VA IDs thousands of exemptions after Trump hiring freeze

The total number of jobs on the list exceeds 304,000.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, VA will always do what is necessary to provide America’s veterans with the benefits and services they have earned,” VA Director of Media Affairs Morgan Ackley said in a statement.

The executive order mandates that no vacant position existing as of noon Monday may be filled and no new openings created, except in limited circumstances.

Trump’s order generally exempts hiring for military, immigration and law enforcement, public safety and national security jobs. But some have called for more explicit guidance on which jobs are exempt.

“Nothing in this memorandum shall adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare, or veterans’ benefits,” the president’s order also says. “In addition, the director of the Office of Personnel Management may grant exemptions from this freeze where those exemptions are otherwise necessary.”

“Because of the targeted hiring-freeze exemptions announced this week, we don’t anticipate any negative impact on hospital performance as a result of the hiring freeze," a spokeswoman for the Dayton VA said in an email to this news outlet.

The Dayton VA Medical Center has 2,355 full-time employees.

Also Thursday, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs backed the nomination of U.S. Rep. Doug Collins to be Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs by a vote of 18 to 1.

The vote now moves to the full Senate.

“Congressman Collins knows firsthand the opportunities and challenges that veterans face and has committed to putting them first,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said in a release.

There has been pushback against the new hiring freeze, which mirrors a similar executive order Trump imposed at the start of his first term in January 2017.

“Make no mistake — this action is not about making the federal government run more efficiently but rather is about sowing chaos and targeting a group of patriotic Americans that President Trump openly calls crooked and dishonest,” American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said in a statement this week.