Democratic U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s guest for Tuesday’s joint session of Congress — Andrew Lennox of Hamburg Township, fired from his job at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Ann Arbor by DOGE — said he and his family had been reaching out to Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett for help for weeks to no avail.
“Our emails and phone calls went unanswered or were met with automated responses and one staffer offering to pass my information on,” Lennox said in a social media post.
Then, within an hour of Slotkin announcing him as her guest for President Donald Trump’s address to Congress, Lennox said Barrett’s office “suddenly contacted me with an offer.”
It was a paid position in veteran outreach.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Lennox said. “I declined the offer. It’s too late for Republican leadership to feign concern for veterans while simultaneously endorsing the arbitrary and illegal terminations of federal employees—terminations that are devastating families and undermining the very government institutions we swore to defend.”
Slotkin — who delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s speech — said she was “thrilled” to have Lennox as her guest.
“Andrew is a Michigan veteran employee employed by the VA in Ann Arbor who was recently fired by DOGE and Elon Musk,” Slotkin said in a social media post. “Service is in Andrew’s blood, and after serving our nation as a U.S. Marine infantryman overseas and a recruiter stateside, he wanted to continue serving at the VA.”
Lennox, 35, a 10-year Marine veteran, was part of a new supervisor training program at the VA. He told the Associated Press that he received an email “out of the blue” on Feb. 13 that informed him he was being terminated.
“In order to help veterans, you just fired a veteran,” Lennox said in the AP story in which he said he “would love nothing more” than to keep working at the VA. “This is my family,” he said. “I would like to do this forever.”
In his social media post, Lennox said that Barrett’s job offer “doesn’t fix the larger issue.”
“…Federal workers are being vilified, and our government is being weaponized to justify illegal directives from unelected officials who have never sworn an oath to the Constitution,” Lennox said. “If there’s a recently terminated veteran out there looking for work, I suggest you contact (U.S. Rep.) Tom Barrett’s office in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. They have an opening.”
