A large group of veterans gathered Friday afternoon on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul in solidarity with a similar march in Washington, D.C.
A march at the National Mall was scheduled to begin at noon as part of a movement called Fourteenth Now. According to organizers, the date was partly chosen due to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from taking federal office or working in the military or civil service.
Protesters in St. Paul could be seen holding signs titled “America: Fight for Veterans” and “We Love the VA”, “Thank You Vets” and others.
The march and protest come days after the Department of Veterans Affairs said in an internal memo it is planning to reorganize, including cutting over 80,000 jobs from the agency that provides health care and other services for veterans.
The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, in part to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
The memo instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration’s goals. Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.
Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA that so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. Veterans comprise more than 25% of the VA’s workforce.
The plans underway at the VA showed how the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is not holding back on an all-out effort to slash federal agencies, even for those that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
