Last month, Townhall published a roundup of government agencies that saw major cuts (or shuttered almost altogether) due to President Donald Trump’s newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE has continued to embed in government agencies and cut jobs. During Trump’s joint address this week, he highlighted some of the obscene findings DOGE uncovered.
Today, another agency announced that it would slash tens of thousands of jobs.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will cut over 80,000 jobs, according to an internal memo that was obtained by the Associated Press.
Reportedly, the VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, revealed to top-level officials within the agency that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000 (via AP):
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The memo 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.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration’s goals. Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.
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The plans underway at the VA showed how the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is not holding back on an all-out effort to slash federal agencies, even for those that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support.
Michael Missal, who was the VA’s inspector general for nine years until he was fired last month as part of Trump’s sweeping dismissal of independent oversight officials at government agencies, told the AP that the VA is already suffering from a lack of “expertise” as top-level officials either leave or are shuffled around under the president’s plans.
Of course, Democrats like Sen. Richard Blumenthal (CT) spoke out about this. Blumenthal said Trump “launched an all-out assault” against the VA.
“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,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
“Democrats are here to say in unison we will not allow our veterans to be defined as government waste,” said Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) added.
