Trump and Musk Are Trying to Purge Veterans From the Government

The mass purge of federal workers under Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plan is more than just an attack on the government bureaucracy — it’s a direct assault on the veterans who make up nearly 30 percent of the federal workforce. 

In a decision that will be remembered as a betrayal of the veteran community and the broader federal workforce, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued an email Tuesday similar in wording to the one Musk used to gut Twitter. The message, which arrived under the subject line, “Fork in the Road,” presented federal employees with a false choice: agree to resign now with temporary pay or risk termination later.

Musk made a similar offer to Twitter employees, along with promises about severance that were apparently never honored — a precedent that raises serious concerns about the integrity of this so-called “deferred resignation” plan. Musk’s fingerprints on this scheme introduce major legal questions, as he is neither a government advisor nor a federal employee. This raises the alarming possibility that the offer itself may not even be legally valid, opening a new legal and constitutional battle over the authority behind this directive.

The administration’s forced resignation scheme, disguised as a voluntary buyout offer, is nothing more than a coercive tactic — not an act of good faith. Federal workers, many of them veterans, are being pressured to resign by February 6 in exchange for eight months of pay. The alternative? Facing reclassification, forced return-to-office mandates, or outright termination. These threats are designed to create panic, rather than reflect actual likelihood.

The most alarming part is that by the time this scheme is challenged in court, it may be too late for veterans who took the bait, leaving them without jobs, benefits, or recourse.

This Trump administration threat is not about cost-cutting or making government work better. This is about power — gutting the civil service, replacing professionals with political loyalists, if at all, and eliminating any institutional resistance to his extreme right-wing agenda. It is exactly the kind of plan you might expect to see in a Cold War report about how to take down a government without firing a shot. 

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For veterans, the stakes are even higher. Many took federal jobs as part of their transition back into civilian life. These roles provide stability, purpose, and, for some, the only path forward after military service. Veterans work in nearly every agency, but they are particularly concentrated in Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Defense Department — all of which are critical to national security and veteran care. By gutting these agencies, Trump and Musk aren’t just purging workers; they are sabotaging the very services that support veterans and their families. The same veterans will get whacked on the back end as their care from the Department of Veterans Affairs deteriorates, if the veterans and non-veterans there fall for the scheme. 

And let’s be clear: The math doesn’t add up. Trump and Musk claim their government purge will help save $2 trillion, but the entire civilian federal payroll is only $271 billion. Even if every federal worker were fired, they wouldn’t come close to those savings. What they will accomplish is chaos: longer VA wait times, weakened national security, a gutted social safety net, and a boat load of unemployed veterans with nothing but time and an axe to grind. 

This won’t deliver efficiency — it’s destruction for the sake of destruction and a display of sheer incompetence by Musk, who couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a new scheme to screw over veterans, and instead just dusted off his Twitter playbook. He assumes we’re as gullible as Trump’s die-hard supporters. We’re not. If he and Trump don’t back off, we’ll make sure they hear us — loud and clear. See the Bonus Army, when veterans marched on Washington during the Great Depression demanding the bonus payments they had been promised. 

As this new purge unfolds, veterans once again find themselves in the crosshairs — not on the battlefield, but in a political war where their service is treated as disposable. Congress needs to act now, before there’s nothing left to save.