Today is
Tuesday March 11, 2025
(WASHINGTON) -- Democrats want to force President Donald Trump's administration to rehire veterans who were laid off as part of large-scale efforts by Trump and Elon Musk to reshape the federal government and its workforce, according to information exclusive to ABC News.
Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey plan to introduce the Protect Veteran Jobs Act in the Senate on Monday. The bill would compel the Trump administration to reinstate veterans impacted by recent mass layoffs, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by ABC News.
It would also require the Trump administration to provide a quarterly report to Congress on the number of veterans removed from the federal workforce -- and the justification for their firing.
"Veterans who choose to continue their service to our country in the federal workforce deserve our utmost gratitude, but instead this Administration has kicked thousands of our heroes to the curb and left them without a paycheck," Duckworth said in a statement. "The message of our bill is simple: Give our heroes their jobs back. If Republicans really care about our Veterans, they should stop enabling Trump and Musk's chaos and support our legislation."
In the coming weeks of floor activity and ahead of government funding votes, Democrats hope to get Republicans on the record over layoffs impacting a reliably Republican -- and Trump-supporting -- group of voters.
The party also attempted to draw attention to the firings by inviting veterans who lost their government jobs to Trump's joint address to Congress on March 3.
Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce of more than 2 million civilian government employees, according to September data from the Office of Personnel Management.
Roughly 75,000 federal workers have accepted offers for deferred buyouts, and another roughly 20,000 government employees have been fired in the first months of Trump's second term.
The Trump administration has not said how many veterans have been impacted by the cuts, though Democrats have estimated that several thousand veterans have been fired across the administration.
OPM has since directed some agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to rehire veteran workers and to exempt veterans and military spouses from other workforce policy changes.
But many veterans have still lost their jobs in recent weeks.
"You spend 10 years trying to defend your country in terms of honesty, integrity and justice, and then you come back and get copy-and-pasted the same email as 10,000 other people about your performance," Andrew Lennox, a fired Department of Veterans Affairs worker who served as a Marine in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, told ABC News.
Lennox was one of the veterans who attended Trump's joint address to Congress last week. He was a guest of Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal to the speech.
The Department of Veterans Affairs also plans to cut up to 80,000 workers from the agency, which has drawn some criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Democratic Rep. Derek Tran of California has introduced similar legislation in the House.
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(WASHINGTON) -- The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to lay off as many as 80,000 workers in the coming weeks in the latest phase of the Trump administration's efforts to reshape the federal workforce, according to an internal memo obtained by ABC News.
VA Secretary Doug Collins later confirmed the planned cuts in a video posted to X, saying the agency is aiming for a 15% workforce cut that could begin in the coming months.
Collins said the VA will continue to hire for open "mission critical" positions while the agency downsizes in other areas, so that "health care and benefits for VA beneficiaries are not impacted."
"We regret anyone who loses their job, and it's extraordinarily difficult for me as a VA leader, and your secretary, to make these types of decisions. But the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people," Collins said.
Top Republicans and Democrats raised concerns with the plans and how they might be implemented.
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, said on X that that "the Department of Veterans Affairs is in need of reform but current efforts to downsize the department and increase efficiency must be done in a more responsible manner."
"I expect the VA to work with Congress to right size the VA workforce and allow us to legislate necessary changes," he added.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the panel, criticized the announcement, saying the "plan prioritizes private sector profits over veterans’ care, balancing the budget on the backs of those who served."
In a March 4 memo to senior agency leaders, chief of staff Christopher Syrek said the VA's "initial objective is to return to our 2019-end strength numbers of 399,957 employees" as part of the Department of Government Efficiency-led wave of large-scale firings and reorganization of agencies.
"VA, in partnership with our DOGE leads, will move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach to identify and eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce footprint, and increase workplace efficiency," Syrek said in the memo obtained by ABC News.
Already, the VA has said it has dismissed 2,400 probationary workers -- although some were subsequently hired back to the agency, workers and lawmakers told ABC News.
Agencies are required to submit the first piece of their reorganization plans -- with proposals for potential layoffs -- to the Office of Personnel Management by March 13.
The VA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Even as the VA prepares to trim its workforce, the agency has faced setbacks in other cost-cutting efforts.
On Wednesday, Collins announced that the agency had saved $900 million by canceling more than 500 "non mission critical and duplicative" contracts, after initially claiming the agency had identified $2 billion in contracts for potential savings.
The agency has faced internal resistance to the contract cuts -- some of which directly support medical care and facilities -- and has reversed the cancellation of many of the initial batch of more than 800 originally identified for cuts.
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