WASHINGTON — As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans.
From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service.
“At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA’s system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, at a news conference last week.
Most veterans voted for Trump last year — nearly 6 in 10, according to AP Votecast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters. Yet congressional Republicans are standing in support of Trump’s goals even as they encounter fierce pushback in their home districts. At a series of town halls this week, veterans angrily confronted Republican members as they defended the cuts made under Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“Do your job!” Jay Carey, a military veteran, yelled at Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards at a town hall in North Carolina.
“I’m a retired military officer,” an attendee at another forum in Wyoming told Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman before questioning whether DOGE had actually discovered any “fraud.”
Although Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson advised his members to skip the town halls and claimed that they were being filled with paid protesters, some Republicans were still holding them and trying to respond to the criticism.
“It looks radical, but it’s not. I call it stewardship, in my opinion,” Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida said on a tele-town hall. “I think they’re doing right by the American taxpayer. And I support that principle of DOGE.”
Still, some Republicans have expressed unease with the seemingly indiscriminate firings of veterans, especially when they have not been looped in on the administration’s plans. At a town hall on Friday, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw told the audience, “We’re learning about this stuff at the speed of light, the way you are. I think there’s been some babies thrown out with the bath water here, but we’re still gathering information on it.”
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, added, “If you’re doing a job that we need you to do, you’re doing it well, yeah, we’ve got to fight for you.”
The Republican chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike Bost, assured listeners on a tele-town hall last week that he and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins are talking regularly. As the VA implements plans to cut roughly 80,000 jobs, Bost has said he is watching the process closely, but he has expressed support and echoed Collins’ assurances that veterans’ health care and benefits won’t be slashed.
“They’ve cut a lot, but understand this: Essential jobs are not being cut,” Bost said, but then added that his office was helping alert the VA when people with essential jobs had in fact been terminated.
Two federal judges this month ordered the Trump administration to rehire the probationary employees who were let go in the mass firings. At the VA, some of those employees have now been put on administrative leave, but a sense of dread and confusion is still hanging over much of the federal workforce.
“We’re all kind of wondering what’s next,” said Dan Foster, a Washington state Army veteran who lost his job when the VA canceled a contract supporting a program that educates service members on how to access their benefits and VA programs.
Others are angry they have been portrayed as deadweight and cut from jobs they felt played a direct role in helping veterans get health care.
“For somebody to go on the news and say we are incompetent or lazy — that is just false,” said Future Zhou, an Army veteran who had a job managing medical supply inventories for operating rooms at the VA facility in Puget Sound, Washington, before she was fired in February.
As Democrats search for their political footing and a rallying point to unify them, they have zeroed in on the cause of protecting veterans. In both the House and the Senate, Democrats have introduced legislation that would shield veterans from the mass layoffs. And when Trump spoke to Congress this month, many lawmakers invited veterans as their guests.
“They are outraged,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who is an Iraq War veteran and former assistant secretary at the VA. “They said Donald Trump promised to watch out for them. And the first thing he does is fire them.”
Democrats are already pressing their Republican colleagues to show their support for veterans. In negotiations to allow passage of a Republican-backed government funding bill this month, Democrats secured a vote to amend the package to include language that would protect veterans from the federal layoffs. But it failed on party lines in part because the last-minute change would have ensured that Congress missed the deadline to avert a shutdown.
With an eye on the midterm elections, VoteVets, a left-leaning veterans’ advocacy group, is already launching video ads that feature veterans sharing their stories of being fired and accusing congressional members of doing “absolutely nothing.” The ads are directed to five potential swing districts held by Republicans who are veterans themselves.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who is also a veteran, said he was unsure whether veterans would shift their political allegiance.
But he said it is at least clear veterans are “pissed.”
Gallego said there’s an opportunity for Democrats to hammer home the message that “Elon Musk and his buddies would rather just deal with the bottom line and try to save billions of dollars so they can have more tax cuts at the expense of veterans.”
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Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., and Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed.