Trump administration plans to cut 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs, according to internal memo

VA plans to cut over 80,000 jobs to return to 2019 staffing levels, sparking concern among veterans and lawmakers.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides health care and other services for millions of veterans, according to an internal memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The VA's chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency Tuesday that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.

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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.

Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA that so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. More than 25% of the VA's workforce is comprised of veterans.

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.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the President “refuses to accept the VA bureaucracy and bloat that has hindered veterans’ ability to receive timely and quality care. By making the VA workforce more efficient, President Trump and Secretary Collins will ensure greater efficiency and transparency for our nation’s heroes while preserving the benefits they earned.”