Like Jordan Belfort in that one scene from The Wolf of Wall Street, most US public servants are not freakin’ leaving. Today is the deadline for ~2.3 million federal workers to accept resignation deals from President Donald Trump’s administration or risk being laid off—but barely anyone is budging.

ICYMI: Government employees got an email from the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) last week titled “Fork in the Road”—a recycled subject line from Elon Musk’s Twitter layoffs email in 2022—offering them paid administrative leave and benefits through the end of September if they resigned from their jobs by Feb. 6 (today). This week, Trump’s administration expanded its offer to employees at the CIA, NSA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as part of its plan to reduce the government workforce.

Only 20,000 workers—less than 1% of the federal workforce—had accepted the buyout as of Tuesday, before the entire CIA was given the offer (Trump’s goal was 5% to 10%). The White House expects a spike in the hours just before tonight’s deadline.

Lawyers question the buyout’s legality

Three unions that collectively represent 800,000+ federal workers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday aimed at delaying today’s deadline by at least 60 days so the Trump administration can provide “adequate justification” for the offer and clarify details that have caused some confusion. Although the administration insists the offer is legal:

• It appears to violate a law that limits federal administrative leave to 10 days per employee, Axios noted.
• Another law bars agencies from spending more than what Congress gives them. Federal agencies aren’t guaranteed funding after March 14, the deadline for the government to pass a new budget or shut down.

Zoom out: The buyouts are part of Trump’s efforts to cut government spending via Musk’s DOGE team. In compliance with this goal, the CIA sent the White House an unclassified email listing its past two years of new hires, which former officials fear could leak if accessed by Musk’s squadron of 19-to-24-year-old software engineers.—ML

World leaders condemn Trump’s Gaza takeover plan. It’s not easy getting China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt all to agree on something, but President Trump’s proposal to turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East” has done just that. Top officials from US allies and adversaries alike quickly made their opposition known to Trump’s plan for the US to seize Gaza and displace Palestinians, which he revealed in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. Russia’s ambassador to the UN said the plan is “out of the question,” while UK PM Keir Starmer and several other leaders said they continue to support a two-state solution. Experts say Trump’s proposal is a violation of international law.

Trump signs executive order banning trans women from women’s sports. The order seeks to prevent people biologically assigned male at birth from competing in women’s sports, acting on an issue that was a key part of the president’s 2024 campaign. On his first day in office, Trump signed an order that called on the government to define sex as only male or female. Now, he’s using Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools and other activities that receive federal funding, to argue that allowing trans women in women’s sports creates an unsafe and unfair advantage. While research on the topic is limited, studies have shown transgender athletes do not have an athletic advantage.

USPS halts packages from China and Hong Kong, immediately reverses decision. The US Postal Service said it resumed receiving shipments from China and Hong Kong yesterday, just hours after announcing it had stopped accepting parcels from those locations. The initial move came after President Trump ordered the end of a trade exemption that allowed packages worth less than $800 from the two regions to ship to the US duty-free. The end of that loophole is expected to hurt Chinese e-commerce platforms Temu and Shein, which used it to grow their presence in the US.—AE

Apple wants to disrupt the industry of painstakingly constructing a chaotic Canva invite for your housewarming party and spamming your close friends’ stories with it. The tech company debuted a new app on Tuesday called Apple Invites, which allows Apple device owners to create custom events within the Apple ecosystem.

Apple Invites allows you to invite friends from your contacts list to an event, share a link, and even add a shared photo album or Apple Music playlist. The app also includes Weather and Maps widgets to help you plan your route and outfit.

You need an iCloud+ subscription to create invites, but anyone, even Android users, can RSVP and see important info. There are, however, a few added steps for Android users to access the invite.

Wow, that sounds really similar to…Partiful? Yeah, Partiful thinks so, too. The new offering does resemble its predecessor, which was Google Play’s Best App of 2024 and named a finalist in Apple’s own Cultural Impact awards. But Apple has such a long history of building its own Apple-ified version of successful third-party apps that there’s a name for it: Sherlocking.—MM

The end zone will look a little different this Super Bowl Sunday, and we’re not talking about a riff on the Griddy. The NFL is switching out its on-field slogan “End Racism” for “Choose Love,” league officials confirmed yesterday.

Why the change? NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said it’s based on recent tragedies, referencing events including the New Year’s terrorist attack in New Orleans (where Super Bowl LIX is being played), wildfires in Los Angeles, and the plane collision in Washington, DC, last week.

This will be the first time that “End Racism” is not stenciled on the field for the big game since 2021. The league started using the field slogans in 2020, two years after introducing the Inspire Change social justice program to promote DEI, per The Athletic.

At the same time…NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell reaffirmed the league’s commitment to DEI in his annual Super Bowl address this week, expressing support for diversity initiatives, including the oft-debated Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for coaching and executive positions.

Zoom out: The NFL stands in sharp contrast to other quintessentially American institutions, including McDonald’s, Target, and Walmart, that have dropped DEI recently, a move that lines up with President Trump’s executive orders banning the practice in the federal government.—CC

Don’t be too hard on your friend who has never seen a funny show besides The Office—there just aren’t as many of them anymore. “Peak TV”—the buzzword for Hollywood’s glut of original TV series in the late 2010s—is definitively over, according to a new report from the insights firm Luminate. The TV industry released 7% fewer shows and 20% fewer episodes in 2024 than in the year before.

Comedy has been hit the hardest: The number of comedies produced in the US and Canada was down 39% at the end of last year compared to 2019. One explanation is that short-form content on TikTok and witty newsletters has taken the place of sitcoms for some viewers.—AE