Longtime Army veteran Luke Graziani, who was abruptly terminated in February from the Bronx VA under Trump administration’s federal staffing cuts, has now been reinstated to his former job. He has been back for over a week in his previous role handling internal and external communications for the Kingsbridge Heights facility.
Although Graziani, who lives in Queens, is now back doing the job he loves — and even got a pay raise, having now completed his probationary year — he still feels a lingering sense of uncertainty, he said in an April 9 phone call with the Bronx Times.
“A lot of things are kind of coming together and making me feel like maybe my situation is not as stable as I thought,” he said.
The Bronx Times reached out to the Bronx VA for comment, but the agency was not immediately available to respond.
The Bronx VA lost just a handful of employees in the mass firings by President Trump and advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, and all those workers appear to have been reinstated, according to Graziani. “Things kind of feel, like, sort of normal.”
But as courts toss around the question of whether or not the massive cuts across many federal agencies were legal, Graziani said he remains on edge. The Supreme Court just overruled one of two lower court rulings against the mass layoffs, potentially paving the way for Trump to continue gutting the federal workforce.
The ruling “feels a little bit scary because, I don’t know, should I be thinking right now, am I gonna be terminated one of these mornings?” said Graziani. “Are they gonna suddenly decide it was a mistake to bring these people back, so let’s at least put them back on administrative leave or something? I don’t know. It’s pretty strange.”
Other workers have decided to quit rather than risk being fired again. A Bronx native Army vet who spoke to the Bronx Times in late February said he was briefly reinstated to his job in human resources at the Brooklyn VA but was told he could be fired again under later cuts.
With a wife and new baby to provide for, the veteran, who did not want his name published, said in an April 9 email to the Bronx Times that he took a job in the private sector.
He noted that while he is a veteran, his director said that would not help protect his job.
More uncertainty
Graziani attended Trump’s address before a joint session of Congress on March 4 as a guest of Congress Member Grace Meng, who represents his home neighborhood of Woodside, Queens. He said he arrived hopeful that the President would somehow address the pleas of probationary employees like him.
But the issue was “purposely omitted from things Trump was saying, because it wouldn’t have gotten a standing ovation from any of his Republican followers,” Graziani said.
He said he is worried that as abruptly as his job was taken away and given back, it could disappear again.
The VA reportedly plans to cut over 70,000 workers, and Graziani said he is concerned that Secretary Doug Collins appears to be supporting the plan.
Collins has said that the VA is “not an employment agency.”
“I want to work with Congress to fix the VA, but our shared goal needs to be making things better for veterans rather than protecting the department’s broken bureaucracy,” said Collins in an April 4 video posted to X.
With Graziani’s job and others still potentially in limbo, he said he worries most about the care of his fellow veterans and himself, as four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan left him with a permanent disability for which he receives ongoing care.
“I don’t understand how VA leadership can say veterans won’t be affected and their care won’t be affected by losing 72,000 people from the workforce. That doesn’t compute.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
