As both a large share of the federal workforce and those promised and owed federal services, veterans are suffering doubly as the civil service is dismantled (Civil Service Purge).
"This is not an anti-Trump protest. … This is not about an individual. This is about an idea that we need to take care of our service members, people who fought for this country and just want to keep serving this country and have access to the benefits that they are owed," Purdy said during an interview Tuesday.
That's not efficient. It's cruel, it's wrong, and it's unAmerican.
These cuts are having a significant impact on veterans employed by the federal government, both at VA and other agencies. Veterans who rely on the VA are already being impacted and more and more will be harmed over time, as DOGE cuts continue and the VA is left without the resources it needs to provide quality care and benefits that veterans need—and earned through their service.
Many veterans, including a disabled veteran who served for 18 years in the Army and a 10-year Marine veteran, were among the 1,000 VA employees recently fired by DOGE. A disabled Army veteran who served for 20 years, including two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, was five weeks from completing his probationary year when he was fired from his job at a VA hospital. Veterans have been fired from other agencies as well, including a disabled Navy veteran who served for 11 years and was told she was being fired for poor performance despite receiving only positive evaluations.
Veterans Crisis Line employees have been fired, and suicide prevention training sessions have been postponed or canceled. Veterans’ health care appointments have been cancelled and postponed for months because of staffing shortages.
… Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) responded to Musk calling him a traitor: “I served in the US Navy for 25 years. I spent 15 years at NASA, risking my life flying the space shuttle. And the only oath I can think of that maybe Elon Musk has sworn is an oath to his own checking account, to his pocketbook—an oath, maybe, to ruining the lives of veterans. I had veterans in my office last week who, after really good performance reports, found out that Musk fired them for poor performance. He has ruined these peoples’ lives. They were serving our country again in very valuable roles, and they did not deserve to get fired by an email from an unelected billionaire.”
As Trump, Musk, and VA Secretary Doug Collins get ready to fire 80,000 VA employees this summer, veterans wonder what’s next
Now, a new class of billionaires, and soon-to-be trillionaires, are callously robbing America and its veterans of a second golden age. Chief among them is Elon Musk, who is on a path to becoming the world’s first known trillionaire by gutting the federal workforce, making life hell for veterans, and betraying American taxpayers by dismantling the benefits and services they fund. In their place, he seeks to impose an unprecedented system — one controlled by an oligarch, propped up by elected leaders, and built at the expense of those who served.
He added that many veterans of the war in Afghanistan who had voted for Mr. Trump now felt fury as word of a possible travel ban has spread. “They’re saying, ‘This isn’t what I voted for,’” he said. “The deal was you need to bring our wartime allies home. And they’re just betraying these folks.”
"I thought that I would have a stable job after serving 24 years in the Air Force, and then they just turned around and terminated me for no cause."
two of his VA therapists took DOGE's buyout offer and were then told they were not eligible for the buyout, only to then be laid off anyway.
"Everything that they're doing is illegal and unconstitutional," said Dawn Burson, a Navy veteran who said Friday was her first protest. "I took an oath to defend the Constitution, not illegal action. If people want to dismantle the government, they should do it through Congress, who will make the law, and not through executive overreach."
After DOGE rampaged through the VA, agency leadership put out statements saying laid-off employees were “non-mission critical” and “probationary” (some were even in DEI!). Meanwhile, press reports trickled out detailing who had actually been fired: hospital staff, veteran outreach workers, employees manning a Veterans Crisis Line.
Last week, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced that the agency would cut $2 billion in current contracts: “No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!” he boasted.
The reality was starkly different. The AP, which obtained the list of affected contracts, reported the cuts “would affect everything from cancer care to the ability to assess toxic exposure.” A day of frantic interventions from lawmakers and veterans’ groups later, Collins backtracked, announcing the contract cancellations would be paused until they could be individually assessed.
The move follows the firings of nearly 1,000 probationary employees Feb. 14, some of which were walked back later when they were determined to be essential employees.
Veterans make up more than 28% of the VA workforce and account for the same share of the federal workforce.
VFW National Commander Al Lipphardt said fired veterans weren't "brand-new, off-the-street employees," but were those who had served the country for decades in uniform and civil service.
"There are bigger ramifications in firing veterans than just faceless workers being let go. The American people are losing technical expertise, training and security clearances already bought and paid for by taxpayers. We're losing people who are genuinely committed to the mission and find a continued sense of purpose in what they do."
The VA has almost 450,000 employees, nearly 92% of whom work in health care and health administration and support services.
savings in salaries and benefits -- an estimated $83 million a year / VA's budget was nearly $304 billion in 2023
more than 2,300 veterans are expected to lose their jobs this week at the Defense Department
"This move should outrage anyone who respects our veterans and service members and believes our promises to them should be upheld."
Trump and Elon Musk plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and strip military veterans and their families overseas of the generous federal hiring incentives they rely on.
This executive order seeks to impose severe hiring restrictions and would disproportionately harm veterans, who make up one-third of the federal workforce.
Many of these programs help veterans adjust to civilian life, with federal employment serving as a stable career path for thousands. Active-duty military members stationed overseas also rely on these programs for critical support, from child care to helping their spouses secure employment in foreign countries where they may lack language skills or legal work status.
The VA is already grappling with severe workforce shortages, particularly in medical and benefits processing roles. This new hiring bottleneck guarantees growing backlogs, delayed care, and increased suffering for veterans. But that may be the goal. ... they achieve two objectives at once — denying care to veterans while making the VA so dysfunctional that veterans either forgo medical treatment or are forced into the private sector.
For years, politicians have promised to fix the VA and take care of veterans. But this Trump executive order does the opposite — it throws veterans under the bus and a few other fast moving objects.
These aren’t just numbers or statistics. These are real people who served their country — some for decades — now being told that their service, their sacrifice, means nothing to the Trump administration.
The hiring freeze doesn’t just hurt veterans looking for jobs; it also threatens the quality of care they receive. The VA is already understaffed, facing a $6.6 billion budget shortfall by the end of fiscal year 2025. Medical professionals, crisis hotline responders, and claims processors are desperately needed to keep the VA running. Now, with hiring frozen, those vacancies will remain unfilled.
That means doctors, nurses, and mental health professionals — already stretched thin — will be unable to keep up with demand.
The consequences will be catastrophic. Veterans will wait longer for care, disability claims will pile up, and crisis lines — lifelines for veterans on the brink — will be understaffed. For veterans battling PTSD, depression, or suicidal thoughts, delays in care aren’t just an inconvenience — they’re a death sentence.
For disabled veterans, the hiring freeze is an even deeper betrayal. Many depend on federal employment opportunities because their disabilities make it difficult to work in the private sector. Programs like the Schedule A hiring authority and the Veterans’ Preference system have historically provided a pathway to meaningful employment that accommodates their medical needs. By freezing hiring, Trump is cutting off a vital source of stability for those who need it most. These veterans — many already struggling with chronic pain, PTSD, and mobility impairments — now face even greater uncertainty. The very system designed to support them is instead shutting them out of employment and the economic security it provides.
The Afghan brothers worked closely with the American military for years, fighting the Taliban alongside U.S. troops, including the Special Forces, and facing gunfire and near misses from roadside bombs while watching their friends die.
They escaped Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban seized control of the country. One brother is now an elite U.S. Army paratrooper at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. The other serves in the Army Reserve in Houston. Their eldest sister and her husband, however, were stranded in Afghanistan, forced into hiding as they waited for the U.S. government to green-light their refugee applications. Finally, after three years, they received those approvals in December and, according to the family, were slated to reunite with their brothers this month.
But weeks before the couple was due to arrive, President Donald Trump issued an executive order indefinitely suspending the admission of refugees.
The order was the first in a series of sweeping actions that blocked the arrival of more than 10,000 refugees who already had flights booked for the U.S.
another 100,000 refugees who had already been vetted by the Department of Homeland Security have also been blocked from entering the country.
At Veterans Affairs facilities in Detroit and Denver, staff reductions have led to canceled health programs and left homeless veterans without their dedicated coordinator to help them find an apartment and line up a deposit.
the Department of Veterans Affairs, plans to cut about 70,000 positions and has already laid off thousands.
Fewer VA staff are handling veterans’ claims that will get them treatment for military-service injuries and mental health conditions, two current employees said. This has already resulted in veterans waiting longer to get treatment in North Texas, one said.
One VA hospital in Detroit canceled programs meant to improve patients’ stability and range of motion after the firings of probationary workers, including Kara Oliver, a 33-year-old Navy veteran leading classes and monitoring participants’ health and progress.
Keith Camire, 48 years old, received one of those letters. He started in September at the IRS to streamline spending on IT. His co-workers, he said, are now scrambling to absorb the work.
Camire, in Milford, Penn., said he voted for Trump three times. He said he’s not opposed to downsizing the government but is against the indiscriminate manner in which the cuts are being made.
“Is it mission critical in the sense of police, fire, border security?” he said of the work he was doing. “No, but it’s essential to provide fiscal accountability and responsibility, which is what DOGE is about.”
The cemetery has completely removed educational materials on the Civil War and Medal of Honor recipients, among other topics.
Piggott, who like other fired probationary employees received no severance, faces an uncertain future. She said she and her husband, a disabled military veteran, have been discussing ways to make ends meet including selling their home.
One veteran caught up in the BFS layoffs was Chauncy James, who was promoted twice during his 18 months at BFS, the second time to building maintenance.
James, 42, said he too worries about making his mortgage payment and feeding his five children. At last week's rally he marched with a sign criticizing Musk and said he regretted voting for Trump.
"They are pretty much just coming here, chopping heads off, without really doing their homework," James said. "He got elected president and he's doing a lot of things that people never even imagined that he was going to do to us."
… Disabled Air Force vet Nathan Hooven voted for Trump but was just fired by DOGE. He told AP: “I think a lot of other veterans voted the same way, and we have been betrayed. I feel like my life and the lives of so many like me, so many that have sacrificed so much for this country, are being destroyed. I’ve been blindsided. My life has been completely upended with zero chance to prepare. I was fired without notice, unjustly, based on a lie that I’m a subpar, poor performer at my job.”
… An internal memo from the new Secretary of the VA obtained by Military.com shows that the agency intends to fire more than 83,000 employees.
A nurse and dedicated Trump supporter had recently been hired by the VA, packed up her family's Fort Worth home, and secured housing in Waco. Then, two weeks before her start date, the job offer was rescinded.
her husband—a disabled veteran himself—shared the devastating impact of the rescinded job offer on social media.
"[We] have spent thousands to move our family," John Basham shared on X, formerly Twitter. "Now our family is lost with no clear path."
"My wife is in tears and inconsolable," he wrote, explaining that working with disabled veterans had long been her dream. "My family is devastated!"
At the Department of Veterans Affairs, psychiatrists are warning that the Trump administration’s return-to-office decree has forced them into crowded workplaces where they cannot grant their patients the medical privacy they are guaranteed by law.
“The end of remote work is essentially the same as cutting mental health services. These remote docs aren’t moving and they have other options if they are forced to drive to some office however many miles away every day to see their patient virtually from there.”
When veterans came home from war — from Vietnam, from Iraq, from Afghanistan — many of us didn’t stop serving. We traded our uniforms for suits. Veterans joined the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Commerce Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and every agency flying the flag overseas. We became the quiet professionals who helped keep America competitive without firing a shot.
These weren’t just any public servants. They were veterans of Fallujah leading agricultural development in Ethiopia. Medics from Helmand who became global health experts during the Ebola and Covid crises. Civil affairs Marines stabilizing fragile governments through USAID. Army logisticians forming the backbone of disaster relief and global supply chain security. Former aviators orchestrating emergency evacuations and air diplomacy at U.S. embassies worldwide. They were the people who carried the U.S. war effort on their backs — and then helped build a more stable, peaceful world. Now they are being thrown out like garbage.
For generations, veterans helped build America’s golden age. Today, the very people who benefited from that sacrifice are selling it off — for clicks, bitcoin pump-and-dump schemes, and tax breaks for billionaires.
more than 80 veterans -- some of them disabled and some from the veterans community at large -- said that they were blindsided by their terminations, which have been directed by billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
"It's not about me, it's about our veterans. What's happening to them is wrong, and I want to fight for them," said Kara Oliver, a disabled Navy veteran who was fired from her recreational therapist job at the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit
"I found out I lost my job off the clock, on my day off -- without a warning, without a meeting, without even a termination letter," Oliver said.
Air Force veteran Albert Ostering, who was fired from his job at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said, "I lost my way to provide for my family, our health care, my purpose and call-to-service" when he was fired after 10 years of working at the agency.
As a result of his firing and other dismissals at the agency, "the nation will become less safe from cyber threat actors," Ostering said.
"hearing from those who sustained illnesses and injuries in honorable service to our nation, only to later be arbitrarily fired via email by the same federal government they've devoted their lives to serve, is a gut punch," Contreras said.
Rebecca Cintron, who was fired from her job at the Department of Veterans Affairs assisting in setting up electronic health records, said the dismissal came as a shock since "we were always told how much we were needed."
"We all understand that everyone has to sacrifice, but I wish somebody understood how differently this could have been done rather than just a panic and no processes," she said.
Hundreds of Native American Code Talkers were instrumental to Allied victories during World War II by using their unique language to obfuscate communications to the enemy, often embarking on dangerous missions, including in the Pacific where Navajo Marines are routinely credited by historians for helping the Corps take Iwo Jima in a bloody amphibious assault.
The move is the latest in a growing list of censored materials celebrating the military contributions of women and service members with minority backgrounds.
a page celebrating Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the Marines pictured raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was removed from the DoD's website.
"At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA's system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block"
Congressional Republicans are standing in support of Trump's goals even as they encounter fierce pushback in their home districts. At a series of town halls this week, veterans angrily confronted Republican members as they defended the cuts made under Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
“For somebody to go on the news and say we are incompetent or lazy — that is just false,” said Future Zhou, an Army veteran who had a job managing medical supply inventories for operating rooms at the VA facility in Puget Sound, Washington, before she was fired in February.
“I didn’t think Trump would brutalize the government like he is. His efforts have surpassed my darkest images.”
“It really seems like all of the things I was promised as a citizen of this fine country are very quickly either evaporating or intentionally being dismantled and taken apart."