An announcement on the website of the US Office of Personal Management said that the program was closed from 19:20 Eastern Time on Wednesday.

The offer is part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to lower the size of the federal government, a plan led by billionaire Elon Musk and the department for the government’s effectiveness.

On January 28, administration officials offered more than 2 million federal workers the choice to resign and receive eight months of salary.

Administration officials said in an online approach that employees who chose to leave were not expected to work, “except in rare cases.

The offer was available to full-time federal employees- excluding certain employees as postal workers, members of military, immigration and national security agents.

The program was announced in an e -mail message with the subject line “fork in the road” -similar to one sent to Twitter employees shortly after Elon Musk bought the company, which he renamed X and began to reduce its labor.

Employees were given until February 6 to register – a deadline that was extended due to the legal challenge.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the offer “generously” for workers and something that will “save the American people tens of millions of dollars”.

Democrats, trade unions and advocate organizations have said that it will lead to a “brain drain” in the federal government and expressed intense concerns about unanswered issues and legality in the plan.

The American Federation of Government employees (ADGE) and other trade unions called the offer illegally.

They claimed that the offer was a threat that pressed employees to resign or risk losing their jobs without payment. The E -mail noticed that those who declined the offer could not be given full insurance that their jobs should not be eliminated.

The trade unions also said that there was no guarantee that those who took the offer would receive an entire eight -month salary, since Congress, which allocated such funds, had not approved state funding in addition to mid -March.

After originally granting an injunction that paused the program, judge O’Toole said that the trade unions do not have the “necessary direct effort” on the matter to question it in court.

The White House had no immediate comment about the decision.

In a statement, ADGE called the National President Everett Kelley the decision for a “setback” but said that the trade union’s lawyers assessed the next step.

“We continue to claim that it is illegal to force US citizens who have devoted their career to public service to make a decision, within a few short days, without sufficient information, whether to eradicate their families and leave their career for what corresponds An unfinanced iou from Elon Musk, “he said.