Veterans who were fired from the federal workforce in the wave of the Trump administration job cuts called their dismissals a betrayal of their service to the nation in uniform and in the civil service, according to a report from the Disabled American Veterans service organization.
In video statements released Monday by the DAV, nine of the more than 80 veterans — some of them disabled and some from the veterans community at large — said in response to the DAV’s “Protect Veterans” campaign, an effort to showcase the plight of fired veterans, that they were blindsided by their terminations, which have been directed by billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
“It’s not about me, it’s about our veterans. What’s happening to them is wrong, and I want to fight for them,” Kara Oliver, a disabled Navy veteran who was fired from her recreational therapist job at the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, said in her video statement.
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“I found out I lost my job off the clock, on my day off — without a warning, without a meeting, without even a termination letter,” Oliver said.
Air Force veteran Albert Ostering, who was fired from his job at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said, “I lost my way to provide for my family, our health care, my purpose and call-to-service” when he was fired after 10 years of working at the agency.
As a result of his firing and other dismissals at the agency, “the nation will become less safe from cyber threat actors,” Ostering said.
In its release, the DAV said its “Protect Veterans” campaign to solicit comments from fired veterans came from the suggestions of Republicans and Democrats at a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees last month to bring them examples of veterans who have been adversely affected by the job cuts.
“It’s heart-wrenching to hear from veterans who are contacting us with fear and anxiety about the future of the benefits, services and health care they’ve earned,” DAV National Commander Daniel Contreras said in a statement.
“But hearing from those who sustained illnesses and injuries in honorable service to our nation, only to later be arbitrarily fired via email by the same federal government they’ve devoted their lives to serve, is a gut punch,” Contreras said.
In a phone interview, Randy Reese, executive director of the DAV’s Washington headquarters, said the swiftness and aggressiveness of the job cuts coming from the Trump administration initially came as a surprise, but the DAV has since mobilized to oppose them.
“It was just a series of things — the speed of it and how they did it,” he said.
Reese said the way DOGE was going about the job cuts made it seem that its game plan was “to come in and terminate” jobs as quickly as it could and “figure out later whether it was a good decision.”
Rebecca Cintron, who was fired from her job at the Department of Veterans Affairs assisting in setting up electronic health records, said the dismissal came as a shock since “we were always told how much we were needed.”
“We all understand that everyone has to sacrifice, but I wish somebody understood how differently this could have been done rather than just a panic and no processes,” she said.
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