Estimates that President Donald Trump’s administration had fired close to 6,000 military veterans from the federal government were met with outrage from Connecticut Democrats this week, who called on the Republican administration to reverse the firings.
Data released Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who serves as ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, estimated that the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk had fired around 5,857 veterans from a variety of federal agencies in the weeks since Trump took office.
“This move should outrage anyone who respects our veterans and servicemembers and believes our promises to them should be upheld,” DeLauro said. “We have repeatedly asked the Trump administration for additional information on the exact number of veterans they have fired and what they plan to do to support them. The American people deserve answers.”
The congressional estimates suggest that the largest population of fired veterans were employed by the U.S. Department of Defense, where around 2,363 of the 5,400 fired employees were believed to be former servicemembers. An estimated 676 veterans were fired from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, according to the congressional statistics.
The Trump administration’s decision to fire so many military veterans prompted condemnation from Sen. Paul Honig, a Harwinton Democrat who serves as co-chair of the Connecticut legislature’s Veterans’ and Military Affairs Committee.
“These are men and women who put everything on the line for our country, and we owe them better than an abrupt termination of their careers,” Honig said. “We owe them better than the fear and anxiety that comes with depleting the family savings just to put food on the table. We owe them better than unemployment benefits and a frantic search for a new job.”
The firings have advocates for veterans scrambling to compile a tally of every veteran who has lost their job. William Attig, executive director of the Union Veterans Council, told Axios his organization has been in contact with its newly unemployed members.
“This is the largest attack on veteran employment in our lifetime,” Attig said, according to Axios.
