(L-R) Attorney Alina Habba speaks as Donald Trump looks on during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City on Sept. 6, 2024.
Charly Triballeau | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s top lawyer Alina Habba on Tuesday questioned whether some military veterans fired from federal government jobs as part of an ongoing workforce reduction are capable of working or willing to do so.
“You know, we care about veterans tremendously,” Habba told reporters at the White House.
“But at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work,” said Habba, who holds the title of Trump’s counselor.
“We’re 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,” she said.
“And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say sorry, you know … they’re not going to come to work,” Habba said. “It’s just not acceptable.”
The Trump administration is engaged in a wide-ranging effort to cut the number of federal workers. How that is being done, as well as the personal stories of individuals such as veterans and others affected by the cuts, has led to blowback among the public.
Habba spoke hours before Trump was set to address a joint session of Congress.
Senate Democrats, in a press release Tuesday, said their guests for that speech would “include veterans indiscriminately fired as part of the Trump Administration’s mass terminations of federal government employees.”
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for example, has invited as his guest “Alissa Ellman, a disabled, toxic-exposed Army veteran who was illegally and indiscriminately fired from her job at the Buffalo VA during VA Secretary [Doug] Collins’ mass terminations of VA employees and veterans,” the release said.
Veterans make up about 30% of the total federal workforce, according to a report by the Office of Personnel Management.
As of September 2021, nearly 640,000 veterans were employed in that workforce. Of that tally, 53% were disabled.
The chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee has advised GOP lawmakers to stop holding in-person town halls on the heels of several events that featured attendees strongly criticizing members of Congress.
At an event Saturday in his home state of Kansas, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall left early after being grilled by some attendees about federal job cuts and other issues.
One attendee, Chuck Nunn, identified himself as a conservative Democrat, who told Marshall he supported the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce fraud and waste in government spending.
“But I think the way we are going about it is so wrong because there are unintended consequences,” Nunn said, according to High Plains Public Radio.
“I support the veterans. But what you’re doing right now, what the government is doing right now, as far as cutting out those jobs, a huge percent of those people, and I know that you care about the veterans, are veterans,” Nunn said.
“And that is a damn shame,” Nunn said. “That is a damn shame.”
Marshall left the town hall after Nunn’s statement.
