The Gist:

On April 25, 2026, an armed man breached the outer perimeter of the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. He was stopped at a magnetometer before reaching the ballroom. Inside that ballroom were the President, the First Lady, and twelve officials in the statutory line of presidential succession, including six of the top seven. The country was sixty days into an undeclared war with Iran whose stated end criterion was a feeling in the President’s bones. There is no public evidence that a designated survivor was identified for the event. There is no federal continuity doctrine that governs the voluntary aggregation of statutory successors at non-official gatherings. There is, however, a 1981 Treasury Department after-action report on the last time a President was attacked at this hotel that warned: “Less favorable circumstances can be easily imagined.” Forty-five years later, those circumstances arrived.

The Sailor on Watch

There is a sailor on watch in the Strait of Hormuz tonight. She does not know when she is coming home. Her ship is in active blockade posture, intercepting Iranian-flagged tankers and screening commercial shipping that has largely refused to risk transit since Iran shut the strait in February. Her chain of command cannot tell her how this ends, because the only person who can tell her, the Commander in Chief, said on Fox News on March 13 that he would know the war was over “when I feel it in my bones.” The American death toll from the war stood at thirteen as of that interview. We do not know how much it will cost the country in blood and treasure, because the administration has declined to ask Congress for a supplemental appropriation to pay for the war and has so far refused to say how much the war will cost.

The sixty-day clock under the War Powers Resolution runs out on May 1. The Trump administration never sought authorization. The Senate has defeated four bipartisan attempts to force a vote, the most recent on April 15 by 52-47, along party lines.

On Saturday night, while that sailor stood her watch, the people who started her war were at a press dinner.

Six of Seven

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, codified at 3 USC § 19, sets the order. Vice President. Speaker of the House. President pro tempore of the Senate. Then the Senate-confirmed cabinet, beginning with the Secretary of State, in the chronological order their departments were created.

Twelve of the eighteen positions in that line were physically present at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026. Six of the top seven.

The names, drawn from named-attendee reporting in the Associated Press, NBC News, CNN, Newsweek, MS NOW, Reuters, Getty, and Fox News red-carpet coverage:

• Vice President JD Vance

• Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, attending with his wife Kelly

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio

• Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent

• Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth

• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche

• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum

• Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy

• Secretary of Energy Chris Wright

• Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

• Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin

The seventh in the top seven, the one not in the room, was the President pro tempore of the Senate: Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, age 92. The longest-serving Republican senator in American history. The man who, had a fragmentation grenade, an explosive vest, or a vehicle bomb in the Hilton’s underground parking garage taken the dais and the head table on April 25, would have been sworn in as the wartime Commander in Chief of the United States.

He would have been the oldest person ever sworn in as President, by fourteen years.

Joining the line of succession in that ballroom were the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in a role from which Trump’s own counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, resigned in March in protest of the war’s stated intelligence basis. The FBI Director, Kash Patel. The EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, whom Trump is reportedly considering nominating to replace Acting AG Blanche. The Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought. The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who in February told the press that Trump had “a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States.” A March 12 ABC News report citing FBI documents on a possible Iranian threat against California prompted Leavitt to post on X: “TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.” Trump’s separate claim that Iran was building missiles capable of striking the United States is, per CNN, not supported by US intelligence.

The dinner was sold out. The room held roughly 2,600 people. The lobby of the Washington Hilton, per the Associated Press, “regularly remains open to other guests during the dinner, and security and screening is typically located closer to the ballroom itself.”

The Reason They Were There

This was the first White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Donald Trump had ever attended as a sitting President of the United States. He skipped 2017. He skipped 2018. He skipped 2019. The 2020 dinner was canceled. He skipped 2025. For nearly a decade, he had treated the dinner as an enemy gathering and made his refusal to attend a public statement.

So why, in the middle of a war, did he come?

He told us himself, three hours after his evacuation, in the White House briefing room. He had come to deliver a speech he had been saving up for a long time. From his own remarks, on camera, after he was rushed off the stage:

“I am ready, willing, and able, and I was all set to really rip it. And I said to my people, This would be the most inappropriate speech ever made, if I said, So I have to save it. I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was gonna be tonight. I think I’m gonna be probably very nice. I’d be very boring the next time.”

He came to a press dinner during active wartime, after a decade of public boycott, to deliver what he himself described as “the most inappropriate speech ever made.” That was the purpose for which the line of succession was aggregated. That was the reason the war Cabinet, the men and women whose decisions are killing American servicemembers in undeclared combat, sat in one ballroom on the night of April 25.

To watch Trump rip the press.

That is the gravity of the room. The Secretary of “War,” the Secretary of State, the Treasury Secretary running the sanctions architecture against Iran, the Energy Secretary responsible for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the supply consequences of the Strait closure, the Director of National Intelligence whose own analysts have publicly contradicted the war’s stated rationale, the Vice President who has called the War Powers Resolution “fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law,” all in one room. None of them, apparently, said this is unwise. None of them said one of us should be elsewhere. None of them said, with a war on, the country needs us alive more than the President needs us in his audience.

Or if any of them said it, the President did not listen. And they came anyway.

Among them was the Acting Attorney General. Todd Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal defense attorney through the 2024 New York hush money trial and the federal classified documents case, was elevated to acting head of the Justice Department on April 2, when Trump fired Pam Bondi over what news reports described as her insufficiently aggressive prosecution of Trump’s political opponents. He was on day twenty-three of his appointment when he sat in the Hilton ballroom. The Justice Department has not publicly specified whether Blanche serves under 28 USC § 508 or the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and declined to answer Roll Call’s questions about which legal mechanism authorizes his service.

The Hotel

The Washington Hilton is the same hotel where John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan, Special Agent Tim McCarthy, Officer Thomas Delahanty, and Press Secretary James Brady on March 30, 1981.

Three months after that shooting, on July 2, 1981, the General Counsel of the Treasury Department circulated a draft after-action report to Edwin Meese III, then Counsellor to the President. The report, ordered by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, evaluated “the adequacy of procedures, facilities, and personnel for ascertaining the existence and assessing the seriousness of threats to the President, protecting the President in his public activities, and responding promptly and effectively to this and similar incidents.” The unredacted draft is held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

It found that the Secret Service performed admirably under circumstances that were highly favorable to survival: a single attacker, quickly apprehended, mid-afternoon, weekday, small-caliber weapon, the President at the door of his limousine close to a fully equipped trauma hospital, the wound non-mortal.

And then it offered, in its own words, this warning:

“Less favorable circumstances can be easily imagined.”

The Treasury Department put that sentence in writing in 1981. It identified procedural deficiencies and called for “the establishment of new protective procedures.” Forty-five years later, the lobby of the Washington Hilton still remains open to other guests during the WHCA dinner. The screening still sits at the door of the ballroom, not at the perimeter of the building. A 31-year-old tutor with a shotgun, a handgun, and four knives walked in.

The Doctrine That Wasn’t

The federal government has a written, classified, multi-tiered policy framework for the continuity of constitutional government in the face of catastrophic events. It is named, dated, and accessible. Presidential Policy Directive 40, signed July 15, 2016, is the controlling National Continuity Policy. It is operationalized by the Federal Continuity Directives, FCD-1 and FCD-2, both updated August 12, 2024. Together they govern how federal agencies preserve essential functions and command authority during a wide spectrum of mass-casualty scenarios.

The directives are exhaustive on facilities. They mandate geographic dispersion of continuity locations. They require that “Heads of Category I and II HQ organizations” identify orders of succession that include “at least one individual who is geographically dispersed from the Organization Head and other individuals within the order of succession.” They define Emergency Relocation Groups and Devolution Emergency Relocation Groups. They specify primary, secondary, and tertiary continuity sites on separate power and telecommunication grids.

They are, in their entirety, silent on the aggregation of the actual statutory successors at non-official gatherings.

The doctrine assumes that bureaucratic continuity is the question. The doctrine does not address the assembly of the human beings the bureaucracy is meant to continue. There is no provision in PPD-40, FCD-1, FCD-2, or any unclassified successor directive that says: officials at the top of the constitutional chain of presidential succession should not all be at the same private dinner during an active war.

That gap is not an oversight. It is a chosen silence. The federal continuity policy framework was rebuilt twice in the post-9/11 era, once in 2007 under Bush and again in 2016 under Obama, with full knowledge that decapitation events targeting the senior civilian leadership were the foundational threat the framework existed to address. And neither version included a binding provision against the kind of aggregation that occurred at the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026.

The doctrine has a hole in it. The hole has the exact shape of a press dinner.

The Designated Survivor That Wasn’t

There is a customary safeguard that fills the doctrinal hole on a small number of occasions every year. It is called the designated survivor. The Cold War-era practice, used publicly since 1984, removes one person in the line of succession from the room during the State of the Union and presidential inaugurations and places them in a secure, undisclosed location with continuity communications and a protective detail. According to the Congressional Research Service, the practice is not codified in any federal statute, in the Code of Federal Regulations, or in the Constitution. It is, in CRS’s own words, an “executive custom.”

The custom is applied because everyone with operational responsibility for it understands that gathering the constitutional command authority in one room is a bet the country cannot afford to lose. The custom exists precisely because the law did not anticipate this need.

There is no public evidence that a designated survivor was identified for the April 25, 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

White House daily schedules do not mention one. Pool reports do not mention one. The press briefing on April 26 did not mention one. The Acting Attorney General, the Acting White House Chief of Staff, the Secretary of “War,” the Vice President, all of whom appeared in the Brady Briefing Room flanking the President in the hours after the incident, were either in the ballroom or in the secure holding area inside the Hilton when the shots were fired. Whoever the designated survivor would have been, if there was one, has not surfaced in any reporting available to the public as of this writing.

This is the question: was the customary safeguard applied or not?

If it was applied and the designated survivor remains unnamed because the White House has chosen not to disclose, that itself is publishable as a refusal of transparency about the most consequential continuity decision the executive branch makes. If it was not applied, then on the night six of the seven top successors were in the same ballroom in the middle of a war, the customary safeguard that has stood since 1984 simply was not used.

Either way, the question demands an answer the White House has not provided.

The Eighteen-Month Warning

On October 17, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security published the final report of the bipartisan Independent Review Panel on the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt against then-candidate Donald Trump. The four panelists were Mark Filip, former Deputy Attorney General; David Mitchell, longtime law enforcement officer; Janet Napolitano, former Secretary of Homeland Security; and Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor.

The report’s findings, in the panel’s own words:

“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission... The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved... The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission. Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”

The panel set deadlines. Butler-specific reforms were to be implemented no later than March 31, 2025. Broader reforms were to be implemented by the end of 2025.

On July 13, 2025, on the one-year anniversary of the Butler shooting, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released its own final report under Chairman Rand Paul. The committee found that the Butler attempt was the result of a “cascade of preventable failures.” It found that “lack of structured communication was likely the greatest contributor to the failures” of July 13, 2024. It found that the former Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheatle, had given false testimony to Congress about whether resource requests for the Butler rally had been denied. They had been.

And the Senate report documented this: as of one year after Butler, the Secret Service had implemented twenty-one of the forty-six recommendations from independent and congressional oversight bodies. Six employees had been disciplined with suspensions ranging from ten to forty-two days without pay. Twenty-five recommendations remained pending.

Twenty-five recommendations remained pending the night Cole Tomas Allen breached the perimeter at the Hilton.

The current Secret Service Director, Sean Curran, in his post-incident statement on April 25, called the response a demonstration that “our multi-layered protection works.”

The Independent Review Panel had a phrase for the precise scenario that played out on April 25, 2026, eighteen months before it played out. Their phrase was “another Butler.” It arrived.

What Is Owed

Ask any servicemember on watch tonight whether they signed up to fight and bleed and possibly die in an undeclared war whose end criterion is a feeling in the President’s bones. They cannot answer you in the way you want them to, because the oath they swore was to the Constitution, not to the man who currently sits in the office. So they stand watch. They run intercepts in the Strait. They sleep in shifts on bases that have already been hit by Iranian retaliation. They wait. They are good at waiting because we asked them to be good at it. They will continue to be good at it, because that is what the country has asked of them, and they will keep their end of the bargain even when the country has not kept its end.

Here is what the country owes them in return.

It owes them a Commander in Chief who acts like the country is at war when the country is at war. It owes them a Cabinet that does not aggregate at a press dinner during their war. It owes them an Acting Attorney General who is not the President’s former personal defense attorney serving on day twenty-three of his appointment, in a position the Justice Department will not publicly explain the legal basis for. It owes them a constitutional chain of succession that is not all in one ballroom on one night to hear the President insult the journalists who cover them. It owes them a Secret Service that has implemented the reforms an independent panel and the United States Senate told it to implement.

It owes them a republic that takes its own continuity seriously enough to keep one of its statutory successors out of the room. Even one. Even on a slow night. Even when there is no specific threat. Especially when there is.

None of that was true on the night of April 25, 2026. The President came to a press dinner he had boycotted for a decade in order to deliver a speech he himself described as “the most inappropriate speech ever made.” His Cabinet came with him. The Speaker of the House came with his wife. The line of succession sat in one room. The White House has not said whether a designated survivor was named. The hotel lobby remained open to other guests. A 31-year-old tutor walked in.

If he had been carrying what a more capable person, or a coordinated cell, or the next person trying this would carry, instead of a shotgun and a handgun and four knives, the country would have woken up on April 26 with Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ninety-two years old, sworn in as the wartime Commander in Chief of the United States in the seventh week of an undeclared war whose previous Commander in Chief had said it would end when he felt it in his bones.

The Acting Attorney General, who was at the dinner, called the night a success story. The Director of the Secret Service called it a demonstration that “our multi-layered protection works.” The President used it to argue for building a new ballroom at the White House.

The sailor in the Strait of Hormuz tonight does not know any of this. She is on watch.

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What You Can Do

This is a continuity-of-government failure. It is also a transparency failure, and Congress has the tools to address both.

Call or write your Senator and Representative. The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Ask for your senator or representative by name. The questions to ask:

• Was a designated survivor identified for the April 25, 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner? If so, who? If not, why not?

• Will the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hold an oversight hearing on the continuity-of-government posture during the April 25 incident, including the absence of any binding doctrine governing the aggregation of statutory successors at non-official events?

• Will the House Oversight and Accountability Committee request the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel memorandum authorizing Todd Blanche’s service as Acting Attorney General, including the legal basis under either 28 USC § 508 or the Federal Vacancies Reform Act?

• What is the implementation status of the twenty-five remaining recommendations from the post-Butler oversight reports as of April 25, 2026?

Specific committees worth calling directly:

• Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: (202) 224-4751

• House Oversight and Accountability Committee: (202) 225-5074

• House Judiciary Committee: (202) 225-3951

• Senate Judiciary Committee: (202) 224-5225

If you are a journalist or researcher, the agencies holding the operational records are:

• The White House Military Office, for any continuity-of-government policy applicable to non-official events.

• The United States Secret Service Office of Protective Operations, for the operational security plan, advance site survey, and threat assessment generated for the April 25, 2026 dinner.

• The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, for the legal authorization memorandum on Acting Attorney General Blanche.

• The Department of Homeland Security FEMA National Continuity Programs office, for any internal policy memoranda or interagency working group records on principal aggregation risk.

FOIA requests cost the news media nothing for the first one hundred pages of duplication and no search or review fees, under 5 USC § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). Public-interest fee waivers are available on request.

About This Publication

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is independent investigative journalism focused on VA policy, veteran benefits, and government accountability. Published by the founder of HadIt.com, one of the oldest veteran-run VA claims communities online (est. 1997).

Tips and sources: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com (encrypted options available on request)

Support this work: Subscribe to TQF | Support HadIt.com

For Press and Advocates

Story tips or collaboration: Tbird (TQF / HadIt.com): ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

Congressional oversight contacts (continuity and Secret Service jurisdiction):

• Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: (202) 224-4751 | hsgac.senate.gov

• House Oversight and Accountability Committee: (202) 225-5074 | oversight.house.gov

• House Judiciary Committee: (202) 225-3951 | judiciary.house.gov

• Senate Judiciary Committee: (202) 224-5225 | judiciary.senate.gov

Government watchdog resources:

• Government Accountability Office

• Federal Register

• DHS Office of Inspector General

• DOJ Office of the Inspector General

Theresa Aldrich “Tbird,” Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983 to 1990), Investigative Journalist, TbirdsQuietFight.com, founder of HadIt.com. Advisory Board Member, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant, the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor.

Last verified: April 26, 2026.

The Gist

The VA claims system has a documentation problem that has existed since Vietnam and has never been fixed. Veterans come home, years pass, conditions worsen — and when they try to file, the records that would prove what happened to them are gone. I wasn’t going to let that happen to veterans of Operation Epic Fury.

Thirty-four days into OEF2026, I built epicfury.hadit.com — a real-time evidence archive that documents every confirmed event in the theater, sourced against a strict tier hierarchy, and mapped directly to 38 CFR diagnostic codes. Named casualties serve as Living Anchors: if you were in the same unit, same base, same date, you can anchor your proof of location to that record.

There’s also a critical acronym conflict that is going to cause widespread improper denials if the veterans community doesn’t address it now. OEF2026 is not OEF. OEF is Afghanistan. Every VSO, every veterans law attorney, and every advocate reading this needs to know that.

This is a one-veteran mission. I’m open to collaboration. I’m open to feedback. Getting it right matters more than anything else.

The paper trail should fight for them when they get home.

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Thirty-four days ago, the United States commenced Operation Epic Fury — a massive kinetic campaign against Iran, executed alongside Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion. American service members are dying, being wounded, and being exposed to blast overpressure, acoustic trauma, toxic combustion byproducts, and sustained psychological stress on a scale the region hasn’t seen in a generation.

The VA claims system is not ready for them.

That’s not a criticism of the people who work at the VA. It’s a description of a structural problem that has existed for every conflict since Vietnam and has never been adequately addressed: the VA adjudicates disability claims based on contemporaneous documentation that the military has no systemic obligation to create, and that veterans have no systemic support to preserve.

We know how this plays out. The veteran gets home. Life takes over. Five years pass, or ten, or twenty. A condition that began in a drone strike on a logistics base in Kuwait is now a chronic disability. The veteran files. The VA asks for proof of the event. Proof of location. Proof of exposure. And the records — the unit logs, the base attack reports, the sick call records, the buddy statements — are either classified, destroyed, inaccessible, or were simply never created in a form the VA can use.

This is not an edge case. It is the dominant experience of post-9/11 veterans. It is the reason HadIt.com has existed for twenty-nine years.

What I built

Three days after Operation Epic Fury commenced, I launched epicfury.hadit.com — a real-time, publicly sourced documentation archive designed specifically to close this gap.

Every confirmed event in the OEF2026 theater is documented before the sources go offline, the press releases get archived, and the witnesses scatter. Each entry is sourced against a strict three-tier hierarchy — Tier 1 being official DOW/CENTCOM/service branch releases, DVIDS records with VIRIN numbers, and Federal Register entries; Tier 2 being a curated list of approved defense publications; Tier 3 being rejected outright. Every entry is mapped to the specific 38 CFR diagnostic codes a veteran will need when they file.

The Living Anchors doctrine is the core innovation. Named personnel — confirmed present at a specific location on a specific date via Tier 1 sources — serve as evidentiary anchors for all unnamed personnel in the same command structure. If you were in the same unit as someone named in this archive on the date of a documented event, you can anchor your Proof of Location claim to that record. That’s how the system works. Now veterans of this conflict will have the tools to work it.

The archive runs on weekly intelligence sweeps, structured fact-checks, and a source discipline that I’d put against any VSO’s claims packet review. It currently covers February 28 through April 2, 2026. Thirteen confirmed combat KIA are named and sourced. The legal authority triad — Presidential announcement, DFARS contingency designation, Congressional Record War Powers notification — is fully documented.

The companion forum

community.hadit.com/forum/199-oef2026-operation-epic-fury is where the archive meets the community. First-hand accounts, buddy statement coordination, claims questions — veteran to veteran. The forum cannot contribute to the archive directly. Source discipline is non-negotiable. But it can generate research leads that future sweeps can chase down and elevate, and it gives veterans a place to connect their experience to the documented record.

The systemic issue nobody is talking about

There is an acronym conflict that is going to cause widespread improper denials if it isn’t addressed now, and I am going to say it as loudly and as often as I can until the VA formally acknowledges it.

OEF2026 is not OEF.

“OEF” is the established abbreviation for Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan conflict, 2001 to 2014. It has its own presumptive periods, its own benefit rules, its own adjudication standards. Operation Epic Fury is a distinct 2026 military operation that has not yet received a formal congressional AUMF — itself an unresolved legal authority gap I am actively researching.

When veterans of Operation Epic Fury begin filing claims, many of them, their VSOs, and potentially VA adjudicators will use the bare “OEF” acronym out of habit. Claims will be routed to the Afghanistan conflict designation. Adjudicators will look for service dates between 2001 and 2014. Claims will be denied. Veterans will appeal. Years will be wasted.

The fix is simple and it needs to start now: Operation Epic Fury (OEF2026) on every form, every buddy statement, every nexus letter, every claim. The archive uses OEF2026 exclusively and I am asking every VSO, every veterans law attorney, and every advocacy organization reading this to do the same.

Where things stand and what I’m asking for

This is a one-veteran mission. I am under no illusions about the limits of that. The archive is methodologically sound, the pipeline is functioning, and the source discipline is rigorous — but there is a ceiling on what one person can sustain while also running HadIt.com and everything else that comes with this work.

If you are in veterans advocacy, VA claims law, military journalism, or policy research and you see value in what I’m building — I’m open to a conversation about collaboration. I am not looking for anyone to take over or redirect this work. I am looking for people who understand why it matters and want to help make it better.

And if you see something in the archive that is wrong, missing, or should be documented differently, I want to know. This is a living record. Getting it right matters more than anything else.

The paper trail should fight for them when they get home. Right now, for veterans of Operation Epic Fury, it does.

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🔗 Archive: epicfury.hadit.com
🔗 Community: community.hadit.com/forum/199-oef2026-operation-epic-fury

— Theresa M. Aldrich “Tbird”
Founder, HadIt.com | Creator, Tbird’s Quiet Fight | USN Veteran

AI-generated image. Created with Google ImageFX.

THE GIST

• Five members of Congress wear veterans as a costume. Ballcaps at VFW halls. Flight jackets at air bases. Floor speeches soaked in sacrifice. Their voting records tell a different story.

• Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) cosponsored the Major Richard Star Act in 2021 — publicly, in a Memorial Day column. In October 2025, as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he single-handedly killed it on the Senate floor.

• He blocked it twice in one day. First the bill. Then a guaranteed single vote.

• Three months before the block, he voted to strip funding protections for the PACT Act he’d reluctantly voted for in 2022.

• His office later acknowledged “inequities” the bill was designed to fix. Tonya Star, widow of the veteran the bill was named after, died in 2024 — in tears, Blumenthal told the Senate, because another Congress had ended without a vote.

• Four more members follow. The pattern holds.

This country has a particular kind of politician.

They show up at VFW halls in ballcaps. They stand at military bases in flight jackets. They say “our heroes” with the practiced ease of people who have said it ten thousand times. Then they go back to Washington and vote.

This is a record of what they voted.

A note on this series

Every subject in The Ballcap Caucus was selected on one criterion: a documented, primary-source contradiction between public statements supporting veterans and specific votes or actions working against them. The five subjects in this series are Republicans. That is not a partisan editorial choice — it reflects who holds the relevant committee chairs, who controls the floor schedule, and who executed the specific procedural blocks documented here. If Democratic members had blocked the Major Richard Star Act, voted to strip PACT Act funding protections, or fired 30,000 VA workers, they would be in this series. The record determines the subject. Not the party.

I. ROGER WICKER

United States Senator, Mississippi
Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee
Retired Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force Reserve

On June 1, 2021, Senator Roger Wicker published his weekly report. It was Memorial Day. He told Mississippi he was a cosponsor of the Major Richard Star Act, which would allow disabled veterans whose combat injuries forced early retirement to receive their full military pension.

He explained what the bill did. Correctly. He understood the injustice it was meant to fix. He wanted public credit for backing it.

Major Richard Star was still alive when Wicker wrote that column. He had lung cancer from burn pit exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had spent what remained of his life lobbying Congress to pass the legislation bearing his name. He died in 2021. He was 51.

His wife Tonya spent the following years walking the same halls. She called Senator Blumenthal’s staff days before her own death in 2024. She was in tears, Blumenthal told the Senate on October 8, 2025, because another Congress had ended without a vote.

Wicker’s senate.gov veterans page reads: “As a retired Air Force Reservist and the first Mississippian to ever serve on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, I understand the issues affecting our nation’s veterans. We have a responsibility to take care of those who have sacrificed to protect the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.”

His November 2024 op-ed called VA budget shortfalls the product of “sloppy budgeting” and positioned him as a guardian of veteran funding oversight.

He is, by his own account, the right man to protect veterans. He served. His father served. His son served.

On October 8, 2025, Senator Richard Blumenthal brought the Major Richard Star Act to the Senate floor.

The bill had 76 cosponsors. A filibuster-proof supermajority. If it reached a floor vote, it passed. That was arithmetic, not politics.

Blumenthal asked for unanimous consent to advance S. 1032. Any single senator could stop it by saying two words.

The presiding officer called on the Senator from Mississippi.

Wicker said: “My colleague is asking for an entitlement that does amount to a double benefit, and that we cannot afford... until authors of this proposal identify a way to offset the expense or to make it less expensive, we should not move forward with this legislation. Therefore, I do object.”

The bill died.

Blumenthal came back with a narrower request. Not passage. A guaranteed single vote — scheduled at Majority Leader Thune’s discretion, before the end of the year. Sixty votes required to pass. Half an hour of floor time, whenever leadership wanted it.

Wicker objected again.

Seventy-six senators could not get one vote.

On the same day, the pending business before the Senate included Wicker/Reed amendment No. 3748 — the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026. The NDAA Wicker was co-authoring. Approaching $900 billion.

He told the Senate he could not find $9 billion for 54,000 combat-wounded veterans over ten years. He was simultaneously managing nearly a trillion dollars in defense spending. The Congressional Record confirms both.

On the floor, Wicker said the Star Act “really belongs in another jurisdiction.”

Senate records show S. 1032 was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2025. Wicker chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. The bill had been in his jurisdiction for seven months when he said it didn’t belong there.

The PACT Act vote is worth examining.

On July 27, 2022, Wicker voted NAY on cloture — Roll Call 272 — blocking the largest expansion of VA healthcare and benefits for toxic-exposed veterans in American history.

Five days later, after veterans and advocates camped on the Capitol steps and the political cost became indefensible, he voted YEA on final passage — Roll Call 280.

His own senate.gov page documented the flip. The headline: “Wicker to Vote for PACT Act.”

When the political pressure became inescapable, he voted yes. The record is documented. The Star Act has not yet made the pressure inescapable.

AI-assisted graphic. All data sourced to primary documents. Sources listed in footer of graphic.

On February 21, 2025, Wicker voted NAY on Roll Call 83 — the Blumenthal amendment to protect PACT Act funding.

The amendment would have shielded the Veterans Benefits Administration from the DOGE workforce cuts then gutting the agency. VBA employees process toxic exposure claims. They were being eliminated. The amendment would have stopped it.

Three months before he blocked the Star Act, Wicker voted to leave the law’s implementation unprotected.

He can claim credit for eventually voting for the PACT Act. He voted to starve the workforce responsible for carrying it out.

Veterans organization PassTheAct.org funded billboards in Tupelo and Jackson. His state. His backyard.

One read: “Senator Roger Wicker blocked fair retirement pay for combat wounded veterans. These heroes lose thousands in retirement they’ve earned.”

He made no public statement in response.

His office made a private one.

Four months after the October 8 block, a Wicker spokesperson told Task & Purpose: “He recognizes the inequities some retirees face under the current laws and fully agrees that combat-wounded veterans deserve to be compensated for their service. Senator Wicker will continue working to reach a durable solution.”

The 54,000 veterans waiting for that solution have been waiting since 1941.

Major Richard Star is dead. Tonya Star is dead. The bill is not passed.

Coming in this series: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS). VA Secretary Doug Collins.

TAKE ACTION

The Major Richard Star Act has 77 Senate cosponsors. It has never received a floor vote. One senator blocked it in October 2025. Another blocked it in March 2026. The bill is S. 1032. It is sitting in the Senate Armed Services Committee. The 119th Congress runs through January 2027.

The ask is simple: demand a vote.

If you are a veteran or military family member

Call Senator Wicker’s Washington office: (202) 224-6253

“My name is [name]. I am a [veteran / military spouse / Gold Star family member] calling about the Major Richard Star Act, S. 1032. Senator Wicker blocked this bill in October 2025 and denied 54,000 combat-wounded veterans their earned retirement pay. I am asking the Senator to stop blocking this bill and allow a floor vote immediately. These veterans have waited long enough.”

If you are in Mississippi, call his Tupelo office: (662) 844-5010

Use the same script. Local calls carry more weight.

If you are a citizen — not a veteran

Call Senator Wicker’s Washington office: (202) 224-6253

“My name is [name]. I am a constituent calling about the Major Richard Star Act, S. 1032. This bill would end an unjust pay offset that costs 54,000 combat-wounded veterans an average of $1,200 a month in retirement pay they earned through their service. Senator Wicker blocked it twice. I am asking him to allow a floor vote. This is not a partisan issue. Seventy-seven senators have cosponsored this bill. It deserves a vote.”

Call the Senate Armed Services Committee

Senate Armed Services Committee: (202) 224-3871

“I am calling to ask the Committee to schedule a floor vote on S. 1032, the Major Richard Star Act. This bill has 77 cosponsors and has never received a vote. Please put it on the calendar.”

Call the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 224-9126

“I am calling to express support for the Major Richard Star Act, S. 1032, and to ask the Committee to keep pressing for a floor vote this session.”

Sign the petition

PassTheAct.org is run by combat-wounded veterans directly affected by the offset. Their petition demands a public explanation from Senator Wicker and a floor vote on S. 1032.

Read the bill

S. 1032, Major Richard Star Act, 119th Congress

Share this article

The pressure that moved Wicker on the PACT Act came from veterans showing up on Capitol steps. This series is part of that pressure. Share it on every platform you use. Tag your own senators. Ask them where they stand.

If your senator is not a cosponsor of S. 1032, that is a question worth asking.

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SOURCES

• Congressional Record, Vol. 171, S7013-7014, October 8, 2025 — Wicker floor objections, verbatim

• Wicker, “Wicker Reflects on America’s Fallen Heroes,” wicker.senate.gov, June 1, 2021

• Wicker, Veterans page, wicker.senate.gov

• Wicker, “Honor Veterans by Reforming the VA,” wicker.senate.gov, November 2024

• Wicker, “Wicker to Vote for PACT Act,” wicker.senate.gov, August 2022

• U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote 272, 117th Congress, July 27, 2022

• U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote 280, 117th Congress, August 2, 2022

• U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote 83, 119th Congress, February 21, 2025

• S. 1032, Major Richard Star Act, Congress.gov — committee referral March 13, 2025

• Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, press release, October 2025

• Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, press release, February 2025

• Nieberg, Patty, “Double-dipping rule keeps veterans from getting full benefits,” Task & Purpose, February 17, 2026

• PassTheAct.org

ABOUT TBIRD’S QUIET FIGHT

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is an investigative publication covering veterans policy, VA accountability, and federal programs affecting the military community. Founded by Theresa “Tbird” Aldrich, U.S. Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983–1990) and founder of HadIt.com, established January 20, 1997.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

For press and advocates: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

AI-generated image. Research and analysis: Tbird's Quiet Fight · tbirdsquietfight.com

THE GIST

• HUD just gutted the main federal program that keeps homeless veterans housed — capping permanent housing funds at 30% of each community’s total CoC allocation, down from the 85–90% communities were previously spending on permanent housing

• The VA simultaneously lost 700 social workers — the people who connect homeless veterans to those housing programs — and is now collapsing 18 regional networks down to 5, eliminating the coordination infrastructure those workers depend on

• A new VA/DOJ agreement gives federal attorneys the power to initiate court proceedings that can strip decision-making authority from approximately 700 veterans in VA facilities — VA confirms some are homeless or at risk

• The vouchers that were supposed to be the safety net now come with ideological compliance strings attached

• A federal court has temporarily blocked the HUD funding shift. But “temporary” is doing a lot of work right now.

The VA isn’t failing homeless veterans by accident.

Three separate federal policy moves — enacted months apart, buried in bureaucratic language, never connected in a single headline — are now converging on the same population. Each one, on its own, looks like reshuffling. Together, they form something uglier.

Move one: HUD Secretary Scott Turner released the FY25 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity — the annual grant that funds most of the housing infrastructure keeping veterans off the street. The new rules cap permanent supportive housing at 30% of a CoC’s previous allocation. Most communities were spending 85 to 90 percent of those funds on permanent housing. That gap doesn’t disappear. Veterans do.

The policy isn’t subtle about its origins. Project 2025 explicitly called for HUD to end all Housing First grants, labeling the model a “far-left idea.” HUD is delivering.

A federal court issued a preliminary injunction on December 23rd ordering HUD to preserve the status quo and process eligible renewals. The injunction is holding — for now.

Months before the injunction, in July 2025, HUD had already issued a separate notice announcing roughly 3,400 new HUD-VASH vouchers — the program that’s supposed to be the individual veteran’s lifeline to stable housing. The $34 million announced sounds significant. It isn’t. The 2025 continuing resolution provided $15 million in total new appropriations for the program — but only $5 million of that reached veterans as new vouchers. The other $10 million was designated for administrative fees. The remaining $29 million in the notice is prior-year carryover — money already allocated in previous budgets, not new commitment. And buried in Section 16 of that voucher notice, HUD attached a list of Trump executive orders that now govern every organization receiving those vouchers — including one that restricts benefits to people based on immigration status, and one that terminates DEI programs. Veteran housing vouchers now come with ideological compliance strings. That’s new.

An estimated 115,000 non-citizen veterans live in the United States. They served. They wore the uniform. Military service provides an expedited path to citizenship — but not an automatic one. The process requires applications, certifications, background checks, and USCIS processing — a multi-step sequence that can be disrupted by overseas service, administrative backlogs, or policy changes. Whether the immigration restriction now embedded in HUD-VASH voucher notices can be used to deny housing assistance to a veteran still waiting on citizenship paperwork is a question nobody at HUD or VA has answered publicly. Someone should ask.

Move two: The VA has shed approximately 40,000 employees over the past year, including nearly 700 social workers. Those aren’t administrative positions. Social workers are the people who find the veteran sleeping under an overpass and walk them through the HUD-VASH application. They’re the ones who know which CoC has a slot open and which case manager to call. You don’t automate that. You just lose it.

And the regional coordination structure those workers depended on is being dismantled at the same time. The VA is collapsing 18 Veterans Integrated Service Networks down to 5 — the largest restructuring of VA healthcare in 30 years. At the February 2026 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz cited a net cost of $312 million over five years — a figure that already accounts for VA’s projected savings. Regional networks are where complex case management happens. Homeless veterans don’t have simple cases. Shrinking 18 networks to 5 means the people still standing lose the coordination infrastructure they need to do their jobs.

Move three: In March 2026, the VA and DOJ signed a memorandum of understanding allowing VA attorneys to initiate state court guardianship and conservatorship proceedings against veterans in VA facilities who lack medical decision-making capacity and have no legal surrogate. Approximately 700 veterans are in scope. VA attorneys don’t determine the outcome — state courts do. But once a court appoints a guardian, that guardian makes decisions for the veteran.

Including where they live.

VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz confirmed that some of the targeted veterans are homeless or at risk of homelessness — and CNN reported roughly half of the 700 targeted veterans are homeless. Kasperowicz pushed back on the framing, saying the key characteristic is not homelessness but lack of capacity to make medical decisions. Carl Blake, CEO of Paralyzed Veterans of America, warned the agreement could lead to “unnecessary institutionalization” and permanently restrict a veteran’s access to community-based supports.

What the Sequence Actually Means

Billion-dollar permanent housing infrastructure gets defunded. The voucher program meant to replace it gets starved of new money and loaded with compliance requirements. Seven hundred social workers disappear. The regional networks that coordinated their work get collapsed. Legal guardianship creates a transfer mechanism for the most vulnerable patients in VA facilities.

HUD is explicitly redirecting CoC funding toward transitional housing. Federal dollars follow veterans wherever they go. The question worth asking is who runs the transitional housing that fills the vacuum — and who profits when permanent housing disappears.

This is what a starvation strategy looks like in practice. You don’t announce that you’re dismantling the system. You just make the system fail — then point at the failure as proof that the government can’t do the job.

The 2024 HUD Point-in-Time count found 32,882 veterans experiencing homelessness. That number came after years of hard-won progress. Watch what happens to it next year.

TAKE ACTION

The ask: Contact your representatives. Demand they protect the December 23rd federal court injunction blocking HUD’s CoC funding reversal and restore permanent supportive housing funding.

If you’re a veteran:

“I’m a veteran and a constituent. I’m calling about the federal court injunction blocking HUD’s Continuum of Care funding reversal. That injunction is the only thing standing between thousands of homeless veterans and the street. I’m asking [Representative’s name] to publicly support restoring CoC permanent housing funding and protecting the court order. Can you tell me the representative’s position on this?”

If you’re a citizen:

“I’m a constituent calling about federal housing policy. A court has temporarily blocked HUD’s attempt to gut the Continuum of Care program that houses homeless veterans. I’m asking [Representative’s name] to go on record supporting the court order and opposing any HUD policy that moves veterans out of permanent housing and into temporary shelters. What is the representative’s position?”

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee — Minority Staff 202-225-9756 Rep. Mark Takano, Ranking Member (CA-39)

Find your representative: house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find your senators: senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

Sources

All primary source documents used in this article are available for public review in the HUD CoC Source Notebook on NotebookLM. Ask it questions directly.

Review the sources yourself →

Download the briefing slides (PDF) →

• HUD FY25 CoC Notice of Funding Opportunity: hud.gov/news/hud-no-25-132

• HUD Notice PIH 2025-21 — HUD-VASH Vouchers: hud.gov

• Project 2025 — Chapter 15, Department of Housing and Urban Development (pp. 503–516)

• USICH FY2024 Annual Homelessness Report: usich.gov

• VA/DOJ MOU Press Release: news.va.gov

• CNN — VA/DOJ Guardianship Agreement (March 20, 2026): cnn.com

• Military Times — VA Legal Guardianship (March 18, 2026): militarytimes.com

• Rep. Takano HVAC Remarks (Feb 11, 2026): democrats-veterans.house.gov

• VA Workforce Report — GovExec (Jan 2026): govexec.com

• VA Rolls Out Risky Consolidation Scheme — The American Prospect (March 2, 2026): prospect.org

• CRS Report — Foreign Nationals in the U.S. Armed Forces: congress.gov

About Tbird’s Quiet Fight

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is an independent investigative publication covering VA policy, veteran benefits, and the forces working to dismantle the system veterans earned. Written by Theresa “Tbird” Aldrich — Navy veteran, founder of HadIt.com, and 29-year veteran advocate.

For more on the VA privatization pattern behind these moves, read:

• The 30+ Year Pattern: VA “Design to Fail” Timeline

• VA Privatization (Outsourcing) Threat Map

• VA Community Care Spending Crisis

For press and advocates: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

A follow-up to VA Bypassed Congress to Strip Veterans of Their Rights

THE GIST

• Project Safe Harbor gives VA attorneys the power to pursue guardianship over homeless veterans — stripping their right to choose where they live

• West LA is one of Safe Harbor’s five pilot sites

• West LA already has VA-controlled housing on the ground: 64-square-foot sheds, no kitchen, no bathroom, not ADA-accessible — the same ones that burned in 2022. VA has not answered whether guardianized veterans can be placed there.

• VA’s own internal documents show the program was designed to scale to veterans “experiencing unsheltered or sheltered homelessness” who are not enrolled in VA healthcare at all

• VA’s own internal documents designate the Emergency Department as the primary screening point for the program — and the MOU gives VA attorneys the legal authority to initiate proceedings against any veteran screened there

• The court ordered 1,800 permanent housing units. VA has no funding and no timeline for them

• On February 18, VA and DOJ declared stripping veterans’ rights without a court order is unlawful. Twenty-one days later, they announced Safe Harbor

• On March 25, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans formally demanded the MOU be rescinded

Source Documents — Primary source documents for this investigation are available for independent review. Includes the VA internal IPT documents, hearing transcript, MOU, NCHV testimony, and video clips from the March 18 congressional hearing. A free Google account is required to access Safe Harbor — VA Bypasses Congress on NotebookLM.

1991. I was breaking down.

I was staying at a friend’s apartment. She wasn’t home. I’d been crying for days — the kind that doesn’t stop, that becomes its own weather system. I called the suicide hotline. They told me to call the VA. The VA psychiatrist said he’d send someone to bring me to the VA hospital. He said I’d be safe there.

Four cop cars showed up. Lights flashing. Angled like a crime scene.

They told me they couldn’t take me to the VA. Only to the state psychiatric hospital.

I didn’t agree to that. Nobody asked.

I ended up in a facility I’d never seen, hadn’t chosen, hadn’t consented to. A man strapped to a gurney rolled past me screaming. I didn’t catch the words. I caught the energy.

I ran.

I hid in a parking lot at 3 AM with no idea what street I was on. I used my last sixty dollars — my food money for the month — to cab back to the apartment.

The psychiatrist called the next morning. He promised no cops if I showed up at 8 AM.

I showed up.

Not because I trusted him. Because the alternative was worse.

That was 35 years ago. I know what it takes for a veteran to make that call. The pride you set aside. The fear you push through. The crisis you have to bottom out on before you’ll admit you need help.

I also know what happens when the system responds badly. How fast the door closes. How long it stays closed.

Here’s what’s different in 2026.

In 2026, a veteran who walks into a VA emergency room in crisis faces something new. The legal authority is now signed. The pilot program has been operational at five VA sites since at least early 2026. Under the March 11 MOU, VA attorneys can initiate state court guardianship proceedings against any veteran screened there — right now, today, at those five sites. The internal documents show the ER was designed as the primary entry point. The authority to act on what happens there is no longer pending. It’s live.

Guardianship means a court strips you of the right to make decisions about your own life. Where you live. What medical care you receive. Your finances.

The entity petitioning that court is the VA.

The same VA that sent four cop cars to a woman in crisis and called it help.

If you read my last piece on Project Safe Harbor, you know the full background. VA attorneys — under a memorandum of understanding announced March 11, 2026 with DOJ — are now authorized to petition state courts for guardianship over veterans without congressional authorization. Rep. Mark Takano put the internal documents proving that into the congressional record on March 18.

But there’s a piece of the story I didn’t fully pull on. I’ve been pulling on it since.

When You Lose Guardianship, Someone Else Picks Your Address

This is black letter law. Not an interpretation. Not a policy judgment.

When a court grants guardianship over a person, the guardian assumes decision-making authority over where that person lives. The veteran doesn’t choose. The guardian does.

Under the March 11 MOU, the entity authorized to initiate those guardianship proceedings is the VA.

The VA is also the entity that controls available housing at Pilot Site 5: VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. West LA campus.

Same agency. Two roles. No firewall between them.

West LA Is Pilot Site 5. Here’s What’s Already There.

I published the West LA story in February. Here’s the short version for anyone coming to this fresh.

In 1888, 300 acres of prime West LA real estate were donated to the federal government for one purpose: house disabled veterans. A federal court ordered VA to build 1,800 permanent supportive housing units on that campus to fulfill that promise.

VA’s compliance plan, presented to Judge Carter in January 2026: up to 800 eight-by-eight-foot Pallet shelters.

Sixty-four square feet. No in-unit kitchen. No in-unit bathroom. Not ADA-accessible. Veterans using wheelchairs depend on communal facilities outside the shed. Emergency exits are floor-level flaps.

They already burned once. September 2022. Twelve units destroyed in minutes. Veterans lost medications, housing vouchers, CPAP machines. One grabbed his phone and wallet. Everything else was ash.

The VA announced safety improvements after the fire. They did not upgrade the shelters. They did not install sprinklers. They did not change the fire rating.

Now they want to build hundreds more.

And “temporary” stays are already stretching into years. Air Force veteran George Fleischman has been in one for over three years. He uses a wheelchair. He described it as living where you’d keep your lawn mower.

West LA is Pilot Site 5 for Safe Harbor. VA is simultaneously the entity initiating guardianship proceedings and the entity controlling housing at that campus. Can a guardian appointed through Safe Harbor place a veteran in VA-controlled housing at that site?

VA has not answered that question.

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The Math Nobody at VA Wants to Do Out Loud

The 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count puts the homeless veteran population in LA County at approximately 3,050.

The executive order signed in May 2025 — EO 14296 — calls for housing up to 6,000 veterans on the West LA campus by January 2028.

That’s nearly twice the entire homeless veteran population of Los Angeles County.

California has approximately 11,000 homeless veterans statewide — the largest concentration in the country, about 31% of the national total.

Six thousand units. Three thousand fifty veterans in LA. Eleven thousand in the state.

The numbers don’t add up on their own.

Who fills the remaining beds? Where do they come from? Who decides they belong there?

VA hasn’t answered that publicly. But their own internal documents answered part of it.

What VA’s Internal Documents Actually Say

The VA told Congress that Safe Harbor targets approximately 700 veterans in acute inpatient beds — veterans with advanced Alzheimer’s, no next of kin, no one to authorize their discharge.

Their own internal documents say something different.

According to VA’s internal program architecture, entered into the congressional record by Rep. Takano on March 18, the program was designed to scale through defined “maturity levels.” At Level 4 — the program’s intended endpoint — Safe Harbor explicitly targets veterans “experiencing unsheltered or sheltered homelessness” who are “not currently enrolled in VA programming.”

Not inpatients. Not Alzheimer’s patients in acute care beds.

Veterans living on the street. Veterans outside the VA system entirely.

That’s their language. Not mine.

The same internal documents show the program was already operational well before the MOU was publicly announced. According to VA’s internal weekly summary dated November 3-14, 2025 — part of the documents entered into the congressional record by Rep. Takano — dedicated social workers had been funded at each pilot site, and a structured virtual planning session had taken place to coordinate implementation across all five locations. Data collection had begun. The MOU formalized the legal authority. The program itself was already running.

The internal documents also designated the VA Emergency Department as the primary screening point for the program. The VA’s own internal memo notes that “the Emergency Department is a common entry point for veterans experiencing homelessness.” So they built the ER into the program architecture as the front door of Safe Harbor.

Under the MOU, VA attorneys now have the legal authority to initiate guardianship proceedings against any veteran screened there. A veteran walks into an ER in crisis — a mental health episode, substance withdrawal, a bad night. The program is designed so that if he can’t demonstrate adequate decision-making capacity in that moment — under those conditions — he enters a pipeline that ends in a state court stripping his legal autonomy.

The man who built VA’s national homeless veteran outreach programs — Dr. O’Toole previously served as Director of the VA’s National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans — is now the executive sponsor of a program that uses the ER as a guardianship screening door.

And the entity petitioning that court is the same entity that controls housing at Pilot Site 5.

Twenty-One Days

On February 17-18, 2026, VA and DOJ issued a joint announcement declaring that stripping veterans’ rights without a judicial determination was unlawful. They restored gun rights to nearly 200,000 veterans assigned fiduciaries. VA Secretary Doug Collins called it correcting a “three-decade-old wrong.” AG Pam Bondi called it “unlawful and unacceptable” to threaten veterans’ constitutional rights.

Those are their words. On the record.

Twenty-one days later, the same VA and the same DOJ — with Bondi’s direct involvement — announced the Safe Harbor MOU authorizing VA attorneys to pursue guardianship over homeless veterans without congressional authorization.

One action restores rights. The other strips them.

Same department. Same attorney general. Three weeks apart.

I don’t know how you hold both positions simultaneously and call it a coherent legal philosophy. I know what it looks like from where I’m sitting.

The Permanent Housing Problem

The court ordered 1,800 permanent supportive housing units and 750 temporary units on the West LA campus.

VA has funding for the temporary housing — the sheds — through end of 2026.

VA does not have confirmed funding for the permanent units. No timeline. No construction schedule. Eight months after EO 14296 was signed, VA had missed its own 120-day deadline for an action plan.

So the current state is this: a court-ordered permanent housing mandate with no money behind it, a compliance plan built on sheds that already burned, and a legal mechanism now in place to move homeless veterans into VA-controlled housing without their consent.

Temporary, in this context, means until someone decides otherwise.

What the Veterans Community Is Saying

On March 25, 2026 — one week after Takano entered the internal documents into the congressional record — the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans submitted formal testimony to the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations demanding that the VA and DOJ rescind the March 11 MOU entirely.

Their argument was direct: guardianship strips veterans of the right to vote, the right to marry, the right to choose where they live, and the right to make their own end-of-life decisions. Once imposed, guardianships are difficult — sometimes impossible — to terminate. A veteran who stabilizes, whose crisis passes, whose housing situation improves, still faces a legal mountain to reclaim their autonomy. A mountain they can’t afford to climb.

The NCHV also raised what may be the most practical consequence of this program: veterans will stop coming to the VA.

The relationship between unsheltered veterans and VA outreach workers is already fragile. The program is now designed so that walking into a VA emergency room in crisis can trigger a federal legal process to permanently strip your rights. When word spreads — and it will — veterans will avoid the ER. They’ll avoid the outreach worker. They’ll stay on the street before they risk losing everything.

The VA will have made itself the threat.

What Needs Answering

VA needs to answer these questions on the record:

What is the housing placement policy for veterans placed under guardianship through Safe Harbor? Who makes that decision? Who tracks it?

West LA is Pilot Site 5. West LA already has VA-controlled temporary housing on the ground — 800 Pallet shelters proposed as court compliance under Powers v. McDonough. Can a guardian appointed through Safe Harbor place a veteran in VA-controlled housing at that site? VA has not answered this question.

If the West LA campus is planned for 6,000 veterans and LA County has 3,050 homeless veterans, where does VA intend the remaining population to come from?

What oversight mechanism exists between the VA entity initiating guardianship proceedings and the VA entity controlling housing at the same pilot site?

When does “temporary” become permanent?

FOIA requests are warranted for Safe Harbor placement data by site, VA housing assignment protocols for guardianized veterans, and any interstate relocation planning documents connected to EO 14296.

The Through-Line

“Safe Harbor” sounds like rescue.

It’s a legal term that means protection from liability. In this context, it’s a program that strips a veteran of the right to make decisions about their own life — and hands that authority to the same agency that controls the housing.

The ER is designed to be the front door. Where the guardian sends them next — nobody at VA will say.

What’s missing is oversight. Transparency. A straight answer from VA about what happens to a veteran after the court says yes.

I’ve been documenting VA patterns for 29 years. The pattern here is familiar: build the infrastructure first. Answer the questions never.

Not this time.

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This is a follow-up to VA Bypassed Congress to Strip Veterans of Their Rights, published March 26, 2026, and They Promised Housing. They Built Garden Sheds., published February 12, 2026.

⚡ TAKE ACTION

📞 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-3527 “I’m calling about Project Safe Harbor. VA’s own internal documents show the program was designed to target homeless veterans outside the VA system — not just inpatients. West LA, one of the five pilot sites, already has VA-controlled housing on the ground. I want oversight hearings and I want the MOU rescinded.”

📞 Rep. Takano’s office: (202) 225-2305 “Thank you for entering the Safe Harbor documents into the record on March 18. I’m asking your office to request VA’s housing placement protocols for Safe Harbor participants — specifically whether guardianized veterans can be assigned to VA-controlled facilities at pilot sites.”

Sources

VA-DOJ Memorandum of Understanding, announced March 11, 2026 — DOJ press release: justice.gov/opa/pr/doj-va-sign-agreement-improve-care-nations-most-vulnerable-veterans

VA press release: news.va.gov/press-room/va-doj-sign-agreement-to-improve-care-for-nations-most-vulnerable-veterans

VA Internal IPT Organizational Chart and Program Documents — HHRG-119-VR00-20260318-SD010, entered into congressional record March 18, 2026 — docs.house.gov/meetings/VR/VR00/20260318/119040/HHRG-119-VR00-20260318-SD010.pdf

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing transcript, March 18, 2026 — timestamps 1:55:43–2:02:24 — hadit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026-03-18_House-VAC-Legislative-Hearing-Transcript.pdf

National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, Statement for the Record, HVAC Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, March 25, 2026 — docs.house.gov/meetings/VR/VR08/20260325/119102/HHRG-119-VR08-20260325-SD005.pdf

VA press release: “VA Undoes Decades-Old Wrong and Protects Veterans’ Second Amendment Rights,” February 17-18, 2026 — news.va.gov/press-room/va-undoes-decades-old-wrong-and-protects-veterans-second-amendment-rights

Stars and Stripes, Linda F. Hersey, “VA moves to end gun restrictions on veterans who require money managers,” February 18, 2026 — stripes.com/veterans/2026-02-18/va-gun-restrictions-veterans-20793446.html

Powers v. McDonough, C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:22-cv-08357 — court proceedings, January 2026 — courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/west-la-va-campus-decision.pdf

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, December 2025

White House Executive Order 14296, May 9, 2025 — Federal Register 90 FR 20369 — federalregister.gov/documents/2025/05/14/2025-08683/keeping-promises-to-veterans-and-establishing-a-national-center-for-warrior-independence

2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count — LAHSA — lahsa.org/news?article=1054-lahsa-va-mva-provide-unprecedented-picture-of-veteran-homelessness

HUD Annual Homeless Assessment Report, 2024

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I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

About Tbird’s Quiet Fight

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is independent investigative journalism covering VA policy, veteran benefits, and federal accountability. Published by the founder of HadIt.com (est. 1997), one of the oldest veteran-run VA claims communities online. Advisory Board Member, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI). Not affiliated with any political party, VSO, or commercial interest.

This is the third article in an ongoing investigation into Project Safe Harbor. Read the full series: VA Bypassed Congress to Strip Veterans of Their Rights | They Promised Housing. They Built Garden Sheds.

For Press and Advocates

Story tips or collaboration: Tbird (TQF / HadIt.com): ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

Congressional oversight contacts: House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-3527 | veterans.house.gov Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 224-9126 | veterans.senate.gov

Investigative journalists covering VA/veteran policy: Suzanne Gordon — American Prospect Linda F. Hersey — Stars and Stripes Leo Shane III — Military Times Quil Lawrence — NPR

Veteran advocacy organizations: Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) Paralyzed Veterans of America National Coalition for Homeless Veterans National Veterans Legal Services Program

THE GIST

• VA built a secret guardianship program — Project Safe Harbor — to strip veterans of their civil rights over housing, finances, and medical care

• VA’s own lawyers admitted the agency has no legal authority to do this

• Congress was asked for that authority. Congress said no.

• VA went around Congress anyway — signing a secret MOU with the DOJ on March 11, 2026

• Seven days later, under oath before Congress, VA’s executive sponsor called his own agency’s internal documents “erroneous”

• Rep. Mark Takano entered those documents into the permanent congressional record without objection

• The documents show VA was targeting homeless veterans outside the VA system — not the 700 inpatients O’Toole described under oath

• FOIA requests are warranted. Congressional investigation is overdue.

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Source Documents All primary source documents are available for review. A free Google account is required to access NotebookLM. Safe Harbor — VA Bypasses Congress

Under oath. Before Congress. In a hearing that 99% of the country missed.

That’s where Dr. Thomas O’Toole confirmed he is the executive sponsor of Project Safe Harbor — VA’s pilot program to pursue legal guardianship over veterans. Guardianship means a court strips a person of the right to make their own decisions. Housing. Finances. Medical care. All of it transferred to someone else.

VA wants to do this to veterans.

There’s one problem. VA doesn’t have the legal authority to petition state courts for guardianship. O’Toole admitted that too, under oath, at the same hearing.

So VA went around Congress to get it anyway.

The Setup

Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-CA) came to the March 18 hearing with receipts.

He asked O’Toole directly: isn’t it true that Project Safe Harbor was developed to align with the president’s executive order on “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets” — the one that essentially criminalizes homelessness?

O’Toole said no. That is not correct.

Takano held up an internal VA document. The Safe Harbor Guardianship Pilot Program Placement document. It says — in writing — that Project Safe Harbor is “a high priority pilot program aligned with the executive order ending crime and disorder on America’s streets.” It also says the program is “targeting veterans at risk or experiencing homelessness.”

That’s not Takano’s characterization. That’s VA’s own language.

The Admission

O’Toole then confirmed two facts that should end this program.

One. VA told congressional staff it lacks the legislative authority to petition state courts for guardianship of veterans.

Two. VA submitted a proposal to Congress to get that authority.

Then VA stopped waiting for Congress to act.

Instead of pursuing the authority through the proper channel — the one the Constitution created — VA went to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The plan: have Bondi sign off on deputizing VA’s own attorneys to walk into state courts and seek guardianship of veterans on VA’s behalf.

The VA-DOJ memorandum of understanding was signed March 11, 2026. It authorizes VA attorneys to serve as Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys with the power to initiate state court guardianship proceedings against veterans.

When Takano asked O’Toole directly whether VA had abandoned the effort to seek congressional authorization and instead gone around Congress to DOJ, O’Toole said he’d have to defer to OGC colleagues and take it for the record.

That’s a yes that won’t go on tape.

The Contradictions at a Glance

The Contradiction That’s Already on the Record

DOJ’s own Elder Justice Initiative states plainly on its website that guardianship “results in the removal of an individual’s legal rights” and should be treated as a last resort. That’s not an advocate’s characterization. That’s DOJ’s own language — sitting on a government webpage — while DOJ attorneys are now authorized to strip those exact rights from veterans in state courts.

The same department. Two positions. One serves the institution. One serves the veteran.

Who Are They Actually Targeting?

O’Toole’s answer, when pressed on the target population, was carefully constructed.

The program, he said, targets approximately 700 veterans currently boarding in acute care beds at VA facilities — veterans who lack the mental capacity for decision-making, many with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, no next of kin, forced to remain in inpatient beds because there’s nowhere safe for them to go.

That is a real problem. Nobody disputes that. Those veterans need help.

But that’s not what the documents say.

The internal documents — the ones Rep. Takano then entered into the congressional record without objection — state that Safe Harbor was targeting “homeless veterans and veterans not actually within VA’s healthcare system.”

Not inpatients. Not Alzheimer’s patients with no next of kin.

Homeless veterans. Veterans outside the VA system entirely.

O’Toole’s response: those documents are “erroneous.”

An internal VA document, produced by VA, describing VA’s own program, is erroneous. The VA would like you to take their word for it.

What the Internal Documents Actually Show

The VA’s own Integrated Project Team organizational chart — marked “Draft — Pre-Decisional Deliberative Document, Internal VA Use Only” — tells a different story than what O’Toole presented to Congress.

The chart names five pilot sites:

• Pilot Site 1: VA Boston HCS / VISN 1

• Pilot Site 2: VA Tampa HCS / VISN 8 (James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital)

• Pilot Site 3: Hines VAMC / VISN 12 (Chicago area)

• Pilot Site 4: VA South Texas HCS / VISN 17 (San Antonio)

• Pilot Site 5: VA GLA HCS / VISN 22 (Los Angeles)

It names the legal framework workstream lead: Bryan Thompson, JD, Office of General Counsel — the same OGC that told congressional staff VA lacked the authority to do this in the first place.

It confirms Thomas O’Toole as Executive Sponsor in his role as Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Health.

And it shows the program was operating across five VA medical centers with named clinical staff conducting guardianship screenings before VA had obtained any legal authority to pursue the proceedings those screenings were designed to initiate.

Full Investigation Timeline

What Rep. Takano Put on the Record

At 2:01:55 in the hearing, Rep. Takano formally entered the internal VA documents into the congressional record. Consent was granted without objection.

Those documents are now permanent.

He also made two formal requests in writing: VA must clarify in writing the actual intent and scope of Project Safe Harbor, and VA should abandon the program entirely.

His closing statement cut through the evasion: “Forcing homeless veterans into guardianship and civil commitment won’t solve their homelessness. Homeless veterans need housing and robust services.”

The disability rights community agrees. The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans have all raised formal objections to the MOU. DREDF called it a pathway to “sweeping losses of civil rights that are notoriously difficult to reverse.”

What Needs to Happen

Congress needs the full Safe Harbor program timeline. The full text of the OGC authorization request sent to DOJ. The full text of the VA-DOJ MOU. The clinical screening criteria being used at all five sites.

FOIA requests for all of the above are warranted and overdue.

And Dr. O’Toole — who sat before Congress and called his own agency’s internal documents “erroneous” — owes veterans a straight answer about who Safe Harbor is actually coming for.

The documents are in the record now.

He can’t walk them back.

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⚡ TAKE ACTION

📞 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-9756 “I’m calling to demand a full investigation into Project Safe Harbor. VA’s own internal documents contradict sworn testimony given to this committee on March 18, 2026. I want the full program timeline, the OGC authorization request to DOJ, and the full text of the VA-DOJ MOU made public.”

📞 VA’s Office of General Counsel: (202) 461-7690 “Project Safe Harbor is operating without congressional authorization. Bryan Thompson in OGC is the legal framework lead for a program VA admitted to Congress it has no statutory authority to run. The VA-DOJ MOU must be released publicly.”

📞 Rep. Takano’s office: (202) 225-2305 “Thank you for entering the Safe Harbor documents into the record on March 18. I’m asking your office to file a formal FOIA request for the full program timeline, hub site clinical screening data, and the OGC authorization request to DOJ.”

Sources

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing transcript, March 18, 2026 — timestamps 1:55:43–2:02:24

VA Internal IPT Organizational Chart — HHRG-119-VR00-20260318-SD010 (entered into congressional record March 18, 2026)

VA press release: “VA, DOJ sign agreement to improve care for nation’s most vulnerable Veterans,” March 11, 2026 — news.va.gov Stars and Stripes, Linda F. Hersey, March 11, 2026 — stripes.com

DOJ Elder Justice Initiative — justice.gov/elderjustice Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law statement, March 11, 2026 — bazelon.org

DREDF statement, March 12, 2026 — dredf.org Paralyzed Veterans of America statement, March 13, 2026 — pva.org

NCHV statement, March 11, 2026 — nchv.org

I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

About Tbird’s Quiet Fight Tbird’s Quiet Fight is independent investigative journalism covering VA policy, veteran benefits, and federal accountability. Founded by Tbird, U.S. Navy veteran and founder of HadIt.com (est. 1997), Advisory Board Member, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institut *VHPI). Not affiliated with any political party, VSO, or commercial interest. For press and advocates: founder@hadit.com

THE GIST

What’s happening: The administration has used the phrase “Warrior Ethos“ in at least four major policy documents — an executive order, the 2026 NDAA, the 2026 federal budget, and Pentagon directives under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Each time the phrase appears, veterans receive less.

The pattern: “Warrior Ethos” is doing the same work the dependency narrative did a decade ago. The words are different. The math is the same.

The evidence: EO 14296 promised housing for up to 6,000 homeless veterans. The 120-day action plan it required was never submitted. The 2026 NDAA invoked “Warrior Ethos” while cutting IVF coverage for military families. The 2026 budget used the phrase while cutting the VA workforce and non-defense programs.

The bottom line: This administration wants veterans to be Spartans. Here’s what Sparta actually looked like.

Welcome to Sparta

When a child was born in Sparta, elders inspected it. If the infant appeared weak or deformed, it was taken to the mountains and left to die. The city-state decided, at birth, whether a person was worth investing in.

The children who survived were taken from their families at age seven and placed in the agoge — the Spartan training system. They were deliberately underfed so they would be motivated to steal. If they were caught stealing, they were beaten — not for the theft, but for getting caught. Competence, not morality, was the standard.

When a Spartan warrior grew old or was badly wounded, there was no pension. No care system. No obligation. He had served his purpose.

This administration is running a policy version of the same calculus.

If you can navigate the VA system after we fired 40,000 of its employees — you pass.

If you can call an 8-by-8-foot shed with no bathroom, no kitchen, and a Class C fire rating a home — you pass.

If you can get your claims processed after we gutted the staff — you pass.

If you can’t?

That’s not a government failure. That’s a lack of “Warrior Ethos.”

They even have a name for it.

Two Words. Plenty of Cover.

There is a phrase this administration keeps using.

It shows up in executive orders. It appears in congressional statements. It surfaces in budget documents and Pentagon decrees. It gets attached to programs that take things away from veterans while claiming to honor them.

The phrase is “Warrior Ethos.”

Language in policy documents is not decoration. It is argument. When the same phrase appears across multiple unrelated documents, across multiple agencies, deployed to justify decisions that have nothing in common except their outcome — that is a strategy.

The strategy isn’t new. It has a recent precedent.

In 2021, retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Gade and journalist Daniel Huang published Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy Is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer. The book argued that VA disability ratings foster a costly and unhealthy culture of dependence among veterans — and that monthly checks from the VBA should be sharply restricted, not expanded. The argument could be distilled to one sentence: veterans are paid to be sick, and paid more the sicker they can show themselves to be.

The dependency narrative said: benefits make veterans dependent. The government’s obligation was being reframed as a personal failure by the veteran.

“Warrior Ethos” says: real warriors don’t need benefits. If you do, that’s on you.

Different words. Same result: spend less on veterans.

Now think about what that means for a veteran sitting down to file a disability claim. Filing a claim is not weakness. It is the legal exercise of a right earned through service — the contractual exchange in action. You served. You were harmed. The government owes you.

But under the “Warrior Ethos” frame, filing becomes evidence of failure. A real warrior doesn’t need the check. A real warrior figures it out. The veteran who files isn’t accessing what they’re owed — they’re admitting they can’t hack it on their own.

Nobody has to say that out loud. The phrase does the work for them.

EO 14296: “Restore Self-Sufficiency and the Warrior Ethos”

On May 9, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14296, titled Keeping Promises to Veterans and Establishing a National Center for Warrior Independence. [Federal Register, 90 FR 20369]

The order directed VA Secretary Doug Collins to “work to restore self-sufficiency and the warrior ethos among homeless veterans through any guidance, requirements, or services needed to ensure that homeless veterans can access housing, receive substance abuse or addiction treatment, and return to productive work and community engagement.”

The language is worth sitting with. Restore self-sufficiency. The implication is that homeless veterans lack it. Not that the system failed them. Not that 3,000 veterans sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles represents a government breach of contract. The implication is that something was taken from these veterans — their “Warrior Ethos” — and that the right intervention is to give it back.

The order also directed the VA Secretary, within 120 days of signing, to “present an action plan to the President” to restore the capacity to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the National Center for Warrior Independence by January 1, 2028.

That 120-day deadline was September 6, 2025.

The action plan was never submitted. [See prior TQF reporting: “They Promised Housing. They Built Garden Sheds.”]

The LA homeless veteran population was approximately 3,000 as of 2024 — about half that number. The order explicitly directed the VA to arrange transportation for homeless veterans from outside the Los Angeles area to fill the gap. The plan was to relocate veterans from around the country to a single campus. The sheds were the down payment on that vision.

What was built: 8-by-8-foot sheds. No bathroom. No kitchen. Class C fire rating — the same category as a wood-frame outbuilding. The plan called them temporary transitional housing. Veterans on the ground called them what they were.

The “Warrior Ethos,” apparently, doesn’t require running water.

2026 NDAA: “Restoring the Warrior Ethos”

On December 8, 2025, House Speaker Mike Johnson released a statement praising the final text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

Johnson said the bill advances President Trump’s “America First” agenda by “ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the ‘Warrior Ethos.’“

The bill simultaneously eliminated a provision covering IVF for military families.

Read that again. The Speaker used “restoring the ‘Warrior Ethos’” to describe a bill that cut fertility coverage for the people currently serving. The men and women who signed that contract. Who deployed. Who are still in.

A military family that can’t afford IVF isn’t failing the “Warrior Ethos.” They’re living the consequences of what Washington decided it was willing to pay for.

The “Warrior Ethos” doesn’t cover that, apparently.

2026 Federal Budget: “Revive the Warrior Ethos of America’s Armed Forces”

The Trump administration’s 2026 federal budget proposal, released in May 2025, stated directly that its defense priorities would “achieve peace through strength by providing the resources to rebuild America’s military, re-establish deterrence, and revive the ‘Warrior Ethos’ of America’s Armed Forces.”

The budget also called for cuts to non-defense programs of more than $163 billion — eliminating more than a fifth of non-military spending, excluding mandatory benefits programs.

The VA workforce cuts rolled into that broader picture. Collins announced plans to eliminate 83,000 positions through mass layoffs. Veterans, VSOs, and bipartisan members of Congress pushed back — and he walked it back. Then the VA quietly lost more than 40,000 actual employees in a single fiscal year, the first net loss in the Department’s modern history. Eighty-eight percent were health care workers. The people who answer phones. The people who process claims. The people who schedule appointments. The ones who know where your file is and what form you need and what that code means on your rating decision.

Now the administration plans to permanently delete 26,000 to 35,000 vacant positions — welding the door shut so those jobs can never be filled again.

I know what it’s like to wait for that call.

In 1991 I was living 15 minutes at a time. I’d give myself 15 minutes, and if I still wanted to kill myself when the time was up, I could. Then I’d ask myself for just 15 more. I lived by the phone waiting for the VA to call with a mental health appointment. I pinned everything on it. That somebody could help me.

Can you imagine doing 15 minutes at a time for 17 days?

For 40 days?

For 121 days?

As of January 6, 2026, veterans waiting for a first mental health appointment faced waits exceeding 40 days in 15 states. The national mean had more than doubled — from 17 days in May 2024 to over 35 days. The VA’s own standard says 20 days is too long to wait. In 15 states, veterans are waiting more than double that threshold.

In Ventura, California, seven of twelve mental health providers quit over the return-to-office mandate. Wait times at that clinic hit 121 days.The average wait for a legacy appeal decision is now 3,541 days — nearly ten years. That is 952 days longer than it was in January 2025. Seventy-five thousand student veterans went without their education benefit payments in Fall 2025. The VA gave them no warning.

Fire them. Cut the positions. Delete the jobs. And then tell the veteran that he lacks the “Warrior Ethos” if he can’t figure it out on his own.

The phrase does its work quietly.

And this is before the veterans from OEF 2026 come home.

Hegseth’s Pentagon: The Decree

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought the “Warrior Ethos” framework to the Pentagon as an operating principle. The department used it to justify purging diversity programs, targeting lawmakers who publicly dissented, and reinstating troops who had been discharged for refusing COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

The framing was consistent with the other three deployments of the phrase: the real warrior doesn’t ask for accommodation, doesn’t need protection, doesn’t require support. The warrior simply performs. If you needed the accommodations that are now gone — that’s a you problem.

This is not an argument about military readiness. It is an argument about obligation.

Specifically, about whether the government has one.

The Dependency Narrative, Rebranded

Daniel Gade argued that benefits make veterans dependent. He was working from a real problem — a VA disability system that is genuinely broken in ways that deserve scrutiny — and arriving at a conclusion that conveniently aligned with benefit cuts.

Former VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, from his new position at the Heritage Foundation, accused his former agency of being overly “focused on getting veterans checks and not getting them well and getting them back into society,” and claimed that veterans service organizations encourage former military personnel “to play disability.”

The Heritage Foundation. The same organization that drafts policy blueprints for Republican administrations.

The pipeline from Gade’s book to current executive language is not a coincidence. It is intellectual infrastructure. Build the argument that benefits create weakness, let it circulate in conservative policy circles for four years, and then deploy it in federal documents as the “Warrior Ethos” — a phrase that carries the emotional weight of military culture while doing the analytical work of entitlement reform.

Gade’s argument was uncomfortable because it came from a combat-wounded veteran. “Warrior Ethos” is more powerful because it doesn’t need a critic. It just needs to appear in the preamble of an executive order.

Once it’s there, the logic writes itself: We’re not cutting your benefits. We’re restoring your “Warrior Ethos.” The weak veteran needed the check. The real warrior doesn’t.

What the “Warrior Ethos” Actually Is

Ask a veteran what “Warrior Ethos” means to them.

Not a think tank fellow. Not a policy architect. Not a speaker at a House press conference.

Ask the infantry sergeant who came home with a TBI and spent three years trying to get a C&P exam. Ask the woman veteran who finally proved her MST-related PTSD after a decade of appeals. Ask the Vietnam veteran who found out at 75 that he qualifies for benefits he never knew existed because nobody told him.

They will not describe a philosophy that requires them to prove they don’t need help.

They will describe the person next to them in the foxhole. The one who didn’t leave. The one who kept watch when you couldn’t. The one who carried you when you went down.

The “Warrior Ethos” is about the obligation to the person beside you — not the requirement to perform self-sufficiency for a government that has already gotten what it paid for.

This country got what it paid for when that veteran signed the contract. The obligation runs the other direction now.

The Promise

You don’t restore the “Warrior Ethos” by housing a homeless veteran in a shed smaller than your garage.

You don’t restore it by cutting IVF from the people still serving.

You don’t restore it by firing the claims processors and then calling the backlog a character test.

You restore the “Warrior Ethos” by keeping the promise this country made when that veteran signed a contract giving up their life to defend it.

That promise was not conditional on the veteran’s ability to perform self-sufficiency in the ruins of a system the government deliberately dismantled.

It was a contract.

The warrior held up their end.

Take Action

The pattern is documented. Now it needs to be on the record.

Call Scripts

If you are a veteran:

“I’m calling to express concern about the use of ‘Warrior Ethos’ language in federal documents to justify cutting veteran benefits and VA staffing. The 120-day action plan required by Executive Order 14296 was never submitted. I want to know when my representative plans to demand accountability for that missing plan. My name is [name], I’m a constituent and a veteran, and I’m paying attention.”

If you are a citizen or advocate:

“I’m calling on behalf of veterans in this district who are watching their care system get dismantled while the administration frames it as philosophy. The 120-day plan from EO 14296 was never submitted. Workforce cuts at the VA are creating real backlogs. I want to know what my representative is doing about it.”

Committee Contacts

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair: Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) — (202) 224-6521 Ranking Member: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) — (202) 224-2823 Committee line: (202) 224-9126

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair: Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) — (202) 225-5661 Ranking Member: Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) — (202) 225-2305

House Armed Services Committee (NDAA / IVF provision) Chair: Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) — (202) 225-3261

Verify current chairs before calling — committee leadership changes. Check congress.gov.

Journalists Covering This Beat

• Leo Shane III — Military Times, veterans policy: @LeoShane

• Quil Lawrence — NPR veterans correspondent

• Rebecca Kheel — Defense and veterans policy reporter

• Patricia Kime — Military.com senior reporter

• Suzanne Gordon — The American Prospect, VA Champion Substack

Tip line for this investigation: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

VSO Directory

If you need help navigating the VA system while the system is being dismantled:

• DAV (Disabled American Veterans): dav.org — (877) 426-2838

• VFW National Veterans Service: vfw.org/assistance

• American Legion Benefits: legion.org/veteransbenefits

• Veterans Service Organizations Directory (VA): va.gov/vso

VSO services are free. Claims agents who charge you money are not VSOs.

RELATED INVESTIGATION: Project Safe Harbor

The National Center for “Warrior Independence” plan relocates homeless veterans from around the country to a single campus in West Los Angeles — away from family, local advocates, and attorneys who know their cases.

A separate TQF investigation is tracking new federal guardianship rules that reduce the procedural protections standing between a vulnerable veteran and the appointment of a legal guardian who controls their housing, finances, and medical decisions.

The questions worth asking: Who benefits when you concentrate isolated veterans on a single campus and simultaneously weaken the guardrails on guardianship? Who ends up controlling their benefits?

If you have information about guardianship abuse targeting veterans, contact the tip line.

Tip line: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

About Tbird’s Quiet Fight

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is an independent investigative publication covering VA policy, federal veteran benefits, and the political systems that shape them. Founded by Tbird, a U.S. Navy veteran and founder of HadIt.com (est. 1997). Not affiliated with any political party, VSO, or commercial interest.

For press and advocates: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

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I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

SOURCES:

• Executive Order 14296, Keeping Promises to Veterans and Establishing a National Center for Warrior Independence, May 9, 2025. [Federal Register, 90 FR 20369]

• Speaker Mike Johnson statement on 2026 NDAA, December 8, 2025. Via Military.com

• Trump 2026 Federal Budget Request, May 2025. Via VeteranLife.com | OMB Discretionary Budget Request PDF

• Daniel Gade and Daniel Huang, Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy Is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer, Ballast Books, 2021.

• Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early, “Trump Is Coming for Veterans’ Disability Benefits,” The American Prospect, December 8, 2025.

• Breaking the Pact, U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Democratic Staff Minority Report, January 2026.

• Prior TQF reporting: “They Promised Housing. They Built Garden Sheds.”

THE GIST

• VA claims a 73% PACT Act approval rate. VA’s own Under Secretary confirmed in 2023 that 34% of those approvals — 1 in 3 — are rated at 0%, meaning service-connected but receiving zero dollars in compensation. For hypertension, the most-filed condition, 82.1% of “approvals” pay nothing.

• Bronchial asthma: 56% denied. Maxillary sinusitis: 51% denied. Hypertensive vascular disease: 40% denied. For the conditions that hit burn pit veterans hardest, more than half are getting turned away.

• A VA OIG audit found that 61% of denied non-presumptive claims contained processing errors — processors skipped legally required steps and denied claims they were not legally permitted to deny.

• The Toxic Exposures Fund (TEF) — the mandatory $52.7 billion pot Congress created to pay for PACT Act implementation — is quietly funding 42% of VA’s entire workforce, covering a $6 billion general budget shortfall, and billing routine flu shots to the burn pit account.

• VA’s own exam contractors received almost $2.3 million in performance bonuses that VA’s watchdog now says were calculated incorrectly — and VA has yet to recover the money.

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Congress called the PACT Act the most significant expansion of veteran benefits in decades. They were right. What they didn’t say — what VA hasn’t said — is that “expansion” and “delivery” are two different things.

Three and a half years in, the VA is running a statistical sleight of hand that would embarrass a first-year auditor. They’re reporting a 73% approval rate that counts veterans receiving zero dollars as “approved,” billing routine healthcare to the toxic exposure fund, and paying performance bonuses to contractors whose work the government’s own watchdog says is riddled with errors.

This is what that looks like up close.

The Number VA Doesn’t Want You to Do the Math On

The VA PACT Act Performance Dashboard, Issue 54 (published January 23, 2026) reports a cumulative approval rate of 73%. VA officials cite this figure in congressional testimony. It leads every press release.

Here’s what it doesn’t tell you.

VA Under Secretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs confirmed the math himself in a September 2023 press briefing: 34% of all PACT Act approvals — roughly 1 in 3 — were rated at 0%. Service-connected. Zero dollars.

For hypertension, the most-filed PACT Act condition with over 710,000 claims, it’s worse: Jacobs confirmed that 82.1% of hypertension “approvals” are rated at 0%. More than 4 in 5 veterans granted service connection for hypertension receive no monthly compensation.

VA’s defense, offered by Jacobs to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is that a 0% rating establishes a nexus for future secondary claims and opens the door to VA health care. That is technically true. It is also true that a veteran who was told the PACT Act would finally compensate them for what they breathed in Iraq is receiving a letter that says “approved” and a check for $0.00.

The condition-specific denial rates — before you even factor in the 0% problem — tell their own story:

• Bronchial asthma: 56% denied (roughly 130,000 veterans out of 231,000 claims)

• Maxillary sinusitis: 51% denied (roughly 132,000 out of 257,000)

• Hypertensive vascular disease: 40% denied (roughly 284,000 out of 710,000) — and of those “approved,” 82% paid nothing

Those aren’t rounding errors. Those are veterans who breathed smoke and chemicals in Iraq and Afghanistan, came home sick, filed claims Congress specifically designed to cover them, and got turned away — or handed a zero.

Then in February 2026, VA tried to lock this in permanently.

On February 17, 2026, VA published an Interim Final Rule (38 CFR § 4.10) that would have required raters to evaluate conditions based on treated symptoms — meaning if your medication controls your hypertension, VA could rate it at 0% regardless of the underlying severity. The rule was a direct response to Ingram v. Collins, 38 Vet. App. 130 (2025), a CAVC decision that required VA to rate based on symptoms without the ameliorative effects of medication — a ruling that would have forced upward rating adjustments on hundreds of thousands of pending claims.

VA skipped the public comment period entirely, using the interim final rule mechanism to push it through without congressional or public review.

Secretary Collins announced enforcement of the rule would be halted on February 19, 2026 — two days after publication — following immediate backlash from the VFW, American Legion, DAV, and congressional members. The rule was formally rescinded in the Federal Register on February 27, 2026 (Docket No. VA-2026-VBA-0067).

The 0% rating trap is still in legal limbo. VA still counts those ratings as approvals on the PACT Act Dashboard.

And the appeals data confirms the broader picture is getting worse. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Blumenthal’s January 22, 2026 report — Breaking the Pact: Impacts of Trump, DOGE, and Doug Collins’ Ongoing Assault on Veterans — documents that as of July 2025, the number of veterans asking VA to take a second look at their claim increased by 44% because of errors claims processors made. Veterans aren’t filing HLRs because they feel optimistic. They’re filing them because they got denied and they know something went wrong.

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The 61% Problem

The VA’s own watchdog documented what “something went wrong” actually means.

VA OIG Report #23-03357-156, published September 30, 2025, audited PACT Act denials for non-presumptive conditions — the claims that don’t fall under a presumptive list and require the VA to develop additional medical evidence under 38 U.S.C. § 1168.

The finding: an estimated 61% of those denials contained processing errors.

Not a handful. Not a statistical blip. Sixty-one percent.

The most common failure: processors denied claims without ever requesting the TERA (Toxic Exposure Risk Activity) medical opinion that federal law requires them to obtain. The opinion exists specifically for cases where a veteran’s condition isn’t on the presumptive list but the evidence still supports service connection. Processors were skipping it entirely, then issuing denials on the basis of insufficient evidence — evidence they were legally obligated to develop but didn’t.

A second OIG review (December 2024/January 2025) found that 45% of reviewed presumptive claims contained a different error: processors ordered unnecessary medical exams for conditions that already qualified under the legal presumption. Those unnecessary exams produced negative medical opinions. Processors then used those negative opinions to override the presumption and deny the claim.

This is not a training gap. This is processors using a broken process to generate denials for claims that should have been granted.

Now ask the question nobody at VA is answering: how many of those veterans appealed?

VBA completed 2.5 million C&P claims in FY2024. VA’s own Monday Morning Workload Report shows the production number; it doesn’t publish the grant/denial split by design. What we know from the documented pattern: a significant share of those decisions were denials, and the majority of veterans who get denied never enter any appeal lane before the one-year deadline expires. They accept the decision and walk away. No Supplemental Claim. No HLR. Nothing. VA’s own appeals reporting has consistently shown that only a fraction of denied veterans pursue formal review — and the number choosing to appeal directly to the Board has been declining, not growing.

The veterans who didn’t walk away won at surprisingly high rates. Supplemental Claims succeed roughly 50% of the time. Higher Level Reviews — the lane specifically designed to catch VA’s own processing errors — succeed 40-50% of the time. The American Legion’s April 9, 2025 Statement for the Record to the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs sampled appealed cases and found 42% had Duty to Assist failures where VA simply didn’t do what federal law required. When those cases are appealed, they are frequently overturned.

When you issue a wrongful denial to a population that statistically won’t fight back, you don’t have to fix it. The TEF keeps its money. The contractor keeps its bonus. The veteran loses.

That is the financial logic of guidance fatigue.

Board of Veterans’ Appeals judges are catching it. BVA case A25007526 (January 28, 2025) remanded a hypertension claim because VA had never obtained the TERA medical opinion required by 38 U.S.C. § 1168(a) — despite evidence of toxic exposure at Camp Lejeune and asbestos contact on record. Case A25038912 (April 29, 2025) remanded a surviving spouse’s cause-of-death claim because the medical opinion’s TERA rationale addressed only asbestos — failing to evaluate brake dust, industrial solvents, and other chemicals the VA’s own TERA memo had already conceded were part of the veteran’s exposure as an Army engineering equipment repairman.

The Board is sending these back. The question is why the Regional Offices issued them in the first place.

The OIG and GAO both point to the same answer: guidance fatigue. The adjudication manual was updated so frequently, with instructions spread across so many different sources, that processors couldn’t keep up. The GAO’s January 2026 report (GAO-26-108844) kept VA Disability on the High-Risk List for exactly this reason — not because of claim volume, but because VA “has not demonstrated progress in decision accuracy.”

Now Look at the Money

While veterans were fighting wrongful denials at Regional Offices, something else was happening on the budget side.

The PACT Act created the Toxic Exposures Fund — a mandatory appropriation, not subject to the discretionary caps that govern most government spending. The intent was to wall off PACT Act funding from the annual budget fights that historically short-changed veterans. Congress wanted to make it untouchable.

VA found another use for it.

According to the FY 2026 VA Budget Submission (June 2025) and VA Financial Policy Chapter 06 (published February 6, 2026), the TEF request for fiscal year 2026 is $52.7 billion — a $22 billion increase over FY 2025. Of that, the fund supports 191,433 full-time equivalent positions. That’s roughly 42% of the entire VA workforce, funded through the burn pit account.

The breakdown is instructive:

• $1.38 billion for information technology — including infrastructure supporting the Electronic Health Record Modernization rollout, which has been a documented failure for years

• $1.4 billion for VBA claims processors’ salaries

• $400 million for medical support and compliance — facility administrators, HR, leadership teams

None of that is direct veteran care. None of it is compensation. It’s overhead, billed to the toxic exposure fund because the mandatory classification makes it harder for Congress to cut.

The 84% Proxy: The Part Nobody Is Talking About

Here’s the mechanism that makes it all work, buried in VA Financial Policy Chapter 06.

VA does not track individual toxic-exposure clinical encounters. They don’t record which specific appointments for which specific veterans are PACT Act-related. Instead, they identify all veterans in Priority Group 6 — a group that expanded significantly under the PACT Act — and apply an 84% proxy rate to their total healthcare costs.

What that means in practice: if a Priority Group 6 veteran goes to a VA clinic for a broken ankle, 84% of that visit’s cost is billed to the mandatory Toxic Exposures Fund. Same for a routine blood draw. Same for a prescription renewal that has nothing to do with burn pits or toxic exposure.

The VA’s own financial policy admits the 84% figure is “a broad estimate” derived from a random sample of PG 6 veterans. It is not based on actual tracked TERA clinical costs. It is a placeholder that allows VA to shift discretionary budget pressure onto a mandatory fund that isn’t subject to congressional caps.

The result: money Congress intended to flow to veterans with toxic exposure claims is instead subsidizing VA’s general operations — keeping the discretionary budget artificially low while the mandatory fund absorbs costs it was never designed to cover.

The Contractor Problem Sitting Underneath All of This

It gets worse when you look at who’s conducting the actual medical exams.

VA’s Medical Disability Examination Office contracts with two primary vendors to perform PACT Act-related compensation and pension exams: QTC Medical Services (a Leidos subsidiary) and OptumServe (a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary). Combined, these two contractors are billing the government more than $2.5 billion annually in current task orders.

GAO Report GAO-26-108783 (published November 20, 2025) audited MDEO’s financial controls and found that almost $2.3 million in performance incentive payments — bonuses paid to MDEO’s contracted exam providers for meeting quality benchmarks — were calculated incorrectly in FY 2024. The cause: MDEO had no written procedures for verifying incentive calculations. Staff manually entered data into spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were wrong. The bonuses went out anyway.

VA told GAO it “agrees in principle” to recover the funds. As of the report’s publication, no documented recovery had occurred.

Meanwhile, the GAO found that medical examiners — the actual physicians doing the PACT Act exams — report concerns about conflicting guidance but are blocked from raising those concerns directly to VA. The contractors filter what gets elevated. The contractors are also the ones being paid performance bonuses based on metrics that include exam volume and on-time completion rates.

Think about what that incentive structure produces. A contractor gets paid more for completing more exams faster. The examiner who wants to flag a guidance problem can’t get the message to VA without going through the contractor. MDEO was nine months overdue on required quality reviews for complex claims — including Gulf War Illness and TERA-related PACT Act conditions — as of July 2025.

This is the ecosystem in which 56% of asthma claims are being denied.

The American Legion told Congress directly in April 2025 that VA needs to “leverage its oversight ability to hold contracted examiners accountable.” That recommendation is sitting in the congressional record. Nothing has changed.

A Spring 2026 Industry Day is now on the calendar for the next MDEO contract recompete cycle (SAM.gov notice R499, March 4, 2026). The same contractors will bid. The same oversight gaps will exist unless Congress demands otherwise.

What Accountability Looks Like

This isn’t a story about VA employees doing their best with a difficult law. The OIG and GAO have both handed Congress a roadmap of specific, documentable failures:

A 61% processing error rate on non-presumptive denials. Documented. Sourced. Published in September 2025. Congress has had this report for six months.

A mandatory fund being used as a shadow budget for general administrative overhead. Documented in the VA’s own budget submission and financial policy.

$2.3 million in incorrect contractor bonuses, unrecovered. Documented by GAO. Acknowledged by VA. Unresolved.

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs both have jurisdiction over this. They should be requiring:

• A full audit of every non-presumptive PACT Act denial issued between May 2023 and the present, reviewed against the § 1168 TERA medical opinion requirement

• A detailed accounting of TEF expenditures by actual cost category, not proxy estimation

• Recovery of the $2.3 million in contractor overpayments, with a documented timeline

• Written procedures for MDEO incentive payment verification before the next contract cycle begins

Veterans who filed PACT Act claims didn’t ask for an accounting seminar. They asked for the benefits Congress told them they had earned. The system failed them by design — through choices made by people with names and titles and budgets.

That’s what this is.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you were denied a PACT Act claim for a non-presumptive condition: Check your decision letter. If it doesn’t reference a TERA medical opinion, there may be grounds for a Higher Level Review on the basis of a Duty to Assist error. Get in front of an accredited VSO or claims agent before the one-year HLR deadline expires. HadIt.com has tracked PACT Act claims issues since the law passed — search the archive here.

If you’re a congressional staffer or policy advocate: OIG Report #23-03357-156 and GAO-26-108844 are your starting points. Both are publicly available. Both name the specific failures. Both recommend remedies VA has not fully implemented.

If you’re a veteran who got a 0% rating: Service connection at 0% is a foothold, not an endpoint. File for an increased rating with current medical evidence. A 0% is not the end of the road.

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Take Action

The Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs Committees have jurisdiction over every failure documented in this article. The OIG reports have been on their desks for months. Call them. Write them. Make them explain why these recommendations haven’t been implemented.

Your call script — if you’re a veteran

“I’m a veteran calling about the PACT Act. VA’s own OIG found that 61% of denied non-presumptive claims contained processing errors — processors skipped the legally required TERA medical opinion and denied claims they weren’t legally allowed to deny. The Toxic Exposures Fund Congress created to pay for PACT Act implementation is being used to cover $52.7 billion in VA overhead, including routine flu shots and HR salaries. And VA paid $2.3 million in incorrect contractor bonuses that have never been recovered. I want [Senator/Representative NAME] to demand a full audit of non-presumptive PACT Act denials and a detailed accounting of every dollar spent from the Toxic Exposures Fund. Veterans are being denied benefits they earned and Congress needs to hold VA accountable.”

Your call script — if you’re a civilian or advocate

“I’m calling about VA’s implementation of the PACT Act. Government audits have found serious problems — a 61% processing error rate on denied claims, a $52.7 billion mandatory fund being used as a shadow budget for general operations, and $2.3 million in contractor overpayments that haven’t been recovered. This isn’t a paperwork problem — it’s a pattern of structural failures that are denying veterans the benefits Congress specifically passed a law to provide them. I’m asking [Senator/Representative NAME] to require VA to audit every non-presumptive PACT Act denial and publish a transparent accounting of Toxic Exposures Fund expenditures.”

Who to call

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee

• Chair: Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) — (202) 224-6521

• Ranking Member: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) — (202) 224-2823

• Committee: (202) 224-9126

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee

• Chair: Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) — (202) 225-5661

• Ranking Member: Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) — (202) 225-2305

• Committee: (202) 225-3527

Can’t call? Write. Both committees have web contact forms at veterans.senate.gov and veterans.house.gov.

Phone numbers verified March 2026. Confirm current at senate.gov and house.gov.

What to ask for — on the record

1. A full audit of every non-presumptive PACT Act denial issued since May 2023, reviewed against the § 1168 TERA medical opinion requirement

2. A line-item accounting of Toxic Exposures Fund expenditures — actual cost categories, not the 84% proxy estimate

3. Recovery of the $2.3 million in contractor overpayments, with a documented timeline and completion date

4. Written MDEO incentive payment verification procedures before the spring 2026 contract recompete

Primary Sources

• VA PACT Act Performance Dashboard, Issue 54 — January 23, 2026

• VA OIG Report #23-03357-156 — Nonpresumptive Conditions Involving Toxic Exposure Under the PACT Act — September 30, 2025

• VA OIG Report #24-03127-66 — VA Disability Benefits OIG Reports — March 27, 2025

• GAO-26-108844 — VA Disability Benefits: Progress Made but VA Decisions on Veterans’ Claims Continue to Be Based, in Part, on Outdated Criteria — January 14, 2026

• GAO-26-108783 — VA Disability Benefits: Implementing GAO’s Recommendations Would Help Improve Quality of Contracted Exams for Veterans — November 20, 2025

• VA Financial Policy Chapter 06 — Toxic Exposures Fund Methodology — February 6, 2026

• VA FY 2026 Budget Submission — June 2025

• Sen. Blumenthal, Breaking the Pact: Impacts of Trump, DOGE, and Doug Collins’ Ongoing Assault on Veterans — January 22, 2026

• SAM.gov Notice R499, Notice ID 36C10X26Q0089 — MDEO Industry Day — March 4, 2026

• 38 U.S.C. § 1168 — TERA Medical Opinion Requirement (Public Law 117-168)

• American Legion Statement for the Record, HVAC Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs — April 9, 2025

• VA Under Secretary Joshua Jacobs press briefing — 0% rating confirmation — September 21, 2023 — Military.com (Patricia Kime)

• Federal Register 38 CFR Part 4, Interim Final Rule — Evaluative Rating: Impact of Medication — February 17, 2026

• Federal Register, Rescission of Interim Final Rule — February 27, 2026 — Docket No. VA-2026-VBA-0067

• Ingram v. Collins, 38 Vet. App. 130 (2025) — CAVC

• HVAC Hearing, Rep. Luttrell — Modernizing VA Benefits Structure — January 14, 2026

• BVA Decision A25007526 — January 28, 2025

• BVA Decision A25038912 — April 29, 2025

I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

Tbird is the founder of HadIt.com (est. 1997) and a Navy veteran. This publication does not constitute legal advice. For claims assistance, work with an accredited VSO, claims agent, or attorney.

About Tbird’s Quiet Fight

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is investigative journalism and policy analysis focused on VA accountability, veteran benefits, and the people and institutions that shape them. It is published by Theresa Aldrich (Tbird), founder of HadIt.com, one of the longest-running veteran-to-veteran VA claims communities on the internet (est. 1997).

HadIt.com provides free VA disability claims education at hadit.com. The veteran community is at community.hadit.com.

This publication is reader-supported. If this work matters to you, share it with a veteran, a congressional staffer, or a journalist who covers VA.

For Press and Advocates

To discuss this article, request documentation, or coordinate on follow-up reporting:

Theresa Aldrich (Tbird) HadIt.com | Tbird’s Quiet Fight on Substack

Source materials available on request. Primary government documents cited above are all publicly accessible.

Start a discussion: community.hadit.com

The Gist

Trump launched a war with Iran five days ago without a congressional vote. Six service members are already dead. The Senate just voted to let him keep going. Meanwhile, the VA eliminated 14,400 medical positions — 73% of which were recently filled — and veterans in 15 states are waiting more than 40 days for a mental health appointment. We’ve seen this movie. We know how it ends.

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Five days ago, we went to war with Iran. Forty-one days ago, a Senate Democrats report found the VA had lost 40,000 workers — though VA disputes this, claiming a net loss of 30,000 through attrition — and veterans in 15 states are waiting more than 40 days for a mental health appointment.

Nobody in Washington is connecting those two facts.

Six Army Reserve soldiers, deployed to Kuwait on a logistics mission, died when an Iranian drone struck their port. They weren’t combat troops. They were doing supply and support work — and the blast radius of this war found them anyway. Defense Secretary Hegseth said Wednesday the operation is “just getting started” and could last weeks. “We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he told reporters.

We are manufacturing veterans faster than we can care for the ones we already have.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 47-53 to let Trump keep the war going — no congressional authorization required. The same body that couldn’t be bothered to vote on a war also couldn’t be bothered to ask what happens to these service members when they come home.

I’ll tell you what happens. I’ve watched it for 29 years.

The system waiting for them is already broken.

Two days ago, the New York Times published an analysis of internal VA records. The VA has been telling the public it eliminated “COVID-era ghost positions” — bureaucratic vacancies that had sat empty for years. Cleanup work. Nothing to see here.

The records say otherwise.

Of the 14,400 medical positions the VA eliminated, 73 percent had people working in them during 2025 or 2026. Only 5 percent had been vacant since 2023 or earlier.

Those weren’t ghost jobs. Those were doctors. Nurses. Social workers. Real people, recently doing real work, now gone — and the VA called a New York Times analysis of their own internal records a “shoddy hit piece.”

At a February congressional hearing, VA Secretary Doug Collins told lawmakers: “Do we need more doctors? Yes. We’re not fully staffed, and we haven’t been for 50 years.”

He said that while his department was actively eliminating 14,400 medical positions.

Internal agency records aren’t liberal or conservative. Numbers don’t have a party affiliation.

Here’s what the numbers actually say.

Before these cuts, the VA’s own Inspector General found that more than 90 percent of VA facilities already faced severe physician shortages. Nearly 80 percent reported severe nurse shortages.

Then they eliminated 1,500 more physician slots and 4,900 more nursing positions. Beyond that, another 11,700 positions were cut — including social workers and psychologists. The Times called them the cornerstones of VA’s suicide prevention and homeless veteran programs.

Mental health wait times for new patients now average 35 days. In 15 states, veterans wait more than 40 days — twice the VA’s own standard. At one clinic in Ventura, California, the wait hit 121 days after seven of twelve mental health providers walked out following a return-to-office mandate.

Part of that collapse is a direct result of a policy decision that had nothing to do with care quality. The VA built rural mental health access on telehealth — psychiatrists who could reach veterans in places with no VA facility nearby. When the return-to-office mandate ended remote work, those psychiatrists were required to drive into a VA building to conduct their remote appointments. Two hundred of them left. That’s a 6 percent drop in VA psychiatrists — not from budget cuts, not from a hiring freeze, but from a policy that forced clinicians to commute in order to do the same work they’d been doing from home. Rural veterans lost providers because of an office attendance dispute they had no part in.

And while they’re cutting direct care, the FY2026 budget increases community care — private contractors — by more than 50 percent.

The VA’s own expert panel warned in 2024 that this was an “existential threat.” They called it a downward spiral: cut staff, capacity drops, wait times rise, more veterans get sent to private contractors, costs surge, less money for direct care, more cuts. Round and round.

Nobody listened. The spiral is now the operating model.

We have done this before.

Vietnam veterans fought for decades to get care for Agent Orange exposure. Gulf War veterans are still fighting for recognition of Gulf War illness. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans fought — and many are still fighting — for burn pit coverage under the PACT Act.

Every generation: we send them, we break them, we make them prove it, we delay, we deny.

Now we’re going back to the Middle East. New veterans, new exposures, new wounds — physical and psychological. And we’re doing it with a VA that just eliminated thousands of recently-filled medical positions and called the evidence a hit piece.

The Senate that voted yesterday to keep this war going without authorization has said nothing about any of it.

One more thing.

The contractors getting that 50 percent budget increase? They will be waiting. Community care networks — Optum, TriWest, the whole apparatus — are about to get a new generation of customers, courtesy of Operation Epic Fury and a gutted VA that can’t absorb them.

The mechanism that makes this possible was already in motion before the first missile flew.

That’s a separate investigation. It’s documented.

For now: six service members are dead. More are coming home. The system meant to catch them is already in collapse.

Congress voted to look away.

— Tbird

What you can do right now:

Call your senator: 202-224-3121 — tell them a war authorization vote is not optional, and neither is funding VA care for the veterans coming home from it.

Share this article. The people who need to read it aren’t looking for it.

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I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

THE GIST

Veterans pushed back hard on the Ingram medication rule, and Collins blinked in 48 hours. That felt like a win. It wasn't — not completely. While everyone was arguing about ratings, Collins quietly field-tested something far more dangerous: a blueprint for overriding federal courts without going through the process that makes oversight possible. The rule is halted. The blueprint is intact. And next time, he'll do it slower.

Everyone is celebrating. I get it. Ten thousand comments in 60 hours. VSOs mobilized. Collins backed down in two days. Veterans showed up and the system responded.

Now let me tell you what actually happened.

Collins didn't lose. He ran a test. And it worked.

The Real Story Wasn't the Rule

The rule was a problem. But it was a visible problem — one that produced an immediate, visceral reaction because veterans understood exactly what it meant for their wallets. Stop taking your medication or lose your rating. That's a gut punch. It got people moving.

What it also did was pull every eye in the room toward the substance and away from the mechanism.

The mechanism is the story.

On February 17, 2026, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs used an interim final rule to override three federal court decisions spanning 14 years. He skipped the notice-and-comment period that exists so the public can weigh in before a rule takes effect. He invoked emergency authority to bypass the 60-day Congressional Review Act waiting period — even though his own agency's regulatory office had classified this as a major rule with over $100 million in annual economic impact. He made it effective immediately.

Then, when the response was ferocious, he halted enforcement two days later and called the outrage "fake news."

He did not rescind the rule. The regulation is still in the Federal Register. The eCFR still shows the new language. He just told his people to stand down.

What Courts Are For

The Jones, McCarroll, and Ingram decisions weren't radical. They were the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims doing its job — reading VA's own regulation and determining what it meant. The CAVC spent over a decade telling VA that 38 CFR § 4.10, as written, required examiners to account for medication effects. Each decision built on the last. Ingram v. Collins, 38 Vet. App. 130 (2025), decided March 12, 2025, extended the reasoning to musculoskeletal conditions.

Collins disagreed with that interpretation. Fine. Agencies disagree with courts. There's a process for that. You publish a proposed rule. You take public comment. You respond to that comment. You wait the required period. You finalize. You defend it in court if challenged.

That process is slow by design. It creates a record. It forces the agency to justify its reasoning. It gives veterans, VSOs, and Congress visibility before a change takes effect. It gives courts something to review.

Collins skipped all of it.

His justification — 350,000 pending claims, systemic disruption, administrative emergency — got shredded by the response it triggered. You cannot credibly claim that allowing public comment is "impracticable and contrary to the public interest" when 10,000 members of the public respond in 60 hours the moment they find out.

But here's the thing about running a test: even a failed test gives you data.

The Blueprint

Collins now knows the following:

The process works if he goes slower. The outrage was as much about speed and secrecy as it was about substance. Veterans were angry because VA dropped a major rule change at midnight with zero warning. The "no notice, immediate effect" piece is what produced 10,000 comments in 60 hours. That's the variable he can adjust.

He also knows the coalition that beat him. VSOs across the political spectrum — American Legion, VFW, DAV, Burn Pits 360, IAVA, Paralyzed Veterans of America — unified against it. That coalition formed because the target was obvious and the timeline was compressed. Give that coalition six months of notice-and-comment, let the issue get complex and technical, and it will not hold together the same way.

Collins framed his retreat carefully. He said the rule was halted because of how it was "characterized" — not because the policy was wrong. He said it was issued "to protect Veterans' benefits in the wake of an ongoing court action." He never conceded the substance. He walked away from the fight, not the goal.

The goal is still on the record. The Federal Circuit case is still alive. The comment period is still open. VA still wants to resolve the Ingram problem on its own terms.

What the VSOs Got Right and Wrong

Most of the major organizations landed on the right side of the substance. They were correct that the rule was harmful, that the process was illegitimate, and that veterans shouldn't have to choose between their health and their benefits.

The VFW got it most right. VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore didn't just praise the halt — she called for full rescission. "This interim rule puts that stability at risk, and it must be withdrawn." That's the correct position. Halted enforcement is a promise. Formal rescission is a legal commitment. We don't have the latter.

Where the VSO response fell short — and where social media made it worse — was the amplification of the most alarming interpretation possible. "VA is coming for your rating." "They're going to lower your disability." That framing was understandable. It was also, for most veterans, inaccurate. And it swallowed the process story whole.

A veteran who understands that VA tried to override courts without due process is a veteran who stays vigilant for the next attempt. A veteran who thinks Collins tried to steal their rating and got beaten back is a veteran who thinks the fight is over.

The fight is not over.

The Civ Div Was Right

I don't agree with everything The Civ Div says. But on this, Clay Simms — the veteran YouTuber with 80,000+ subscribers who built his channel on VA claims education — was right and most of the internet was wrong.

His argument: the VA has always rated on medicated baseline — that's why the Jones/Ingram line of cases had to fight for 14 years to get courts to say otherwise. The rule didn't change how veterans are being evaluated today. The real issue is that the Secretary put his direct interpretation of 4.10 into federal regulation specifically to avoid complying with a court. That's the issue. Not the ratings.

When the loudest voices in the room are screaming "they're taking your rating," that's all anyone hears. The quieter, harder argument — that an executive agency just demonstrated it can override federal courts through emergency rulemaking with no notice and no process — gets lost.

That argument matters more. It will matter more next time.

What Veterans Actually Won

The 48-hour reversal isn't nothing. Ten thousand comments in 60 hours is not nothing. VSO unity is not nothing. Collins backing down is not nothing.

But what veterans won is time. The rule is halted. The Federal Circuit case continues. The comment record is being built. The Laffon petition is filed.

Time is only useful if it's used.

The comment period closes April 20. Every comment filed strengthens the legal record against re-implementation and raises the political cost of another attempt. The Federal Circuit will eventually rule on Ingram. If they rule against VA, expect another attempt at a rule — this time, done by the book, with a proper comment period, six to twelve months out, when the news cycle has moved on and the coalition is harder to reassemble.

That's the scenario to prepare for. Not this one. This one is over.

The One Thing Collins Can't Take Back

He showed his hand.

VA's filing in the Federal Register said the agency would pay out additional disability compensation "based on levels that veterans are not actually experiencing." That's VA, in writing, on the record, arguing that the court-mandated standard produces compensation that veterans don't deserve.

That is now in the administrative record. If VA tries again, that language follows them into court.

Collins wanted to solve the Ingram problem quietly, quickly, and permanently. He got the opposite: a loud, public, documented fight that put VA's intent on the record and activated every major VSO and several law firms in the Federal Circuit simultaneously.

Veterans won the battle. But the war — over whether VA can override courts through rulemaking, and whether the process requirements that protect veterans have any teeth — is just getting started.

Stay in the fight. File your comment. Watch the Federal Circuit.

And don't mistake a pause for a surrender.

Take Action

The comment period on RIN 2900-AS49 is open through April 20, 2026.

Tell VA exactly how this standard would affect your life. The comment record matters — both for this rule and for any future attempt.

Watch the Federal Circuit. Ingram v. Collins, No. 23-1798, is still pending. Laffon v. Collins has been filed. Both cases will shape what VA can do next.

Read the full HadIt.com breakdown: VA Halts Enforcement — 48 Hours Later

Tbird has been running HadIt.com since 1997. This is her personal analysis and advocacy publication. Facts matter here — even when making arguments.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I'd use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

The Gist:

The VA wants to consolidate its 18 health care regions into five. The man who designed the current structure says that’s a mistake. Congress got a half-page letter and a slide deck instead of a plan. The first-year cost is $521 million that nobody budgeted for. VHA has lost 20,400 employees — including over 1,000 doctors. Here’s what happened, what it means, and what veterans should watch.

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By the Numbers $521 million — first-year cost, zero dollars budgeted $312 million — net cost over five years 20,400 — VHA employees lost 1,000+ — doctors gone, 100 in December alone ½ page — what Congress got instead of a plan 17 pages — what the man who built the system submitted saying don’t do this

On February 11, 2026, the full House Veterans’ Affairs Committee held an oversight hearing titled “Opportunities with VHA Reorganization.” (Video) The stated purpose: examine Secretary Doug Collins’ plan to consolidate the Veterans Health Administration from 18 Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) down to five, with 15 new Health Service Areas underneath them.

What actually happened was two and a half hours of confrontation over staffing losses, missing plans, and a reorganization nobody requested funding for.

Here’s what veterans need to know.

What the Reorganization Actually Proposes

The plan, as presented, restructures VHA’s regional management from 18 VISNs to five larger VISNs, each containing three Health Service Areas (HSAs). The stated goals:

• Eliminate duplicative layers of bureaucracy

• Empower local hospital directors

• Ensure consistent application of VA policies across all facilities

• Improve health care quality for veterans

VHA Central Office would set policy. A new Medical Operations Center would standardize implementation. The five VISNs would handle regional oversight. HSAs would focus exclusively on care delivery. Local facility directors would gain more decision-making authority.

Collins and his team — Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum, Assistant Secretary for Human Resources Mark Engelbaum, and Acting Chief Operating Officer Gregory Goins — framed this as common-sense reform based on decades of GAO and OIG recommendations. (For a detailed breakdown of how Collins used those same reports at his Senate testimony two weeks earlier, see “The Efficiency Theater: Reading Between the Lines of VA’s VHA Reorganization.”)

Collins’ central argument: VHA workforce grew 14% between fiscal years 2019 and 2024, but veteran encounters only grew 6%. Some facilities saw 30% FTE increases while patient encounters actually declined. The system is overstaffed at the administrative level and understaffed at the clinical frontline.

Half a Page and a Slide Deck

Ranking Member Mark Takano held up a 134-page book from 1995 — the “Vision for Change” document that guided the last major VHA reorganization. That plan included detailed analyses, congressional input, veteran input, VSO input, and employee input.

What Congress got this time: a half-page notification letter and a 10-page slide deck.

Takano didn’t mince words: “You are tearing down the walls before determining whether they’re load-bearing. And veterans will be the ones crushed if the structure collapses.”

He ticked off what’s happening simultaneously: an unproven electronic health record deployment, a trillion-dollar community care contract, and severe staffing shortages across the system. “Any one of these projects would strain an organization,” he said. “Taken altogether, they will overwhelm it.”

The Numbers Nobody Can Ignore

Takano delivered the workforce losses since Collins took the helm — across VHA alone:

• Net loss of 20,400 employees

• Over 1,000 doctors (100 left in December alone)

• Over 2,300 registered nurses

• Nearly 700 medical support assistants

• Nearly 700 social workers

• Nearly 650 licensed practical nurses

• Nearly 300 psychologists

• Over 250 police officers

Collins pushed back hard. He called the 30,000 departures “all voluntary early retirement” — not firings. He pointed to the vacancy rate for doctors and nurses holding steady between 14% and 19% over the past four years, noting the 19% peak was in 2022 under Biden. He argued VA is still up in total FTE compared to five years ago.

But then Rep. Ramirez spotlighted an inconvenient detail about one of Collins’ headline achievements: the reduction in time-to-hire from 109 days to 47 days. Under the previous administration, that metric measured time from application to first day on the job. Under Collins, it measures time to a tentative job offer — a fundamentally different thing.

“That is why we can’t trust anything coming out of your office,” Ramirez said.

The Cost Nobody Budgeted For

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, ranking member on the Military Construction-VA appropriations subcommittee, delivered the financial reality check.

A draft cost estimate provided to her subcommittee showed approximately $521 million in upfront costs during the first year and a net cost of around $312 million over five years. These numbers contradicted earlier assurances that the reorganization would be cost-neutral.

When Wasserman Schultz asked where the $521 million would come from — since the FY2026 bill already signed into law appropriated zero dollars for a VHA reorganization — Collins said it would come from “regular account funds.”

She pressed: Would the committee see a reprogramming request? “Probably,” Collins said. Would there be an updated cost estimate in the FY2027 budget request? “That is being put together now. Yes.”

Wasserman Schultz also flagged a projected $1.7 billion in savings from “personnel actions” resulting from the reorganization — including moving administrators into clinical roles, which would result in pay cuts. Her time expired before she could finish her questions. Chairman Bost declined to extend it.

The Man Who Built the VISNs Says This Is Wrong

Perhaps the most significant testimony came not from Collins but from Dr. Kenneth Kizer, the former VA Under Secretary for Health who designed the VISN structure in the 1990s. His written testimony — a 17-page document submitted for the record — was a surgical dismantling of the reorganization’s rationale.

Kizer cited research showing 70% of organizational change efforts fail. He noted that McKinsey found only 23% of reorganizations are considered successful. Bain & Company reported that redesigns “fall short because leaders focus on structure while underinvesting in how work actually gets done.”

His core argument: VHA’s performance problems stem from leadership failures, unclear policies, and poor execution — not structural defects. Redrawing the org chart won’t fix them.

“Rather than spending scarce resources on an unclear and unnecessary organizational restructuring plan, energy and time should be devoted to creating and implementing a much more robust, healthcare-specific leadership development program,” Kizer wrote.

In response to written questions submitted by the committee, Kizer was unequivocal. Does the VISN structure continue to be the preferred organizational model? “In a word, yes.”

Does VHA’s current structure present insurmountable barriers to addressing the problems called out by GAO? “In brief, no.”

Is now the right time for a major restructuring? “In a word, no.”

Kizer noted that several higher priorities should take precedence: successfully implementing the new electronic health record, implementing a new community care contract, fixing wasteful VA-Medicare Advantage spending, and growing leadership skills — “especially given the exodus of so many experienced VHA leaders and managers during the past year.”

What This Means for Veterans

The reorganization is happening. Collins has been clear about that. But the hearing exposed several fault lines veterans should watch:

No finalized plan exists. The VA described what was presented in December as “the start of a discussion” — not a final plan. Goins acknowledged the final version “may look somewhat different” as input continues. The statutory report to Congress under Title 38 § 510(b) has not yet been submitted.

Continuity of care is the stated priority — but there’s no documented plan. When Rep. McGarvey asked for a continuity of care plan, the answers conflicted. Collins and Goins both eventually said “yes,” but McGarvey pointed out: “If you have a continuity of care plan, we haven’t received it.”

The EHR rollout is supposed to be unaffected. The EHRM system goes live April 11 in Michigan, with 13 new sites planned for 2026 and 164 more by 2031. VA leadership committed that the reorganization would not impede the EHR schedule. But Rep. Bazinski revealed that VA canceled its standing meetings with GAO on the EHR program because, per a GAO email, “leadership and resources are strained.” VA has also not nominated a Chief Information Officer.

Women veterans were nearly left out of the org chart. Rep. Brownley noted that the Department of Women’s Health — codified in law under the Deborah Sampson Act of 2021 — did not appear on the reorganization chart. VA officials said it falls under “national programs” on the “enterprise side.” Brownley also raised the rollback of reproductive health access, noting that women in uniform have access to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life, but lose that access when they transition to the VA.

Territories were missing from the map. Rep. Sablan from the Northern Mariana Islands — which has one of the highest per-capita military enlistment rates of any state or territory — pointed out that the reorganization map showed only the continental United States. VA confirmed territories remain under their current oversight assignments, but the omission raised alarms.

What Comes Next

Chairman Bost secured a commitment from Collins to return for additional hearings as the reorganization moves forward. The hearing ended abruptly at 12:30 — Collins’ hard stop — with several members unable to ask their questions and closing statements submitted for the record.

Wasserman Schultz noted this was only the second time Collins had appeared before the committee since being sworn in. Takano pushed for more appearances. Bost agreed to hold more hearings.

The VA must still submit the statutorily required report under 38 U.S.C. § 510(b) before implementation can begin. Collins committed to following the law. Whether the plan that arrives on Capitol Hill will contain the detail Congress is demanding remains to be seen.

In the meantime, veterans are left with a VA that’s shedding staff, promising better outcomes, and asking for trust it hasn’t earned — armed with a slide deck and a half-page letter to justify the largest health care reorganization in three decades.

Make the Call

A phone call takes two minutes. Congressional offices tally every one. If enough people call about the same issue in the same week, staffers flag it for the member. That’s how priorities get made.

Who to call:

• Your own U.S. Representative and Senators — they work for you. Find yours here.

• Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) — Chairman, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-5661

• Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) — Chairman, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 224-6521

• Capitol Switchboard (connects to any member): (202) 224-3121

Script 1: If you’re a veteran or military family member

“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a [veteran / military spouse / family member of a veteran] in [STATE]. I’m calling about the VA’s plan to reorganize the Veterans Health Administration.

On February 11, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee heard testimony that this reorganization will cost $521 million in the first year — money Congress never appropriated. VHA has already lost over 20,400 employees, including more than 1,000 doctors, and the architect of the current system testified that this restructuring is unnecessary and will fail.

I’m asking [MEMBER NAME] to demand a finalized reorganization plan with a documented continuity of care plan before any implementation begins, and to hold additional oversight hearings with independent witnesses.

I’d like to know the [Congressman’s / Senator’s] position on this. Thank you.”

Script 2: If you’re a concerned citizen

“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent in [STATE]. I’m calling about the VA’s plan to restructure veterans’ health care from 18 regions down to five.

Congressional testimony on February 11 revealed this will cost over $500 million that hasn’t been budgeted, and the former VA official who built the current system says it’s the wrong move at the wrong time. The VA has lost thousands of doctors and nurses, and Congress has received only a half-page letter and a slide deck — not a plan.

I’m asking [MEMBER NAME] to demand full transparency, a written continuity of care plan, and additional hearings before this reorganization moves forward.

Thank you for your time.”

Tips:

• You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be a constituent.

• If you get voicemail, leave the message. It still gets counted.

• Call during business hours (9 AM – 5 PM Eastern) for the best chance of reaching a staffer.

About This Publication

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is an independent publication covering VA policy, veteran benefits, and government accountability. It is written by the founder of HadIt.com, one of the oldest veteran-run VA claims communities on the internet (est. 1997). This publication accepts no government funding, no advertising from claims companies, and no editorial input from the VA or any political party.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant — the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. The analysis, perspective, and voice are mine.

For Press and Advocates: Tips, corrections, and media inquiries: founder@hadit.com

Sources: House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Full Committee Oversight Hearing, “Opportunities with VHA Reorganization,” February 11, 2026. (Full hearing video) Written testimony of Secretary Douglas A. Collins. Written testimony of Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, MD, MPH, DCM (submitted for the record). Hearing documents, witness statements, and supporting materials available via the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

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Even as a kid I was what he called hardheaded. I call it tenacious. I keep at it till I achieve my goal or I realize on my own that I need to readjust. On my own. That part matters.

I’ve come a long way from a 650 square foot tract home in a little town outside of St. Louis. I remember walking home from school one day, my usual route, past the Mayor’s house, past the Kroger’s, then across the tracks to my subdivision. And it hit me — I just crossed the tracks. The Mayor’s house is on the other side. That must mean I come from the wrong side of the tracks.

Seemed fitting.

I’m 69 now and if you’ve read any of my stories you know I should have been dead a long time ago. A beat-up kid with no prospects who barely survived getting out of my father’s house. I served my country honorably in the US Navy for eight years and would have made it a career if disability hadn’t ended it.

But God or the Universe had other plans. Instead of serving my country, I was sent down a rough and treacherous path to serve my brothers and sisters in the struggle.

December 1990. Honorably discharged. Medals. Outstanding performance reviews. And I was a broken mess sitting in a puddle of tears. Just like that I became another disabled veteran, nearly unable to function, afraid to admit I needed help, and clueless where to find it.

I ended up at the VA in ‘91. I’ll spare you the details for now — that’s its own story. What matters is that’s where I met my people. It was mostly men back then, quite a few Vietnam veterans, and they took a liking to me. Over coffee, in group therapy, they told me things. How the system worked. How it failed. How long they’d been fighting — as my chief used to say, since I was shitting yellow. They were military veterans but they were also VA veterans, seasoned in a war I was just entering.

I listened. And my righteous outrage grew to the point I had to do something.

So in 1997 I founded HadIt.com, for veterans who had had it with the VA claims system. I had to teach myself the web, coding, VA law — the internet was barely a thing when I started figuring this out in ‘94, ‘95. But I did it. Twenty-nine years of helping my brothers and sisters not get lost in the maze. If it helps one veteran, it’s successful.

Turns out the only thing my father ever got right about me is I have a hard head.

The Gist

HR 6047 cleared the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee on February 12, 2026, on a near party-line vote. The funding mechanism that charges disabled veterans rated 10–70% a fee on VA loan refinances? Still in there. The bill now heads to the full House. There is no Senate version. August 1, 2026 is the effective date. The clock is ticking.

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Two months of silence. That’s what we got after the December 3rd hearing where every major VSO opposed Section 3’s funding mechanism and Sharri Briley and Edgar Edmundson testified with tears in their eyes about what these benefits mean to their families.

Then, on February 12th, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee marked up HR 6047 and reported it out. Five bills moved that day. This was the headliner.

The vote split almost perfectly along party lines. Ten of eleven Democrats voted no. Not because they oppose helping catastrophically disabled veterans or Gold Star families — every single member of that committee supports increasing DIC and SMC. They voted no because Section 3 is still in the bill.

Section 3 is the part that makes you the bank.

What Didn’t Change

The funding mechanism survived markup without amendment. Here’s what that means, same as it did in December:

If you’re rated 10–70% and refinance your VA home loan or take a subsequent loan, you pay a funding fee you’re currently exempt from. That exemption has been in place for the 80-year history of the VA home loan program.

According to Democrats on the committee, the bill would nearly triple the fee veteran homeowners pay to refinance and double the fee for a buyer to assume a VA loan at their existing interest rate.

Chairman Bost still calls it “$35 a month.” The VFW’s math from December still says $27,000 over the life of a loan.

The authority runs from August 1, 2026 through September 30, 2035. Nine years of disabled veterans funding other veterans’ benefits.

What Happened at the Markup

It got ugly.

Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN) proposed redirecting ICE funding from the Department of Homeland Security to cover the cost instead of charging disabled veterans. That amendment failed.

Ranking Member Takano put it plainly: the committee couldn’t support HR 6047 because Republicans chose to fund it by taxing veterans. He also pointed out that Democrats advocated for increases larger than Barrett’s proposed $24 a month for DIC. Twenty-four dollars. That’s the “historic” increase for surviving spouses.

Chairman Bost fired back. He told Democrats to drive to Arlington National Cemetery if they needed a reminder of why they serve on the committee. That line got headlines. What it didn’t do is fix Section 3.

Rep. Van Orden (R-WI), a retired SEAL, told Democrats they must have walked into the wrong committee room when they brought up ICE funding. He said the committee’s job is to take care of veterans.

He’s right about that part. Which is exactly why you don’t make veterans pay for it.

The VSO Split

This is where it gets complicated.

Over 20 veteran service organizations signed on in support of the bill. PVA called the markup an “important step forward” while urging speed.

But the VFW, DAV, and American Legion all opposed the funding mechanism at the December hearing. That tension hasn’t gone away — it’s just been overshadowed by the political theater of the markup vote.

The VSO support letters are for the benefits expansion. Not for Section 3. That distinction matters, and it’s getting lost in the press releases.

What Happens Next

The bill is now eligible for a full House floor vote. Chairman Bost has signaled he wants to move fast.

There is no Senate companion bill. If this passes the House, it still needs Senate action, a companion or amendment, and reconciliation. That’s a long road.

But here’s what worries me: the August 1, 2026 effective date. That’s five and a half months away. If this bill gains momentum and gets attached to a must-pass vehicle — an NDAA provision, a VA funding bill, anything moving fast — Section 3 could become law before most veterans know it happened.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s how Congress works. Bills that stall on their own get folded into larger packages all the time.

The Real Problem Nobody’s Fixing

This entire fight exists because Congress won’t appropriate money for veteran benefits. Every dollar spent on DIC and SMC increases could come from general appropriations. Congress has the power to fund this without touching a single veteran’s wallet.

The estimated cost is $5–10 billion over ten years, depending on whose math you use. For context, the FY2026 Military Construction and VA Appropriations bill that passed the House last year totaled $453 billion. The ICE budget Democrats tried to tap has $30 billion in it.

But Congress chose to make 3.8 million disabled veterans the funding source instead. Both parties bear responsibility for not finding a better way, but only one party wrote Section 3.

What You Can Do

The bill is heading to the House floor. That means your representative — not just committee members — will vote on it.

Call your representative. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Tell them: “I support increasing DIC and SMC benefits. I oppose Section 3 of HR 6047, which charges disabled veterans a funding fee to pay for it. Find another funding source.”

Find your representative: house.gov/representatives

If you’re rated 10–70% and have used or plan to use a VA home loan, this bill directly affects you starting August 1, 2026.

Previously: F*** You for Your Service: HR 6047 and the Bill That Makes Veterans Fund Each Other

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Last verified: February 14, 2026. Bill status confirmed via Congress.gov, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee press releases, and Stars and Stripes reporting.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

They Promised Housing. They Built Garden Sheds.

The VA’s answer to a federal court order: 800 eight-by-eight-foot boxes on a campus donated 137 years ago to house disabled veterans.

Updated March 17, 2026: This article has been updated to name the administration’s “warrior ethos” branding as a through-line connecting the executive order, the DOGE cuts, and the shed housing plan. The phrase appears in Executive Order 14296, the 2026 NDAA, and the 2026 federal budget — each time used to justify policies that reduce what veterans actually receive. Original article published February 12, 2026.

The Gist

A federal court ordered the VA to build thousands of housing units for homeless veterans on its 388-acre West Los Angeles campus — land donated in 1888 specifically for that purpose. The VA’s response? Up to 800 eight-by-eight-foot sheds. No in-unit kitchen. No in-unit bathroom. Not ADA-accessible. Meanwhile, portions of the same campus remain leased to a private prep school and UCLA’s baseball team. The executive order promising 6,000 units has no clear plan, no timeline, and is being implemented by an agency that just cut tens of thousands of staff. The administration calls this “restoring the warrior ethos.” This isn’t a housing plan. It’s a press release dressed up as compliance.

Pallet shelters on the West LA VA campus. Each unit is 8 feet by 8 feet — 64 square feet. No kitchen. No bathroom. The VA calls this "transitional housing." (Photo: VA.gov / Public domain)

In 1888, Senator John Percival Jones and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker donated 300 acres of prime West Los Angeles real estate to the federal government. The condition was simple: use it to house disabled veterans.

One hundred and thirty-seven years later, Air Force veteran George Fleischman sits in one of those 8x8 sheds on that same campus — where he’s been for over three years in what the VA calls “temporary” housing. He uses a wheelchair. He described it as living in the place where you’d keep your lawn mower.

There’s the country’s promise to veterans and what it delivers. And there’s the gap. It’s not getting any smaller.

What the Court Ordered vs. What the VA Built

In September 2024, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued a ruling that didn’t mince words. After years of litigation — the Powers v. McDonough lawsuit filed by disabled veterans in 2022 — he ordered the VA to build 1,800 permanent supportive housing units and 750 temporary units on the West LA campus.

In December 2025, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the order and went further, finding that the VA had “strayed from its mission.”

Then came the January 2026 court hearing where the VA unveiled its compliance plan: hundreds more 8x8 sheds.

The veterans’ attorney, Roman Silberfeld, told the court there was a “disconnect” between what they’d fought for and what the VA proposed. Judge Carter himself questioned whether any veteran on Skid Row would see a move to a shed as an upgrade.

These aren’t tiny homes. They’re 64 square feet. No in-unit kitchen or bathroom — veterans rely on communal shower and restroom facilities outside the shed. They’re searched going in and out. The existing units have proven difficult for anyone using a wheelchair or walker. And “temporary” stays have stretched into years.

They’ve Already Burned Down Once

On September 9, 2022, a lithium battery overheated inside one of these same Pallet shelters on the West LA VA campus. Within minutes, the fire jumped from unit to unit. By the time LAFD arrived, 11 shelters were ablaze.

The damage:

• 12 tiny homes destroyed. 10 more damaged. Twenty-one veterans and one spouse displaced.

• $160,000 in total damage — more than the cost of building 16 new units at $10,000 each.

• Pallet shelters carry a Class C fire rating — the lowest classification. The LAFD does not test them for flammability.

• Fire extinguishers ran out after what one resident described as “a couple of squirts.”

• No fire hydrants at the site. LAFD had to manually extend a supply hose to the nearest one.

• Emergency exits were dog doors — small flaps at floor level. Some were blocked by electrical wiring. Many residents didn’t know they existed. These are disabled veterans. Some are in wheelchairs. A dog door at floor level isn’t an escape — it’s a death trap with a hinge.

• No evacuation plan was given to residents when they moved in.

• Veterans lost medications, housing vouchers, CPAP machines, and clothing. One veteran grabbed his phone and wallet. Everything else burned.

• Fire trucks had difficulty maneuvering because the units were packed so tightly together.

It wasn’t an isolated incident. Pallet shelters had already burned in Banning, Santa Rosa, and Oakland — all before the West LA fire. After the Banning fire destroyed 20 units, Pallet quietly changed the wall materials. The company said the change had nothing to do with fire safety. A fire marshal who reviewed the new material told Curbed it was no less flammable.

After the West LA fire, the VA announced safety improvements: new smoke alarms, a dedicated e-bike charging station, wider access roads, two additional fire hydrants “closer to” the site, and new rules banning extension cords and battery charging inside units. What the VA did not do: upgrade the shelters themselves, install sprinkler systems, change the manufacturer, or improve the fire rating of the structures veterans sleep in every night.

Veteran advocate Rob Reynolds, who arrived on scene that night, told Spectrum News: “The veterans should be inside buildings with sprinkler systems. This wouldn’t have happened. They shouldn’t even be in tiny homes.”

Now the VA wants to build hundreds more of them.

A row of Pallet shelters on the VA campus. Veterans are searched entering and exiting. "Temporary" stays have stretched into years. (Photo: VA.gov / Public domain)

The Campus That Was Stolen in Slow Motion

This didn’t happen overnight.

The West LA VA campus once had a chapel, a theater, a billiard hall. It housed roughly 6,000 veterans. It was, by all accounts, exactly what the donors intended.

Then, starting in the 1970s, the VA began leasing chunks of the property to outside interests. UCLA got a baseball stadium. The Brentwood School — a private K-12 where tuition runs $55,700 a year — got athletic facilities. Oil companies got drilling rights. The VA’s own Inspector General concluded these agreements did not primarily benefit veterans.

While private interests used the campus for profit and prestige, veterans pitched tents on the sidewalk outside the gates. “Veterans Row” along San Vicente Boulevard became a national embarrassment — and a rallying point for the lawsuit that followed.

The Ninth Circuit’s December 2025 ruling invalidated many of those private leases. But it notably let UCLA keep its arrangement. And the VA has been slow to reclaim the rest.

The “Warrior Ethos” Executive Order

In May 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14296 establishing the “National Center for Warrior Independence” on the campus, calling for housing for up to 6,000 veterans by January 2028.

The order’s stated goal: to “restore self-sufficiency and the warrior ethos” among homeless veterans through housing, addiction treatment, and return to “productive work and community engagement.”

The rhetoric was strong. The specifics were nonexistent.

VA Secretary Doug Collins had 120 days to present an action plan. That deadline passed in September 2025. As Task & Purpose reported in December, no full plan has been released — the VA missed its own deadline. The LA Times reported in January 2026 on notices for renovating two buildings on the campus, the first concrete details to emerge eight months after the order was signed.

The 6,000 figure itself raises questions. Current estimates put LA’s homeless veteran population at roughly 3,050, per the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. The executive order envisions bringing veterans from across the country to one campus. Critics — including veteran housing advocates quoted by The Independent and NPR — have warned this could concentrate thousands of vulnerable people in one location without adequate infrastructure, creating a warehouse rather than a community.

And the math doesn’t work on the backend either. The VA told the court it has funding to complete temporary housing by end of 2026, but not the permanent housing portion. Temporary housing, in this context, means more sheds.

The DOGE Contradiction

Now watch the other hand.

The same administration invoking “warrior ethos” launched DOGE-driven cuts that hollowed out the VA’s capacity to deliver on those promises. An internal VA memo obtained by Government Executive in March 2025 called for slashing 83,000 positions — returning staffing to pre-PACT Act 2019 levels. Military.com, Bloomberg, and the VA’s own chief of staff confirmed the target. After sustained backlash, the VA scaled back to 30,000 positions through attrition, according to AFGE. As if cutting fewer people somehow made it acceptable.

But it wasn’t just headcount. The administration gutted the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. It suspended the Veterans and Community Oversight and Engagement Board — the very body charged with overseeing implementation on the West LA campus.

“Warrior ethos” shows up everywhere this administration talks about veterans. It’s in the executive order. It’s in the 2026 NDAA. It’s in the federal budget. And every time, it’s used to brand a policy that delivers less than what veterans were promised. The phrase sounds like honor. It functions as cover.

You can’t build 6,000 housing units while firing the people who process the paperwork, manage the construction, and coordinate the services. You can’t “restore the warrior ethos” by handing a homeless veteran the keys to a 64-square-foot fire trap with no bathroom and no kitchen. But “warrior ethos” makes better copy than “compliance shelter.”

The Voucher Dead End

Even for veterans who make it through the shed pipeline and get approved for permanent housing, the path doesn’t end. It just hits another wall.

As of early February 2026, hundreds of HUD-VASH vouchers — housing vouchers created specifically for veterans — sit unused in Los Angeles because landlords won’t accept them. Army veteran Charles Nelson, his wife, and their young son went through the sheds, then a hotel, then finally got a voucher. They were among the lucky ones.

The voucher system only works if there’s housing on the other end. In LA’s rental market, that’s increasingly a fiction.

What This Really Is

I’ve been documenting VA patterns for 29 years. This one is familiar.

The VA gets caught failing veterans. Courts or Congress order a fix. The VA complies on paper with the cheapest, fastest, most minimal response it can get away with. Officials issue statements about their “commitment.” The press cycle moves on. Veterans keep waiting.

The sheds aren’t a housing solution. They’re a compliance strategy.

The executive order isn’t a plan. It’s a talking point.

The “warrior ethos” isn’t a policy. It’s a brand.

And the 388 acres donated in 1888 to house disabled veterans still hosts a prep school’s athletic complex — while the veterans those acres were meant for live in boxes the size of a parking space.

You don’t “restore the warrior ethos” by housing a homeless veteran in a shed smaller than your garage. You restore it by keeping the promise this country made when that veteran signed a contract giving up their life to defend it.

What You Can Do

If you’re a veteran or family member:

• The Powers v. McDonough case is back before Judge Carter for implementation. Watch for updates from the veterans’ legal team.

• Contact your congressional representatives and ask specifically what they’re doing about the West LA campus.

If you’re an advocate or journalist:

• The VA’s 120-day action plan for the National Center for Warrior Independence was due in September 2025. Where is it? FOIA it.

• Track the private leases. Which ones have been terminated? Which are still active?

If you’re a voter:

• Don’t let anyone claim credit for “solving” veteran homelessness by building sheds. Demand permanent housing with real services.

• Ask candidates whether they support fully funding the court-ordered housing — permanent units, not emergency shelters rebranded as progress.

• The next time you hear “warrior ethos” in a speech or a press release, ask what it actually delivered.

The West LA VA campus is the most visible example, but the pattern repeats nationwide. When the country decides veterans deserve housing, it means apartments with in-unit kitchens and bathrooms and support services — not lawn mower sheds with a new coat of paint.

If this piece was useful, share it. The veterans living in those sheds can’t amplify their own stories from inside an 8x8 box.

Make the Call

A phone call takes two minutes. Congressional offices tally every one. If enough people call about the same issue in the same week, staffers flag it for the member. That’s how priorities get made.

Who to call:

• Your own U.S. Representative and Senators — they work for you. Find yours here.

• Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) — Chairman, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-5661

• Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) — Chairman, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 224-6521

• Capitol Switchboard (connects to any member): (202) 224-3121

Script 1: If you’re a veteran or military family member

“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a [veteran / military spouse / family member of a veteran] in [STATE]. I’m calling about the VA’s plan to house homeless veterans in 8-by-8-foot Pallet shelters at the West LA VA campus — the same shelters that caught fire in 2022 and burned 12 units in minutes. These carry the lowest fire safety rating available. Emergency exits are floor-level flaps that a veteran in a wheelchair can’t use.

A federal court ordered permanent housing. The VA is responding with sheds. I’m asking [MEMBER NAME] to demand that the VA provide construction timelines for permanent, ADA-accessible housing units — not emergency shelters rebranded as compliance — and to hold oversight hearings on the West LA campus plan.

I’d like to know the [Congressman’s / Senator’s] position on this. Thank you.”

Script 2: If you’re a concerned citizen

“Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent in [STATE]. I’m calling about the VA’s response to a federal court order requiring housing for homeless veterans at the West LA campus in Los Angeles. Instead of permanent housing, the VA is proposing hundreds of 64-square-foot sheds with no kitchen, no bathroom, and no sprinkler system. The same shelters caught fire in 2022 — 12 units burned in minutes.

I’m asking [MEMBER NAME] to support oversight hearings on the West LA VA housing plan and to push for permanent housing construction with real timelines, not temporary shelters that have already proven unsafe.

Thank you for your time.”

Tips:

• You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be a constituent.

• If you get voicemail, leave the message. It still gets counted.

• Call during business hours (9 AM – 5 PM Eastern) for the best chance of reaching a staffer.

• Be polite, be brief, and state your ask clearly.

• If a staffer asks follow-up questions, it means they’re taking notes. That’s good.

Why calls matter more than emails:

Congressional offices rank constituent contact by perceived effort and urgency. Here’s how they actually process what you send:

• Phone calls get logged in real time by issue and position (for/against). A staffer marks it in their system the moment you hang up. When a member asks “what are people calling about this week,” your call is in that count. High volume on a single issue in a short window triggers a staff briefing. This is the most effective single action you can take.

• Personal emails (not form letters) get read, categorized, and usually receive a response — but they sit in a queue. Most offices process constituent mail in batches. Your email might not get logged for days. It still counts, but it doesn’t create the same real-time pressure as a ringing phone.

• Form emails and petitions (pre-written “click to send” campaigns) get the lowest weight. Offices batch-count them. They know you clicked a button. It’s better than silence, but staffers treat one personal phone call as worth more than dozens of form emails.

• Letters to the editor in your local paper punch way above their weight. Congressional offices have staff assigned to clip and track local media mentions of their boss. One published letter is perceived as representing 100+ constituent concerns — because it’s public, it influences other voters, and it can get picked up by larger outlets.

• Op-eds in local or regional papers get flagged immediately and often become talking points in internal staff briefings.

The most effective combination: Call first. Follow up with a personal email. Then write a letter to the editor. Each one escalates the pressure through a different channel.

Go Deeper

Write a Letter to the Editor (10 minutes — worth 100 phone calls in perceived impact)

Most local papers accept 150–200 word letters. Mention your representative by name. State your veteran status if applicable. Stick to facts from this article.

• Localize it — mention your rep by name and your nearest VA facility

• Keep it under 200 words

• Editors prioritize veteran voices on veteran issues

• Don’t submit the same letter to multiple papers simultaneously

Contact Your VSO

If you’re a member of VFW, DAV, American Legion, VVA, IAVA, or any other Veterans Service Organization — contact your local chapter and ask what their position is on the West LA housing plan. VSOs have lobbying power. Use it.

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Forward it. Post it. Print it. The veterans affected by these decisions often can’t amplify their own stories. You can.

About This Publication

Tbird’s Quiet Fight is independent investigative journalism focused on VA policy, veteran benefits, and government accountability. Published by the founder of HadIt.com, one of the oldest veteran-run VA claims communities online (est. 1997).

Tips and sources: ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com (encrypted options available on request)

Support this work: Subscribe to TQF | Support HadIt.com

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor.

For Press and Advocates

Story tips or collaboration:

• Tbird (TQF / HadIt.com): ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com

Congressional oversight contacts:

• House Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 225-9756 | veterans.house.gov

• Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: (202) 224-9126 | veterans.senate.gov

Investigative journalists covering VA/veteran policy:

• Suzanne Gordon — American Prospect

• Jasper Craven — American Prospect

• Nikki Wentling — Stars and Stripes

• Leo Shane III — Military Times

• Quil Lawrence — NPR

• Abbie Bennett — Military.com

Veteran advocacy organizations:

• VoteVets

• Vietnam Veterans of America

• Disabled American Veterans (DAV)

• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)

• National Veterans Legal Services Program

• Veterans Legal Clinic — Harvard Law

Government watchdog resources:

• VA Office of Inspector General

• Government Accountability Office — Veterans

• Federal Register — VA Notices

• USAspending.gov (track federal contracts and grants)

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Task & Purpose, LAist, Spectrum News, Military.com, Government Executive, Bloomberg, AFGE, Knock LA, Stars & Stripes, court filings in Powers v. McDonough (C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:22-cv-08357), White House Executive Order 14296 (May 9, 2025), Federal Register (90 FR 20369), VA safety protocol press release (Oct. 2022), Invisible People, Planetizen, 2026 NDAA, 2026 Federal Budget, VA Office of Inspector General reports, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling (December 2025), 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I'd use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

The Gist

They’re going to tell you this contract is about “choice,” that no employees were fired, and that oversight mechanisms are built in. Here’s what the evidence actually says — twelve arguments, twelve answers, every one sourced.

After publishing “The Trillion-Dollar Handoff Nobody Voted On,” I expect pushback. Not from veterans — from the people who stand to profit from this contract and the people paid to defend it.

Here are the arguments they’ll make, and what the evidence actually says.

“This isn’t privatization. It’s choice.”

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That’s been the talking point since the MISSION Act passed in 2018. And at 20% of veteran health care flowing to the private sector, it was defensible.

It’s not 20% anymore. Community care now consumes over 40% of all veteran health care. The FY2026 budget request puts community care spending at $48 billion — a 26% increase from $38 billion the year before. Secretary Collins just authorized full-year referrals for 30 medical conditions, eliminating the requirement that veterans return to VA periodically for reauthorization.

When half the system runs through private contractors, “choice” starts looking a lot like “default.”

A supplement is choice. A parallel system replacing the original is a structural shift. Call it what it is.

“No VA employees were removed. We eliminated unfilled positions.”

Technically true. Strategically devastating.

VA lost approximately 30,000 employees in 2025 through attrition, early retirements, and a hiring freeze. Another 25,000 vacant positions were eliminated in December. The department that hired 62,000 people in a single year to implement the PACT Act is now running with fewer staff than it had before the law passed.

An unfilled position isn’t an abstraction. It’s a nurse who didn’t get hired. A mental health provider who isn’t seeing patients. A claims processor who isn’t reducing the backlog.

Eliminating the vacancy doesn’t make the need disappear. It just guarantees the need goes unmet — and that the veteran gets referred to community care instead.

That’s the ratchet: fewer staff → longer wait times → more community care referrals → bigger contracts → less justification for VA staffing. It only turns one direction.

“The contract includes quality metrics and oversight mechanisms.”

Show me.

Chairman Bost — a Republican, not a partisan critic — told the January 22 hearing that his staff and the ranking member’s staff were told “some topics are off limits because of the sensitive nature of the contract and solicitation.”

If Congress can’t see the oversight mechanisms, they aren’t oversight mechanisms. They’re marketing language in a procurement document.

The committee named its own hearing “One Trillion Dollars of Oversight” — after the oversight failure, not before. When the body constitutionally charged with overseeing VA spending learns the contract details at the same time the insurance companies do, the word “oversight” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

“Federal procurement law limits what VA can disclose during an active solicitation.”

They’ll lean hard on this one, and it’s partially true. Federal Acquisition Regulation does restrict what agencies can discuss publicly during an active procurement to prevent unfair competitive advantage.

But there’s a difference between protecting competitive integrity and keeping Congress in the dark about a trillion-dollar structural shift in veteran health care. The House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees have classified briefing capabilities. They receive sensitive information on military and intelligence matters routinely. The idea that VA couldn’t brief the oversight committees before posting the RFP — while simultaneously providing details to potential vendors — doesn’t hold up.

A source told Military Times that the VA provided no information to the committee’s Democratic leadership before the December 15 announcement. They chose who to tell and when. Congress wasn’t on the list.

“Community care saves lives in rural areas. You want to take that away?”

No. And the article says so explicitly.

Here’s what I actually wrote: “The question isn’t whether community care has a role — it does, and it should, especially in rural areas where VA facilities don’t exist. The question is whether you build a system that creates those facilities, or one that profits from their absence.”

Community care as a bridge while VA builds capacity in underserved areas? Absolutely. Community care as the permanent replacement for a system that could serve those veterans directly with better outcomes and lower overhead? That’s a different conversation — and that’s the one they don’t want to have.

At $70 billion per year, you could build hundreds of new VA clinics and hire hundreds of thousands of staff. A major VA health care center like the one in Charlotte cost $104 million. A new community-based outpatient clinic like the one Congress just authorized for Hampton Roads cost $79.7 million. At the low end of this contract, you could build dozens of new medical centers and hundreds of new clinics every single year. In five years, there wouldn’t be a rural veteran in America more than 45 minutes from a VA facility.

They’ll tell you it can’t be done. What they mean is it’s not as profitable as routing the money through private insurance companies.

“VA’s administrative cost comparison is misleading. You’re not counting facility costs.”

Fair point — and worth addressing honestly.

The 1.3% vs. 12-18% comparison (VA/Medicare administrative costs versus private insurers) comes from Dr. Rachel Madley’s testimony to the House Veterans Affairs Committee and reflects how administrative overhead is typically measured across health care systems. It’s a standard comparison used by CMS, GAO, and health policy researchers.

Critics will argue that VA’s low administrative percentage doesn’t account for the cost of maintaining an entire federal hospital system — capital investment, building maintenance, pension obligations — which are budgeted separately. That’s a legitimate accounting question.

But it cuts both ways. Private insurers’ 12-18% overhead also doesn’t capture the full cost of their system: the lobbying, the litigation, the executive compensation, the shareholder returns. UnitedHealth Group reported $25.7 billion in adjusted profit in 2024. Its CEO earned $26.3 million. The six major health insurance CEOs earned a collective $159.4 million. None of that shows up in the overhead calculation either.

Even if you double or triple VA’s administrative cost estimate to account for facilities, it’s still dramatically lower than the private sector. The gap narrows but doesn’t close.

“The MISSION Act passed with bipartisan support. Congress already voted for this.”

Congress voted for community care as a component of veteran health care. The MISSION Act expanded access standards and established a framework for community care referrals. It did not authorize a trillion-dollar contract that restructures the entire VA health system into a payer model.

There’s a difference between “veterans should be able to see a private doctor when VA can’t see them quickly enough” and “let’s route half of all veteran health care through private insurance companies for the next decade.”

The MISSION Act set eligibility criteria. CCN Next Gen sets the infrastructure. They’re not the same thing — and the scale of this contract goes far beyond what Congress debated in 2018.

“Veterans are satisfied with community care.”

Some are. Especially veterans in rural areas who’d otherwise drive three hours to a VAMC. That’s real, and it matters.

But satisfaction surveys don’t capture what veterans lose when the system shifts underneath them. They don’t measure the research that won’t happen because VA’s bench-to-bedside pipeline shrinks. They don’t measure the specialty expertise that disappears when VA spinal cord injury centers and blind rehabilitation programs lose patient volume. They don’t capture the institutional memory lost when your health record stops being tracked by one integrated system across your entire post-service life.

Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of IAVA, told Congress: “Community care is a vital part of overall veterans’ health care, but especially as we consider rising costs, we need to be clear that the evidence does not bear out that community care is a meaningful replacement for all direct VA care.”

Satisfaction with an individual appointment isn’t the same as satisfaction with losing the system that was built to take care of you for life.

“The cost savings in the contract will actually reduce spending.”

VA projects $54 to $100 billion in savings over the contract’s life through better care management and EHR interoperability.

Those projections depend on VA’s electronic health record modernization actually working. The same VA has already spent $13.8 billion on the Oracle Health EHR project, which was paused in 2023 after deploying to just five sites. As of February 2025, 94% of VA medical centers still don’t have the new system. GAO has made 18 recommendations on the project, 16 of which remain unimplemented.

Projecting $54-100 billion in savings on a technology foundation with a $16 billion track record of underdelivering isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s faith-based budgeting.

“TriWest settled those DOJ allegations. That’s old news.”

TriWest paid $179.7 million to the Department of Justice in 2020 to resolve allegations it retained overpayments from the VA, including cases where VA paid twice for the same services. That was the second settlement in eight years — the first was $10 million in 2012 for allegedly defrauding TRICARE.

Calling it “old news” is a choice. The DOJ press release is still on their website. The settlement is a matter of public record. And the company is bidding on a contract worth up to a trillion dollars in veteran health care spending.

If you applied for a VA job and had two fraud settlements in your background, you wouldn’t get hired. But if you’re a corporation, apparently you get to bid on the biggest contract in government history.

“You’re fearmongering. Nobody’s closing VA hospitals.”

Nobody has to close them. You just defund them gradually.

Cut staff through attrition and hiring freezes. Eliminate vacant positions so replacements can’t be hired. Expand community care eligibility so more veterans are seen outside VA. Watch internal patient volume drop. Use the declining volume to justify further staff reductions. Repeat.

The building stays open. The sign stays on the wall. But the doctors, the researchers, the specialized programs — they’re gone. And by the time anyone notices, the contract is ten years in and the political cost of reversing it is higher than the cost of letting it continue.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a budget cycle.

“You’re just anti-private sector.”

I’m anti-accountability vacuum. I’m anti-trillion-dollar contract with no congressional vote. I’m anti-insurance companies managing health care for 9 million veterans when those same companies deny 4.1 million prior authorization requests per year and count on 88.5% of those denials never being appealed — even though 80.7% of the ones that areappealed get overturned.

The private sector has a role in veteran health care. But that role should be defined by Congress, overseen by Congress, and accountable to veterans — not defined by a procurement document posted two weeks before Christmas while nobody was watching.

“So what do you actually want?”

Six things:

Pause. Delay the March 16 proposal deadline until Congress has conducted full oversight. A decade-long contract worth up to a trillion dollars can survive a 90-day review. If it can’t, that tells you something.

Transparency. Full congressional briefing on contract terms, cost projections, and quality metrics before any contract is awarded. No more “off limits” topics.

Investment. Redirect a meaningful portion of community care spending into VA staffing, facilities, and research. Build the system instead of outsourcing around its gaps.

Accountability. Past performance — including DOJ settlements — should be a weighted factor in contract evaluation. Companies that overcharged taxpayers shouldn’t be rewarded with bigger contracts.

Oversight. Real-time reporting to Congress on community care spending, veteran outcomes, and contractor performance. Not annual reports filed after the money’s been spent.

A vote. A structural change of this magnitude — potentially converting the VA from a health care provider to a health care payer — should require legislation, not just a procurement action. If it’s good policy, it can survive a vote.

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Tbird is a Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983-1990) and founder of HadIt.com, one of the oldest veteran-run VA disability claims communities on the internet (est. 1997). For 29 years, HadIt.com has operated on one principle: Leave No One Behind. Contact: founder@hadit.com

This article is for informational purposes only. HadIt.com does not provide legal advice. For assistance with your specific VA claim, consult an accredited Veterans Service Organization (VSO) or VA-accredited attorney. Find accredited representatives at VA.gov’s eBenefits.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine. — Tbird

Sources cited in this FAQ are drawn from the original article, “The Trillion-Dollar Handoff Nobody Voted On.”Full source list available there.

The Gist

The VA is handing up to $1 trillion in veteran health care to private insurance companies over the next decade. Congress wasn’t briefed before the contract dropped. The oversight committee was told some topics were off-limits. No vote is required. Proposals are due March 16, 2026 — five weeks from now.

This article breaks down the money, the players, and what it means for your claim.

On December 15, 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs dropped a Request for Proposals that will reshape how 9 million veterans get their health care for the next decade.

The price tag: up to $700 billion. Some estimates put it closer to $1 trillion.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee — the body constitutionally charged with overseeing VA spending — learned the details at the same time the insurance companies did.

No vote. No advance briefing. No public debate.

Just a procurement document posted on SAM.gov two weeks before Christmas.

What Is CCN Next Gen?

The Community Care Network Next Generation contract replaces the current system that lets veterans get VA-covered medical care from private providers. Right now, two companies — Optum (owned by UnitedHealth Group) and TriWest Healthcare Alliance — manage five regional networks covering every state and territory.

The new contract collapses those five regions into two: East and West. It restructures the entire relationship between the VA, private insurance companies, and the community providers who actually treat veterans.

This is the second time VA has issued large contracts with health plans to coordinate private-sector care. The first was in 2018, after the MISSION Act. Those contracts are expiring. What replaces them will define whether the VA remains a health care provider — or becomes a health care payer.

That distinction matters more than anything else in this conversation.

The Numbers Tell the Story

Community care already consumes over 40% of all veteran health care. The FY2026 budget request puts community care spending at $48 billion — up 26% from $38 billion the year before. Secretary Collins announced full-year authorizations for 30 medical conditions, eliminating the requirement that veterans return to VA every few months for reauthorization.

That’s not expanding access. That’s building an exit ramp from VA care.

Meanwhile, VA lost approximately 30,000 employees in 2025 through attrition, early retirements, and the hiring freeze. Another 25,000 vacant positions were eliminated in December. The department that hired 62,000 people in a single year to implement the PACT Act is now running with fewer staff than it had before the law passed.

Fewer VA staff means longer wait times. Longer wait times mean more veterans get referred to community care. More community care volume means bigger contracts. Bigger contracts mean less justification for VA staffing.

It’s a ratchet. And it only turns one direction.

For 29 years, veteran communities like HadIt.com have operated on a simple principle: Leave No One Behind. That principle doesn’t work when the system designed to catch you is being outsourced to companies that get paid whether you fall or not.

Congress Found Out Last

On January 22, 2026, the House Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing titled “Community Care Network Next Generation: One Trillion Dollars of Oversight.”

Read that title again. Congress named its own hearing after the oversight failure.

Chairman Mike Bost — a Republican from Illinois, not a partisan critic of this administration — opened with a statement that should alarm every veteran in America:

“I understand the VA finds it unprecedented to hold a hearing on an active contract solicitation. I appreciate the sensitivity of the contract, but it is also unprecedented to avoid Congress’s oversight of $1 trillion of spending. My staff and the ranking member’s staff have been told that some topics are off limits because of the sensitive nature of the contract and solicitation.”

Read that again. Seriously, read it again: “My staff and the ranking member’s staff have been told that some topics are off limits because of the sensitive nature of the contract and solicitation.”

WITAF.

The committee that oversees VA was told there were topics they couldn’t ask about regarding a contract worth more than the annual GDP of most countries. Bipartisan staff — both Republican and Democrat — were kept in the dark.

The ranking Democrat on the committee wasn’t even briefed before the RFP dropped. A source told Military Times that the VA provided no information to the committee’s Democratic leadership before the December 15 announcement.

This is not how a democracy handles a trillion dollars.

Who Benefits?

The current CCN is managed by Optum — a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance company on Earth — and TriWest Healthcare Alliance. Under the new structure, VA says “multiple national and regional health plans” can compete.

That sounds good on paper. But expert testimony at the January 22 hearing exposed serious structural problems.

Dr. Rachel Madley, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Democracy, told the committee that the proposed contracts create inherent conflicts of interest. Insurance companies that are increasingly consolidating with medical providers would be building their own provider networks and scheduling patients into them. The incentive to steer veterans toward providers the contractor owns — rather than the best providers for the veteran — is baked into the structure.

The contracts also require “value-based care” models. In a not-for-profit system, these can work. When operated by corporations whose primary obligation is shareholder profit, they can lead to rationed care.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky put it plainly: “I don’t trust big insurance companies to take care of anybody. The sole thing that motivates them is profit. It’s not people, and it’s certainly not our veterans.”

The Privatization They Swore Wasn’t Happening

VA leadership has been saying for years that community care isn’t privatization. It’s “choice.” It’s “access.” It’s “modernization.”

But the math doesn’t lie.

When community care was 20% of veteran health care, it was a supplement. At 40%, it’s a parallel system. At 50% or higher — which is where these contracts are headed — the VA becomes an insurance company with a hospital system it’s slowly defunding.

Dr. Madley’s testimony laid out the data: increasing funding for community care decreases funding for VHA direct care. The VA’s own hospitals provide care more efficiently, with significantly lower administrative overhead. Traditional Medicare — the closest public-sector comparison — runs administrative costs around 1.3% of total spending. Private insurers typically run 12-18%. Madley told the committee that VA administrative costs are comparable to Medicare’s, making them roughly ten times lower than the private insurance companies now bidding on CCN Next Gen. Veterans seen at VA facilities face shorter wait times for many services and receive better outcomes for exposure-related illness and mental health.

Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and a Marine veteran, testified to Congress in July 2025: “Community care is a vital part of overall veterans’ health care, but especially as we consider rising costs, we need to be clear that the evidence does not bear out that community care is a meaningful replacement for all direct VA care.”

The evidence says VA care is often better and cheaper.

The contract says we’re buying more of the alternative.

What a Payer Doesn’t Do

This is the part nobody in the procurement office wants to talk about.

When the VA is a health care provider, it does things no insurance company will ever do. When it becomes a health care payer — which is what a trillion-dollar contract with private insurance companies makes it — those things disappear. Not all at once. Gradually. Then all at once.

Research vanishes. VA operates one of the most important medical research programs in the world. Nearly 80% of VA researchers also provide direct patient care — they’re not in a lab somewhere, they’re treating you on Tuesday and running a clinical trial on Wednesday. That bench-to-bedside pipeline produced the implantable cardiac pacemaker. The CAT scan. The nicotine patch. The first successful liver transplant. The shingles vaccine. Three Nobel Prizes. Seven Lasker Awards. The Million Veteran Program — one of the largest genomic databases on Earth — exists because VA researchers can track health outcomes across millions of veterans over decades.

UnitedHealth Group doesn’t do that. Optum doesn’t do that. No private insurance company runs long-term research on burn pit exposure, Agent Orange cancers, or Gulf War illness. They don’t have to. Their obligation is to shareholders, not to the 23-year-old Marine who inhaled toxic fumes at a burn pit in Balad and won’t develop symptoms for another fifteen years.

VA researchers recently found that veterans exposed to military burn pits had three times the level of carbon particles in their lungs compared to unexposed people. They found that toxic exposure increased suicidal ideation by 50%. That research happened because VA doctors treat burn pit veterans and study burn pit exposure in the same integrated system.

A payer writes a check. A provider finds out why you’re dying.

Training collapses. More than 70% of all U.S. doctors received training at a VA facility. Every year, VA trains 62,000 medical students and residents, 23,000 nurses, and 33,000 other health care trainees. No single institution in America trains more doctors or nurses. When VA hospitals shrink because the patients are being routed to community care, the training pipeline shrinks with them. That doesn’t just hurt veterans — it hurts every American who will eventually need a doctor.

Specialized expertise walks out the door. Your local community hospital doesn’t have a spinal cord injury center. It doesn’t have a blind rehabilitation program. It doesn’t have clinicians who’ve spent their careers treating combat PTSD, traumatic brain injury, military sexual trauma, or the specific pattern of blast injuries from IEDs. VA built those specialties because the private market never would — there’s no profit margin in treating a Vietnam veteran’s Agent Orange-related peripheral neuropathy forty years after exposure.

When a private insurer takes over care coordination, veterans get routed to whatever provider is in-network. Not whoever knows the most about their condition. Whoever costs the least.

The Fourth Mission dies. VA has a statutory obligation — its “Fourth Mission” — to serve as the nation’s medical backstop during emergencies and disasters. During COVID, VA deployed personnel to over 50 states and territories, treating veterans and non-veterans alike. VA maintains 48 Federal Coordinating Centers for mass casualty events. During Hurricane Maria, VA deployed hundreds of employees to Puerto Rico in rotating two-week shifts.

Insurance companies don’t deploy to disaster zones. They process claims from disaster zones. There’s a difference.

Institutional memory evaporates. VA tracks your health across your entire post-service life. It connects the knee injury from jump school in 1987 to the degenerative arthritis claim in 2026. It links the Gulf War deployment to the unexplained chronic fatigue twenty years later. That longitudinal view — one patient, one system, decades of data — is what makes VA uniquely capable of identifying service-connected conditions that private doctors don’t think to look for.

A community care provider sees you for an episode. VA sees you for a lifetime. Or it used to.

Prior authorization enters the chat. Here’s what veterans using community care need to understand about the insurance companies bidding on CCN Next Gen: according to a KFF analysis of CMS data, Medicare Advantage plans — run by the same companies — denied 4.1 million prior authorization requests in 2024. Only 11.5% of those denials were appealed. But of the ones that were appealed, 80.7% of the denials were overturned. That means millions of people were denied care they were entitled to, and most of them never fought back.

That’s the business model. Deny first, pay later, count on people giving up.

Now imagine that model managing health care for 9 million veterans.

Who Gets Richer

This is the part you’re not supposed to ask.

UnitedHealth Group — the parent company of Optum, which currently manages community care in three of VA’s five regions — reported $400.3 billion in revenue in 2024. That’s not a typo. Four hundred billion. Its adjusted profit was $25.7 billion. Its CEO, Andrew Witty, earned $26.3 million in total compensation that year — 348 times the median salary of a UnitedHealth employee. The six major national health insurance CEOs earned a collective $159.4 million in 2024.

TriWest Healthcare Alliance, which manages the other two VA regions, has its own history. In 2020, TriWest agreed to pay $179.7 million to the Department of Justice to resolve allegations that it retained overpayments from the VA — including cases where VA paid TriWest twice for the same services. That was the second settlement in eight years. In 2012, TriWest paid $10 million to settle allegations it defrauded TRICARE by billing the government higher rates than it had negotiated with providers.

These are the companies bidding on CCN Next Gen. These are the companies that will manage up to a trillion dollars in veteran health care over the next decade.

Every dollar that flows through a private administrator generates overhead that doesn’t exist when VA treats you directly. Administrative costs. Network management fees. Executive compensation. Shareholder returns. Profit margins. Lobbying budgets. Legal departments built to fight the same claims they’re paid to process.

When VA treats a veteran at a VA hospital, one hundred cents of every dollar goes to care, training, and research. When VA pays a private insurer to arrange that same care in the community, some portion of every dollar is siphoned into corporate infrastructure that has nothing to do with whether a veteran gets better.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a business model. And the CCN Next Gen contract is about to scale it up by a factor of ten.

The Math Nobody’s Running

Here’s the question Congress should be asking but isn’t: What would happen if that same money went directly into VA?

The CCN Next Gen contract is estimated at $70 to $100 billion per year at peak. Even at the low end, that’s $70 billion annually flowing to private companies to arrange care that VA could provide itself — if anyone bothered to invest in it.

Let’s run the math they won’t.

Staffing. The average VA employee salary is roughly $73,000 per year. At $70 billion, you could hire 958,000 full-time VA employees. VA currently employs about 400,000 people. You could more than triple the workforce. You wouldn’t need to — but even dedicating a quarter of that spending to new hires would add 239,000 doctors, nurses, mental health providers, and claims processors to a system that everyone agrees is understaffed.

Facilities. Congress recently authorized $79.7 million for a single new community-based outpatient clinic in Hampton Roads. A major VA health care center in Charlotte cost $104 million. Full VA medical center replacements — like the New Orleans facility built after Katrina — run $1 billion or more. These aren’t cheap. But at $70 billion a year, you could build dozens of new medical centers and hundreds of new clinics — every single year. In five years, there wouldn’t be a rural veteran in America more than 45 minutes from a VA facility.

Wait times. The entire justification for community care is that VA can’t see you fast enough. But VA can’t see you fast enough because Congress has systematically underfunded staffing while simultaneously expanding eligibility through the PACT Act. The answer to “we don’t have enough doctors” isn’t “send the patient somewhere else at twice the cost.” It’s hire more doctors.

Research. VA’s entire research budget is approximately $2 billion per year. That $2 billion produced the cardiac pacemaker, the CAT scan, the nicotine patch, the shingles vaccine, and three Nobel Prizes. Imagine what happens with $4 billion. Or $10 billion. That’s the kind of investment that produces the next breakthrough in TBI treatment, the next generation of prosthetics, the next discovery about burn pit exposure — research that no private insurer will ever fund because there’s no quarterly earnings call where “we figured out why Gulf War veterans are dying” moves the stock price.

The real cost comparison. Community care consistently costs VA more per patient than treating that same veteran in-house. VA’s own data has shown this repeatedly. Madley told Congress that VA’s administrative costs are comparable to Medicare’s — roughly 1.3% of total spending — while private insurers run 12-18%. That means for every $100 spent through community care, $12 to $18 goes to overhead. Through VA directly? About $1.30.

Over a decade, at $700 billion to $1 trillion in contract value, that overhead gap translates to somewhere between $75 billion and $167 billion in administrative costs alone — money that buys no care, treats no veteran, and funds no research. It pays for executive suites, shareholder dividends, and lobbyists who will argue for even more privatization next year.

Nobody in the procurement office is running this comparison. Nobody in Congress is demanding it. The question isn’t whether community care has a role — it does, and it should, especially in rural areas where VA facilities don’t exist. The question is whether you build a system that creates those facilities, or one that profits from their absence.

Right now, we’re choosing the second one.

The Promise Wasn’t a Contract

Buried in the contract details is a $300 million investment to modernize VA’s electronic health record system to industry standards. Richard Topping, VA’s assistant secretary for management, told Congress this is essential because VA’s current system is “more than 30 years old” and requires manual loading of patient records.

This is the same VA that has already obligated $13.8 billion on EHR modernization — the Oracle Health project — with life cycle cost estimates ranging from VA’s own $16.1 billion to an independent estimate of $49.8 billion, according to GAO. The project was paused in 2023 after deploying to just five sites, restarted in late 2024, and remains one of the most troubled IT programs in federal history. As of February 2025, 94% of VA medical centers still don’t have the new system.

Now the CCN Next Gen contract bets on EHR interoperability as a central feature. If it works, records flow seamlessly. If it doesn’t — and there’s a $16 billion track record suggesting it might not — veterans’ medical records get lost between systems. Again.

The contract’s promised 8-14% cost savings over the decade depend on this interoperability working. The VA is projecting $54 to $100 billion in reduced community care spending from better management. That projection is built on a technology foundation that has failed repeatedly — and that GAO has flagged with 18 recommendations, 16 of which remain unimplemented as of December 2025.

What This Means for Your Claim

If you’re a veteran with a VA disability claim, a pending appeal, or a service-connected condition being treated at a VA facility, this contract matters.

Here’s why:

Your medical records could change hands. The shift to new contractors means your community care records may be managed by different companies. If you’re building a claim that depends on treatment records from a community provider, make sure you have personal copies of everything. Don’t rely on the system to maintain continuity during a contractor transition.

Access patterns may shift. If you’re currently seen at a VA facility and referred to community care, the referral process, the provider network, and the authorization timeline are all changing. The full-year authorizations for 30 conditions sound convenient — until the provider network changes and your doctor isn’t in it anymore.

The workforce cuts affect claims processing. The same staff reductions that push more health care to community care also affect VBA — the arm that processes disability claims. Fewer employees processing more claims means longer waits. The PACT Act created millions of newly eligible veterans. The staff hired to process those claims is being cut.

Document everything yourself. In a system undergoing this much structural change, institutional memory disappears. Keep copies of every appointment, every diagnosis, every referral. Build your evidence file like nobody’s going to do it for you.

Because increasingly, nobody is.

Five Weeks

Proposals for the CCN Next Gen contract are due March 16, 2026.

Five weeks from the day this article publishes.

Once those proposals are submitted and contracts awarded, the structural shift is locked in for a decade. The contracts include a three-year base term with three two-year option periods and a one-year extension — up to ten years total.

This isn’t a policy proposal. It’s not a CBO budget option. It’s not a bill sitting in committee.

It’s a procurement action. It requires no vote. No filibuster. No signing ceremony. Just a contracting officer and a pen.

By the time most veterans hear about it, it will be done.

What You Can Do

Contact your representatives. Both the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees have signaled they want more oversight. Tell them to demand full transparency before contracts are awarded. The hearing on January 22 was, in Chairman Bost’s words, “only the beginning.” Make sure it’s not the end.

Contact the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. They’re planning additional hearings on CCN Next Gen. Your voice — especially if you use community care — matters in shaping those hearings.

Talk to your VSO. Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and other organizations have been raising concerns. Make sure they know this is a priority for their members.

File your claims now. If you’ve been waiting to file a disability claim or an increase, the current system — with its current staffing, current rating criteria, and current VA infrastructure — is the system you want processing your claim. What comes after the structural changes may not be.

Keep your records. If you receive any care through community care, request and keep copies of all medical records, referral authorizations, and treatment documentation. Contractor transitions are when records disappear.

The Promise

Abraham Lincoln’s promise — “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” — is carved into the wall at VA headquarters in Washington.

It doesn’t say “to purchase care from the lowest bidder.”

It doesn’t say “to issue an IDIQ contract for care management services.”

It doesn’t say “to outsource the obligation to corporations whose legal duty is to maximize shareholder value.”

The VA was built to provide care. Not to broker it.

A trillion-dollar contract awarded without a congressional vote, briefed to oversight committees at the same time as vendors, with topics declared off-limits to the people’s elected representatives — that’s not modernization.

That’s a handoff.

And if veterans don’t speak up in the next five weeks, it’ll be permanent.

They're going to push back. I already answered.

Tbird is a Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983-1990) and founder of HadIt.com, one of the oldest veteran-run VA disability claims communities on the internet (est. 1997). For 29 years, HadIt.com has operated on one principle: Leave No One Behind. That means no paywalls on claims information, no sales pitches, and no staying quiet when the system built to serve veterans gets handed to the people who profit from denying care. Contact: founder@hadit.com

This article is for informational purposes only. HadIt.com does not provide legal advice. For assistance with your specific VA claim, consult an accredited Veterans Service Organization (VSO) or VA-accredited attorney. Find accredited representatives at VA.gov’s eBenefits.

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Sources:

• House Veterans Affairs Committee, “Community Care Network Next Generation: One Trillion Dollars of Oversight,” Full Committee Oversight Hearing, January 22, 2026

• Department of Veterans Affairs, “CCN Next Generation Request for Proposals,” SAM.gov, December 15, 2025

• Federal News Network, “VA readies massive contract for veterans’ private sector health care,” January 2026

• Military Times, “VA to reorganize community care contracts, reducing regions to 2,” December 15, 2025

• GovCIO Media, “VA Ties Community Care Modernization to EHR Interoperability,” January 29, 2026

• Dr. Rachel Madley, Written Testimony to House Committee on Veterans Affairs, January 22, 2026

• VA Press Release, “VA to improve health care choice and quality for Veterans with new community care contracts,” December 15, 2025

• VA FY2026 Budget Submission, Budget in Brief

• VA FY2026 Budget Submission, Volume 5: Information Technology and Electronic Health Record Modernization

• Military Times, “VA expects 30K voluntary job cuts by October, erasing need for layoffs,” July 7, 2025

• GovConWire, “VA Seeks Offers for Potential $700B CCN Next Gen Medical IDIQ,” January 2026

• GAO-25-106874, “Electronic Health Records: VA Making Incremental Improvements in New System but Needs Updated Cost Estimate and Schedule,” March 2025

• GAO-26-108812, “VA Electronic Health Record Modernization: Critical Actions Needed to Support Accelerated System Deployments,” December 2025

• Chairman Bost Opening Remarks, January 22, 2026

• Military Times, “Veterans health shake-up, reforms to get underway in coming months,” January 30, 2026

• UnitedHealth Group, “UnitedHealth Group Reports 2024 Results,” SEC 8-K Filing, January 16, 2025

• Fierce Healthcare, “UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty was 2024’s highest-paid payer CEO,” May 12, 2025

• Department of Justice, “TriWest Healthcare Alliance Corp. Agrees to Pay $179.7 Million to Resolve Overpayments from the Department of Veterans Affairs,” December 31, 2020

• Military.com, “TriWest Settles Overpayment Dispute with VA for $180 Million,” January 5, 2021

• KFF, “Medicare Advantage Insurers Made Nearly 53 Million Prior Authorization Determinations in 2024,” January 28, 2026

• VA Office of Research & Development, Research Accomplishments

• Rep. Jen Kiggans, “Kiggans Secures Nearly $80 Million for New VA Clinic in Hampton Roads”

• VA Office of Construction & Facilities Management, CFM News (Charlotte VA Health Care Center, $104 million)

• NPR, “VA will cut 25,000 positions it has been unable to fill,” December 19, 2025

• Military.com, “83,000 VA Employees Slated to Be Fired This Year by Musk’s DOGE, Memo Says,” March 5, 2025

• Federal Budget IQ, “Veterans Affairs — Ahead of the Field for FY26 Appropriations”

• VA News, “Ensuring Veteran care during crisis through lifesaving exercises,” May 3, 2025

• VA News, “Through hurricanes, VA continues efforts to care for Veterans,” October 4, 2017

• OpenPayrolls, “United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Employee Salaries”

• Kyleanne Hunter, IAVA Written Testimony to House Committee on Veterans Affairs, July 2025

• VA Research, “Burn pit exposure linked to higher carbon particle levels in lungs”

• VA News, “VA Research Wrap-Up: Toxic exposure and suicidal ideation”

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The Gist

VA Secretary Collins testified that VHA reorganization will eliminate “duplicative bureaucracy” and improve care—using the exact playbook from 2014’s Choice Act and 2018’s MISSION Act. His statistics are mostly accurate but misleadingly framed: backlog reductions began under Biden, the homeless housing record was achieved before Trump took office, and the oversight reports he cites never recommended eliminating regional management layers. Watch what happens over the next 18-24 months when VISN positions quietly disappear.

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When officials lead with “this is NOT a reduction in force,” that’s usually your first clue.

On January 28, 2026, VA Secretary Douglas Collins testified before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee about VHA’s planned reorganization. His opening line? “Let me start by addressing some misleading and inaccurate descriptions we have heard about this effort. This is not a reduction in force (RIF), and this is not an effort to diminish direct care for Veterans.”

If you’ve been around VA long enough, you recognize this playbook. It’s the same one used before every major restructuring attempt for the past two decades. The script never changes—only the date on the letterhead.

The Numbers Game

Collins came armed with statistics designed to demonstrate that the Trump administration has transformed VA in barely a year:

• Backlog reduction: “nearly 60% since January 20, 2025”

• CHAMPVA backlog: Eliminated

• New facilities: “25 new health care facilities”

• Homeless veterans housed: “nearly 52,000...the highest total in 7 years”

Here’s what the numbers actually show:

The Backlog Story

The backlog claim is technically accurate. The backlog dropped from 264,717 on January 20, 2025, to 112,353 by November 2025—a 57.6% reduction that Collins rounds to “nearly 60%.”

But zoom out: The backlog peaked at 417,855 in January 2024 and fell to 134,009 by September 2025—a 67.9% reduction. Most of that drop happened before Trump’s inauguration. The automation systems, staffing increases, and process improvements driving current success were implemented throughout 2024.

Collins is taking credit for crossing the finish line of a race someone else ran.

The Homeless Housing Achievement

Collins claims credit for “permanently housing nearly 52,000 homeless Veterans in fiscal year 2025, the highest total in 7 years.”

One problem: Fiscal Year 2025 ended on September 30, 2025—nearly four months before Trump took office on January 20, 2026.

This is a Biden-era achievement being repackaged as Trump administration success.

The Missing Details

Collins mentions “opening 25 new health care facilities.” VA press releases say “25 new health care clinics.” That word swap matters—facilities suggests full medical centers; clinics means outpatient sites.

Research could not find a list of these locations. No facilities confirmed by name. No opening dates verified. Just a number floating in press releases, unchallenged and unverifiable.

The Citation Shuffle

Collins justifies reorganization by citing reports from GAO and VA’s Office of Inspector General spanning 2016-2024. He’s correct that these reports exist and contain critical language about VHA structure.

But here’s what he doesn’t mention:

The 2016 GAO report (GAO-16-803) that Collins quotes was produced during the Choice Act era—the last major push toward privatization. It criticized VHA’s structure but was part of a broader effort to route veterans to community care.

The Commission on Care report from 2016 was packed with privatization advocates. Their “governance recommendations” aligned with efforts to dismantle direct VA care.

The 2019 GAO reports (GAO-19-462) documented problems with VISN oversight, but recommended strengthening accountability—not eliminating oversight layers.

The 2024 OIG statement that Collins quotes—”weaknesses in VA’s governance and oversight have affected many aspects of program performance and operations”—came from a semiannual report discussing specific program failures (personnel suitability, financial management systems). The OIG was criticizing how VA manages individual programs, not recommending wholesale elimination of regional oversight.

None of these reports specifically recommended eliminating VISN leadership positions. Collins is using decade-old criticism to justify a predetermined restructuring plan.

What They’re Actually Proposing

Strip away the rhetoric, and here’s the reorganization:

• VHA Central Office: Sets policy, handles financial management, oversight, compliance

• VISNs + New Operations Center: Take policy direction from Central, develop operational standards

• Local facilities: Get “greater decision-making authority”

Translation: They’re eliminating the middle management layer that currently provides regional oversight, quality control, and accountability.

Collins promises this creates “clear lines of authority.” But removing oversight doesn’t create accountability—it creates decentralized failure points that are harder to track and slower to fix.

The Pattern You Should Recognize

This exact pattern played out with:

• 2014 Veterans Choice Act: Cited VA’s “access crisis” to push community care expansion

• 2018 VA MISSION Act: Used same efficiency language to consolidate community care programs

• 2025-2026 VHA Reorganization: Using same reports and same rhetoric

Each time, the script is identical:

1. Cite years-old oversight reports

2. Promise “no reduction in force”

3. Claim “eliminating bureaucracy”

4. Talk about “empowering local directors”

5. Avoid specifics about which positions disappear

What to Watch For

The reorganization announcement says changes will occur “over the next 18-24 months.” That’s your window to track what actually happens versus what’s promised.

Key indicators:

• Vacancy rates at regional offices: If VISN positions aren’t filled after people leave, that’s a soft RIF

• Wait times and quality metrics: Local facilities with less oversight may see quality variation

• Community care spending: Watch whether “efficiency” dollars flow to private contractors

• Accountability gaps: Who investigates systemic problems when regional oversight disappears?

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The Questions Nobody’s Answering

Collins’ testimony didn’t address:

• Current staffing levels: What are VISN vacancy rates now?

• Specific positions affected: Which “duplicative” roles are being eliminated?

• Success metrics: How will VA measure whether this reorganization improves care?

• Timeline details: When do specific changes occur, and how will they be monitored?

• Cost analysis: Does removing oversight layers actually save money or shift costs elsewhere?

What This Means for Your Care

In the short term: probably nothing. Front-line clinical staff at your local VA aren’t affected by this reorganization. Your doctor, your nurse, your benefits counselor—they’re still there.

In the medium term: watch for variations in service quality between facilities. Regional oversight exists to catch problems early and ensure consistent standards. Without it, facility-level failures may take longer to identify and fix.

In the long term: this restructuring makes VA’s direct care system more vulnerable to further privatization efforts. Eliminating regional management layers removes institutional knowledge and oversight capacity that would be difficult to rebuild.

What You Can Do

Track the changes: Bookmark this article and check back in 6 months. Are VISN positions being filled? Are wait times staying steady? Is community care spending increasing?

Ask your VSO: When you hear about “efficiency improvements,” ask which specific positions are being eliminated and how oversight will be maintained.

Document your experience: If you notice changes in care coordination or quality at your local VA, report it. The pattern only becomes visible when veterans share what’s actually happening on the ground.

Share this analysis: Veterans need to understand the playbook before the moves are made. Forward this to veterans in your network who need to see the pattern.

The Bottom Line

Collins wrapped his testimony in the language of efficiency and accountability. He cited legitimate criticisms from oversight reports. He presented impressive statistics.

But the pattern is unmistakable: Use accurate numbers, cherry-pick old reports, avoid specifics about job losses, promise better care with less bureaucracy.

It’s the same playbook from 2014’s Choice Act and 2018’s MISSION Act—just updated for 2026.

The real test isn’t Collins’ testimony. It’s what happens over the next 18-24 months when VISN positions quietly go unfilled, when regional oversight disappears, when accountability gaps appear.

By then, the press conference will be over. The testimony will be archived. And veterans will be left navigating whatever system remains.

Place your bets on how long before they say “unforeseen challenges.”

Tbird’s Take: I’ve watched VA restructuring attempts for 29 years. Every single one follows this script: cite old oversight reports, promise efficiency, avoid specifics about job cuts, claim “this time is different.”

It never is.

The question isn’t whether Collins’ statistics are accurate—most are, with creative framing. The question is whether removing regional oversight actually improves care or simply makes systemic failures harder to detect and fix.

History suggests the latter.

Sources: Secretary Collins’ testimony (January 28, 2026), VA press releases, GAO reports GAO-16-803 (2016), GAO-19-462 (2019), VA OIG Semiannual Report Issue 90 (March 2024), VBA Monday Morning Workload Reports

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The Gist

• 40,000+ VA employees gone in one year — 88% from Veterans Health Administration

• Mental health wait times now 35+ days nationally, exceeding community care threshold; some states over 50 days

• Blumenthal’s “Breaking the Pact” report documents 1,000 physicians, 3,000 nurses, 700 social workers lost

• Therapy sessions capped at 8-24 visits at some facilities regardless of clinical need — veterans being cut off mid-treatment

• DOGE’s AI contract tool hallucinated values, canceled ~600 contracts including cancer research and foreclosure prevention

• CBO budget options (means testing, ending TDIU at 67) remain proposals — NOT law, but keep resurfacing

• Collins testifies tomorrow (Jan 28, 3:30 PM EST) before Senate VA Committee on VHA reorganization

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One year ago, DOGE came to the VA. Secretary Doug Collins promised efficiency. No impact on care. Trimming the fat.

The Blumenthal report landed last week. The numbers tell a different story.

The Numbers After One Year

Blumenthal’s report landed January 22. The title—”Breaking the Pact”—is deliberate. It’s about breaking the promise to veterans, but it’s also about breaking the PACT Act. The 2022 toxic exposure law created the biggest expansion of VA benefits in decades. Now the staffing losses are slowing those claims to a crawl.

The report documents what many of you already know from experience:

Staffing losses:

• 40,000+ VA employees gone in 2025 — 88% from Veterans Health Administration

• 1,000 physicians lost

• 3,000 registered nurses lost

• 700 social workers lost

• 1,500 schedulers lost

• 1,500 claims examiners lost from VBA

• Nearly half of VBA’s 50 Regional Office Directors quit or retired

PACT Act backlog: The loss of claims processors is hitting toxic exposure claims hardest. Veterans report longer waits on legacy claims, and requests for VA to take a second look at claims (Higher Level Reviews) jumped 44% by July—driven by errors from overworked processors forced to meet higher quotas with fewer staff.

The 1.2 million number: Lindsay Church of Minority Veterans of America estimates 1.2 million veterans have lost their VA provider since January 2025. It’s an estimate, not verified VA data—but a thousand doctors gone makes the math plausible.

Mental health wait times: National average for new patients now exceeds 35 days. That’s nearly double the 20-day threshold that should trigger community care eligibility. Some states are far worse:

• Maine: 61 days

• Maryland: 54 days

• California (Ventura clinic): 134 days after 7 of 12 mental health providers left following return-to-office mandates

Session limits: Veterans in some regions are being limited to as few as 8 to 24 therapy sessions — regardless of clinical need — then stepped down to group therapy or discharged.

Veterans Are Speaking Out

The War Horse has documented dozens of veterans cut off from mental health care. Their words tell the story better than statistics.

Spencer McKinstry, Marine veteran with two combat deployments to Afghanistan, was told he’d reached the limit after nearly three years of therapy at his VA:

“I did my job. You said you’d take care of me for the rest of my life. The rest of my life is not 20 sessions.”

Phoebe Ervin, Army reserve veteran of the Gulf and Iraq wars, had been seeing her VA psychologist for 16 years when she was abruptly cut off:

“I feel lost. All this stuff is happening to me, [but] I have no outlet to talk to anybody.”

“They didn’t wean me off. They just said, that day, ‘That’s it. Gone.’”

Joe R., Navy veteran whose one-on-one therapy was ended after nine months at the Richmond VA, stopped taking his medication and started drinking again after seven years sober:

“It’s a bit hypocritical to say, ‘Come here, I’m here to help you and take care of you,’ and then kick you out the door because you didn’t get better on their timeline.”

These aren’t statistics. These are your brothers and sisters.

Secretary Doug Collins maintains VA services “have not been affected.” VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz called Blumenthal’s report “political theater.”

The numbers say otherwise.

The 80,000 Plan — What Actually Happened

Remember the December headlines about 80,000 planned layoffs? Here’s where that landed:

Original target: 80,000 positions eliminated

Current reality: Roughly 30,000 gone through attrition, early retirements, and deferred resignations. VA says another 26,000 VHA positions are targeted through additional attrition in 2026.

What Collins says: The cuts target “long-standing vacant positions” and “non-mission essential roles like interior designers and DEI officers.” No doctors or nurses.

What the data shows: Those staffing losses included physicians and nurses. You can’t call that “preserved.”

The hiring freeze is technically lifted as of last week — but staffing caps remain. According to Federal News Network, facility leaders are still reporting delays in hiring approvals across the board.

Mary Jean Burke, AFGE’s first executive vice president for VA, told Federal News Network that by end of 2026, most VA facilities will lose 2-5% of their psychologists. Seattle and Buffalo are on track for double-digit attrition.

DOGE’s AI Contract “Muncher” — Still Active

DOGE’s own engineer called it the “contract muncher” — their term, not ours. They treated VA contracts like a game.

ProPublica’s October investigation revealed DOGE used a flawed AI tool to flag 2,000+ VA contracts for cancellation. The tool:

• Was built in one day by a software engineer with no VA or healthcare experience

• Used outdated, inexpensive AI models

• Hallucinated contract values — flagging 1,100 contracts as worth $34 million each when some were actually $35,000

• Only analyzed the first 10,000 characters of each contract

• Flagged internet connectivity services as “munchable” because they’re “multiple layers removed from direct patient care”

Nearly 600 contracts have been killed. Canceled contracts include:

• A gene sequencing device for cancer treatment development

• Blood sample analysis for VA research

• Nursing care measurement tools

• Military records retrieval for processing disability claims

• A program to help veterans avoid foreclosure

• Environmental testing to meet safety standards

• Radiation detection for imaging equipment

VA says all decisions went through “multilevel reviews.” The engineer who built the tool acknowledged mistakes were made but said, “It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

Congress still hasn’t received a complete list of what was canceled.

CBO Budget Options: Still Just Options

Veterans keep asking about the CBO “budget options” — means testing, ending TDIU at 67, taxing disability payments. Here’s the current status:

These are NOT law. None have been enacted.

The options remain on CBO’s website as deficit reduction proposals. They include:

1. Means testing at $135K household income (CBO 60915) — Would reduce or eliminate compensation for veterans with household income above threshold. Projected savings: $253 billion over 10 years.

2. 30% minimum rating requirement (CBO 60918) — Would eliminate compensation for veterans rated 10% or 20%. About 20% of veterans currently have ratings below 30%.

3. 30% reduction at age 67 (CBO 60917) — Would cut benefits by 30% when veterans who start receiving compensation in 2026 or later reach retirement age.

4. End TDIU at age 67 (CBO 60916) — Would stop Individual Unemployability payments at Social Security retirement age.

5. Tax VA disability payments (CBO 60947) — Would make compensation taxable income.

Current status: No legislation has been introduced. The 2.8% COLA increase is in effect as of December 1, 2025. Your current benefits are unchanged.

The Project 2025 connection: OMB Director Russell Vought contributed to Project 2025 and a 2023 think tank report that specifically recommended ending TDIU at retirement age and reducing compensation for older veterans. Collins says he hasn't read Project 2025. But the playbook is on the shelf.

But: These options resurface in every budget discussion. They’re being studied. The political ground is being prepared.

Watch the Federal Register. Watch committee hearings. The threat isn’t imaginary.

What This Means for VA Workforce Morale

VA morale is in freefall. The Blumenthal report documents:

• Employees citing “exhaustion, low morale, and fear”

• Telework elimination forcing staff into “overcrowded” spaces

• According to ProPublica, 40% of physicians offered VA jobs in early 2025 turned them down — quadruple the prior year’s rate

• Collective bargaining rights stripped from 400,000 employees

AFGE President Everett Kelley has called the administration’s approach “reckless policy, inflammatory rhetoric, and manufactured crisis over responsible leadership.”

Collins is scheduled to testify before the Senate VA Committee Wednesday, January 28 at 3:30 PM EST. The hearing will focus on VHA reorganization.

VSO Statements — Reading Between the Lines

The major VSOs are walking a careful line.

DAV (February 2025): “The recent VA workforce cuts are deeply concerning, especially given the unprecedented lack of transparency... cuts like these move us in the wrong direction.”

American Legion (December 2025): National Commander Dan Wiley said the Secretary briefed them that changes “will not disrupt or delay veteran healthcare.” Then added the Legion will “continue to provide Congress and VA direct feedback from our members.”

Paralyzed Veterans of America: Expressed favor for reducing “administrative barriers” but wants to “learn more.”

Common Defense: Called the planned layoffs a betrayal.

The big VSOs are monitoring. They’re not yet in full opposition mode. That could change if Wednesday’s hearing goes badly.

Republican Response

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), chair of the Senate VA Committee, told reporters he hasn’t reviewed Blumenthal’s report but will “have a better response when I see what the facts are.”

House VA Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL) is frustrated — but about transparency, not policy. He threatened to bar VA testimony after the department twice failed to provide materials before hearings.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the planned cuts “kind of rattle you” but “I’m sure the VA can be reduced.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) supports expanding community care. “It is so much more convenient for our veterans to get the health care that they have earned, and to get it in their communities.”

The Republican position remains: The VA is bloated. Cuts are necessary. Community care is the answer.

The spending bill that passed the Senate sets staffing targets and requires advance notice before terminating contracts over $10 million. It protects Veterans Crisis Line funding. Small guardrails.

Truth Check: Who’s Right?

You’re getting two completely different stories. Here’s what the evidence actually supports.

“No impact on care” — That’s the VA line. Collins maintains cuts target vacant positions and non-essential roles. Press Secretary Kasperowicz calls criticism “political theater.”

The problem: VA’s own data shows mental health wait times exceeding the 20-day community care threshold. By VA’s own standard, the system is failing.

“1.2 million veterans lost their provider” — That’s from Minority Veterans of America. It’s an estimate, not verified VA data. The number may be high. But the documented staffing losses make it plausible.

“Voluntary attrition, not layoffs” — Technically true. Most departures came through early retirement offers and unfilled vacancies. But “voluntary” doesn’t mean “no impact.” When half your Regional Office Directors leave in one year, that’s institutional knowledge walking out the door. Unfilled positions still mean veterans waiting.

The DOGE contract tool — ProPublica’s investigation stands. Collins called the reporting “misleading” but hasn’t disputed the specific findings.

CBO budget proposals — Both sides muddy this. Democrats warn about means testing and ending TDIU at 67. Republicans say nothing’s been introduced. Both are right. The options exist. No legislation has moved. Your benefits are unchanged today. But the proposals keep appearing in budget discussions.

The bottom line: The administration’s claims rely on framing—voluntary, non-essential, safety valves. The Democrats’ claims rely on documented outcomes—wait times, staffing losses, canceled contracts.

When VA’s own wait time data contradicts the “no impact” claim, the data wins.

What You Can Do Now

If you’re still waiting for care:

• Document everything. Appointment dates, cancellations, what you were told.

• Save Secure Messaging communications.

• You have the right to request community care if wait times exceed 20 days for mental health or 28 days for specialty care.

If your provider left:

• Request assignment to a new provider in writing.

• Document the gap in care.

• If care is delayed and harm results, speak with an attorney about FTCA claims.

If you’re watching the budget:

• Track committee hearings: Senate VA Committee, House VA Committee

• Monitor the Federal Register for proposed rule changes

• Know your protections: The 20-year rule, the 55-year rule

• Contact your representatives. Tell them CBO options are unacceptable.

If you’re a VA employee:

• Your work matters. Veterans know who shows up.

• Document retaliation if it happens.

• Stay connected to your union.

Collins testifies tomorrow. Blumenthal will be there. So will the data.

I’ll be watching.

Tbird is a Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983-1990) and founder of HadIt.com, serving veterans since 1997.

Sources

Blumenthal Report:

• Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee: “Breaking the Pact: Impacts of Trump, DOGE, and Doug Collins’ Ongoing Assault on Veterans” (January 22, 2026)

DOGE AI Tool Investigation:

• ProPublica: “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to ‘Munch’ Veterans Affairs Contracts” (October 2025)

Staffing/Workforce:

• Federal News Network: “VA officially lifts hiring freeze, but staffing caps still in place” (January 26, 2026)

• Military Times: “VA leader’s policies delaying care, destroying work force, report says” (January 22, 2026)

• ProPublica: “Doctors and Nurses Reject VA Jobs Under Trump” (August 2025)

• The War Horse: “Veterans’ mental health is being capped, VA therapists say” (August 2025)

• The War Horse: “’I Feel Lost.’ Anxiety Grows Among Veterans Cut off From VA One-on-One Therapy”(December 11, 2025)

CBO Budget Options:

• Congressional Budget Office: Budget Options — CBO 60915 (Means Testing), 60916 (TDIU at 67), 60917 (30% reduction at 67), 60918 (30% minimum rating)

VSO Statements:

• DAV: “Statement on VA workforce cuts” (February 2025)

• American Legion: “American Legion issues statement on report of VA job cuts” (December 2025)

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The RECOVER Act: How a Delaware Shell Company Spent $1.5M to Gut VA Mental Health Standards

By Tbird Tbird’s Quiet Fight | January [DATE], 2026

The Gist

A Delaware shell company spent $1.5 million lobbying for the RECOVER Act—legislation that hands $60 million to private mental health clinics while eliminating quality standards. The shell company is reportedly a front for billionaire Steven Cohen’s 22-clinic network.

What the bill does: Requires only ONE staff member per clinic to have military training. No suicide prevention training. No accreditation. No outcome measurement. Clinics get federal grants + bill insurance + bill VA for the same services. Veterans bypass VA authorization entirely.

The damage: Your mental health gets treated. Your disability claim gets denied. Because private providers won’t know how to document for VA raters.

Cohen tried this in 2017. VSOs killed it. He’s back with better camouflage.

I read the bill line-by-line against existing VA law. Here’s what they’re doing.

The Setup

A Delaware shell company with no website just spent $1.5 million lobbying Congress to gut quality standards for veterans’ mental health care. The company—”Advancing Mental Health for Military Families LLC”—is a mailbox.

According to The American Prospect’s investigative reporting, it’s a front for hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen, whose 22-clinic network stands to collect tens of millions in federal grants if the RECOVER Act passes.

I’ve seen this playbook before. In 2017, Cohen tried the same move with different window dressing. Major VSOs killed it. This time he’s hidden the fingerprints better, but the con is identical—and the regulatory damage is worse.

I read H.R. 2283 against Title 38. It's deliberate: dismantle oversight, wrap it in compassionate language, hope nobody notices.

The Regulatory Breakdown

Part 1: The “Culturally Competent” Loophole

What the RECOVER Act Says:

• Bill requires “culturally competent, evidence-based mental health care”

• Subsection (f) requires Secretary to establish “requirements” for cultural competency training

• Only requirement: “at least one clinician employed by the provider at each facility” must be trained

What This Actually Means:

• ONE person per clinic needs training

• No definition of “culturally competent” in the bill

• No specific training standards

• No requirement for veterans-specific military cultural competency

What Current VA Law Requires:

38 USC 1703 (MISSION Act) references “veteran cultural competency” training available through VHA TRAIN program. Under current community care contracts, providers must demonstrate:

• Understanding of military culture

• Knowledge of service-connected conditions

• Familiarity with VA disability rating process

• Training on military sexual trauma (MST)

• Understanding of combat-related PTSD presentations

The Gap:

The RECOVER Act’s “one person” requirement means 99% of clinic staff could have zero understanding of military culture. Compare this to VA requirements where ALL mental health providers complete annual military cultural competency training.

Part 2: The “Evidence-Based” Shell Game

What the RECOVER Act Says:

• Requires “evidence-based mental health care”

• No definition of what constitutes “evidence-based”

• No requirement that providers be trained in evidence-based practices

• No specification of which evidence-based practices

What VA Actually Requires:

38 CFR 4.130 references DSM-5 as the standard for mental health diagnosis. VA mental health providers must be trained in specific evidence-based treatments:

• Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD

• Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

• Evidence-based suicide prevention protocols

The Regulatory Problem:

Without specifying evidence-based practices or requiring provider training, “evidence-based” becomes meaningless. Any provider could claim they use “evidence-based” approaches without actual training or fidelity to protocols.

Part 3: What’s Missing

No Accreditation Required:

• VA facilities must meet Joint Commission or CARF standards

• RECOVER Act grantees: No accreditation requirement

No Peer Review:

• VA mental health: Mandatory semiannual peer review

• RECOVER Act grantees: No peer review mandate

No Suicide Prevention Training:

• VA providers: Mandatory annual suicide prevention training

• RECOVER Act grantees: Zero requirement (despite bill prioritizing “high-risk” areas)

No Timeliness Standards:

• VA community care: Wait time standards under 38 CFR Part 17

• RECOVER Act grantees: Could have longer wait times than VA

No Outcome Reporting:

• VA: Tracks and reports symptom improvement

• RECOVER Act grantees: No outcome measurement required

No Record Sharing:

• VA/Community Care: Integrated health records

• RECOVER Act: Veterans bypass VA entirely, creating fragmented care

The Money Scheme

The RECOVER Act provides $1.5 million grants per recipient ($60 million total over three years). Multiple awards per recipient allowed.

Notice what’s missing? Any requirement to increase veterans served.

Bill says grantees can’t charge veterans fees, can’t refuse care based on inability to pay. Says nothing about demonstrating you’re serving more veterans than you would without the grant.

The triple-dip (Section 2(c)(3)):

“Nothing in this subsection shall prevent the recipient of a grant under the pilot program from seeking or receiving reimbursement for all, or a portion, of the mental health care provided to a veteran, including reimbursement under a health plan contract, the Community Care Program of the Department under section 1703...”

Translation:

Veteran with insurance:

• Clinic gets: $1.5M federal grant

• Bills veteran’s insurance: $150/session

• Bills VA under community care: Additional payment

• Three payments. Same service.

Veteran without insurance:

• Clinic gets: $1.5M federal grant

• Bills VA community care: Payment per service

• Two payments. Same service.

Optimization:

• Serve same veterans you’d serve anyway

• Get paid three ways

• Zero requirement for expanded access

• Zero outcome accountability

Compare this to actual VA grant requirements for homeless services, housing, employment. Recipients must demonstrate: number served, outcomes achieved, cost per veteran, community need, VA coordination.

RECOVER Act requires none of that.

Show us you’ve operated a clinic for three years. Promise to follow undefined “cultural competency” with one trained person. Here’s $1.5 million per facility.

The Pattern

March 2024: VA announces 10,000 position cuts through attrition

June 2024: Frontline clinical jobs cut despite exemption promises

2024: Bost introduces Veterans’ Mental Health Access Act (H.R. 9427)

January 2025: Federal hiring freeze impacts VA

March 24, 2025: Bill reintroduced as RECOVER Act (H.R. 2283)

March 2025: VA plans 80,000+ job cuts (17% workforce reduction)

Present: Veterans experience longer mental health wait times

Standard privatization playbook: Gut VA clinical capacity. Wait for access problems. Offer private “solution” with taxpayer funding and zero oversight.

I’ve watched this for 29 years.

2017 quote from former VA official: “If you start trying to carve into government money in veterans’ care to feed things like the Cohen Veterans Network, that’s actually privatization. It’s going to be death by a thousand cuts.”

RECOVER Act is one cut.

But it establishes precedent. If Congress passes legislation creating a parallel mental health system with no VA oversight and minimal standards, what’s next? Parallel primary care? Specialty care? Inpatient?

Each one chips away at VA’s integrated model.

Why This Matters for Your Claim

You’re filing for PTSD. You need mental health treatment. New clinic opens under RECOVER Act. Free. Closer than VA. You go.

Here’s the problem:

VA mental health providers document for claims purposes. They know what VA raters need to see:

• Frequency of symptoms

• Severity scaled to rating criteria

• Duration and persistence

• Impact on occupational and social functioning

• Nexus to service-connected condition

Private providers funded by RECOVER Act don’t.

They’ll document that you’re “improving” or “stable” or “progressing well in treatment.”

Three years later, you file your claim. C&P examiner reads records from RECOVER clinic. Sees “patient responding to treatment, symptoms managed.”

Claim denied. Not severe enough. Treatment working.

You just documented yourself out of benefits because your provider didn’t know they were documenting a claim.

What Resistance Looks Like

In 2017, when Cohen tried this the first time, major veterans organizations killed the bill. They recognized the threat and mobilized opposition.

The VSOs got it right. When VFW, DAV, American Legion, and Vietnam Veterans of America say a bill threatens VA healthcare, listen.

This time Cohen spent $1.5 million through a Delaware shell company to hide his involvement. The bill has crept through with less scrutiny.

But it’s the same threat.

The Bottom Line

I’ve compared H.R. 2283 against existing law. I’ve shown you exactly what’s missing and why it matters.

Now the question is: What are you going to do about it?

Call Congress. Contact your VSOs. Share this article. Make noise.

Because if we’re silent, we’re complicit.

And I’m done being silent about schemes that threaten veterans’ healthcare.

UPDATE [Date]: I’ll track the status of H.R. 2283 here, including any scheduled hearings, markup sessions, or votes. If you want notifications when this bill moves, subscribe to legislative alerts.

Resources

Primary Sources:

• H.R. 2283 Full Text - RECOVER Act

• 38 USC 1703 - Veterans Community Care Program

• 38 CFR 4.130 - Mental Disorders Rating Schedule

• 38 CFR Part 17 - Veterans Community Care Program Regulations

Investigative Reporting:

• The American Prospect: “A Billionaire Tries Again to Hijack Veterans’ Care” (Russell Lemle and Jasper Craven, January 12, 2026)

VA Job Cuts:

• VA Plans to Cut 10,000 Jobs (Military.com, March 19, 2024)

• Frontline VA Jobs Cut (CNN, June 10, 2024)

• 5 Reasons Federal Cuts Hit Veterans Hard (PBS, March 17, 2025)

Take Action:

• Find Your Representative

• Find Your Senators

Tbird is a Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983-1990) and founder of HadIt.com, a veteran-run VA disability claims knowledge base established in 1997. She publishes investigative journalism and policy analysis at Tbird’s Quiet Fight on Substack.

I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I'd use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.

The Gist: The Trump administration cut childhood vaccine recommendations from 17 diseases to 11, claiming it aligned with “international consensus.” That’s false. Most developed nations recommend vaccines for 12-15 diseases. Denmark—the single country they modeled our new schedule after—recommends 10, making it the most minimalist schedule of any developed nation. Even Denmark’s Nordic neighbors vaccinate against more diseases. This wasn’t alignment with peer nations. It was finding the one outlier that matched a predetermined outcome and calling it consensus.

On January 5th, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the CDC was cutting childhood vaccine recommendations from 17 diseases to 11. He called it “aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus.”

Here’s what international consensus actually looks like. Most developed nations recommend vaccines for 12-15 diseases:

• UK: 12-15 diseases

• France: 12-15 diseases

• Germany: 12-15 diseases

• Israel: 12-15 diseases

• Japan: 12-15 diseases

• Sweden: 12-15 diseases

• Finland: 12-15 diseases

• Norway: 12-15 diseases

• Austria: 17 diseases

• Greece: 15+ diseases

• Ireland: 15+ diseases

• Italy: 15+ diseases

• Poland: 15+ diseases

The European CDC tracks vaccine schedules for 30 countries. Exactly one recommends vaccines for just 10 diseases.

Denmark.

Even Denmark’s Nordic neighbors—countries with similar healthcare systems and similar populations—vaccinate against more diseases than Denmark does.

So when HHS claims the US was “a global outlier” for recommending too many vaccines, understand what they’re doing. We were at the upper end of the range. Now we’re at the bottom, past most peer nations, adopting the most minimalist schedule any developed country uses.

They found the one country that matched their predetermined outcome and called it consensus.

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“Aligning with peer nations” sounds evidence-based. Like they did a comprehensive review and found where most countries land. They didn’t. They picked the extreme low end and presented it as the middle.

Here’s how this actually went down: Someone with dual US-Denmark citizenship presented to the CDC’s advisory committee suggesting fewer vaccines would reduce aluminum exposure in kids. A major Danish study already examined this and found aluminum from vaccines isn’t harmful. Kennedy demanded the journal retract it, called it pharmaceutical industry propaganda. They refused.

Then Trump issued a memo directing health officials to align with “peer nations”—specifically mentioning Denmark.

Denmark’s situation:

• 6 million people

• Universal healthcare

• Guaranteed access to medical care

• Low baseline disease prevalence

• System catches illness early

We have 330 million people. No universal healthcare. Higher childhood obesity rates, higher asthma rates, more kids at higher risk for complications from diseases Denmark doesn’t worry about as much.

The numbers: Before routine chickenpox vaccination, the US had about 4 million cases annually. Now it’s under 150,000. Denmark doesn’t vaccinate for chickenpox. They see 60,000 cases a year in a population 1/55th our size.

Last year, 300 American kids died from flu. Eighty-nine percent weren’t vaccinated. The flu vaccine just moved from universal recommendation to “shared clinical decision-making.”

This didn’t go through the normal process. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is supposed to review evidence, hold public meetings, evaluate US-specific disease patterns and healthcare realities. Instead, an acting CDC director signed a decision memo accepting recommendations from an assessment that looked at 20 countries and chose the outlier.

No cited research. No public input. Just the outcome Kennedy wanted wrapped in language about international best practices.

California, New York, and Illinois have already said they’re ignoring the new federal guidance. They looked at their actual populations and disease burden.

I’ve spent three decades watching federal agencies use selective data presentation to justify decisions they’ve already made. Find the answer you want first, then locate the one data point that supports it. Present that single data point as if it represents the norm.

That’s what happened here. When you use “international consensus” to describe adopting the single most extreme position available among peer nations, you’re not doing policy analysis. You’re running PR.

Every country builds its vaccine schedule based on its own disease patterns, healthcare infrastructure, population demographics. Nobody just copies another country’s homework.

That’s not what this is either, despite the framing. This is predetermined outcome, selective citation, bureaucratic language designed to obscure rather than clarify.

You can agree or disagree with reducing childhood vaccine recommendations. But call it what it is. Don’t pass off selective citation as international consensus and expect people not to notice.

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I use AI as a research and editing assistant—the same way I’d use a good reference book or a sharp editor. Every word published here is reviewed, verified, and approved by me. The perspective, accuracy, and editorial decisions are mine.