On February 13, Andrew Lennox, an administrative officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Michigan, learned from an email he had been fired. The news shocked him. Lennox had deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria during his ten years as a Marine infantryman. Now, he was a veteran helping fellow vets. He had assumed that he would be safe from the chaos of Elon Musk’s DOGE purges.
But Lennox discovered he was one of roughly 1,000 VA workers fired earlier this month via form email. The message falsely stated that the employees were being terminated for performance-based reasons. The real reason was that Lennox, and others, were probationary employees who had recently been hired or promoted, which made it easier to get rid of them. Lennox began working at the VA in December 2024.
“You want this to be a traumatic experience for government employees, thirty percent of whom are veterans?”
The VA stated in a press release that people in “mission-critical positions” such as doctors and nurses were exempted from the firings. However, three VA workers I interviewed made clear that no effort was made to understand what the people the department was firing actually did—or whether it made sense to eliminate their positions.
One contract specialist, who has now been reinstated, told me their portfolio included a renovation of currently unusable operation rooms and an effort to remove mold from VA facilities. He estimated that he had saved the government tens of millions of dollars during more than 15 years of service. (The Department of Veterans Affairs, which announced additional dismissals on Monday, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Lennox’s story, then, is one of many. I spoke with him last Friday about his time in the Marines, his work at the VA, and how he is trying to get his and other workers’ jobs back.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The election had already happened when you started at the VA in December. Were you worried about your job, or did you think the department would be safe from cuts?
My thought process was: This is the VA. We are going to be at the very end of the list. And it might sound kind of selfish, but I thought, I’m a vet. I’m safe. It’s in my paperwork that I’m protected from a reduction in force because it’s something they have to take into account when choosing who to let go.
What did you do for the VA?
I was an administrative officer for our primary care department. My responsibility was to support our care providers. So it was certifying and verifying all hours and pay to make sure we didn’t overpay people. It was to ensure that our doctors had the right credentialing so that when they wrote a prescription, it wouldn’t get denied by the DEA. It was ordering equipment. Making sure that we got the best prices on the equipment so we didn’t waste taxpayer dollars. It was just trying to remove all of the red tape and unnecessary stuff so our doctors and nurses could do their jobs.
What were the days leading up to you getting fired like?
It was kind of the same situation. It was like, All right. DOGE is happening. This is terrible for the other agencies.
My wife works for a federal agency as well. We were at home. There were a bunch of people talking in group chats about getting weird emails—not termination emails. So I was like, let me check my work phone real quick, see if I got fired. I meant it as a joke. Then I opened up my email and saw I’d been fired.
Did the email claim you were being fired for performance?
Yeah. I immediately called my supervisor. He had heard nothing about that. Neither did our chief of staff. Neither did the director of our hospital. Nobody knew this was happening. If I’m a poor performer, go ahead and fire me. But bring the receipts. There was no paperwork. I was doing well. Nobody had any complaints. They literally said, You’re doing a great job.
“I would like some accountability for those that are denigrating the people that keep the lights on in this country.”
Every single person got the same copy and pasted email. There were people that were on probationary periods because they were recently promoted for outstanding performance. That’s what really angered me: everybody else that had been there for a long time.
What do you know about your employment status and the details of your firing?
I have heard absolutely nothing from the VA. I called this morning. I left a voicemail with our HR director. Nothing yet. I have great leadership. I don’t want to sound like I’m throwing them under the bus. The problem is they had no idea.
What have you heard from other people since being fired? Are you looking for other work?
People from my past, throughout my Marine Corps career—even people that are on, say, the other political side of this situation—are like: Man, I can’t believe this. When we thought of stuff like this happening, we never thought it’d be someone like you.
And I’ve gotten a ton of support from people in terms of encouragement and suggestions on employment afterward. But I want my job back. I want to help vets. I would love to work for the government again. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth defending. And I hope everybody that has more seniority gets their jobs back first.
Are you planning to appeal or take any legal action?
I don’t have much hope for this going through the traditional means like appeals and lawsuits. Because if we look at the actors involved in this, their modus operandi is to not follow through with their contractual obligations and then to let it die in court.
It’s David versus Goliath. I don’t have enough money to pay a lawyer for the next year. We don’t have the luxury of years of litigation that the other side of this equation has. This is what they do: Yeah, I’m not going to pay the rest of what I owe you for this contract. Sue me. I’ll outlast you. Meanwhile, our families have to eat.
And, again, there are people in worse situations. That’s why I want to talk to as many people as possible. I feel like the only effective thing is the court of public opinion.
What was the career path that led you to the VA?
I got my Bachelor’s in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic, and that led me to moving to Egypt during the Arab Spring. I was a kindergarten teacher—and was working teaching English for a nonprofit over there for about a year. Watching the country transition from dictatorship to military junta to the Muslim Brotherhood becoming the elected party, it was kind of like, Man, I really love home. And I’d always wanted to join the military and figured the clock was ticking. I finished the year out at my school, then enlisted as soon as I flew back to Michigan.
I was an infantryman. I love being tired, dirty, and outside. I love leading Marines. I love all the mentors that I had. It was fantastic. It’s the greatest thing I’ve done in my life. I left after 10 years in 2023. I loved the Marine Corps, but I wanted to start a family, and the deployments are not very conducive to that.
After the Marines, I worked in the civilian sector for a little bit at a natural gas distribution company doing employee relations and HR. It was a great experience but I was laid off as a result of corporate restructuring. But they treated me with a lot of respect and dignity. They made sure I had a severance. They told me when my health care would expire. They shook my hand.
What else do you think is important for people to know about what’s happening?
The biggest thing bothering me is the argument building up to this. It was this campaign of trying to demonize and vilify the “deep state bureaucrats” and “draining the swamp.” Look at the director of OMB right now, Russ Vought, and those clips that are going around where this guy is literally standing behind a podium with people laughing as he says, We want to make life so miserable that these people don’t want to come to work every day. I want it to be a traumatic experience.
You want this to be a traumatic experience for government employees, thirty percent of whom are veterans? How could you stand behind a podium—and now stand in a position where there’s the flag of the United States behind you—and say that to people who dedicated their lives to serving this country both in uniform and out of uniform? It’s cowardly.
I would like some accountability for those that are denigrating the people that keep the lights on in this country. People that make sure our water is not poisoned. The people that make sure our veterans get their medications. Because, as they’re giggling, saying they want government service to be a traumatic experience, those are the people they’re talking about.
How long are you going to keep fighting for you and others to get their jobs back?
Until people stop listening. It sounds cliche, but we’re Marines. We’re service people. This is what we do. There are people that deserve their jobs back a lot more than me. But, unfortunately, sometimes “Marine veteran terminated” is what can get attention.
And all I want to do is help my colleagues that deserve better treatment than this.
If I get my job back, that’s awesome. But right now, I’d rather take care of the people that have been taking care of our veterans for a really long time. So I’ll do this as long as I can. And, one day, if I’m able to work for the government again if I’m not persona non grata, I’d love to do it.
