On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it is on track to eliminate roughly 30,000 workers by the end of fiscal 2025.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins revealed this spring plans to cut roughly 15% of the VA’s staff or around 80,000 workers, arguing that positions “like interior designers and other things DEI” are bloating the agency, which saw staffing levels surge during the Biden era. 

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While mass layoffs, also known as reduction-in-force, were on the table, Collins said he no longer viewed the technique as necessary this week due to a federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements, and normal attrition. Nearly 17,000 employees have already left because of those measures under the Trump administration, Collins said, revealing that an additional 12,000 VA workers are expected to exit the agency by Sept. 30. 

“Since March, we’ve been conducting a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to Veterans,” the VA secretary said in a statement. “As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction, both in terms of staff levels and customer service. A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA. Our review has resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving Veterans that we will continue to pursue.”

In February, Collins led two rounds of layoffs that targeted an estimated 2,400 probationary employees, or federal workers who have been on the job for less than a year and have yet to gain civil service protection. However, the following month, a federal judge in California ordered White House officials to reinstate those workers.

Thousands of VA employees in healthcare positions are among those who have opted for several governmentwide separation incentives, including the deferred resignation program, which allows them to resign from their positions while receiving paid administrative leave until Sept. 30.

Over 300,000 “mission-critical positions” have been deemed essential and are exempt from the cuts, according to Collins.

But others are on the chopping block as the department undertakes an initiative to overhaul the agency, citing such issues as veteran suicide that have long dodged the bureaucracy despite increasing federal resources. 

“We have approximately 470,000 employees. That’s larger than the active-duty Army,” the VA secretary said at the Tucson, Arizona, VA Medical Center in April. “But over the last 10 years, we’ve been struggling … Certain parts of our system, our hospitals, our disability claims, and even our cemeteries, have had issues that we’re not working on as we should,” he said. “So maybe there’s a better question to be asked: With the money and resources we have, could it be spent better?”

Some prominent veterans groups have criticized Collins for taking a “chainsaw” approach to cleaning up the federal agency. 

VETERANS GROUP RISES TO COLLINS’S DEFENSE OVER VA CUTS: ‘GOTTA THINK DIFFERENTLY

Others, such as Mission Roll Call, have defended the VA secretary for abandoning what it describes as failed policies that past administrations have settled for. 

“I think that’s important to understand that if we continue down the path we are and just add people and add money to it, it’s not going to improve because it hasn’t improved for many years,” Mission Roll Call CEO Jim Whaley previously told the Washington Examiner.