VA's $600M Press Release, Autopsied
What the May 11 announcement says, and what twenty-nine primary federal documents document.
AI-generated illustration: a federal government press release on a stainless steel forensic examination table, marked with red ink and numbered evidence markers, evoking the article's autopsy of the May 11, 2026 VA infrastructure press release. Generated with Google Flow / ImageFX.
The Gist
VA announced $596 million in Q2 FY2026 infrastructure improvements on May 11, 2026. The administration’s own concurrent paperwork tells a different story.
The same administration says the count of new VA facilities since January 20, 2025 is both “35” (press release) and “25” (White House 365 Wins fact sheet, three months earlier).
The backlog reduction percentage from the same administration in the same six-month window is 70%, 63%, 60%, or 57%, depending on which document you read.
The Q2 project list VA linked contains 536 projects and zero attached dollar amounts.
VA cut 29,000 employees in eight months while a federal district court injunction blocked the formal RIF. The administration routed around the injunction through hiring freeze, deferred resignations, and attrition.
PACT Act enrollment is declining year over year. The administration credits itself for statutory growth from a 2022 law expanded in 2024.
Oracle EHR program: 16 of 18 GAO recommendations not fully implemented, a new $32.7 billion cost estimate not shared with GAO, over $12 billion already obligated.
Secretary Doug Collins began his VA tenure simultaneously serving as acting head of two federal agencies that investigate his own department.
This article cites twenty-nine primary federal documents. The administration’s own paper is where the contradictions live.
The Department of Veterans Affairs put out a press release on May 11, 2026. It announced “nearly $600 million in infrastructure improvements” approved during the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, and credited the Trump administration with opening “35 new VA health care facilities” since January 20, 2025.
Three months earlier, on January 20, 2026, the White House published its “365 Wins in 365 Days” fact sheet marking the first anniversary of President Trump’s return to office. That document credited the same administration with opening “25 new VA healthcare clinics” since January 20, 2025.
Same administration. Same period. A ten-facility gap between two of its own concurrent communications.
That is where this autopsy starts. Not with a hostile critic’s claim, not with a leaked document, not with an investigative reporter’s source. With the administration’s own paper, side by side with the administration’s own other paper.
The $596 million headline rests on top of a fact sheet that contradicts the facility count, a project list with no dollar amounts, four different backlog reduction percentages, a workforce cut achieved by routing around a federal court order, a PACT Act enrollment claim that runs the wrong direction, an Oracle electronic health record program with sixteen unimplemented GAO recommendations, and a Secretary whose first weeks in office included acting headship of the federal agency that polices ethics violations inside his own department.
The press release is roughly 700 words. The contradicting paper trail is twenty-nine primary federal documents long.
Who actually authorized the facilities?
The press release credits the Trump administration with opening “35 new VA health care facilities” since January 20, 2025. The same administration’s White House fact sheet says 25. Both numbers misattribute the authorship.
VA major medical facility leases require specific Congressional authorization under 38 U.S.C. 8104 and 40 U.S.C. 3307. The timeline from authorization to a facility opening for patients runs five to ten years for major construction, two to five years for smaller capital leases. VA’s own FY 2026 Construction and Long-Range Capital Plan documents this process.
Facilities opening in 2025 and 2026 were authorized between roughly 2017 and 2023. That means the actual authorizing administration was Trump 1 (2017-2020) or Biden (2021-2024). Not Trump 2.
The largest tranche of those authorizations is in one law. The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our PACT Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-168), signed by President Biden on August 10, 2022, authorized 31 veterans’ medical care and research facilities in 19 states. Sections 701 through 707 of the PACT Act handled the authorizations and appropriations.
In June and July 2025, 18 of those 31 PACT Act facilities required reauthorization due to updated cost estimates. All four required congressional committees, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, voted to reapprove them. The facilities were originally authorized under a law signed before the current administration took office, by a president defeated in the 2024 election.
Trump 2 did not pass the PACT Act. Trump 2 did not authorize a single one of the 31 facilities the PACT Act funded. Trump 2’s own FY 2026 budget request proposed cuts the Senate VA Committee questioned in May 2025. The facilities opening on this administration’s watch were authorized, funded, designed, and constructed by predecessors.
The Secretary is cutting ribbons on buildings other people built.
The “35 new facilities” claim and the “25 new clinics” claim do not just contradict each other on the count. They both misattribute the authorship.
Four different percentages for the same backlog
Look at the backlog numbers.
The May 11, 2026 press release leads with a 70% reduction. On February 23, 2026, VA’s own news service announced that the backlog had dropped under 100,000 for the first time since 2020, citing a 63% reduction. On November 18, 2025, VA News announced a 57% reduction. The White House “365 Wins” fact sheet of January 20, 2026 cited 60%.
Four federal documents. Four different percentages. Issued by the same administration in roughly a six-month window.
The numbers may describe different baselines and different windows. That is the problem. If the administration cannot keep its own backlog reduction figure consistent across its own concurrent press releases, what survives of the May 11 claim is “a number that sounds large.”
Now look at how the reduction was achieved.
On January 14, 2026, the Government Accountability Office testified before the House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs that VA continues to base decisions on veterans’ disability claims, in part, on outdated criteria. The GAO testimony (GAO-26-108844) documents that VA’s earnings-loss calculations rely on labor market data from 1945. That is not a typo. Nineteen forty-five. GAO also found that VA has updated medical criteria for only 11 of 15 body systems since 2009.
In April 2026, the VA Office of Inspector General released a Review of Automated Decisions for Veterans’ Service-Connected Death Claims (Report 25-00153-47). The review found that automated decision models VA uses to process Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) claims bypass standard scrutiny protocols. The report documents improper payments and PACT Act compliance violations resulting from the automation.
The 70% reduction is partly the work of automated models that don’t apply the protocols those models were built to apply, operating on top of regulatory criteria still anchored to the labor market a World War II veteran would have come home to.
That is “faster.” It is not “accurate.”
$596 million, 536 projects, zero attached dollar amounts
Now the headline number itself.
The press release links a Q2 FY2026 Non-Recurring Maintenance Project Awards list. The PDF is 19 pages. It contains 536 individual project line items spread across 70 to 80 VA medical centers. Every line item names the project and the station. Not one line item lists a dollar figure.
$596 million is announced. Zero of the 536 projects in the supporting PDF state how much money they received.
The press release frames the FY26 NRM appropriation as “the largest NRM dollar amount in the history of VA,” echoing the framing in VA’s own FY 2027 Budget in Brief. That framing may be accurate, or it may not. The supporting documentation does not permit verification at the project level. A reader who wants to know whether a specific VA medical center got $50,000 or $50 million for the elevator project listed on page 7 has no way to answer that question from the linked PDF.
The 536-project list does answer one question. Fifty-five of the projects are tagged “EHRM Infrastructure Upgrades” or similar EHR-related work. EHRM is the VA Electronic Health Record Modernization program, the Oracle Health rollout that has been the subject of three Government Accountability Office reports and four VA Office of Inspector General reports over the past five years. EHRM work appears in the Q2 list at facilities including Columbus, Albany, Bath, and roughly fifty other sites.
Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, the original Oracle EHR pilot site and the location of every major OIG finding on EHR safety, care coordination, and information security, appears in the Q2 list. Its projects are not tagged EHRM. Multiple secondary VA medical centers carry the tag. The site that defined what is wrong with the EHR rollout does not.
The PDF is consistent on this point. It catalogues 536 projects. It funds none of them on paper. It tags many sites with EHR upgrades, including some that have never been Oracle deployment sites. It does not tag the original pilot site as receiving EHR work, in a quarter when the program is reportedly accelerating.
Capital expansion as a headline. A project list as the source of truth. The two do not check.
The workforce cut and the court order that did not stop it
A new hospital wing is a building. A staffed wing is health care. The press release announces buildings while the administration cuts the people inside them.
On July 7, 2025, VA News announced the department was on pace to reduce total VA staff by approximately 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025. Headcount went from roughly 484,000 employees on January 1, 2025, to 467,000 by June 1, 2025, with the department projecting another 12,000 reductions by September 30, 2025.
The reduction was announced as having “eliminated the need” for a department-wide reduction in force, which VA had previously been considering at a scale of up to 15% of staff.
Here is what is missing from that announcement: the reason VA did not need to issue formal RIF notices to achieve the cuts.
On May 22, 2025, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a 51-page preliminary injunction in AFGE v. Trump, Case 3:25-cv-03698-SI. The injunction blocked Executive Order 14210, the order directing federal agencies to plan large-scale reductions in force, from being implemented at 21 federal agencies. The Department of Veterans Affairs was on the named list.
Judge Illston’s opinion opens with a statement of constitutional principle that does not require a law degree to understand:
“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed. But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that, by statute, they must carry out. Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
The Supreme Court stayed the preliminary injunction on July 8, 2025, expressly declining to rule on the legality of any specific agency RIF or reorganization plan. The Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction and remanded the case on September 19, 2025. The district court issued a new preliminary injunction order on December 17, 2025. The case is ongoing.
For seven weeks, May 22 through July 8, 2025, Judge Illston’s injunction was the operative federal law on VA’s ability to conduct large-scale RIFs.
By July 7, 2025, the day before the Supreme Court stayed the injunction, VA had already announced it had achieved a 17,000-employee reduction since January, and was on pace for another 12,000 by September 30. The mechanisms VA used were not RIFs. They were a federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements, and normal attrition.
The administration did not defy the May 22 injunction. It routed around it. The cuts the court blocked at the front door were achieved at the back door through mechanisms the order did not reach.
On February 3, 2026, the VA Office of Inspector General published a Healthcare Facility Inspection of the VA Indiana Healthcare System in Indianapolis (Report 25-00207-36). Among its findings: the hiring freeze had destabilized the facility’s operations to the point where Human Resources specialists and program analysts were trained on the job to stock surgical supplies in the operating rooms.
HR specialists stocking surgical supplies so the operating rooms could function. That is what 29,000 fewer employees buys.
In May 2026, the administration announces $596 million in capital improvements to the physical plant. The workforce required to operate the physical plant is being reduced through mechanisms the federal courts have repeatedly examined. The press release announces the buildings without mentioning what is happening to the staffing inside them.
PACT enrollment is going the wrong way
The administration credits itself with PACT Act enrollment growth. The data the administration publishes itself shows the opposite trend.
VA’s PACT Act Performance Dashboard, Issue 54, dated January 23, 2026, reports new VHA enrollee counts by calendar year:
2024: 384,839 new enrollees
2025: 364,448 new enrollees
2026 year-to-date through January: roughly 125,000 new enrollees, tracking the declining 2025 pace
Year-over-year, new enrollment declined by 20,391 between 2024 and 2025. The 2026 trajectory continues the decline, not a reversal.
The PACT Act became law on August 10, 2022, under the previous administration. The statutory expansion of toxic exposure presumptive conditions, the regulatory change that produced the bulk of enrollment growth, took effect on March 5, 2024, also under the previous administration.
Both the law and its largest implementation milestone pre-date the current administration. The growth the current administration claims credit for is statutory growth from a law it did not pass, achieved through a regulation it did not write, that is now declining on its watch.
That is not enrollment growth. That is enrollment decline credited as enrollment growth.
The $32 billion the press release does not mention
A press release announcing $596 million in VA infrastructure should account for the largest information technology modernization program in federal civilian government. This one does not.
The Government Accountability Office issued GAO-26-108812 on December 15, 2025: “VA Electronic Health Record Modernization: Critical Actions Needed to Support Accelerated System Deployments.” The testimony documents ten new priority recommendations for VA. Of the 18 prior GAO recommendations on EHRM, 16 remain not fully implemented. VA’s new cost estimate for the program is $32.7 billion, with alternative scenarios as high as $37 billion. VA has not shared the new cost estimate with GAO. The program has already obligated more than $12.71 billion in federal funds.
In February 2025, GAO had issued the earlier testimony GAO-25-108091, “Electronic Health Record Modernization: VA Is Making Incremental Improvements, but Much More Remains to Be Done.” Carol Harris, GAO’s Director of Information Technology and Cybersecurity, delivered both testimonies. The “Incremental Improvements” report documented user satisfaction issues and configuration changes still outstanding. It was delivered at the February 24, 2025 House VA Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing titled “From Reset to Rollout: Can the VA EHRM Program Finally Deliver?”
The same Subcommittee held a follow-up hearing on December 15, 2025, where Harris delivered GAO-26-108812. Title used again: “From Reset to Rollout.”
The VA OIG record on the Oracle EHR rollout is independently documented. Three Mann-Grandstaff OIG reports were released on a single day, March 17, 2022:
Report 21-00656-110: Medication management deficiencies after the new EHR go-live.
Report 21-00781-108: Ticket process concerns. The OIG documented 38,700 tickets generated in five months. Thirty-three percent were closed without resolution.
Report 21-00781-109: Care coordination deficiencies.
A fourth OIG report from June 2022 (21-03020-168) documented deficits with metrics for the EHR rollout assessment. A fifth OIG report from February 18, 2026 (25-00975-234) documented continued information security findings at Spokane.
David Case, then-Deputy Inspector General, testified before the House Subcommittee on February 15, 2024, that “for more than four years, OIG staff have been” examining the EHRM program. The full transcript of that hearing is part of the public record.
The OIG paper trail is over five years long. The GAO paper trail is over five years long. The Oracle deployment site list is short. The number of OIG and GAO recommendations VA has fully implemented out of the 18 most recent: two.
In May 2025, Secretary Doug Collins appeared before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs for his first hearing as Secretary. The transcript shows him pushing back at Senator Richard Blumenthal: “I will not let you sit here and scare my veterans” about the EHR rollout.
In January 2026, the same Senator and the same Secretary were in the same room for the Senate VA Committee’s hearing on the Restructure for Impact and Sustainability Effort, or RISE, where Collins answered EHR questions differently. The committee record contains his statement that veterans “have every right to be skeptical” about EHR deployments at their facilities.
Eight months between the two statements. The underlying program had not changed. The Secretary’s confidence in defending it had.
A press release announcing capital investment in the physical infrastructure that runs on top of an EHR program GAO has flagged 18 times, OIG has examined for five years, the Secretary himself has acknowledged is grounds for skepticism, and which has obligated more than $12 billion against a $32.7 billion cost estimate not yet shared with GAO. That press release is silent on the EHR program.
Brick and mortar make no medical record.
The narrator: Doug Collins
A press release is only as credible as its narrator. Examine the narrator.
On February 11, 2025, the day after Doug Collins was sworn in as the 11th Secretary of Veterans Affairs, President Trump signed documents naming Collins as acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, replacing recently-confirmed Biden appointee David Huitema. On March 5, 2025, Collins was added as acting Special Counsel at the Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency that protects whistleblowers, including federal whistleblowers reporting wrongdoing inside agencies the Secretary of Veterans Affairs leads.
For approximately seven weeks, the sitting Secretary of Veterans Affairs simultaneously served as the acting head of:
the agency responsible for executive branch ethics enforcement,
the agency responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers, and
the federal department those agencies investigate.
On February 21, 2025, Representative Gerry Connolly, then-Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent President Trump a formal letter opposing the appointments. The letter cited the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the institutional independence Congress wrote into OGE’s enabling statute. The letter characterized the dual appointment as “a fundamental conflict of interest that undermines the very purpose of OGE’s institutional independence.”
The Connolly letter is congressional record, on House Oversight letterhead, signed by the ranking Democrat on the committee with oversight jurisdiction. It is not a press statement. It is a formal congressional position.
The day after the OGE announcement, Senator Richard Blumenthal, then Ranking Member of the Senate VA Committee, was quoted in Military Times:
“Barely one week on the job, Doug Collins should have enough on his plate taking the reins of the largest health care system in the country. On top of it being a major conflict of interest for a Cabinet secretary to be tasked with oversight of his own position and agency, all three of these roles are too important for one individual to fill.”
On April 1, 2025, Jamieson Greer succeeded Collins in both acting roles. Collins held the OGE acting directorship for approximately seven weeks. He held the OSC acting role for approximately four. Both ended.
Collins is not currently serving in either oversight role. The credibility question is not about active conflicts of interest in May 2026. The credibility question is about the disposition the first months of his VA tenure established.
The first official act on Collins’s calendar as Secretary of Veterans Affairs was acting headship of the federal agency that polices the federal government’s ethics standards. His first weeks in office included a formal House Oversight letter from a Ranking Member to the President describing his appointment as “a fundamental conflict of interest.” On May 6, 2025, when the Senate VA Committee questioned his confidence in the Oracle EHR rollout, he answered by accusing a senator of scaring veterans. On January 29, 2026, he told the same committee veterans had “every right to be skeptical” about EHR deployments.
These are not inconsistencies of detail. They are inconsistencies of posture. They are documented across federal court filings, congressional letters, hearing transcripts, military press coverage, and the Secretary’s own statements.
The May 11, 2026 press release we are autopsying carries his name.
What the documents say
What the May 11 press release asserts in roughly 700 words is contradicted by twenty-nine primary federal documents. Federal court orders. House and Senate hearing transcripts. GAO testimony. VA OIG audits and Healthcare Facility Inspections. VA’s own concurrent news releases. The White House’s own fact sheet. A congressional letter from a House Oversight Ranking Member to the President.
The specific contradictions:
35 new facilities (press release) versus 25 new facilities (White House, three months earlier).
70% backlog reduction versus 63% versus 60% versus 57%, all from the same administration’s own concurrent paper.
$596 million announced, zero of the 536 individual projects identified by dollar amount in the supporting PDF.
Capital expansion announced alongside a 29,000-employee workforce reduction achieved by routing around a federal court order blocking large-scale RIFs.
PACT Act growth credited despite the statutory origin pre-dating the administration and the enrollment trend now declining.
$596 million capital announcement in a quarter when the Oracle EHR program has 16 of 18 GAO recommendations unimplemented, a new $32.7 billion cost estimate not shared with GAO, and over $12 billion already obligated.
A Secretary whose first weeks in office included acting headship of the agencies that investigate his own department, and whose public confidence in the systems he defends has been documented as situational.
The autopsy does not require interpretation. The documents do the work.
A press release this contradicted, this often, by sources this primary, is not communication. It is performance.
Veterans are entitled to better, and the documents are how they get it.
What you can do about it
The ask. The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has the authority to formally request a written reconciliation. Specifically:
A reconciled new-facility count, with the administration’s definition of “new facility” stated explicitly.
A backlog reduction figure with the baseline date and the calculation window stated.
Project-by-project dollar amounts for the Q2 FY2026 NRM project list.
The administration’s specific contribution to PACT Act enrollment, separated from the statutory expansion that took effect March 5, 2024.
These are not policy preferences. They are reconciliation requests for federal numbers the public has been given without supporting detail.
Phone calls
Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs:
Chairman Jerry Moran (R-KS): (202) 224-6521
Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): (202) 224-2823
House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs:
Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL): (202) 225-5661
Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-CA): (202) 225-2305
Veteran call script
“I’m a veteran. I’d like Senator [or Representative] [Name] to ask VA Secretary Collins for a written reconciliation of the conflicting facility counts and backlog reduction percentages across VA’s own concurrent communications. The numbers in the May 11, 2026 press release do not match the numbers in the White House’s own January 2026 fact sheet. Reconciliation should be in writing and on the public record.”
Citizen call script
“I’m a constituent. I’d like Senator [or Representative] [Name] to formally request that the VA Secretary provide project-by-project dollar amounts for the Q2 FY2026 NRM project list referenced in the May 11, 2026 press release. The PDF VA linked from that press release lists 536 projects, with zero funding amounts attached to any of them. The public is entitled to know how the $596 million was allocated.”
Tip line for sources
If you work at VA, in Congress, at GAO, at OIG, at Oracle Health, or at any contractor with information relevant to this story, secure tips can be sent to ipersist@tbirdsquietfight.com. Sources are protected.
About this publication
Tbird’s Quiet Fight publishes investigative reporting on veterans’ policy, benefits, and oversight. It is independent, paid for by readers, and unaffiliated with any agency, contractor, or advocacy organization.
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.
Theresa “Tbird” Aldrich, Navy veteran (VAQ-34, 1983-1990), Investigative Journalist, TbirdsQuietFight.com, Founder of HadIt.com | Advisory Board Member, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI).