What The Hell America!

Nevertheless, as Goldsmith argues, it will take a lot more than issuing press statements, presenting hearing testimony, and politely lobbying legislators to stop the further “bleeding” that will result from a VA “reorganization” first reported March 5.

According to an internal memo, Trump’s new VA secretary, Doug Collins, intends to cut 80,000 more jobs — contrary to the confirmation hearing testimony he gave to the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC) on January 21. On that occasion, the ex-congressman from Georgia assured his former Capitol Hill colleagues that “we’re not going to sacrifice veterans’ benefits to do a budget.” This helped the right-wing Air Force Reserve chaplain get confirmed, with virtually no SVAC opposition, and by a 77-23 Senate vote in his favor.

Despite the leaked document from VA headquarters, President Trump insists that he will still “take good care of our veterans” and wants to keep the total number losing their federal jobs “as small as possible.” Meanwhile, he boasted of “having great success at slimming down our government,” which was a major focus of his recent joint address to Congress. During the hundred-minute rant, Trump didn’t mention veterans or Collins even once, despite his various shout-outs to cops, firefighters, border patrol officers, and other cabinet members.

As part of the Democrats’ response to what Sen. Tim Kaine calls a “war on veterans,” Kaine and others in Trump’s audience brought along guests who served in the military. All were just fired by the VA and other federal agencies, where vets comprise about 30 percent of the workforce.

When one dismissed Forest Service worker, Iraq War vet Jacob Bushno, approached his congressman back home for help, he got no response from Mike Bost, the Republican chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. (Instead, Bushno heard from the office of Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois Democrat and former Army helicopter pilot who became a double amputee when she was shot down in Iraq.) Noting that Republicans like Bost always wrap themselves in the flag, Bushno told the New York Times that “he hadn’t seen any patriotism out of them since this has been going down.”

This emerging rift between right-wing Republicans and one part of their electoral base might be further deepened through more grassroots activism by veterans and their organizations, VA caregivers and their patients, federal worker unions, and even their often-unreliable Democratic allies.

On February 19, there was plenty of blue-state outrage on display when members and friends of the Federal Unionists Network (FUN) protested DOGE in rallies from the West Coast to New York City, where one thousand people gathered in Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square to hear speakers like longtime VA defender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Outside a Tesla dealership in San Francisco, Army veteran and VA patient Ricardo Ortiz told a crowd of three hundred about the struggle of working-class vets to create a health care system, based on public provision of care instead of for-profit medical treatment. That achievement is now at risk, he warned, because of bipartisan efforts to privatize the VA-run Veterans Health Administration.

Now many red-state victims of the Trump-Musk purge are speaking out as well, taking their personal stories to media outlets and public meetings around the country. Army veteran Nelson Feliz Sr lost his job in the first wave of VA layoffs, which Collins claimed would “not negatively impact VA healthcare, benefits, or beneficiaries.”

“We’ve been betrayed,” Feliz told Channel 2 News in Atlanta: “I was a first sergeant. My job was to take care of troops, making sure they were paid, fed, and slept. Why is this happening to us? I’ve been here too long for this to be happening.”

Both Bushno, the now unemployed National Forest Service worker in Illinois, and Feliz were among the 6,000 vets affected by the dismissal of 20,000 federal workers still in probationary status. In Bushno’s case, he was let go seven days before his one-year probationary period ended, a decision he is appealing.

Feliz was fired despite having been a VA employee for more than twelve years; he had recently started a new position but had not completed the required probationary period for that. The “Notice of Termination” he received via email stated that “the agency finds, based on your performance, you have not demonstrated that your further employment would be in the public interest.” This and other indiscriminate dismissals have been the subject of an ongoing legal challenge by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the progressive veterans’ group Common Defense, and other plaintiffs.

AFGE local union leaders like Rebecca Reinhold, vice president of Local 85 at the VA in Leavenworth, Kansas, have been taking the fight directly to Republican members of Congress when they dare to show up for constituent meetings in their districts. This is already a risky decision for many of these congresspeople due to growing popular anger about impending Medicaid and Medicare cuts.

In Reinhold’s recent video-taped confrontation with Rep. Mark Alford at a town hall gathering, she reminded Alford that her 1,200 members provide critical services. “We make sure veterans are cared for from the moment they become a veteran,” she said. “But you want to cut my job.” In response, Alford insisted there would be “appropriate funds for veterans” and that any VA cuts “would not affect services” because “we’re going to make sure veterans are supported.”

In Oakley, Kansas, Sen. Roger Marshall abruptly ended an already contentious town hall meeting when local resident Chuck Nunn questioned the wisdom of laying off so many veterans. His concern was shared by another member of the crowd who declared, “I’m not a Democrat, but I’m worried about the veterans.” Marshall did not respond to either comment and left the room hurriedly, amid jeers and boos.

In other House member encounters with voters in the southwest recently, it was the same story. Veteran Louis Smith drew approving applause from an East Texas audience when he warned Congressman Pete Sessions that “the guy from South Africa [Elon Musk] is not doing you any good — he’s hurting you more than he’s helping.” Rep. Stephanie Bice from Oklahoma heard, during a telephone town hall, from a self-identified Republican and former Army officer who demanded to know how “some college whiz kids with a computer terminal in Washington, DC . . . have determined that it’s OK to cut veterans benefits.”

Those skirmishes took place even before Secretary Collins doubled down on the bad news contained in the leaked memo from his chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, who comes to the VA from KPMG, a corporate consulting firm specializing in outsourcing strategies. In a March 5 video statement, Collins pledged his fealty to further elimination of “waste and bureaucracy.” He claimed that VA health care delivery would not be disrupted because no “mission critical positions” would be impacted. “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it,” he said.

In response, SVAC ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal displayed some buyer’s remorse of his own. He accused Collins of planning job cuts to “roll back the PACT Act” — which expanded health care access to nearly a million post-9/11 veterans — and impeding the agency’s “ability to meet increased demand in order to justify privatizing VA.”

Just two months ago, Blumenthal and his fellow veteran on the committee, Sen. Ruben Gallego from Arizona, were among the twenty-two Senate Democrats voting to confirm Collins, along with longtime VA privatization foe Bernie Sanders (I-VT). As penance for that misguided display of VA-related bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, they will hopefully be holding town meetings soon themselves to rally their own distressed constituents, many of whom once donned military uniforms but are now feeling double-crossed by Chaplain Collins.