Illinois veterans, VA employees rally to protest expected Trump administration cuts

McHENRY — John Gerend, a Vietnam War veteran from Lake Villa, was exposed to Agent Orange while on duty. Suffering from diseases associated with exposure to the toxic chemical, he said he still considers himself fortunate.

“I’ve had some issues with it — diabetes, some heart issues and so on — but there are many more that have suffered a lot more than I have and need the care a lot more than I do,” said Gerend, 77. “It’s very upsetting to think that the people who have served their country and have lost limbs or mental health might now lose the benefits, all the support, both for mental health and physical health, and the doctors and medications available.”

“I am mad about what’s going on. I’m angry,” he added.

A retired U.S. Army first lieutenant, Gerend was among the 200 people who gathered outside the McHenry Veterans Affairs clinic Sunday to protest the Trump administration’s plans to slash the agency’s workforce, sparking fears among veterans over the prospect of worsening care and growing unemployment.

Across Illinois, protests have been gaining strength since the proposed cuts were revealed. They range from veterans protesting last month at the Capitol in Springfield to demonstrations by nurses and staff at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, who are concerned about the dangers to proper care and risk for veterans.

In an internal memo to senior agency leaders on March 4, VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek said the agency’s initial goal was “to return to our 2019-end strength numbers of 399,957 employees.” VA Secretary Doug Collins later confirmed the department’s target is to fire roughly 80,000 employees later this year, but he insisted the agency would strive for more efficiency while not cutting benefits and care to the 9 million veterans it serves. According to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of the workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs are themselves veterans.

The move comes after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, fueled by the passing of legislation like the 2022 Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, PACT, Act, expanding medical benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxins from burn pits of trash on military bases.

“I’m getting later in my years, so it’s gonna affect some younger folks possibly more than me, so I’m more afraid for them than I am for myself,” said Gerend, who has used VA services for 12 years.

VA workers in distress

The VA attempted to lay off at least 2,400 probationary employees in February. According to the department,  those in “mission-critical” positions — including Veterans Crisis Line responders — were not affected. Yet, several crisis line staffers received a notice, according to union leaders.

Some of the department’s Illinois workers were axed, too, and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth said the ensuing “chaos” had left the VA less efficient with longer wait times and more backlogs in service.

“I was almost finished with my two-year-long probationary period when I received an email saying I was terminated because of my performance effective that day, (Feb. 24),” said one Illinois-based VA employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “I had outstanding performance reviews, but the fact that they labeled it as a performance-based solution meant that I couldn’t get unemployment (benefits).”

The employee was rehired in March after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the fired probationary employees at several departments, including the VA.

In April, however, the Supreme Court halted the federal judge’s ruling, allowing the federal government to keep thousands of probationary federal employees it attempted to fire off the payroll while lower courts weigh whether the downsizing efforts are legal.

“Everybody is nervous and on edge,” the employee said. “Their jobs are not secure. Nobody’s jobs are secure.”

With the threat of more cuts looming, some Illinois facilities have already started laying people off, causing health care workers more distress.

Heather Fallon, a VA nurse in the Chicago area, said one of her colleagues returned to the facility as a patient after learning that their job “was being eliminated.”

“The person had a conversation with family over dinner about how they are going to pay for their daughter’s college,” she recalled. “The patient ended up developing some pain related to the stress, coming to the emergency department and being admitted because of the health problems that were precipitated by the stress that that person was under.”

“That really affected our staff quite a lot,” Fallon added.

Some fear that the upcoming mass layoffs, especially in smaller towns across rural Illinois, are going to negatively impact populations at large.

“Danville is a small town. It consists of about 29,000 people, and if we lose 400 good-paying government jobs, that will devastate our economy here,” said Mickensy Ellis-White, a veteran of the Iraq War from Vermilion County and chair of the Vermilion County Democratic Party. “Where are those people going to go to get new jobs? That’s going to negatively affect all of us.”

The level of care diminishes

Even before the cuts were announced by the Trump administration, it had been difficult for health facilities within the VA system to maintain enough staff and resources, like beds, available. According to the 2024 VA Office of Inspector General report, 86% of all Veteran Health Administration medical facilities reported severe staffing shortages of medical officers, whereas 82% reported severe shortages of nurses.

The mass slashes to the department’s workforce will only worsen the preexisting lack of personnel, according to Fallon, who said she knows of several nurses who have already submitted job applications to other places in the private sector as the threat of the layoffs looms. “A friend of mine at the St. Louis VA had her care appointment canceled because they didn’t have a provider, and that’s a direct result of the cuts,” said Jessica Motsinger, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran living 12 miles east of St Louis in the Metro East. “It really is devastating, and if it hasn’t really affected somebody, it will very shortly.”

This is not an isolated incident.

“We had a patient yesterday who needed services that we didn’t have open beds at our facility. The solution was that they were going to send him to a different facility, more than an hour away, and he was very upset about that,” Fallon said. “He wasn’t able to go home to get his belongings, and he didn’t feel like his belongings were safe where they were, and his family wouldn’t be able to visit him there, so he would be very isolated.”

According to the official data, 247,140 Illinoisians were enrolled in the VA health care system in fiscal year 2023, and the state’s veteran medical facilities provided services to 162,366 unique patients. Although the impacts of the layoffs are likely to extend throughout the state, the cuts would hit northeastern Illinois the hardest, the counties with the highest percentage of veteran population.

Many veterans are fearful of what is to come — but also angry.

“They think that, since we use the word ‘disabled,’ somehow we’re receiving benefits that we’re not entitled to,” Motsinger said. “But people don’t get this just because we somehow scammed somebody or paid something, we’ve totally earned this. We raised our hand; we offered to sacrifice our lives.”

“I’m sorry America decided to have war for over 20 years. Now you have veterans, an entire generation that you owe us to care for us, not asking for anything other than what we’ve earned,” she said.

Sonya Dymova is an undergraduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.