The national leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars criticized the ongoing mass layoffs of government employees, arguing that veterans — who account for nearly one-third of the federal workforce — are disproportionately affected.
VFW National Commander Al Lipphardt, a Vietnam War veteran, condemned the layoffs in a statement Tuesday. He said veterans were being “hit hard” by the firings, which have affected thousands of workers across various government agencies during President Donald Trump’s first month in office.
“Since the federal government is the single largest employer of veterans in the nation, it’s veterans who are being indiscriminately harmed in this bull-’DOGE’-ing of the federal workforce,” wrote Lipphardt, using a play on words about the new agency tasked with carrying out the cuts, the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.
According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 636,937 veterans were employed by the federal government as of September 2021. That number equates to about 30% of the federal workforce.
Nearly 90% of those veterans received veterans’ preference, a policy that gives job candidates a boost in the hiring process if they are disabled veterans or served on active duty during certain dates or military campaigns. Half of the veterans in the federal workforce as of September 2021 were designated as disabled, meaning they were discharged from the military with a service-connected disability.
In a 2021 report about veterans in the federal workforce, the Office of Personnel Management lauded a recent increase in the rate of disabled veterans who were recruited into government jobs. “This performance reflects consistency and robust application of veterans’ recruiting efforts concerning disabled veterans,” the agency wrote.
There is no official figure available for the employees fired since Trump launched an effort to shrink the federal workforce, and it’s unclear how many of them were veterans.
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Lipphardt said the VFW, which comprises 1.4 million members across 6,000 posts, has heard from some veterans who were affected. Their layoff emails, shared with VFW leadership, were “disjointed,” “inconsistent” and given “little to no oversight or thought,” Lipphardt wrote.
He argued that DOGE made decisions using algorithms and email distribution lists, rather than using more nuanced means to solve complex problems.
“I was wounded in combat during the Vietnam War. I am thankful that the medics who treated me chose not to take my whole arm for the sake of efficiency,” Lipphardt said. “It took a trained eye, a skillful hand and human intuition to fix me up and get me back in the fight. In my experience, those operating with a scalpel have a better chance at saving limbs than those who operate with a chainsaw.”
So far, many of the layoffs have been carried out by the wide-ranging firing of employees on probationary status, a designation that’s generally given to workers who are on the job for less than a year and means they had yet to gain civil service protection.
However, Lipphardt said some of the veterans who reached out to the VFW had worked for the government far longer and were “caught by a formality in administrative statuses.”
“A lot of these aren’t brand-new, off-the-street employees,” he wrote. “These are employees who have been serving the American people for years, in uniform and in civil service. … These veterans are now being told their skills are no longer useful to the government.”
Lipphardt conveyed concerns about the well-being of the veterans who had found purpose in government work and were abruptly fired, and he said the American people were suffering a loss of “technical expertise, training and security clearances already bought and paid for by taxpayers.”
As one of the country’s largest veterans service organizations, the VFW lobbies Congress and testifies before lawmakers about issues that affect veterans, service members and their families. On March 4, Lipphardt will testify during a joint hearing of the House and Senate veterans’ affairs committees — an annual event when multiple veterans organizations tell lawmakers about their priorities for the year.
Lipphardt said he would use the opportunity to urge Congress and the Trump administration to “put an end to the indiscriminate firing of veterans in the government workforce.” He called on VFW members to gather on Capitol Hill that day to make the same demand.
“It’s time to apply pressure and stop the bleeding,” he wrote.
Nikki Wentling is a senior editor at Military Times. She's reported on veterans and military communities for nearly a decade and has also covered technology, politics, health care and crime. Her work has earned multiple honors from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors and others.
