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As the Trump administration cuts tens of thousands of federal jobs under the guise of “efficiency,” veterans say the sweeping layoffs and surreptitious push toward privatization are worsening their lives and eroding essential Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare and support programs.
Andrew Torosian, a Coast Guard veteran turned VA housing assistant in Oakland, was among the first to feel the blow. In February, after a year of exemplary service helping 40 unhoused veterans find permanent homes — and receiving top marks in his performance review — Torosian was abruptly fired through an email sent by the Office of Personnel Management under a sweeping federal layoff order.
“They essentially told me I didn’t meet the requirements of my probationary contract, so that was definitely a shock to me,” Torosian said. “I had immediate concern for the veterans that I was currently helping. I had five veterans that were in the process of being housed within the next week or two, and I had no way of following up with them.”
When Torosian turned to his supervisors, they told him he was not alone. As of April, the Office of Personnel Management fired about 16,000 probationary workers and ordered federal agencies to fire most of the remaining probationary employees, estimated to be 200,000 people. The sweeping cuts will disproportionately affect veterans since they make up one-third of the federal work force.
This episode of “Civic” explores the effects of federal job cuts on services for veterans.
A federal judge in San Francisco reversed the firings in mid-March, but within a month, the U.S. Supreme Court let them stand, ruling that the nonprofits filing lawsuits lacked legal standing. In early May, a second federal judge in San Francisco ordered a two-week halt of the layoffs and scheduled a hearing for May 22 to consider a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of federal workers have been dismissed or left their positions.
In a May 16 email to the Public Press, VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz wrote that the VA had plans to cut 72,000 full-time employees.
“We’re conducting a comprehensive, data-driven review of all agencies and processes within the department with the goal of fixing the problems that have kept VA on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list since 2015,” Kasperowicz wrote. “We’re going to maintain VA’s mission-essential jobs like doctors, nurses and claims processors, while phasing out non-mission essential roles like DEI officers. The savings we achieve will be redirected to Veteran health care and benefits.”
Ikram Mansori, a decorated Army combat veteran and member of San Francisco’s Veterans Affairs Commission, which advises the mayor and Board of Supervisors, said she was seeing growing unease among those who have depended on the VA.
“A lot of veterans are anxious, and veterans like myself — I’m mostly worried about our unhoused veterans, our veterans who suffer from PTSD,” Mansori said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. “I would just urge our city and county leaders to really keep veterans in the conversation. All the planning, all the implementations of benefits, keep veterans a part of that.”
VA Secretary Doug Collins said the cuts follow President Trump’s “mandate for generational change in Washington,” adding that veterans have been demanding a “more efficient, accountable and transparent VA.”
But VA data shows that the department enjoys unprecedented levels of veteran satisfaction. According to a 2024 VA study, 80% of veterans trusted the agency for critical services, including disability compensation and home loans. And more than 90% trusted the VA for health care — a dramatic increase from previous years. Studies also show that most Americans support spending more for veterans’ benefits.
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Reductions in VA funding are typically pitched as efficiency measures, cost-saving reforms or expanding veteran choice by increasing access to private care providers. However, studies have shown that privatizing care often results in worse outcomes for veterans.
Programs like the 2014 Veterans Choice Program and the 2018 VA MISSION Act were intended to shorten wait times by allowing veterans to see private providers. Instead, they created longer delays and higher costs, according to an analysis of VA claims data by ProPublica and PolitiFact.
The unique nature of military trauma makes VA clinicians indispensable, and private providers are simply not equipped to do the work, said Suzanne Gordon, a journalist and researcher who has studied the VA for over a decade.
“Fundamentally, we don’t understand that these patients are different, that the system is different, that what goes on in the exam rooms is different, what goes on in the hospital is different,” Gordon said.
Gabriel Iturbe served nearly 20 years in various roles of military law enforcement in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army Reserve, including five deployments to the Middle East. He said the idea of shifting mental health care outside the VA is alarming.
“My job over there every day was to search cars, vehicles and people for bombs and IEDs and suicide vests, and in short, it did a number on me,” Iturbe said, referring to improvised explosive devices used as roadside bombs. “I was stressed, depressed, anxious — I felt hopeless. Asking for help was the first thing that I needed to do, and I did. It led me to various programs and services for veterans.”
Even support staff are essential, said Mark Smith, an occupational therapist at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and president of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1, one of many groups across the city and the country collaborating to push back against the gutting of public services.
He’s a member of the Federal Unionist Network, which staged a protest in February outside Tesla’s San Francisco dealership — a symbolic site, given Elon Musk’s leadership of the new Department of Government Efficiency, which is overseeing mass federal layoffs. (Musk is reportedly reducing his involvement in government work this month.)
Smith pushed back against Collins’ assertion that the only jobs being cut are “non-mission critical.”
“Pretty much any occupation in healthcare is a mission critical occupation,” Smith said. “If a scheduler — somebody who schedules the appointments for primary care providers or for mental health professionals — is terminated, it becomes much more difficult for the primary care provider or the mental health therapist to do their job.”
VA hospitals vastly outperform non-VA hospitals in patient satisfaction. Two studies released in September showed that more than three-quarters of VA facilities received 4 or 5 stars out of 5 for care quality, compared to less than half of non-VA hospitals.
Bruce Carruthers, a Vietnam Army combat veteran and retiree from the VA senior executive service, which manages major programs and strategic direction, said he saw the funding cuts as a moral failure.
“You can’t balance the budget on the backs of veterans,” Carruthers said. “If you don’t want to spend so much money on veterans’ care, don’t have the kind of military we have, and don’t become involved in so many conflicts. But as long as they’re going to do that, those who answer the call to duty have to be taken care of afterwards. Veterans are not toy soldiers. They’re not to be thrown away when you’re finished with them.”
Meanwhile, organizations are stepping in to fill the void. Vets in Tech, a nonprofit led by Mansori and supported by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, offers free training and employment opportunities in fields like artificial intelligence, cloud computing and project management.
“We don’t tap into their benefits,” Mansori said. “We focus on education, employment and entrepreneurship. Our veterans are some of the best project managers, people managers — leaders. And we need to support them now more than ever.”
UPDATED 5/16/25: This article was updated to add comments from VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz.
