Pantsuits and Lawsuits with Attorneys General Kris Mayes and Dana Nessel

Firing America's Heroes: Veterans Cast Aside in Government Purge

• Attorneys General Kris Mayes & Dana Nessel • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel break down the unprecedented upheaval in the federal workforce. With mass firings sweeping across agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the CDC, and even the nation's nuclear weapons programs, what do these cuts mean for government stability and public safety?

Joining the discussion is Max Rose, Senior Advisor for the VetVoice Foundation and former U.S. Congressman, who shares insight on how these sweeping layoffs are affecting veterans, government efficiency, and national security.

Plus, we examine the legal challenges being mounted against the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and what’s at stake for Americans who rely on these essential services.

Credit: This episode includes excerpts from an MSNBC segment, viewable here.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Hello and welcome back to Pantsuits and Lawsuits. I'm Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And I'm Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, and we are excited to have you back for today's episode as we dive into another important lately. about the most pressing legal issues you might have seen in the news lately.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

On today's docket, we want to talk about the recent upheaval in the federal workforce. President Trump and Elon Musk have made absolutely no secret about the fact that they are taking a sledgehammer to our federal bureaucracy.

Dr. Ben Andrews:

I am Dr Ben Andrew.

Andrew Lennox:

My name is Andrew Lennox.

Jonathan Kamens:

My name is Jonathan Kamens. I oversaw cybersecurity for the VA. gov websites, and about a third of USDS, including me, were fired last week. Without people like me ensuring that VA. gov is secure, the private financial and healthcare data of Americans' veterans is at risk of being stolen, sold to the highest bidder and used to harm people.

Dr. Ben Andrews:

I served as the Chief of Safety and Emergency Management at the Philadelphia VA. This was a mission-critical role that ensured the health and safety of all those who entered into our facilities

Andrew Lennox:

After leaving the military, I wanted to continue serving my country and I did so as an administrative officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My job was to enable our medical providers and that meant looking at the hundreds of doctors and the thousands of patients' schedules to make sure that nobody walked through those doors and was not treated. Make sure we had all the paperwork and credentialing to send those veterans home with the prescription medication they needed and we didn't waste a single taxpayer dollar.

Dr. Ben Andrews:

I chose public service because my mother worked 30 years for the VA Medical Center in New Orleans. As a kid I said one day I'll work at the VA.

Andrew Lennox:

If they offered me my job back tomorrow, I would take it. Despite all the chaos and risk, the mission is still there and I'm still ready to be a part of it.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Back on January 28th, the Office of Personnel Management extended a deferred resignation offer to all federal employees, seemingly without consideration for mission needs or appropriate staffing levels and threatening the federal government's ability to provide necessary essential services to residents, and my department issued a warning to read the fine print before signing and to be extra cautious as certain benefits may not be guaranteed. And ultimately it was estimated, at least by the federal government, that about 75,000 people actually took the offer.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

For those who stayed on, the last few weeks have been filled with turmoil and confusion, as questions arise over who still may be fired, which programs are to receive funding cuts and what of the executive branch's recent actions are even legal. Our most recent lawsuit against Trump, Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, challenges the Office of Management and Budget's decision to lay off thousands of probationary workers, who are not easily replaceable.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And, mind you, the probationary period for federal hiring lasts up to two years, but it also applies to people who were recently promoted to a new position, as well as those who were freshly hired from outside the agency.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

A staggering lack of transparency throughout the proceedings leaves us without complete numbers yet, but the numbers we do have are extremely concerning 700 people laid off at the CDC, as many as 350 federal employees tasked with working on the nation's nuclear weapons programs, Over 1,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, including researchers working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Not to mention the overnight firings of 17 inspectors general, you know, the lead auditors of federal agencies who are tasked with oversight on issues of spending and waste.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

And Trump and DOGE are indicating that this is just the beginning. I think it's important to note that the people who work in these federal agencies whether monitoring our water for toxins, safeguarding our nuclear reactors or staffing the VA they are public servants. Their careers often span several administrations and it doesn't matter who holds the Oval Office. Their work needs to be done anyway.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

That's right, and these basic functions of government are severely hampered when our agencies are understaffed and the employees there are receiving conflicting information out of Washington DC and, of course, they live across the country. We're hearing about potentially hundreds, even thousands of Michiganders and, I'm sure, Arizonans, who have been themselves fired.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That's right. Here in Arizona we've heard of therapists who were fired from the VA in Phoenix, hotshot firefighters, firefighter crews who were let go in Payson right before the fire season, rural public works officers, Grand Canyon National Park employees and so many Arizona public servants losing their jobs.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So here to tell us about what it's like on the ground for federal employees, we have Max Rose. Max is a senior advisor for the VetVoice Foundation as well as a former congressman for New York. So, Max, welcome to the show.

Max Rose:

Thanks, AG. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me and for everything you do as well.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I want to start with a comment made by a Michigan congresswoman by the name of Lisa McClain, and here's what she said "Democrats are soliciting sob stories from bloated bureaucrats with six-figure salaries. Give me a break.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I don't know about you. I was very offended by that as somebody who has a great appreciation for the work that so many federal employees do, but I wanted to know what your thoughts were about that and how that was received by the federal workers that you know and have been with for a long time.

Max Rose:

Well, people are really scared and they're really offended and they're angry. And there's a whole moral component to all of this where I think we all align that government service is a really virtuous, moral and really hard way to live your life. But gosh, you know, when you think about DOGE is doing, it's also not a recipe for an effective government by any sense of the word. You know, the government is tasked with doing some really complex, really difficult and challenging things. You live it each and every day, from issues related to security, to health, to welfare, to investments in our future, at every level of government. And I want really talented people there and I want to compensate them.

Max Rose:

I would argue that they're not compensated nearly enough at every level of government. And I want really talented people there and I want to compensate them. I would argue that they're not compensated nearly enough at every level. So I don't think anyone can understate or overstate excuse me the level of just fear and panic at every level of government. So you tell me oh, they've only fired 1%, that's a number that they're throwing around a lot. Well, they've scared the shit out of 99% of them and they've paralyzed our government Right, and I don't know how we, how we rescue this.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

What are you, what are you seeing, you know, in the veteran community, I mean in terms of the real world impact of these cuts? I'm from a state where we have a ton of veterans, heavy military presence here in Arizona, multiple bases, a number of VA facilities and a ton ton of veterans, too, that have gone on, obviously left the service and gone on to work for the federal government in other agencies providing incredible service. So what are you seeing and hearing from people about that? I mean, it's just very concerning to me that veterans could be disproportionately impacted by these cuts because they went on to work in federal agencies.

Max Rose:

Absolutely. Well, let's just look at the stats 50% of the federal workforce are veterans, 50% of that cohort are disabled veterans. And you know, anyone who has spent one day in the military or really one day in any form of public service knows that the people who are in those ranks didn't just develop a temporary mindset, right, you're kind of you're born with that, or you develop it and you don't, you can't just have it for a couple of years. It's why many people, when they leave the military, they choose to join the reserves and they choose to continue, or they choose to continue their service in the federal government, doing really difficult and in many instances, really really dangerous things, and we're so blessed to have them. But I also have to say, you know, I've done a lot of things, you know, in my life, right, I've served in Congress, I've worked in business as an entrepreneur and served in the military. The most competent, creative, entrepreneurial, intellectual, ambitious, committed people I've ever worked with were on the front lines of the United States military and the army, to be specific. So this is not charity. When we offer them employment, they are doing us a favor, not the other way around, because they could be making a hell of a lot more money doing something in the private sector.

Max Rose:

So these firings, though, have been massively arbitrary. It's not as if DOGE went in there, these 19-year-old tech bros, and they're slowly and meticulously interviewing people and evaluating where there are efficiencies. They are going the easy way out, which is they are firing new employees at a time when our federal workforce is also aging and in desperate need of technological advancement, and they're firing people who are only in their probationary status because they just got promoted. Think about how goddamn insane that is. We are going to say we're going to make our government more lean, mean and efficient by firing who, by all accounts, are our best and brightest because they just got promoted. I just stood with a gentleman who was fired from CISA, the cybersecurity arm of the Department of Homeland Security. A veteran. He had been there for 15 years, promoted, very frequently, excelled, deployed worldwide to assist our allies and partners with cybersecurity, but he had just been promoted, six months prior, and they fired him indiscriminately.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, I know that when we're doing our hiring, we always look for veterans who apply for virtually any of the types of jobs at our department, because we know that they're going to have qualifications that, frankly, the rest of the workforce won't necessarily have.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

We know that they're going to have qualifications that, frankly, the rest of the workforce won't necessarily have, and so that is, of course, that is a boon to our department.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Anytime we can find somebody who also, you know, served.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But one of the first layoffs that I heard about when DOGE first started, you know, marauding through federal government and conducting these indiscriminate firings was a woman who worked at the VA here in Detroit, who was a social worker and, you know, unfortunately as we know, vets have unfortunately disproportionately have either thought about or have attempted to take their own lives. It's a very important function, but this woman had also been cross-trained in DEI work, and so she was put on leave virtually immediately and I just thought like the cruelty, the abject cruelty, to treat our veterans the way that this administration has treated them. It's not a surprise, because I've never heard anybody talk about people who serve our country the way that we've heard Donald Trump describe our former military members. But that was the very first person that I had heard about and of course the firings just have continued and I will say that our federal government and all of the United States would be so much worse off without these vets serving in our federal government in a myriad of positions.

Max Rose:

AG, you're spot on, and you all have been through campaigns. It is really easy at times to say things like that in a campaign. Now, though, they are showing us who they really are, which is someone who spits at vets, someone who doesn't even know a vet's real value. Many of the veterans who have just been fired are post 9/11 vets. We have this vision of post 9/11 global war on terrorism vets, Iraq, Afghanistan, and we have engaged in conflict and certainly high stakes circumstances in plenty of other countries this century as all 22 year olds, but you know, if you deployed in 2003 as a 23 year old sergeant in the initial invasion of Iraq, you know at this point, you're closer to Medicare eligibility than you are to being immediately able to vote for the first time. Right, you are to being immediately able to vote for the first time. Right. These are folks who are fully formed adults at the height of their career, but they also experienced the pinnacle of complexity in the most high stakes environment humanly imaginable.

Max Rose:

For 20 years, we fought these wars that were totally nonlinear, where we asked our service members to both protect civilian populations, protect the men and women to the left and right of you, accomplish the mission, defeat the enemy, seize the high ground. We've never asked something like this of service members, and we did it for our nation's longest war in our history. These people are supremely war in our history. These people are supremely, supremely competent and they have unbelievable resiliency. These are the folks that get the job done for America and they're the last people we should have ever fired, and I think it's imperative that we never let the MAGA movement ever again say that they stand for vets, because it's not just the Trump administration doing this. It's every single Republican member of the Senate and Republican member of Congress who refuses to stand up to them.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, I think that's a great point, Max, and it is so heartbreaking. You know we are seeing these stories out here in Arizona and you know, as a former congressman, I would love to get your thoughts about what's going on, the process that's being used. As you know, Dana and I are suing the Trump administration for violating the separation of powers, with all of DOGE cuts and, you know, takeovers of federal agencies. What goes through your mind when you see this happening?

Max Rose:

Every president has talked about wanting to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse, and that should be something that we unite around as a country. And I don't even think you know times when everyone talks about hatchet versus scalpel. You know that term. You know there's times when we got to get a hatchet to some of this, because there is such a thing as bloated government. But that does not mean that you engage in this reckless, disruptive, destructive process that pays no respect whatsoever to our Constitution. They are doing far more good than otherwise.

Max Rose:

And think about it this way right, congress appropriates money for the executive to deploy within certain left and right limits.

Max Rose:

They've basically said I don't care about any of that, and they're going to destroy entire departments, like USAID, where funds have been congressionally appropriated. So you know this is going to come to a head in the budget negotiations coming up, and I think it's imperative that Democrats look Republicans in the face and say there's no negotiation where you're going to get us on your side with a continuing resolution, because why should we think your side's going to respect the budget in the end anyway, even if we pass it. So this experiment that we have as a country is really delicate. And it survived only because we have sworn an oath, each of us, you, myself not to a king, but to a set of ideas in the Constitution, to a higher set of morals and imperatives. And this administration doesn't care about it at all. But I'll tell you, the Republican members of Congress could stop it. Yeah, if they put the country first, they really could.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

What's interesting to me is that you know the sheer cowardice that we're seeing by so many Republican members, and I was just doing a presentation to some constituents that live in the seventh Congressional District of Michigan. There's a new congressman there. His name is Tom Barrett. He is a veteran and he ran on being a veteran and yet for all his bravery and his commercials where he's in a Blackhawk chopper, he can't stand up for his own constituents against the president and what we know and I just saw some huge programming. He represents the area where Michigan State University is and they had enormous cuts because they do a lot of food and agriculture work. So one single grant for $23 million because it was connected to USAID, and yet total silence.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

He will not criticize President Trump in any way, shape or form, even though he's a guy who was in combat, you know?

Max Rose:

I know. It's a weird thing being an elected official, because at times you get in your own head and you start to think that the only reason why you were there is to stay there, and it doesn't matter what you said in the campaign, because the only reason you said that in the campaign was to get there. And then you got to stay there and this thing just keeps on going like a hamster wheel. I've lost elections and I've won them as well. When you lose an election, the sun does come up the next day. In fact, your marriage might improve, which is a message I would send their way. But the truth is is that all you have in the end are your own principles and your record of actually upholding them.

Max Rose:

t's are you supposed to look your family in the eye? How are you supposed to look your family in the eye? How are you supposed to look your neighbors in the eye? How are you supposed to look the men and women who you served with in the eye when you tell them that, yeah, no, I talked a big song and dance about service and country and thumped my chest about being a badass but, I really just went along to get along. That, to me, is not a life of public service worth living. Go out there and just sell crypto, man, you'll get a condo in Miami. Why are you doing this? That is the question that we should be asking each of these individuals. Just give up, man. You got the pin. I'll tell you. They still call you congressman when you leave. Just give up, don't. Don't. Don't play this game anymore, because you look like a fool and you're making a mockery of service.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, you stand for something or you stand for nothing, right?

Max Rose:

Amen

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, and I, you know, I wish that each of these people would be willing to look in the face of the veterans who are being impacted by this. I want to read you a quote from someone. We had a handful of staff at the VA hospital in central Phoenix critical hospital serving our vets here in Phoenix. Quote "it was a punch in the gut, I cried. It's been hard." And we're seeing that all over Arizona from incredibly brave people, people who serve their country, who just got fired by Donald Trump and Elon Musk for absolutely no reason whatsoever. And I wish these people would have the guts, both in Congress but also Elon Musk, to look these people in the eye and explain why they just did this to them and our country, Max.

Max Rose:

You know, but I think it's important for us also to have a conversation not just about these amazing heroes who have been fired, but also and this definitely applies to the VA the equally amazing heroes who will now not get the services they need. Right, yeah, they just laid off. You know 2000 or so veterans from the VA excuse me, employees of the VA many of whom are veterans, and they called them all non-essential. Now you see healthcare each and every day. There's no such thing as a non-essential VA employee.

Max Rose:

They all directly impact patient care, patient quality and veterans will suffer and will be hurt as a consequence of these decisions that have been made, and I'm not going to project how bad those consequences will be, but we will find out. We'll talk about the veteran population. Let's talk about the way they rely on the Small Business Administration to start their next chapter. Let's talk about the way that homeless veterans rely on all the grants and services provided by HUD. This is not just the VA, and we can talk about a whole assortment of other groups that are really deserving and really rely on these services.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Max. Thank you for coming on the podcast, thank you for your service and thank you for standing up so strongly for for those who have served our country, and who deserve better than this.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

Yeah, we appreciate you, Max. Thanks so much, Mr Congressman.

Max Rose:

Thank you.

Max Rose:

AG AG.

Max Rose:

Thank you for your leadership and for having me on and keep up the fight, and we're here to support you, however we can.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

We're the only ones that get to be called general, even though we don't necessarily have any military experience at all whatsoever.

Max Rose:

So it's pretty cool, that's pretty cool.

Attorney General Kris Mayes:

That's a wrap on this episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits. We'll be back soon with more incredible guests and information to protect and inform all of our listeners.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Until then, stay informed, stay engaged and keep fighting the good fight. This is Pantsuits and Lawsuits.