U.S. Rep. Angie Craig criticized the Trump administration for its indiscriminate cuts to the federal workforce, including those aimed at the Department of Veterans Affairs, saying if Trump were a CEO, he’d have been fired for incompetence. Craig was speaking at a news conference with veterans, VA staff and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith in West St. Paul on March 18, 2025. (Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer)
Minnesota Democrats blasted the Trump administration’s plans to fire upwards of 80,000 Veterans Affairs employees as part of its war on the size of the federal workforce, saying the cuts will rob veterans of the benefits they’ve earned through their service.
“Unelected billionaire Elon Musk has made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in making targeted cuts to increase efficiency, to stop waste, fraud and abuse in any meaningful way,” U.S. Rep. Angie Craig said at a news conference with veterans and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith in West St. Paul on Tuesday.
“They’ve closed their eyes and taken a sledgehammer to the federal workforce,” Craig said.
Tens of thousands of federal workers, nearly a third of whom are veterans, have been terminated since Trump took office and deputized Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash personnel.
It’s unclear exactly how many workers have been fired, however, because the Trump administration has not released that information, even to Republicans, Craig said. The New York Times estimates more than 30,000 workers have been terminated though others have pegged the figure much higher.
Veterans Affairs and other broadly popular service agencies like Social Security and Medicare were supposed to be largely spared from the first assaults on the federal workforce, including the “Fork in the Road” buy-out offer and the mass termination of probationary employees.
But more than 2,000 Veterans Affairs workers have been terminated already. That includes John Helcl, a veteran and former law enforcement officer, who recently took a job at the VA — with a 40% pay cut from the private sector — investigating alleged employee misconduct and underperformance.
He said he was fired by text message on Feb. 14 while on leave for a funeral. So were about a dozen new hires in his department.
“We were all removed without a legitimate evaluation of our performance,” Helcl said at Tuesday’s news conference. “These were highly motivated and skilled employees.”
Helcl, who said he identifies neither as a Democrat nor Republican, said the cuts were an assault on the rule of law and shattered the trust of veteran workers. He also said the cuts don’t make fiscal sense because his job more than paid for itself by rooting out waste, and the cuts seemed to disproportionately hit frontline employees.
“Veterans bring discipline, leadership, advanced training and an unparalleled sense of duty. To discard them so carelessly is both a strategic and a moral failure,” Helcl said.
Two judges have since ruled the probationary firings were illegal and ordered the government to reinstate them.
Helcl said he hasn’t decided if he would return to work even if his job is reinstated, likening it to returning to an abusive relationship.
On top of the Veterans Affairs workers who have already been fired, the Trump administration is pursuing deeper cuts. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said in a video release that he intends to return the agency to 2019 staffing levels of around 398,000, which would mean eliminating some 72,000 employees.
“There are many people complaining about the changes we’re making at the VA, but what most of them are really saying is, ‘let’s just keep doing the same thing that the VA has always done.’ Nope, not going to happen,” Collins said in the video.
Collins said the savings they find will be reinvested in health care and direct services for benefits, and pointed out they are still hiring for more than 300,000 essential positions.
“The federal government doesn’t exist to employ people. It exists to serve people,” Collins said.
The agency has grown in recent years in response to the massive increase in veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan needing services as they age, as well as an entirely new benefit from a 2022 toxic exposure law known as the PACT Act. The law was intended to help veterans following the military’s use of open air burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jacob Romans, a registered nurse at the Minneapolis VA and union leader, said since the PACT Act passed in 2022, 740,000 veterans signed up for care through the VA, a 33% increase.
“It is not sustainable,” Romans said, citing increasing volume while cuts erode 15-20% of the workforce. “We have already been experiencing extreme staff shortages at the Minneapolis VA, where we are being mandated to work 16-hour shifts.”
Romans said the fired Minneapolis VA workers deemed “non-essential” included veterans and those conducting research on PTSD, kidney disease and alcohol use disorder.
“If we are to resist this attack on veterans and their health care, we must recognize the problem. An unelected billionaire bought his way into our government and is destroying the very idea of American values,” Romans said.
Klobuchar called on Republicans to stand up to Trump, saying they’re acting more like subjects to a king than representatives of the people.
Klobucher voted to confirm Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins and half a dozen other cabinet members even after the Trump administration began slashing the size of the federal workforce.
Asked about that vote, Klobuchar pointed out that she voted against a majority of Trump’s cabinet picks, and that even if Collins isn’t who she would have picked, “you need someone between a president like Donald Trump and the employee.” She wouldn’t go as far as saying she regretted voting for Collins, saying she will “assess that as time goes on.”
“Clearly he is not standing up to the degree that he should,” Klobuchar said.