The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut more than 80,000 workers from the agency, which helps administer benefits for America's military veterans, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
The VA's chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, sent a memo to senior agency officials on Tuesday, telling them the goal was to return the agency to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would mean cutting about 82,000 staff.
The memo directed agency staff to work with tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to make the cuts.
Musk and his team have been tasked by U.S. President Donald Trump to slash the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy. To date about 25,000 workers across the U.S. government have been fired and another 75,000 have taken a buyout, out of the 2.3 million federal civilian workforce.
Veterans groups spoke out about cuts to the agency after several thousand workers were recently let go. About a quarter of the VA workforce are military veterans.
Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate committee that oversees veteran affairs, said in a statement that the cuts in the memo represented "an all-out assault... attacking the VA workforce and the veterans it serves."
Blumenthal, of Connecticut, said the job cuts appeared to be one step in a plan to privatize VA services. "It’s a shameful betrayal, and veterans will pay the price for their unforgivable corruption, incompetence, and immorality," he said in the statement.
Naveed Shah, political director of Common Defense, a grassroots veterans group, decried the planned layoffs.
"Donald Trump is once again proving what we have known all along - that he has nothing but contempt for our veterans," he said.
"Many workers at the VA are veterans themselves and this is an outright betrayal of those who have served. He's gutting the system that was designed to care for our brothers and sisters in arms."
News of Tuesday's memo came on a day when the Trump administration suffered a temporary setback in its efforts to cull workers from the federal bureaucracy.
A board that reviews the firings of federal employees has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate thousands of workers who lost their jobs as part of the layoffs spearheaded by Trump and Musk.
Cathy Harris, a Democratic member of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, in a written order blocked the USDA from firing probationary employees for 45 days on Wednesday while a challenge to the terminations plays out.
On Tuesday a federal judge blocked Trump from firing Harris and removing her from her position with the board without cause before her term expires in three years. The administration is appealing that decision.
