'Your duty to leave': Former Trump diplomat urges federal workers to quit

A former U.S. State Department employee under the first Trump administration is urging current federal workers to take an offered buyout and flee Washington.

Chuck Park served as a diplomat for 10 years before quitting the Foreign Service in disgust in 2019. Park wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post then to explain his decision, and is now urging other government employees in the second Trump administration to follow his lead.

In a new opinion piece, Park references the "Fork in the road" email sent by "First Buddy" Elon Musk on Jan. 28, urging federal employees to consider taking a "deferred resignation offer." Park writes in Tuesday's piece, "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 writes, adding that his vehement opposition to the first administration's policies was his signal to leave.

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Park argues, "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. 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.'"

Quitting is not the same thing as surrendering, according to Park, and pursing his passion to fight for immigrants' rights 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."

Read The Washington Post opinion piece here.