Warner and Kaine Ask that VA Positions be Exempt from Federal Hiring Freeze
The senators joined colleagues in sending a letter to President Trump.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele

United States Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are calling for the Trump Administration to exempt all positions at the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs from a federal hiring freeze ordered last week.
As the Advance reported on Monday, the freeze exempts doctors, nurses and 38 other medical and support staff positions, but it appears to apply to other staff that will be needed at the new Veteran’s Affairs outpatient clinic in Spotsylvania, which is supposed to open in March.
Kaine and Warner joined other Democratic senators in signing a letter to President Trump, expressing “urgent concerns” about the hiring freeze.
“Veterans have earned and deserve the best quality health care and benefits possible. Delivering on that sacred promise starts with ensuring the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has the appropriate personnel in place to serve them,” the senators wrote.
“In your Memorandum, little detail is provided to understand the scope of its exemptions. And despite assurances that VA benefits would be exempt, we have become aware the hiring freeze will extend to the Veterans Benefits Administration—a decision that will dramatically impact the processing of disability claims, growing the backlog and making it more difficult for veterans to access their earned benefits, including those promised in the PACT Act [a law that expands VA health care and benefits for Veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances]. Additionally, there is no explicit exemption for employees serving the more than 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA health care.”
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”