The Trump administration plans to slash as many as 83,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to multiple outlets. That move could endanger care for veterans who were sickened from exposure to toxic burn pits while deployed.
The cuts are part of President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk’s effort to slash federal spending through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has already cut thousands of jobs in a chaotic fashion, endangering national security and public health in the process.
The massive planned job cuts at the VA—where more than a quarter of the workforce has served in the military—reverses the hiring spree that President Joe Biden carried out during his tenure.
The Biden administration hired 61,000 new employees at the VA to handle the influx of veterans who became eligible for care after Congress passed the PACT Act, which "expands VA health care and benefits for Veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances."
The Department of Veterans Affairs building in Washington, D.C.
According to the VA, after the bill was passed, the VA saw an influx in veterans receiving care, and the government screened more than 4 million veterans for toxic exposure to help them get care if needed.
But now the Trump administration plans to scale back the hires from the Biden administration, which Democrats say will hamstring the VA's ability to provide care to veterans.
"83,000 VA employees are set to be fired. These cuts won’t just impact those seeking health care. They will create chaos across every aspect of VA—delaying benefits, straining claims processing, and making it nearly impossible for student veterans and schools to get the assistance they need,” Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee wrote in a post on X. “Veterans will suffer the consequences.”
The news that the Trump administration plans to make dramatic cuts at the VA comes after a top White House aide on Tuesday said she didn't feel sorry for the thousands of veterans who have been fired from the Trump administration already.
"We have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people who actually work, that doesn't mean we forget about our veterans by any means, we are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they're not fit to have a job at this moment or are not willing to come to work," Alina Habba, a counselor to Trump, said from outside the West Wing of the White House. "And we can't—I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, 'Sorry, they're not going to come to work.' It's just not acceptable."
Habba was reacting to the news that Democratic lawmakers were bringing veterans whom the Trump administration fired to Trump’s congressional address Tuesday night.
One of those veterans who attended the speech, retired Army Staff Sergeant Alexzandria Hunt, was fired from her job as a supply technician at the Hampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Virginia.
Hunt worked in the hospital to ensure that hospice patients had supplies like diapers, oxygen tanks, and other necessary medical equipment before she was fired on Feb. 25.
"It broke my heart," Hunt told a local Virginia television station about being fired and having to leave the patients she served. "It made me feel like nothing, like I didn't matter, like I was just a number.”
Ultimately, Trump patted himself on the back for the cuts DOGE has made so far, saying this is “just the beginning” of the cuts. Absent from his speech was any mention of veterans and how his DOGE cuts will benefit them.
“What else would you expect from the man who thinks we're suckers and losers,” VoteVets, a progressive veterans group, wrote in a post on X.
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