WASHINGTON (AP) — A freshman Democratic congressman is introducing a bill to protect the jobs of veterans working for the U.S. government amid mass firings by the Trump administration, the latest legislative response to the turmoil rippling across federal agencies.
The bill from Rep. Derek Tran, an Army veteran and former employment lawyer, would require that any veterans terminated without reason from the federal government since the start of President Donald Trump’s term be reinstated. It would also require federal agencies to submit reports to Congress on the veteran dismissals and provide justifications for their actions.
“They sacrificed so much to protect our country, to defend our freedom,” said Tran, who represents parts of Orange County, California. “Now they’ve been kicked to the curb.”
The bill is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled House, but it serves as just the latest example of how Democrats are trying to harness public backlash to Trump’s efforts to upend the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency, which is led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
Nearly 6,000 veterans have been fired across the federal government, according to data from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. That data found that DOGE has fired about 38,000 federal employees since the start of Trump’s second term.
“It’s almost like permission to let them do what they want to do, and they feel like they can come in and disrupt by firing, by cutting a bunch of employees just so that they save government or they save this country X amount of dollars, only to transfer that over to tax cuts for them,” Tran told The Associated Press.
Democrats have denounced the Trump administration’s broadsides against federal workers and agencies as unlawful power grabs, while Republicans in Congress have called the president’s efforts a necessary corrective to what conservatives view as a bloated federal bureaucracy. Tran says he would welcome a Republican co-sponsor to work on the bill.
“I’ve been trying to get support. I’m trying to not make this a partisan issue,” Tran said. “This is just the right thing for our veterans. So in my communication with colleagues across the aisle, I want to make sure that they understand this is not a Democratic bill. This is a bill to protect those who served.”
The federal government has traditionally encouraged veterans to work across the government after their service in uniform. The Veterans Employment Initiative was enacted by then-President Barack Obama to streamline and boost veteran recruitment and retention efforts across the government. Military training and education are often considered a prized asset to private-sector firms because of the skills troops develop during their service.
Tran is the son of Vietnamese immigrants who fled their country amid the Vietnam War. He served in the U.S. Army before getting a law degree and becoming a small business owner. He is the third Vietnamese American to serve in Congress, after defeating Republican U.S. Rep. Michelle Steel in last year’s election.
He said that his service was inspired by the aid that federal and state programs in California had afforded his family after they had sought safe haven in a new country.
“As the son of refugees, I always felt this debt to this country for taking in my parents,” Tran said. “I always had a sense of wanting to give back to this country. So I marched into the recruiter’s office without telling my parents or my friends and enlisted.”
