'Chaotic and sweeping': Trump’s cuts cost 62,000 veterans their jobs — with more to come

President Donald Trump’s sweeping government cuts have cost 62,000 veterans their jobs, according to a budget-oriented think tank — and worse is yet to come.

“The Trump Administration has radically slashed the federal civilian workforce, sidestepping Congress and causing disruptions, slowdowns, and fragility in a range of critical public services that people and communities depend on,” wrote the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on Friday. “Veterans have been affected by these cuts both as members of the federal workforce and as recipients of federal health care and other benefits available to them based on their service.”

The federal government has been a large employer of veterans for many decades, with veterans accounting for roughly 30 percent of all federal employees in recent years. The number of veterans working in the federal government fell by nearly 10 percent between September 2024 and December 2025, resulting in the lowest number of veterans in the federal workforce in over 15 years, according to data no longer available online from the Office of Personnel Management.

“Veterans have felt the impact of the Administration’s chaotic and sweeping personnel policies across the federal government, including at the IRS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Department of Education,” the think tank writes. “But it’s at the VA — the federal agency dedicated to running programs and services that benefit veterans and their families, including providing care through nearly 1,400 health care facilities — where the harm to veterans may be most acute.” Trump has eliminated nearly 28,000 VA employees, or roughly 6 percent of the agency’s staff, including more than 2,700 nurses, more than 1,000 medical officers, more than 1,000 psychologists and social workers and more than 1,800 people tasked with evaluating veterans’ claims for benefits.

“Congress needs to continue to crack down on the Administration’s abuse and weaponization of personnel policy and address its unilateral cuts in federal capacity,” the think tank concluded. “Otherwise, the delivery of services and programs that Congress chooses to fund will continue to deteriorate, and everyone, including veterans, will continue to feel the worsening impact.”

The Trump administration has only walked back its past cuts to veterans services when facing intense pressure. On Thursday Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins ended a controversial VA policy that lowered veterans’ disability ratings and subsequent monthly compensation.

“DAV is extremely disappointed and alarmed by VA’s decision to issue an interim final rule today that could potentially reduce disability compensation for millions of disabled veterans,” Coleman Nee, national commander of Disabled American Veterans, said prior to Trump’s reversal.

In addition to rolling back veterans benefits, Trump is also accused of politicizing the military. The Atlantic's Missy Ryan, who has covered 10 defense secretaries, recently wrote that she has never seen anything like Trump Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s political actions, such as trying to penalize veterans such as Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for their political speech.

"Expanding the military’s ability to control veterans’ speech would be a major and historic reversal of basic freedoms," Ryan wrote. "Retired service members turned public officials have a long history of criticizing Pentagon leaders in ways those leaders might find objectionable."

She added, "If the government prevails, the silencing of longtime service members would be like barring retired doctors from opining on health policy. When debating matters of war and peace, he said, it serves the public to hear from the very people who have served on the front lines — and lived through the consequences."

Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) recently told The New York Times something similar, arguing that “once lost, the legitimacy of a military that reflects and represents all Americans will be difficult to recover." Meanwhile MS NOW's Steve Benen wrote that Trump's partisan speeches to the military erode “a foundational, bedrock principle of the United States. Partisan, ideological and electoral considerations must be utterly irrelevant to what the military is and how it functions. It is nevertheless a principle for which Trump appears to have no use, creating an untenable dynamic."

• george conway
• noam chomsky
• civil war
• Kayleigh mcenany
• Melania trump
• drudge report
• paul krugman
• Lindsey graham
• Lincoln project
• al franken bill maher
• People of praise
• Ivanka trump
• eric trump