Washington — The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to slash thousands of employees in the coming months as part of President Trump’s initiative to scale back the size of the federal government, according to a memo from the agency’s chief of staff.
The memo, sent Tuesday to top Veterans Affairs officials and obtained by CBS News, describes the agency’s plans for a reduction-in-force, which is expected to take place in August. The department’s goal is to return its workforce to 2019-levels of just under 400,000 employees, a cut of more than 70,000 workers.
Led by Secretary Doug Collins, a former congressman and Iraq War veteran, the VA employed more than 471,000 people as of December, according to the agency’s workforce dashboard, 27% of whom are veterans.
The memo states that the Department of Veterans Affairs, “in partnership with DOGE leaders, will move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach to identify and eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce footprint and increase workforce efficiency.”
Mr. Trump created the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, which he said is headed by Elon Musk, to oversee his plan to shrink the size of the federal government and cut spending.
The VA’s memo estimates that a portion of the savings stemming from its cuts “will be reinvested in the veterans we serve and the systems required to support our workforce and executive our mission.”
The memo is part of the VA’s efforts to initiate a department-wide review of its organization and structure in response to an executive order Mr. Trump signed last month that directed agency heads to “promptly” make plans to initiate “large-scale” reductions in its workforce.
“This effort will require the entirety of VA staff and organizations to work together in a collaborative fashion, as well as to coordinate actions with DOGE and the administration as a whole, to achieve the desired results,” the directive states.
It lays out a timeline for implementing this reduction-in-force and reorganization plan, which begins this month and culminates in the terminations before the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30.
As part of his government-cutting initiative, Mr. Trump offered the entire federal workforce, which consists of more than 2 million people, a deferred resignation program, under which they could resign from their jobs but retain full pay and benefits until Sept. 30.
The White House said roughly 75,000 employees accepted the offer, far fewer than the 200,000 it expected to take the so-called buyout.
Thousands of probationary employees, generally considered those who have been in their positions for less than a year, have also been terminated. The Office of Personnel Management instructed agency heads in a Jan. 20 memo to identify all employees in their probationary periods and determine whether they should be kept on.
But after a federal judge ruled last week that the mass firings were likely illegal, OPM revised the memo to clarify that it is “not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees. Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions.”
The VA dismissed more than 2,400 employees last month and said there were more than 40,000 probationary workers across the department.
But Democrats have warned that firing thousands of VA employees will have devastating impacts on the nation’s veterans, forcing them to wait longer for medical care, to have disability claims adjudicated and to speak to someone at the Veterans Crisis Line.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are escalating their full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans–and putting the health care and benefits they have earned in grave danger,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement. “It’s infuriating that two billionaires think they can fire tens of thousands of people responsible for administering the services and care that over nine million veterans across the country count on. It’s flat-out immoral and a breach of the sacred commitment we make to our veterans to take care of them when they return home.”
Murray is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The work by DOGE and the Trump administration to scale back the size of the federal government has sparked numerous legal challenges and concerns from Democrats and labor unions, some of which have filed lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions.
contributed to this report.
