By Brian Witte
Nathan Hooven is a disabled Air Force veteran who voted for Donald Trump in November. Barely three months later, heâs now unemployed and says he feels betrayed by the presidentâs dramatic downsizing of the federal government that cost him his job.
âI think a lot of other veterans voted the same way, and we have been betrayed,â said Hooven, who was fired in February from a Virginia medical facility for veterans. âI 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.â
The mass firing of federal employees since Trump took office in January is pushing out veterans who make up 30% of the nationâs federal workforce. The exact number of veterans who have lost their job is unknown, although House Democrats last month estimated that it was potentially in the thousands.
More could be on the way. The Department of Veterans Affairs â a major employer of veterans â is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. Veterans represent more than 25% of the VAâs workforce.
In interviews, several veterans who supported candidates of both parties described their recent job losses as a betrayal of their military service. They are particularly angered by how it happened: in an email that cited inadequate job performance â despite, they say, receiving positive reviews in their roles.
James Stancil, a 62-year-old Army veteran who was fired last month from his job as a supply technician at a VA hospital in Milwaukee, said it felt like heâd been shot and dumped out of a helicopter.
âAnd you just free fall and hit the ground â thatâs it,â said Stancil, who supported Democrat Kamala Harris last year. âIâm not dead weight. Youâre tossing off the wrong stuff.â
Stancil said the email he received telling him his performance wasnât good enough came as âa complete shockâ 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.
âIâve been blindsided,â Hooven said. âMy life has been completely upended with zero chance to prepare. I was fired without notice, unjustly, based on a lie that Iâm a subpar, poor performer at my job.â
Stancil said he believes Trump owes fired veterans an apology.
Asked this week about fired federal workers who are veterans, Alina Habba, a former member of Trumpâs personal legal team who now serves as a counselor in the White House, defended the cuts.
âBut at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work,â Habba told reporters. âThat doesnât mean that we forget our veterans, by any means. We are going to care for them in the right way. But perhaps theyâre not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work.â
Veterans were much likelier to support Trump than Harris in Novemberâs presidential election, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the American electorate conducted in all 50 states. Nearly 6 in 10 voters who are veterans backed Trump, while about 4 in 10 voted for Harris.
Cynthia Williams, an Army veteran who lost her job as a dispatcher at a VA in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said she didnât vote for either candidate but suspects fellow veterans who backed Trump might have changed their minds had they known this was coming.
âIt was blindsiding, because he said he wanted to make the country great again ⊠but this is not making it great again,â Williams said.
Matthew Sims, an Army veteran, lost his job last month 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.
âI support downsizing, but itâs just the way theyâre going about doing it. Itâs like the chainsaw approach, I guess, versus the surgical approach that they should be doing,â Sims said.
Jared Evans, a recreation therapist at the Salem VA, was fired in February, his eighth month as a probationary worker. Evans said a patient had just told him how much he appreciated his work when he received his email. He had moved from California with his wife, 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter for a job that he had long wanted.
Evans, a 36-year-old Army veteran, was the only one working in his family. He said he feels scared, numb and angry.
âI cried,â Evans said about learning of his firing. âI havenât done that in a while, because youâre just kind of free falling now. Youâre in an area to where youâre not really familiar with, and youâre just being left out to dry.â