Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania joins veterans protesting the Trump administration's proposed cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, outside the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Veterans and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday protested the Trump administration’s planned cuts for the Department of Veterans Affairs that include slashing some 80,000 jobs, which many worry will affect the massive agency’s delivery of medical care and benefits.

The group rallied outside the U.S. Capitol shortly after VA Secretary Doug Collins finished lengthy questioning before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, where he defended the cuts as necessary to improve the department’s efficiency.

Holding signs that read “Veterans Healthcare Not For Sale,” a crowd of former service members joined by senators and representatives decried that argument as “nonsensical,” as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee, put it.

“We’re not going to allow veterans to be betrayed by this administration,” Blumenthal, of Connecticut, said. “I’ve just come from a hearing with the VA secretary, and to say it was a disappointment is a huge understatement. That hearing was a disgrace.” 

‘Non-stop smear campaign’

Jose Vasquez, executive director of Common Defense, the advocacy group that organized the press conference, said, “They call this efficiency, but we call it betrayal.”

Vasquez, an Army veteran who recently received care from the VA in New York for a cancerous tumor on his pancreas, said, “Millions of veterans depend on VA every day — survivors of cancer, toxic exposure, traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress.”

He contends the agency’s workers, many of whom are veterans, have been the target of a “non-stop smear campaign.”

“Why? Simple. Because a small group of greedy billionaires would rather get tax cuts than pay for the true cost of war,” Vasquez.

Trump’s temporary DOGE organization, led by top campaign donor Elon Musk, cut roughly 2,400 VA jobs in early March.

Collins, a former Georgia congressman who still serves in the Air Force Reserve, unveiled a plan in early March to return VA staffing to 2019 levels of 398,000, down from the current approximately 470,000 positions.

The lawmaker told senators Tuesday that he’s “conducting a thorough review of the department’s structure and staffing across the enterprise.”

“We’re going to maintain VA’s mission-essential jobs like doctors, nurses and claims processors, while phasing out non-mission-essential roles like interior designers and DEI officers. The savings we achieve will be redirected to veteran health care and benefits,” Collins said.

Collins drew pushback during the hearing, including from Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who told the secretary “there’s no way that all those 80,000 are in those job fields,” referring to his comment about DEI and interior designers.

“I’m having a problem understanding how the veterans in Michigan are going to get the same or better care, which is what we want,” said Slotkin, who served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst.

GOP says VA must change

Many Republicans on the panel maintained the VA, as Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said, “is not working.”

“If we just say everything has to stay the same and you just gotta add more money and more people, then you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Tillis said, adding that he’s “open to any suggestions” and will review the proposal for workforce reductions.

Collins criticized the increase in hiring under former President Joe Biden, who signed into law the PACT Act, the largest expansion of VA benefits in decades.

The law opened care to roughly 1 million veterans who developed certain conditions and cancers following exposure to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Vietnam vets exposed to Agent Orange.

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Collins was being “battered” about the possible 80,000 cuts. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there were 52,000 new positions added between 2021 and 2024. … That 52,000, has that saved the day for our veterans?

“I don’t think so,” Collins responded.

But at the rally afterward, Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio, a former Navy officer who served in Iraq, defended the PACT Act expansion.

“At this moment when so many toxic-exposed veterans of my generation, Agent Orange-exposed veterans from the Vietnam era, are finally getting the benefits they’ve earned because of the PACT Act, we should be investing in the resources for the VA, and Donald Trump and his team are doing the opposite,” said Deluzio, who represents Pennsylvania.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) addresses union members at a weekend rally in support of federal workers whose jobs are on the line under the administration of President Donald Trump. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Moves by the Trump administration to cut the federal workforce have caused chaos and fear inside agencies ranging from the U.S. Forest Service to the Social Security Administration, advocates for federal employees say.

Some two dozen Forest Service employees in Wisconsin returned to work Monday, five weeks after receiving termination notices and being walked out, as a result of a court order March 13 holding the termination notices issued on Valentine’s Day were illegal.

Wisconsin is home to some 18,000 federal workers, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) said at a rally in Madison Saturday — workers whose jobs are on the line under orders from Washington, D.C.

“I am getting record numbers of calls in our office, literally thousands of calls every single week,” Pocan said. “People are pissed. They’re upset about cuts to the Veterans Administration. They’re upset about what’s happening with the Social Security Administration. They’re upset about Medicare and Medicaid potential cuts. They’re upset about cuts to agriculture and education.”

At the Social Security Administration, the acting Social Security commissioner has announced plans to close regional offices and cut 7,000 jobs “through buyouts, layoffs, resignations and terminations,” said Jessica LaPointe, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 220, who joined the Saturday rally at the headquarters of the South Central Federation of Labor. The council represents Social Security field office employees.

Social Security operations have been “historically understaffed,” LaPointe said, and the planned reductions “will lead to longer service delays, systems failures, and even inevitably benefit disruptions.”

In an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner during a Wisconsin visit in October, Martin O’Malley, Social Security commissioner at the time, said staff at the agency’s Madison field office has dropped by 40% since 2019. O’Malley said he told members of Congress they should increase staffing at the agency to restore “at least an adequate level of customer service.”

The cuts the agency has announced are “exacerbating the chaos, confusion and anxiety felt by workers under siege,” LaPointe said Saturday. She added that the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s project to slash operations across the federal government “are destroying the public’s ability to access timely and effective service from the Social Security Administration, with the intent — let’s be real about their intent — of turning the American people against Social Security.”

William Townsend, president of the AFGE local at the Department of Veterans Affairs VA hospital in Madison, said the department’s plan to cut 80,000 or more positions nationwide would be detrimental to the health care of veterans counting on the agency.

AFGE also represents employees at the Transportation Security Administration. The union and the Biden administration signed a new contract in 2024, but Trump administration TSA leaders told the union last month they were canceling the contract and would no longer recognize the union.

Nevertheless, said TSA worker and AFGE Local 777 president Darrell English, the union will continue to stand up for its members’ rights while conducting a legal battle to restore their union contract. “We know it’s going to be a long fight, but we’re here,” English said at Saturday’s rally.

At the U.S. Forest Service, 24 Wisconsin employees were fired on Feb. 14 — part of a wave of thousands of “probationary” employees let go, said Carl Houtman, a union official.

Houtman works at the Forest Service Products Laboratory in Madison and is president of the National Federation of Federal Employees union local there. He is also the national negotiation chair for the union’s Forest Service Council. In an interview Monday, he stipulated he was speaking strictly as a union leader, not as a Forest Service representative.

About 170 of the Forest Service’s 672 Wisconsin employees work at the laboratory, researching the use of wood as a building material and wood chemistry for papermaking and in a variety of new applications. Most of the other Forest Service employees in the state are associated with the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.

After a series of legal challenges, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the fired probationary workers, ruling that Trump administration officials hadn’t followed required procedures.  

The fired workers returned Monday, said Houtman, including a colleague who was among those who had been dismissed.

“It’s crazy the inefficiency that has caused,” he said Monday. “They walked her out the door, took her computer and her door card, and they basically had to hire her back. In this intervening month she could have been reasonably doing her job, but the agency was forced” by the federal Office of Personnel Management, now under the Trump administration’s control, “to fire these people.”

The federal judge’s ruling requires the administration to follow the legal procedures for reducing the federal workforce. Houtman said federal workers and their unions involved in the February firing expect to learn more about the administration’s intentions in the next month.

“We anticipate about the middle of April getting an idea about what’s going on,” he said. “It’s possible that a large number of people in Wisconsin will get wiped out — we just don’t know.”

Houtman said there are concerns among employees that “this administration wants to wipe out the science arm of the Forest Service” and possibly sell most or all federally owned forest land, harming the nation’s natural resources.

Established in 1910, the forest products lab remains a vital source of research, he said. Its findings help shape codes and standards for building as well as for product manufacturing — such as a project currently underway to develop a consistent test for how recyclable consumer packaging is.

The lab also plays a role in training new scientists, he added.

“Most of the probationary employees were new hires, starting to learn wood science from us,” Houtman said. “You basically have wiped out the next generation of scientists. It’s going to do irreparable harm.”