In April 2025, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued a report detailing how the new Trump Administration ordered the firing of 2,400 highly trained VA employees who had provided direct and indirect care for US veterans, and canceled roughly 900 contracts designed to ensure veteran patient medical care and safety.
As the biggest health care system in the country, the VA serves over nine million veterans annually. The Biden administration passed the PACT Act in 2022, which generated the most significant increase in veterans’ medical benefits in over twenty years. This created the need for additional trained medical staff to provide veterans’ care under the law. And yet the early-term layoffs and employment restrictions called for by the Trump administration caused unprocessed medical claims to grow significantly.
Staff cuts in the spring of 2025 hobbled the operation of the mission-critical veteran’s 24/7 “988” Suicide & Crisis line, a modified version of the civilian 911 emergency assistance. The VA is now planning a staff reduction of 30,000 by the end of FY2025. This could severely impact the Suicide & Crisis center. In addition, many key VA-specific research positions were eliminated, jeopardizing the future of ongoing life-saving scientific projects for veterans.
Compounding the problem is that the VA continues to reduce the workforce of physicians and nurses, overwhelming these employees due to chronic understaffing.
