people are so hesitant to go to the private sector from government.
Philip:	I think if I were just to run through a couple of things real quick that compelled me to leave when I did... I had written down some notes at the time that I was going through. You know as soon as the administration came in they pardoned over 1500 domestic terrorists and attacked FBI employees who had been defending the American people and the US Constitution from further attack by domestic terrorists. They disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, degrading the DOJ and FBI's ability to detect and disrupt foreign adversaries' attempts to sow discord in the US. 
Jill:	They refocused our mission to prioritize immigration, which was not something that the FBI had been involved in because we do have DHS, and ICE is in charge of immigration not FBI, and they pulled a lot of national security bodies and a lot of the bodies from the violent crime side to focus on immigration.
Philip:	Yeah. They were berating employees who had investigated foreign adversaries attempts to undermine democracy in the US and abroad. They dissolved CISA's Cybersecurity Review Board, which was tasked with reviewing and assessing the most significant cyber incidents affecting the United States, and at the same time they were weakening US government cybersecurity by providing unfettered access to an unqualified, racist band of ketamine-fueled cyber criminals, aka the DOGE guys.
Jill:	Yeah. Those guys.
Philip:	On the counterterrorism side, they had also deprioritized the counterterrorism mission. It had been the Bureau's top priority since 9/11, as directed by the 9/11 commission. We were the only place left that was prioritizing counterterrorism, and at the same time they were emboldening terrorists like ISIS, like HAMAS, like al-Qa'eda, by threatening to take over Gaza, tear it all down, and build shopping malls, and turn it into a resort. That is playing right into recruiters and propagandists hands. So, yeah. I was fed up. 
Jill:	Yeah. You were done. I thought I could hold on, but the further along things went... 
Philip:	So, after the deferred resignation closed and everybody had started taking this, agencies started offering additional openings for people to leave because they didn't feel like they were hitting their
 numbers. The early estimate from April was 200,000 federal employees had taken it. Then, in July there was a revised estimate that was published in the Washington Post. They cited two OPM administration officials who weren't authorized to speak to the public, and they said that they were paying 154,000 federal employees their full salary to stay home through the end of the year under the deferred resignation. 
Jill:	That's a lot of money. 
Philip:	It is, but one thing that I've noticed is you know everybody's talking about, "We don't know how much this is costing, and so I did the math for myself. I was a GS-13 step 6 employee. Since I took the deferred resignation I've received over $80,000 in salary. I will, after October 1st, get my accrued annual leave, so my vacation time, paid out in the amount of 15,451 dollars and some change, and the government has paid into my benefits another 31,247 dollars. That's one of 200... 154,000 people. Jill, I know you were also...
Jill:	Yeah, I crunched some numbers, and the salary, leave payout, benefits, everything, all of that total would be $104,088
Philip:	So, what do we... We added them up. Over $231,000 for the Fields family. The discourse has been around how much is this costing the government. It's how much is the government paying out while they're not getting anything in return. 
Philip:	I think it'd be fun to talk a little bit about what has actually gone into making this, and for anybody listening who's like, "God, the audio sounds terrible on this." 
Jill:	Yeah, we're sitting at our dining room table.
Philip:	That's right, but we did get some nice microphones and some mic stands and things. We've been learning how to do sound editing in Audacity. I think if anybody is interested in starting a podcast, I definitely recommend the NPR book. We can put a link in the show notes.
Jill:	Yeah.
Philip:	NPR is not paying us for this, by the way.
Jill:	No, no, no. They're not paying anybody.
Philip:	I think some of the other stuff that's been fun for me has been the extra stuff. We've been working with a graphic designer to get logos and things like that. Coming up with some of the ideas for the art has been fun. The recreation of the American Gothic painting for this episode's show work was definitely a highlight.

Jill:	In the future we would like to see forking off of all into more commentary on current events and public service. 
Philip:	Yeah, and I think building on the people that we've already been interviewing we've got some really fun ones. We've got people from the Department of Justice. We've got people from the Department of Defense 
[Jill interjects] Department of War. 
Philip:	We've got... Oh. Yeah. Speaking of commentary on current events and public service. Yeah, that is a discussion... But, yeah. No. 
	We've got... We've got people from CDC I believe.
Jill:	CDC. 
Philip:	And I think we'd still welcome more if anybody wants to go ahead and reach out. But as far as some of the topics that we think we might want to add some commentary to, and these may be old news by the time we get there. 
Jill:	The news cycle. Everything goes so fast. 
Philip:	Yeah, but we've been talking about maybe doing an episode on privacy and the first amendment, and maybe the Hatch Act, as well, and how that's being used to silence federal employees.
Jill:	Yeah, we want to talk about public health implications of the deferred resignation, and the RIFs at CDC. I mean what was it at the beginning of April I think it was 10,000 CDC employees. Entire divisions are gone. 
Philip:	And they're constantly under attack by their own leadership, as well as people in the public. 
Jill:	Yeah, so we're gonna talk about... We would like to talk about public health implications; talk about changes in prioritization at these different agencies and just within the government in general.
Philip:	This one bothers me in particular because the FBI still won't admit that they have deprioritized counterterrorism. 
Jill:	Yeah, and then you hit on earlier unemployment and hiring trends. 
Philip:	Actually when I was looking at the unemployment trends, the only times that we had had peaks in the last 20 or 30 years were in times of crisis. There was the dot com bubble. There was the 2008 financial crisis and the year leading up to that, and then there was the pandemic. And so, from 2023 to the present where things have been going back up there's not a clear crisis yet that is spurring this unemployment, except for a crisis of confidence. So, I think seeing where we go from here. Like, I think we're just at the beginning of that. I think that there's a big danger that we could have another major recession because of the lack of confidence people have in government right now. 
Jill:	Yeah. So season 2 we'd like to focus on commentary on public events, but also we want to provide support for organizations that are focused on helping former feds. There are a lot of different organizations that have grown out of the Fork in the Road, the resignations, or the reductions in force, and we really want to help give a platform and focus on those organizations and the good that they are doing. 
Philip:	Yeah, and I would just add a couple, and that would be the employees who were being fired for having upheld their oath. There are a lot of DOJ attorneys and other public servants who said no I won't cross that constitutional line, and those have also spurred a lot of really valuable organizations. 
Jill:	So, that's a lot about what we're gonna be talking about. We're gonna be talking with some really great people. We have formed some really great friendships and got some really great connections out of all of this, but we'll be sharing their stories. Some are sad. Some are happy. Some are very exciting, but we'll be sharing the real stories because there's a real need for people to hear who these people are. That they are not lazy. They are actually some very bright, intelligent people who want nothing more than to help others, and they are now finding their way in this world, and they are using their voices to help others, and we're gonna try to do that, as well. 
Philip: Yeah, and I actually I think that a lot of good can come from this because all of the people who had not been venturing out into the private sector because they weren't interested in getting the bigger paycheck; they're gonna be out there now, and they're gonna be doing things differently; and they're gonna be doing things in a way that allows them to keep their morals and their ethics and their conscience clean, and that is gonna be a good thing for everybody
Jill:	Absolutely.
Credits: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Forking Off. To our listeners still in government: remember, your integrity is worth more than your TSP. Leaving doesn't mean giving up on public service. It just means finding new ways to serve. Until next time! Keep your ethics. Keep your dignity. And we'll keep telling these stories. If you're a former fed with a story to tell, or you're wrestling with your own ethical crossroads, reach out to us at info[at]ForkingOff[dot]com. Today's episode was created, produced, and edited by Jill and Philip Fields. You can find more information about this episode at ForkingOff[dot]com. Also, follow us on Instagram TikTok, Blue Sky, Mastodon, LinkedIn or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us Monday October 6th. We'll be talking with former DOJ employee Jordan Mathews as she shares her story about taking the fork in the road. 
[Jordan speaking] I felt honored to be a part of such history and... It was a dream job... I've been saying that I woke up that week not at all expecting to take the fork. By Friday, that was my last day.