VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs has temporarily suspended billions of dollars in planned contract cuts following concerns that the move would hurt critical veterans’ health services, lawmakers and veterans service organizations said Wednesday.
The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts that Secretary Doug Collins a day earlier described as simply consulting deals, whose cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash costs across the federal government.
“No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!” Collins posted to X Tuesday, in a post that was then lauded by Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The Associated Press has obtained the full list of 875 affected contracts, which shows the cuts would affect everything from cancer care to the ability to assess toxic exposure. The list underscores how the Trump administration’s approach to broad spending reductions has immediate and potentially unintended consequences, generating significant concern not just among Democrats but also Republican lawmakers.
The VA said in a statement to the AP that its review of the contracts “is ongoing and not final.”
“We will not be eliminating any benefits or services to Veterans or VA beneficiaries, and there will be no negative impact to VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries. We are always going to take care of Veterans at VA. Period,” VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in a statement.
One contract that was on the chopping block supports assessing veterans’ disability ratings. Those evaluations are one of the most important steps needed for a veteran to qualify to have their medical care covered and receive financial compensation if they were wounded due to their military service. An inaccurate rating can have a long-term impact on their access to care and financial support.
Another contract is intended to identify and integrate data between the Pentagon, VA and other agencies to support the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022, a bill passed in 2022 to increase veterans’ access to care.
Some of the other contracts marked for cancellation also directly affect veterans’ care.
At a joint House and Senate hearing Wednesday with veterans services organizations, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal submitted a partial list of the affected contracts his office had received and submitted it for the congressional record.
If carried out, these cuts “will harm veterans and taxpayers for years to come,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
In an internal VA email sent Tuesday and seen by the AP, a VA contracting official said DOGE targeted contracts broadly categorized as “consulting” but they included ones that if terminated would halt chemotherapy and imaging services.
Contracts to calibrate radiation detection equipment, to support cancer care and veterans cemetery management, among others were also targeted. Another would directly affect the ability to assess toxic exposure because it supports more than 24,000 research requests to look through the National Archives and Records Administration and other government sources to validate service and toxic exposure events.
Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, who served in the Trump administration in his first term, said that while the agency has gotten larger and there are likely savings to be found, the VA grew, in part, to meet the large expansion of veterans enrolling to get care under the PACT Act. More than 740,000 veterans signed up for coverage after the law passed, according to a September 2024 VA press release.
“I do think slowing down and pausing to see what the consequences are, even if they are unintended consequences, is important to do,” Shulkin told The Associated Press.
Veterans service organizations called for ”immediate transparency” on what contracts were affected.
“With funding suddenly stripped from contractors processing claims, conducting medical screenings and expanding outreach, there are growing concerns veterans will face delays, denials and disruptions in accessing critical services,” said Rosie Torres, executive director of Burn Pits 360.
The group advocates for veterans who face life-altering respiratory illnesses and cancers due to toxic exposure to dangerous air particle matter generated from massive trash-burning fires at overseas bases.
The Washington Post was first to report on the cancellations.
___
Johnson reported from Washington state.
The DOGE Takeover Is Worse Than You Think
If you’ve felt overwhelmed by all the DOGE news, you’re not alone. You’d need too much cork board and yarn to keep track of which agencies it has occupied by now, much less what it’s doing there. Here’s a simple rubric, though, to help contextualize the DOGE updates you do have time and energy to process: It’s worse than you think.
DOGE is hard to keep track of. This is by design; the only information about the group outside of its own mistake-ridden ledger of “savings” comes from media reports. So much for being “maximally transparent,” as Elon Musk has promised. The blurriness is also partly a function of the speed and breadth with which DOGE has operated. Keeping track of the destruction is like counting individual bricks scattered around a demolition site.
Featured Video
Historian Answers Renaissance Questions
Even if that feels like old news, remember that it’s actually still happening, every day a fresh incursion by Big Balls and his cohort of twentysomething technologists. (In fairness, they’re not all young; some of them are old enough to present conflicts of interest so flagrant that they literally lack modern precedent.)
Similarly, you’ve likely heard that the United States Agency for International Development has been gutted and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been put on ice. All true, all bad. But here’s what that means in practice: Fewer people globally have access to vaccines than they did a month ago. More babies are being born with HIV/AIDS. From here on out, anyone who gets ripped off by payday loan companies—or, say, social media platforms moonlighting as payments services—has lost their most capable defender.
Keep going. The thousands of so-called probationary employees DOGE has fired included a significant number of experienced workers who had just been promoted or transferred. National Science Foundation staffing cuts and proposed National Institutes of Health grant limits will combine to kneecap scientific research in the United States for a generation. Terminations at the US Department of Agriculture have sent programs designed to help farmers into disarray. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration canceled a meeting that would have given guidance on this year’s flu vaccine composition. It hasn’t been rescheduled.
Don’t care about science or vaccines? The Social Security Administration is reportedly going to cut its staff in half. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to be cut by as much as 84 percent. Hundreds of workers who keep the power grid humming in the Pacific Northwest were fired before a scramble to rehire a few of them. The National Parks Service, the Internal Revenue Service, all hit hard. So don’t make any long-term bets on getting your checks on time, keeping your lights on, buying a home for the first time, or enjoying Yosemite. Don’t assume all the things that work now will still work tomorrow.
Speaking of which, let’s not forget that DOGE has fired people working to prevent bird flu and to safeguard the US nuclear arsenal. (The problem with throwing a chainsaw around is that you don’t make clean cuts.) The agencies in question have reportedly tried to hire those workers back. Fine. But even if they’re able to, the long-term question that hasn’t been answered yet is, Who would stay? Who would work under a regime so cocksure and incompetent that it would mistakenly fire the only handful of people who actually know how to take care of the nukes? According to a recent report from The Bulwark, that brain drain is already underway.
And this is all before the real reductions in force begin, mass purges of civil servants that will soon be conducted, it seems, with an assist from DOGE-modified, automated software. The US government is about to lose decades of institutional knowledge across who knows how many agencies, including specialists that aren’t readily replaced by loyalists.
Elon Musk has, at least, acknowledged that DOGE will make mistakes, and promised fast fixes. He even called one out specifically Wednesday, the cancelation of a USAID program designed to prevent the spread of Ebola. “We restored the Ebola prevention immediately,” he said during an appearance at Trump’s first cabinet meeting. “And there was no interruption.”
This is not the case, as The Washington Post first reported. Not only has Ebola prevention not been restored—it was and remains severely diminished—but the Trump administration also said Wednesday it would terminate nearly 10,000 contracts and grants from USAID and the State Department. Many of those contracts represent an attempt to lessen some form of suffering in some part of the world. It’s too many individual stories to tell, too many tragedies unfolding too far away.
It’s worse than you think in the same way that your brain breaks a little when you try to picture how deep the ocean is. It’s worse than you think because by the time the courts catch up the damage will already have been done. It’s worse than you think because the people running the government seem to have no higher mission than to watch it burn.
Federal agencies could absolutely be more efficient, but we’re long past the point where efficiency is a plausible goal. DOGE’s cuts have no apparent regard for civil society or opportunity costs or long-term strategic thinking. Their targets are Elon Musk’s and Project 2025’s targets. They have found no fraud, just democracy at work. They’re apparently eager to see what happens when it no longer does.
It’s worse than you think because so far all DOGE has done is drop a boulder into the middle of a pond. If you think this is bad, wait for the ripples.
The Chatroom
What will be the most lasting impact of the DOGE cuts?
Leave a comment on the site or send your thoughts to mail@wired.com.
WIRED Reads
- DOGE Is Working on Software That Automates the Firing of Federal Workers: Operatives working for Elon Musk’s DOGE appear to be editing the code of AutoRIF—software designed by the Defense Department that could assist in mass firings of federal workers, sources tell WIRED.
- DOGE Staffers at HUD Are From an AI Real Estate Firm and a Mobile Home Operator: Elon Musk’s men at HUD come from the real estate sector. They have access to vast stores of personal and financial data—and control over who can access which HUD systems.
- DOGE’s Chaos Reaches Antarctica: Daily life at US-run Antarctic stations has already been disrupted. Scientists worry that the long-term impacts could upend not only important research but the continent’s delicate geopolitics.
Want more? Subscribe now for unlimited access to WIRED.
What Else We’re Reading
🔗 DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week: The parade of casual incompetence continues. (The New York Times)
🔗 Trump Administration to Cut 92% of USAID Foreign Aid Contracts: This is reportedly going to “save” $60 billion. The federal budget is $6.8 trillion. As discussed above, the true cost will be incalculable. (Axios)
🔗 Is What DOGE Is Doing Legal?: Great question! Wish the courts would get around to answering it! (The Washington Post)
The Download
Check out this week’s special-edition podcast episode, WIRED News Update: DOGE’s Many Conflicts of Interest & Elon’s Weekend Email Chaos. I joined global editorial director Katie Drummond to dig into all things DOGE. Listen now.
Thanks again for subscribing. You can get in touch with Makena via email, Instagram, X, Bluesky, and Signal at makenakelly.32.
