A Boston man who oversaw information security for the federal Veterans Affairs website and endorsed Kamala Harris for president says he has been fired as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to downsize the federal workforce.
MIT graduate Jonathan Kamens, “deployed” to the VA as an information security lead through the former US Digital Service, is speaking out after he learned Friday night that he and dozens of his colleagues had been laid off, calling President Trump and Elon Musk’s actions “illegal.”
“The country is in a bit of chaos right now, the job market is a little rough right now, but I am not worried about where I will land,” Kamens told the Herald Monday. “I am much more worried about where this country is going to land if we don’t push back against what’s going on.”
“The people who work for the federal government are dedicated and are concerned about the future of this country,” he added. “Every single one of them who gets fired without due process, without cause, is a loss to the nation, and it damages the government’s ability to provide the services that the American people need.”
Roughly 160 employees who had worked for the Digital Service remained on the job when Trump renamed the agency on his first day back in office last month to the Department of Government Efficiency, a Musk-led special commission tasked with slashing federal spending.
Kamens said he landed his remote role for the Digital Service in June 2023 after working for more than 30 years in the private sector, mostly at startups in the Boston area. President Barack Obama launched the agency in 2014 to fix glitches plaguing HealthCare.gov and modernize the government’s approach to technology.
Roughly 50 USDS staffers received termination letters Friday from the DOGE SERVICE that cited Trump’s executive order establishing the agency.
“Due to the restructuring and changes to USDS’s mission, USDS no longer has need for your services,” one letter said, according to a copy shared with Bloomberg.
The dismissals are part of a wave of thousands of terminations across a slew of federal agencies. Many of those receiving termination notices across the government are probationary employees, who have worked for the government for less than a year.
USDS had four-year term limits, differing from the probationary statuses seen in other agencies.
In a LinkedIn post on Saturday about his situation, Kamens, who publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president ahead of last November’s Election, said he was “fairly certain” he was “illegally fired due to political considerations, i.e., disloyalty to the administration.”
Kamens declined to expand further when asked by the Herald what he meant. In a LinkedIn post ahead of the Inauguration, he stated he would “probably need to step away” as the “the substantial uncertainty and chaos surrounding the impending transition to the next presidential administration exceed my family’s risk tolerance threshold.”
Kamens said he was deployed to the VA to “level up” its “cybersecurity practices” to combat evolving cyber threats. In the role, he was “in charge of information security for VA.gov, which has millions of users per month and stores and processes huge amounts of veterans’ personal information.”
“I’ve been told by people I’ve worked with that I’m the best at what I do of anyone they’ve ever met,” he wrote in the post Saturday, which has been seen by hundreds of thousands of platform users. “Now there will be no strong information security leadership for VA.gov, putting veteran privacy at risk. Does this seem like improving government efficiency?”
Kamens said he declined a buyout offer that offered eight months of pay and benefits because he didn’t want to leave government service. Roughly 75,000 employees – less than 4% of the federal workforce – accepted the package.
After securing a court ruling upholding its authority late last week, the Trump administration initiated mass layoffs across scores of federal agencies – a strategy that the president and Elon Musk say aims to make the government more efficient.
Trump, in an executive order before the court ruling, told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions.” The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources department, has given agencies until 8 p.m. Tuesday to issue layoff notices.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the US Forest Services are just some of the agencies that have layoff efforts in full force.
The VA also announced last week it had “dismissed” more than 1,000 employees who had either served less than a year in a “competitive service appointment” or less than two years in an “excepted service appointment.”
Newly appointed VA officials have projected that the layoffs will save the department “more than $98 million per year.” They’ve also highlighted how “all of those resources” will be “redirected back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.”
More than 43,000 probationary employees in mission-critical roles received exemptions from the dismissals, the VA has said. “This was a tough decision, but ultimately it’s the right call to better support the Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the department exists to serve,” Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement.
“The firings that DOGE is doing throughout the government, I don’t think they’re making the government more efficient which Musk claims he’s trying to accomplish,” Kamens told the Herald. “What I think they are doing is tearing apart the government’s ability to serve the American people.”
Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation has been a vocal critic of Trump and Musk’s authority to cut federal agencies and conduct mass layoffs. Attorney General Andrea Campbell and 13 of her counterparts filed a federal lawsuit last week and argued DOGE’s actions should be taken by a “nominated and Senate-confirmed officer.”
“It’s risky for me to be speaking out,” Kamens said Monday, “but I think we have to do it. It’s the best and the only way we’re going to recover some level of what we’re losing, to protect the government and what the government does to serve the American people from the damage that’s being done to it.”
Herald wire services contributed to this report
Originally Published:
link