Best-written Federal Resignations, 2025

This is a story worth telling.

Over 150,000 people resigned from the federal government last year. Nothing like that has happened in the history of the United States.

The majority of those 150,000 workers opted for the DRP—the Deferred Resignation Program. Elon Musk ran a similar initiative when he took over at Twitter/X. On January 28, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) followed his lead. OPM’s “Fork in the Road” memo encouraged virtually all non-military federal employees to resign. They could do so via a one-word email:

Upon review of the below deferred resignation letter, if you wish to resign:

1. Select “Reply” to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account other than your .gov or .mil account will not be accepted.
2. Type the word “Resign” into the body of this reply email. Hit “Send”.

Many federal employees had more than one word to say about their departure. We are interested in what they had to say.

In 2026, Bicycle Comics will publish a new anthology: a collection of federal resignation letters. We seek input from all executive branch departments and agencies, from the Department of Agriculture to the National Zoo.

Want to be part of this project? Please tell us your story.

Resignations penned by agency leaders and senior military officers get plenty of media attention, and we’ll publish some of those, of course. But those people tend to land on their feet. We also want to read and publish the letters of everyday employees. We want to hear from park rangers and museum curators, poultry inspectors and bank auditors. Everyone from GS-1 to GS-15.

Your resignation was a moment. Let’s preserve it as part of a historical record.

Send a letter for consideration