Trump and Musk Are Going to War Against Military Veterans With DOGE
By: Michael Embrich (Rolling Stone)
the veteran "suckers and losers" that voted for POS/POTUS deserve this. the veterans that are still bound by their oath of service to defend the constitution against foreign and domestic enemies don't ...
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The president's new exec order gives Musk and DOGE carte blanche and sets limits on hiring veterans and transitioning active duty military personnel.
Donald Trump's new executive order, titled "Implementing the President's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Workforce Optimization Initiative," outlines exactly how Trump and Elon Musk plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and strip transitioning military veterans and their families overseas of the generous federal hiring incentives they rely on.
This executive order seeks to impose severe hiring restrictions and would disproportionately harm veterans, who make up one-third of the federal workforce. Requiring agencies to hire only one new employee for every four who leave will drastically reduce VA staffing levels. At a time when the veteran population is aging and the VA's mission has expanded under Biden, this policy will lead to massive delays and outright denials in health care, benefits processing, and disability claims — the essential services veterans depend on to survive.
The order also forces agencies to implement immediate reductions in force, prioritizing cuts to positions not explicitly mandated by law. In practice, this means slashing administrative staff, veteran outreach programs, and transition assistance. Many of these programs help veterans adjust to civilian life, with federal employment serving as a stable career path for thousands. Active-duty military members stationed overseas also rely on these programs for critical support, from child care to helping their spouses secure employment in foreign countries where they may lack language skills or legal work status.
What's worse, this executive order makes hiring at VA more bureaucratic and politicized. Each new hire must be approved by a DOGE "Team Lead," creating unnecessary hurdles in filling critical positions. As we have learned over the past few weeks, these "team leads" can be 19-year-old kids who go by names like "bigballs," or 25-year-old men who have recently gone on racist tirades about how we should "Normalize Indian Hate."
The VA is already grappling with severe workforce shortages, particularly in medical and benefits processing roles. This new hiring bottleneck guarantees growing backlogs, delayed care, and increased suffering for veterans. But that may be the goal. If Musk and DOGE aim to dismantle the government, they achieve two objectives at once — denying care to veterans while making the VA so dysfunctional that veterans either forgo medical treatment or are forced into the private sector.
For years, politicians have promised to fix the VA and take care of veterans. But this Trump executive order does the opposite — it throws veterans under the bus and a few other fast moving objects. First, by cutting veteran federal workers who make up a huge part of the workforce; second, by slashing the very services those same veterans need; third, by denying our military service members and their families adequate support overseas and here at home; and finally, doing anything but making sure veterans have a stable place and support system to build a life post-service.
Trump couldn't care less about veterans — he never served and doesn't understand or respect those who do. It's not clear whether Musk has taken an oath to the U.S. Constitution. Neither man can begin to grasp the sacrifices military members and their families make every day to keep Americans safe. Their reward? A callous system run by billionaires who claim to want to slash government spending — except when it comes to the White House budget or the tens of billions Musk's companies receive from U.S. taxpayers. Right now, Trump and Musk are scrambling to find revenue to fund their mass deportation schemes and extend the trillions in tax cuts Trump passed in 2017, which are set to expire. Those cuts primarily benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
Musk and Trump have claimed that he's saving the U.S. government lots of money, no one can give a real number. What we do know is that number is getting smaller as the State Department is poised to spend $400 million to buy "armored" Teslas. Like naming a government agency after a crypto meme coin (DOGE), or launching a new crypto meme coin, Musk and Trump are just getting started with their giant grift.
As for our veterans and military service members, their message is clear: Good luck, you're on your own.
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trump is going to let a afrikaner billionaire dismantle our military structure to pay for tax cuts for the rich ...
The other day I asked on one of these seeds if people here thought Musk is a patriotic American. I don't think anyone replied in the affirmative.
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Of course Trump is Musk's president, he could afford to buy him ... ah, the new patriotism.
Could you imagine how the MAGAites would have lost their fucking minds if Kamala had won and then appointed George Soros to run a Department of Government Efficiency that was then quickly cutting all funding for any religious conservative program including the voucher program for private religious schools where the government is essentially funding religious indoctrination.
They would have been screaming to the heavens about how it must be illegal and would have been using the courts to try and stop any Harris Administration agenda, pretty much like the Democrats are doing now. And of course, now with Musk, Republicans are simply aghast at the implication that they're not doing everything above board and by the book following the letter of the law and doing nothing wrong which is why they are "acting" shocked at the Democrat response, "acting" being the key word. It just proves Rightwing conservative Republicans have truly turned hypocrisy into an artform.
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It's never been about government spending. This has always been all about culture wars. Trump is the Evangelical Dominonist tool for payback of every perceived and imagined slight.
No, I'm saying there's nothing new under the sun. This is politics, but I honestly don't believe Democrats would have ever done something like this. They would never have just come in like a bull in a China shop and smashed everything in the government just so they could rebuild it in their image. Have the Democrats done things they should be ashamed of? Absolutely. But thankfully, they actually still have the ability to feel shame unlike the new Trumpublican party which has no shame, no morals and no compass, just an unquenchable appetite to selfishly consume everything around them.
One needs to remember the praise Trump got for all of his appointments in 2016.He'll start tossing his current slew in a few months and the rabel will march in booing order. Trump, like bad history, will repeat himself.
[✘] that's a GREAT comparison.
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The State Department can order $400M in armored Tesla's but fuck our veterans, huh? Musk has something like $13B in current federal contracts and in return he's shitting on the middle class.
I was reading an article this morning saying the House GoP was drafting bills to raise the debt ceiling to pay tax cuts. They are going to raise the debt ceiling, use the OMB to calculate costs on "current" costs and not real costs and then blame Democrats on the rise in inflation.
all of musk's federal subsidies need to be heavily scrutinized as conflicts of interest ...
And said "subsidies" weren't just put in place the last four weeks.[✘]
Musk takes in roughly 8 million a DAY, from the US government? A guy worth billions of dollars....you ok with that?
Yet the MAGA budget hawks are mad as Hell that LA is paying their fire recovery tsar a half million for three months...
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Mass deportation scheme.....costs 3 times the amount it did using military aircraft than what it did using charter flights. That's a massive waste and abuse scheme right there!
Cutting veterans' benefits is going to make recruitment a lot tougher. It wouldn't surprise me if they bring back the draft.
Again, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 that Trump is attempting to ram through has never been about federal spending. It's always been about control in their culture war. They know they can't maintain control under laws and the Constitution that treats all equally so they have to gut the current framework to rebuild it to keep their power. If allowed to finish we will have an authoritarian theocracy run by uber wealthy oligarchs.
oops, too bad their maga supporters won't be afforded 24/7 protection ...
Shit. in no time at all we will be bringing back everyone form Europe and SK to ring the country
because our own borders are our new priority /s
Trump says he can slash military spending by voiding current contracts.
We spend $916B on defense. 3.4%
Hegsbeth who's word is worthless, promised in his confirmation hearings that defense spending would not dip below 3.0% of GDP or $800billion.
Defense stocks all dropped today, some plunged.
We just wasted the better part of those airframes and engines life expectancy.
So if and when we do need them....
What instead of picking crops?
felon and elon can get us a much better deal on our military hardware if it's made in china ...
... loot a democrat repaired thriving economy and divvy up the take among the wealthy. republican SOP ...
Cutting jobs in the millions isn't making America great.
Veterans after serving their country transition to honest government jobs to keep serving the American people.
Trump is an admitted draft dodger, and Musk is a foreigner who could care less.
No one, especially Republicans seem to care that 30% of government jobs are filled with American military veterans.
What happens to the unemployment lines after the Republican 4 trillion $ dollar tax cut to the wealthy corporate interests.
Corporations already don't make hiring veterans a priority. So just adding more veterans to the ranks of joblessness and the homeless? Republicans don't care.
Federal and states do have a veterans preference. You have to ask for it on your application.
As for the unemployment? There will be plenty of jobs in the fields and the orchards!
Jesus! This whole thing is starting to feel like the Hunger Games
it's beginning to feel like 1934 again.
I was thinking more like occupied paris ...
Most presidents are judged by how many jobs they ADD.... Trump will be judged by how many jobs he lost...and the truly sad thing? His supporters will just keep on cheering.
when trump tells maga it's the democrats, not his policies at fault, they'll happily swallow the hook, line, and sinker ...
True. However, Trump is only really being judged by those who don't support him. Those who support him don't give a fuck if Musk runs off with billions of tax dollars in unvetted contracts, they don't give a fuck if Trump destroys the safety net millions of Americans rely on every day like Medicaid and food programs for kids, they don't give a fuck about what damage Trump does and they won't for the next three years because they're angry bitter bigots who are determined to make "the other side pay" even if it means destroying the very foundations our nation was built on.
So, while the rational patriotic Americans are judging Trumps performance, his supporters are just cheering on whatever he does and are ready to make excuses for anything that, for any other President, would have been illegal or grounds for impeachment. There really is no point judging Trump anymore. We all know what he is, the problem is that apparently, some people (I use that term loosely) in America just love lying cheating convicted felons and accused rapists who have talked about dating their own daughters. They love people like that so much and are SOOOO angry at their opponents who dared to suggest that America should NOT be set up as an exclusive resort for white conservative Christians that they decided to vote for the second most disgusting immoral man on the planet because apparently their first pick was already running Russia.
Talked to an old friend today who works for the VA. Many colleagues were fired today. It is reckless, heartless, and just goes to show that the cruelty is the point.
My sister interviewed to work there years ago. I'm glad she ended up elsewhere.
The VA has always been understaffed.
We know career Navy docs who retired, did very well in private practice and tried to work at the VA.
It broke them, broke their spirits and will to practice medicine.
Another young man is stuck there working off his student tuitions and we worry if he will make it to the end of his contract.
and we both have the horror stories of having our fathers in the VA system.
Fortunately my mom had the insurance and means to take care of him instead of using the VA.
make that 3 ...
Having been involved with Medicare for over a decade and very pleased,
I would suggest that the military use it's 281 hospitals in 47 states to treat veterans and cover the treatment through
Medicare or Tri Care regardless of the age of the veteran. I have worked at several Naval Hospitals, branch clinics and Edwards AFB and have never seen a busy day outside of the NICU. Edwards had brand new "excess" state of the art equipment, shrink wrapped in the hallways for months. Not enough patients or staff.
There are 170 VA hospitals. Many have exceeded their usefulness and should be torn down. They are typically using out of date equipment and the lack of staff is overwhelmed by the patient load and a forever broken appointment system.
Veterans deserve better.
Trump put Musk in charge of DOUCHE.