Trump administration could reportedly fire 80,000 from Veterans Affairs
The Trump administration is looking to roll back staffing at the department charged with caring for American veterans to lower levels that were in place during Donald Trump's first term by firing as many as 80,000 workers who were hired as part of a Biden administration initiative to improve care and cover veterans exposed to burn pits and toxic substances under a 2022 law.
The plan is laid out in a memorandum, first reported on by Government Executive, which came from VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek and calls to reduce the number of employees on payroll to 2019 levels.
It instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to "resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure."
The memorandum also calls for agency officials to work with the White House's Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to "move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach" to meeting objectives laid out by the administration, which has started a concerted effort to reduce the number of people on federal payrolls seemingly without regard to what is needed for agencies to carry out their missions.
In public social media posts, Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a prominent Trump campaign donor, has alluded to presidential election results in the District of Columbia — a heavily Democratic city that has never given its' electoral votes to a Republican candidate — as justification for slashing the federal workforce.
Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA, which so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. More than 25% of the VA's workforce are veterans themselves.
In Congress, Democrats have decried the cuts at the VA and other agencies, while Republicans have so far watched with caution the Trump administration's changes.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees veteran's affairs, said in a statement that the Trump administration "has launched an all-out assault" against progress the VA has made in expanding its services as the number of covered veterans grows and includes those impacted by toxic burn pits.
"Their plan prioritizes private sector profits over veterans' care, balancing the budget on the backs of those who served. It's a shameful betrayal, and veterans will pay the price for their unforgivable corruption, incompetence, and immorality," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
18 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Trump to send 9,000 migrants to terrorist detention center
Donald Trump is set to send thousands more illegal migrants to the infamous terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay starting this week in an acceleration of his mass deportation plan. In February, Trump deployed members of the Armed Forces to expand the capacity of a detention facility at the Cuba base. This week, at least 9,000 people are being identified for a potential transfer to the prison as early as Wednesday, Politico reported. Currently, around 500 migrants have been held at the jail known as 'Gitmo' for short stints in the past few months. These holds would also be temporary, as it would be a pit stop on the way to being deported to the country they came from. However, it would reportedly send a message to foreign countries that America is closed to migrants who aren't willing to go through the legal process. A document obtained by the outlet said that several hundred Europeans - including over a hundred Russians and Romanians - that has the State Department worried. 'The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people, but we're allies,' an anonymous State Department official familiar with the plans said. The White House also faces legal challenges to the policy. The United States Navy announced that its combat ship USS St. Louis was moored at the Guantanamo Bay naval station and that the crew was supporting the expansion in February. Photographs showed members of the armed forces setting up army green tents and pounding large stakes into the ground to hold them up. The first phase of the expansion is expected to increase the center's capacity to 2,000, according to the Navy, with plans to expand it to fit 30,000 migrants. The detention facility is widely known as the location for detained terrorism suspects in recent years, but the Trump administration has decided to expand it's use for detaining migrants scheduled for deportation. Trump announced plans for his administration to detain as many as 30,000 high priority migrants with criminal records at the military base at Guantanamo Bay. Legal experts stress that detainees at Guantanamo Bay will still have legal rights afforded to them by the Constitution, as the Supreme Court defended terror suspects right to habeas corpus and a lawyer. 'The government's view at that time was that Guantanamo was sort of outside the parameters of the U.S. Constitution, and whoever was there had no rights, whatever. And the Supreme Court rejected that,' Eugene Fidell, Yale Law School military law expert noted. 'We don't want them coming back, so we're sending them to Guantanamo,' he said at the White House. Trump's border czar Tom Homan (pictured) told reporters the administration would expand the capacity of the facility as the military has planned to erect temporary tents. 'We're just going to expand upon that existing migrant center,' Homan said.
Reuters
23 minutes ago
- Reuters
Kosovo accepts US request to host third-party deportees
PRISTINA, June 11 (Reuters) - Kosovo has accepted a request to receive migrants deported from the United States, with an initial plan to take in 50 deportees per year, the government said in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday. "The government has expressed its readiness to participate, with the opportunity to select individuals from a proposed pool, provided they meet specific criteria related to the rule of law and public order," it said. The United States is on the look-out for partners to receive third party nationals as it seeks to deliver on President Donald Trump's promise of record-level deportations. Kosovo, a Balkan country of 1.6 million people, already has a deal to receive 300 prison inmates from Denmark beginning in 2027 in return for 210 million euros over the next decade, and has expressed interest in receiving deportees from Britain. Kosovo-U.S. relations are particularly strong, given the U.S. lead in supporting independence from Serbia in 2008. "We hold their support in very high regard," the statement said.
The Independent
30 minutes ago
- The Independent
Army veteran joins anti-ICE protest in Dallas and ‘calls on conscience' of fellow service members
A uniformed U.S. Army veteran has provoked anger among MAGA conservatives by joining a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, Texas, on Monday. In a viral video recorded at the event, the soldier does not hold back in her criticism of President Donald Trump for activating 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to help police the anti-ICE demonstrations that have raged in Los Angeles for five days and have since spread to other major American cities. 'We are not pawns for Donald Trump's agenda,' the woman, wearing a camouflage uniform bearing the name tag 'Colado,' says in the video shared by left-leaning X account BreakThrough News. 'Why now?' she continues. 'It's because the military was called upon against the protesters. In our oath to serve, we serve the people of the United States, the Constitution. These constitutional rights are being stripped and just denied. 'And the military will not be pawns to that. That's why I'm calling on the conscience of military members who served previously and now. We have a conscience, we have a mind and we have a duty, a moral obligation to say no and resist.' The Independent has contacted the Pentagon for its response to her comments. Online, conservatives wasted no time in calling for the woman, subsequently identified as Carmen Colado, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to be dishonorably discharged or court-martialled for publicly criticizing the commander-in-chief's orders. Some argued that her actions constituted a violation of the U.S. military's Uniform Code of Military Justice and called for Article 15 to be invoked against her, which empowers a commanding officer to order nonjudicial punishments less severe than a court-martial. These might include restrictions on duty, extra duty, forfeiture of pay, and, in some cases, confinement; however, since Colado appears to have left the service, it is unlikely to apply. She describes herself on Instagram as the 'proud daughter of an illegal immigrant hero who saved my life' and posts photos of friends and family, poetry, pencil drawings, and even a short film she has directed. Her posts also include an inspirational quote from Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green, who was censured for interrupting President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress earlier this year, on the occasion of a Dallas protest march calling for immigration reform. 'To protect liberty and justice for all – to protect government of the people, by the people, for the people – to protect what this country has in its great and noble ideals, we have to do what is necessary,' Green's quote reads.
