Milwaukee, Wisconsin

An Army veteran, Stancil had a job handling supplies for emergency and spinal injury care at a Veterans Administration hospital in Milwaukee. In his hiring paperwork, Stancil’s job was described as “critical.” Nevertheless, after two years with the V.A., he was fired along with nearly half the other people on his shift. “If you double the work,” he told a reporter for the Associated Press, “I can guarantee you’re going to have wrong things and wrong stuff in the wrong place.”

Stancil compared his experience to being shot and dumped out of a helicopter. “And you just free fall and hit the ground — that’s it,” he said, adding: “I’m not dead weight. You’re tossing off the wrong stuff.”

All told, roughly 2,400 VA workers, many of them veterans themselves, were dismissed in the early weeks of the Trump Administration. They include people who buy medical supplies, make appointments, and set up rides for patients to see their doctors. The V.A. plans to terminate tens of thousands more people. “That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans, by any means,” a White House counselor said in answer to reporters’ questions. “We are going to care for them in the right way. But perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work.”

Date Posted: 3/10/25