President Donald Trump’s administration has backed off its plan to fire 83,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA will still get rid of about 30,000 employees, a figure that includes the thousands it has already let go. 

After arguing for months that the proposed cuts were essential to ensure the VA could continue its mission, the administration has done a 180 on these claims. It is unclear whether the administration has decided to back off due to pressure from veterans groups, no longer needing the money for their billionaire tax breaks, or pressure from Congress. It may be a combination of all three. But it is more likely that this is a shell game to buy Trump time.

This revised approach is being sold as a win for efficiency, but it’s actually a calculated retreat in language — not in intent. They swapped pink slips for attrition, hiring freezes, early retirements, and a bureaucratic euphemism called “deferred resignation,” which lets people technically stay on the books while being paid to prepare to leave. The new plan is not a full walk-back — it’s a workaround. All this at a time when the VA patient base is growing and its supply of doctors and nurses is shrinking. 

Frontline staffers at the VA are sounding the alarm. Nurses and doctors are now being asked to cover administrative duties because the people who used to handle billing or facilities management are simply gone. 

Since January 1, the VA has lost 17,000 employees. By the end of September, 12,000 more will be gone. The administration claims these departures won’t impact veteran care. Ask any veteran waiting months for a disability claim to be processed or stuck in a long line for an appointment if that’s true. 

Trump announced Monday that the hiring freeze at the VA and the rest of the executive branch will go on for at least three more months. This has a double effect, as it will keep the many veterans who have been fired under Trump from finding another federal job for longer than their unemployment will sustain them. 

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This also means veterans will have to wait even longer to get the care they need, as it is unlikely the VA can keep up with hiring as over 30,000 of its employees walk out the door. Either way, one glance at Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will tell you: As the VA shrinks and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement grows larger than the FBI, this administration’s priorities are not to care for veterans, but to shift that money to tax breaks for billionaires and more ICE agents.

Trump will stick to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plan to lay off thousands of workers in other agencies — one third of whom are veterans — keeping in line with the larger Project 2025 blueprint that was pushed by conservative think tanks aligned with Trump’s second-term ambitions. 

All the while, looming in the background of the systemic breakdown at the VA is the threat of private health care companies finally getting what they’ve always wanted — a larger slice of the VA pie. 

During Trump’s first administration, he passed key legislation to privatize the VA. In Trump’s second term, Republicans have offered the Veterans’ ACCESS Act, which would push more VA veterans to the private sector. 

These efforts, combined with job cuts and already codified cuts to veterans who rely on Medicaid and SNAP benefits — not to mention the rural hospitals serving veterans and their families that will close due to Medicaid cuts — reveal a larger movement away from a public health care system that helps veterans, and toward a hybrid system meant to bog down veterans with red tape, fees, and costly travel expenses. This greatly diminishes patient care and greatly enhances profits from a system that was never meant to make them.

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DOGE, of course, has been proven as a scam. Just ask the former DOGE staffer deployed at the VA who’s since admitted to being “pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was.”

But Trump, VA Secretary Collins, and the rest of his administration cannot stop going through the motions it set off when Trump took office back in January. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. They never cared about saving money, they never cared about veterans, active duty military members, or their families. They care about one thing: making billionaires richer at the expense of veterans and taxpayers alike.