Trump to ‘Take Good Care’ of Veterans by Firing 80,000 VA Employees

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Since taking office, Donald Trump and his administration have embarked on an unsparing quest to reduce government spending by making substantial cuts to federal agencies across all sectors. Their efforts have resulted in slashed departmental contracts and programs, as well as mass layoffs of federal workers, in exchange for a questionable amount of savings.

Though the cuts have prompted pushback and legal challenges, the president’s Department of Government Efficiency agenda shows no signs of abating and the administration stands poised to institute further cuts to another crucial agency. The Associated Press reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs intends to eliminate at least 80,000 jobs as part of a restructuring of the agency, which provides health care and other benefits and services to American veterans.

In an internal memo, VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek outlined goals to return the department to its 2019 staffing levels to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” According to the outlet Government Executive, which first reported on the memo, the VA currently employs 482,000 staffers and would have to eliminate 83,000 jobs to reach its 2019 level of 399,000 workers. Syrek urged agency officials to work alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s DOGE in these efforts and to “move out aggressively while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach.”

If implemented, the substantial cuts will impact veterans not just as care recipients but also as employees. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, veterans make up about 30 percent of the federal workforce. Democratic members of the House Appropriations Committee estimate that Musk and Trump’s DOGE initiative has resulted in the firing of nearly 6,000 veterans from the overall civilian federal workforce as of late February. Several congressional Democrats sought to highlight this fact on Tuesday by inviting federal workers, many of them veterans, who were fired as a result of the administration’s cuts to attend Trump’s joint address to Congress as their guests.

Last week, Trump was asked about the firings impacting veteran workers during a press conference with Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The president said he was aware that veterans had been caught up in the layoffs but gave no signal that a change in approach was coming. “We’re watching that very carefully, and we hope it’s going to be as small a number as possible. But we are having great success in slimming down our government,” he said.

Trump continued, “We love our veterans. We’re gonna take good care of them.”