“To care for him who shall have borne the battle.”
– Since 1865, that’s been the country’s promise, and the motto of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

A view from the Westin Westminster Hotel in Denver, Colorado: Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

DENVER, Co. – About 60 percent of U.S. military veterans say they supported Donald Trump for president in 2024. But many now say they feel betrayed after being fired from federal jobs and facing cuts to their health care and other benefits.

Nathan Hooven, a disabled Air Force veteran who voted for Trump last November, is now unemployed, fired in February from a Virginia medical facility for veterans. He says he feels betrayed by the president’s program to downsize the federal government led by Elon Musk at DOGE, as well as cuts to programs by Congress in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

“I think a lot of other veterans voted the same way, and we have been betrayed,” Hooven said in an interview with PBS. “I feel like my life and the lives of so many like me, so many that have sacrificed so much for this country, are being destroyed.”

The mass firing of federal employees hit veterans especially hard. They make up 30 percent of the nation’s federal workforce due to preferences in the federal hiring system. The Department of Veterans Affairs, also a major employer of veterans who make up 25 percent of the workforce, is planning a reorganization that could include cutting another 30,000 to 80,000 jobs.

Several veterans who supported candidates of both parties described their recent job losses in interviews as a betrayal of their military service. They are particularly angered by how it happened. It came in an email that cited inadequate job performance. Not true, they say, as they received positive reviews.

James Stancil, a 62-year-old Army veteran who was fired from his job as a supply technician at a VA hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said it felt like he’d been shot and dumped out of a helicopter.

“And you just free fall and hit the ground — that’s it,” Stancil said. He said he supported Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, but insisted, “I’m not dead weight. You’re tossing off the wrong stuff.”

Stancil said the email he received telling him his performance wasn’t good enough came as “a complete shock” because he had previously received positive feedback.

Hooven also said his performance was cited despite similarly positive feedback during his 11 months as a probationary employee.

“I’ve been blindsided,” Hooven said. “My life has been completely upended with zero chance to prepare. I was fired without notice, unjustly, based on a lie that I’m a subpar, poor performer at my job.”

Stancil said he believes Trump owes fired veterans an apology. But of course that has not happened. Trump apologizes for nothing.

Matthew Sims, an Army veteran, lost his as a program support assistant at a mental health clinic at a VA in Salem, Virginia, after moving with his wife and three children from Texas. He voted for Trump and said he supports reducing the size of the federal government, but not this way.

“I support downsizing, but it’s just the way they’re going about doing it,” Sims said. “It’s like the chainsaw approach … versus the surgical approach that they should be doing.”

Veterans Affairs

Like other federal agencies and programs in Washington, D.C. and around the country, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is also facing deep budget cuts by the Trump administration.

Back in March, after Elon Musk and his team of DOGE hackers started invading agencies and cutting budgets and programs, it was announced that 83,000 people would be fired from the VA, a cut of 17 percent of the work force. Related non-profits supporting veterans also faced budget cuts by the executive branch, including funds already approved by Congress.

Facing blowback from members of the military and representatives in states, that number was cut back to about 30,000 jobs that would be lost at the VA. But the damage was already being done to services and morale.

In Denver this week, I met Jason Alves, director of initiatives for the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, here for a conference of rural volunteer groups who work to try to prevent suicide by former members of the military and other help and services, including food assistance, finding housing, job training programs and other things.

“The cuts in D.C. are real, dangerous and scary,” Alves said when I interviewed him. “But that is not going to stop this great group of people, volunteers who are working to find solutions to big problems all across this country, who are standing up for veterans.”

The program is funded by the VA and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and other sponsors, and there are close to 40 groups in about 25 states. Even if they lose some funding, they say they will not stop and keep going to help vets in any way they can. At their annual conference in Colorado, it was a chance to meet and hear from those in other states, as well as leaders and researchers identifying problems and solutions in communities, and to take a break and have a little fun as well.

The program is called “Together With Veterans.” The overall focus is suicide prevention, but that’s not all they do. One of the sponsors is the Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center for Suicide Prevention, billed as a national leader in advancing research, education and clinical care to improve the lives of vets. Whether you are a vet, a health care provider, researcher, trainee, or community member, you can learn more about this work and the free evidence-based tools, trainings and clinical resources online. The mission is to promote engagement, access, and quality of mental health care for vets facing barriers to care, especially those isolated in rural ares where services and care can be hard to come by.

In reporting from PBS, there are five main ways the federal budget cuts are hitting veterans especially hard, including cuts to health care and public health research, housing options, life insurance, pensions, education stipends, and assistance in jails and courts, as well as jobs.

A quarter of the VA’s 482,000 employees are veterans, and they make up about 6.1 percent of the U.S. population. Due to federal preferences in hiring, nearly 30 percent of federal workers are veterans, half of whom are disabled. Of the 38,000 federal employees fired in the first five weeks of the Trump administration alone, 6,000 were veterans.

Cuts to the federal workforce are also affecting medical care for veterans, cuts that are coming at a time when veterans’ health care needs are on the rise. The VA enrolled 400,000 veterans in its benefits system from March 2023 through March 2024, 30 percent more than the previous year, and the Biden administration had expanded eligibility for former service members to receive VA health care.

“Trump’s cuts will make it more difficult for the VA to provide health care for these newly eligible veterans,” PBS reports, saying these cuts “roll back” President Joe Biden’s investment in the VA to address long-standing staffing problems and a backlog in cases. The Office of Inspector General’s 2024 report on VA staffing shortages reveals that 137 of 139 VA health centers nationwide report a severe staffing shortage in at least one area, particularly nursing and psychology.

Staff shortages have led to long wait times for care, which can vary from days to months, with some VA clinics still so understaffed that they are unable to take new patients for primary care or mental health counseling. Staff increases under the Biden administration was shortening wait times while providing care to more veterans. Back in 2024, the VA said it was working hard to fill its 66,000 vacancies, aiming to improve health care for the more than 9 million veterans it serves.

The Trump administration cuts constitute a fundamental change in the VA health care system, critics say. Rather than helping veterans directly, the VA may pay for veterans to seek medical care outside the system, leading to higher costs and lower quality, some report.

Some veterans who supported Trump for president defend the administration moves to eliminate programs related to “diversity” for Black and other minority veterans, women, gay, transgender or Native Americans, while statistics show veterans with gender identity issues went up from 2,513 to 10,457 between 2011 to 2021. They don’t seem to believe that it would be helpful to have specialists trained in dealing with these groups involved in their care and counseling.

“Just deal with all veterans,” one vet told me in Denver.

When asked about Trump’s comments calling vets and others who voted for him “losers and suckers,” he blamed the “liberal media” for using people and making up a biased story.

But the quotes “losers” and “suckers” originate from an article published in The Atlantic in 2020 about Trump’s relationship to the military. He continues to dispute the reports, as he does on any story that shows him in a bad light. The article relied on anonymous sources, but many of the accounts have been corroborated by news outlets, including The New York Times, and by John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who was Trump’s White House chief of staff and a Republican, not some biased liberal. He continues to stand by the report.

Suicide Hotline

One of the most devastating cuts came to the veterans suicide hotline. In the Trump and Congressional cuts to social services in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the country’s Veterans Crisis Line overseen by both the VA and the Department of Health and Human Services is losing employees to layoffs, despite reporting staff shortages. An estimated 800 to 900 of the 1,130 crisis-line workers have always worked remotely, so ending remote work options further undermines staffing.

Current data shows an average of 17.6 veteran suicides a day in the U.S. And suicide remains the second-leading cause of death among veterans under the age of 45. Staff reporting indicates that the service fields 60,000 calls a month.

Studies show that the VA reported nearly 3 million calls between 2009 and 2017, which led to 82,000 emergency dispatches to prevent veterans from harming themselves. The VA steadily increased crisis-line staffing over the years to address these concerns, as research showed that veterans were not receiving help in a timely manner. Fewer staff, many already suffering from burnout, undermines this work, as callers already at high risk for suicide will face longer wait times.

During Trump’s first term, he supported veteran suicide prevention as a matter of policy. But his latest moves reverse that policy goal.

Research

The VA’s investment in research, about $916 million a year, has contributed to a comprehensive understanding of veterans’ well-being, meaning the government can more efficiently target aid toward those most in need. This research has also helped spark major medical breakthroughs, including on the link between smoking and cancer, prompting the Surgeon General to put warnings on cigarette packages. It also helped develop the most widely used method to measure and treat prostate cancer. It’s also important in the social sciences, as millions of veterans who come from diverse sociodemographic groups can be tracked over time.

At least 350 VA researchers will likely lose their jobs under the latest budget cuts. A Trump administration directive to stop research on how poverty and race shape veteran health outcomes will undermine not only the general well-being of veterans, but also the entire medical establishment’s knowledge about substance use and abuse, mental health and deeper insights on prevention and treatment of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Reports indicate that Republicans in Congress want to reduce so-called “entitlement benefits,” including food stamps and Medicaid, health insurance for the nation’s poorest citizens, which in many cases includes veterans. Cutting Medicaid would hurt veterans’ health since not all veterans have access to federally funded health care through the VA. To get full coverage, they must have a disability score, sources say. Estimates show that over the past decade nearly 10 percent of veterans use Medicaid for at least some of their health care benefits, and 40 percent of those rely exclusively on Medicaid for all their health care.

About 400,000 veterans live in states where no insurance is provided because Medicaid was never expanded by Republican governors and legislatures. Based on their incomes, half of these uninsured veterans should be eligible for Medicaid. But if Congress cuts that too, more vets will suffer.

About 1.2 million veterans received help through the federally funded supplemental nutritional access program, SNAP. Working-age veterans face an elevated risk of experiencing food insecurity compared to other Americans. Veterans are also overrepresented in the homeless population.

Becky Larson-Griffen came all the way from Minnesota on the border with Canada and sat at the same table as James and Nina Rhodes, my friends from Birmingham, Alabama who now live and help veterans in Coulterville, California. Rhodes served in Vietnam.

When asked about her experiences at the conference with the group, she said it was a rewarding experience.

“You meet so many fine people who appreciate you so much,” she said.

Lisa Brenner, a researcher who has been visiting many of the communities represented at the conference, said her findings show some of the biggest problems facing veterans, especially in rural areas. They often have no access to public transportation, so no easy access to healthy, affordable food choices, as well as a shortage of affordable housing and access to child care, and no local suicide prevention programs.

In one slide she showed in her presentation on Saturday, it showed signs urging people to store guns safety, and urging kids to finish high school at least. It also showed a sign for pay day loans, which often charge loan shark interest rates.

People from North Carolina talked about the devastation from Hurricane Helene, and how that impacted services in their rural area in the western part of the state. People from New Mexico talked about the impacts of a 500 year flood. In Greenville, Mississippi, it was gun violence that led to a curfew. In the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, they have to deal with many feet of snow every winter, making it hard to get anywhere. In Oregon, a new problem is “poverty with a view,” as rich people move in and raise property values and prices so much it makes it hard for people to remain where they’re from to live and work.

In Coulterville, California, Rhodes said the only way many vets get help is through this grassroots movement led by volunteers. Some people are more accepting of help from volunteers, he said, since they don’t trust the federal government.

About 44 percent of military recruits came from rural areas, studies show, where over the last several decades, programs have developed to connect veterans to the land. This potential is something Jason Alves, formerly with the Washington State Department of Veteran Affairs, witnessed firsthand. Alves was born in the southeastern corner of Oregon, where he grew up on his family’s ranch raising alfalfa and working on a cattle operation joining the Navy in 2001.

“I jumped at the chance to serve my country and look at potentially going into higher education and going to college,” Alves remembers.

These days, the anti-woke movement among conservatives has led to a drop in young people, especially from rural areas, even pursuing a college education.

During his four years in the Navy, Alves served on the USS Kittyhawk, spending three years overseas in Japan. When he came home, his desire to help veterans led him to go to work for the state as program manager of the Veterans Conservation Corps and the Vet Corps program, focusing on counseling and physical and mental health.

“Overall, there is a community movement in the Pacific Northwest to connect with food and where food comes from,” Alves said. “I think veterans are also caught up in that.”

He said at the time there were about 113,000 veterans living in rural areas there.

Now he leads the volunteers who are working to make a difference in their communities, like the ones who showed up in Denver this week.

“These people,” he said, “put their own blood, sweat and tears – and hearts – on the line.”