House Democrats have calculated that more than 38,000 federal workers have been canned so far as part of President Trump’s early moves to remake the federal bureaucracy, and nearly 6,000 of them are veterans.
The numbers marked a new attack on Mr. Trump, top adviser Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, with Democrats saying the veterans deserved better than quick dismissals.
“This move should outrage anyone who respects our veterans and servicemembers and believes our promises to them should be upheld,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, which did the calculations.
She said the firings have left the veterans “with no way to feed their families or keep a roof over their head.”
The committee scoured news sources to calculate the ousters.
It said some 38,078 employees are known to have been “fired” so far. Of those, 5,857 were veterans, or about 15%.
The number of veterans caught in the early wave of firings is lower than the percentage of former military personnel employed across the entire federal workforce, which is about 30%.
The largest number of veterans are employed in civilian jobs at the Defense Department, which has been largely spared layoffs. The committee numbers say that there were more than 330,000 vets in the department in 2024, and 2,363 of them have been canned under Mr. Trump.
Veterans Affairs had nearly 125,000 veterans in its ranks.
As of the time the committee did its calculations, the department had announced it was 1,000 employees in total — 256 of whom were veterans, according to Democrats.
The largest single set of ousters so far has been the U.S. Agency for International Development, where Democrats said 9,700 workers are in danger of losing their jobs. The committee said 374 of them are veterans.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat, said veteran firings were “a disgraceful assault on heroes.”
It is deeply offensive that this administration would attempt to balance our budget on the backs of our veterans,” she said.
Many of the firings Democrats cited dealt with probationary employees, who have less than a year or two in their jobs.
The Trump team had targeted them because they have lower civil service protections.
But U.S. Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said they do still have some protections in law, and the firings appear to trample on those.
“Firing probationary employees without individualized cause appears contrary to a reasonable reading of the law, particularly the provisions establishing rules for reductions in force,” he said. “I believe I have a responsibility to request a stay of these actions while my agency continues to investigate further the apparent violation of federal personnel laws.”
He filed a complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board citing a half dozen firings he said ran afoul of law. He asked the MSPB to pause the firings for 45 days.
In one example he released, a program support assistant at the Education Department was given a termination notice on Feb. 12 — just hours after he had been given an attaboy from his supervisor, who called him “a perfect fit” for their team.
The irony of the situation is that Mr. Trump has moved to fire Mr. Dellinger himself.
A federal judge has put that firing on hold and the Supreme Court last week declined to intervene at this point, leaving Mr. Dellinger to be a hurdle to the president’s plans.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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