WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides health care and other services for millions of veterans, according to an internal memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency Tuesday that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Joe Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.

The memo instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration’s goals.

— The Associated Press