North Carolina has one of the highest percentages of active duty military and veteran residents in the country, which means any cuts to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs have outsized impact.
The Trump administration cut some 2,000 jobs from the VA nationwide, and while hard numbers are hard to pin down, lots of those cuts fell on facilities in Durham and Fayetteville, where veterans receive health care for a range of issues, including exposure to toxic burn pits in the Middle East.
The veterans who lost their jobs helped care for other veterans.
Alina Habba, a Trump administration official, downplayed the cuts to reporters in Washington recently, implying that the veterans who were fired were lazy and “are not willing to come to work.”
Take a look.
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