We Salute, Then We Abandon: The Betrayal of America’s Veterans

The draft notice came on May 28, 1968—just a few days after high school graduation. He’d been working nights at the mill since February, saving up for a car. It was the first big thing he’d ever bought: a 1969 Pontiac Firebird, deep blue, four-barrel V8. He didn’t even have plates on it yet. His plan was to spend the summer driving—county roads, lakeside highways, maybe as far as Colorado if the money stretched. That was the future, as far as he could see it: a car, a road, freedom.

He figured he’d be back in a year or two. He felt certain of it—sure that the country asking for his service would still be there to welcome him home.

His uncle helped him bring the Firebird out to the farm and back it into the barn. They threw a tarp over the hood like they were sealing something up for safekeeping. When he returned, he thought, he’d pull it off, turn the key, and drive like no time had passed.

At the same moment funding was being clawed back from veterans sleeping in cars, Congress was being asked to greenlight unprecedented new spending on weapons, drones, and missile systems.

What he didn’t know—what no one tells you in the recruiter’s office or in the grainy footage of presidents giving speeches—is how long it takes to feel like you’ve really come home. Or what it feels like to live in a country that thanks you for your service but resents having to keep its promise.

That Firebird was sold 20 years ago to cover a surgery Veterans Affairs (VA) wouldn’t pay for. The barn’s long gone too. And now, in his 70s, the man who once covered that car with a tarp sits at a kitchen table with a blinking laptop and a stack of printouts, trying to navigate a benefits portal that feels like it was built to confuse him. He clicks through broken links, resubmits forms, dials numbers that go to voicemail. He’s not afraid of war anymore. He’s afraid of being forgotten. Of being told there’s no record of his claim. Of finding out too late that the service he relied on has been quietly defunded.

This year, Memorial Day arrived with its usual rituals—flag-raising, wreath-laying, the half-mast slow choreography of remembrance. But beneath the ceremony, something else is happening. Just days after taking office, the Trump administration launched a freeze on federal financial assistance across dozens of programs, including those housed within the Department of Veterans Affairs. Memo M-25-13 ordered agencies to halt disbursements for any grant or aid program considered inconsistent with the administration’s values. No list was released. No criteria published. By 5:00 pm the following day, payments were to stop.

The impact on veterans was immediate and severe. More than 44 VA-supported programs were effectively frozen overnight. The Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF)—a backbone initiative that helps tens of thousands of veterans each year stay housed through rental assistance, case management, and emergency aid—was halted. The Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program, which funds transitional housing, peer mentorship, and reintegration for unhoused veterans, was put on hold. Legal aid clinics that help veterans resolve fines, access overdue benefits, and prevent evictions had their funding suspended or marked for review. Suicide prevention programs lost staffing and stability. Hotline response times lengthened. Providers pulled back outreach. Veterans called in, asking the same questions over and over: Is my housing still covered? Is the program still running? Will anyone still pick up the phone?

In many cases, the people on the other end didn’t have answers. Some had already been laid off.

After a wave of lawsuits and public outcry, a federal court issued an injunction. The memo was withdrawn, but the strategy was not. The administration made clear that programs centered on housing, reintegration, climate resilience, or “nontraditional” care models would remain under scrutiny. Meanwhile, federal officials quietly sunsetted the VA Servicing Purchase Program—a pandemic-era mortgage relief tool that allowed the VA to purchase delinquent loans and offer more affordable terms to struggling veterans. Over 5,000 veterans avoided foreclosure because of that program. There was no press release. No transition. Just silence.

Then Trump proposed the largest defense budget in American history: over $1 trillion for 2026. It was a stunning figure, even in a country accustomed to massive Pentagon spending. But what made it feel grotesque was the timing. At the same moment funding was being clawed back from veterans sleeping in cars, Congress was being asked to greenlight unprecedented new spending on weapons, drones, and missile systems. A trillion for war. But nothing for the woman calling a crisis line after her motel voucher runs out. Nothing for the outreach team trying to find a veteran living under an overpass. Nothing for the caseworker explaining to yet another caller that the check might be delayed.

This isn’t about belt-tightening. It’s about priorities. And those priorities have consequences.

Across the country, nonprofits that deliver VA-funded services are shrinking. Some are shutting down. Others are operating with skeleton crews, working double shifts to prevent people from falling through the cracks. Suicide rates among veterans remain stubbornly high—nearly double the civilian average. Women veterans, now one of the fastest-growing homeless populations in the U.S., are bearing the brunt of service gaps and shelter closures. In cities like Phoenix, Cleveland, and San Diego, outreach teams report rising waitlists, rising anxiety, and rising numbers of veterans returning for help they were once stable enough to no longer need.

The policy is abstract. The harm is not.

This isn’t about a man and his Firebird. It’s about the distance between what we say and what we do. It’s about the uncomfortable truth that we’ve built a system that honors veterans with ceremony but abandons them in practice. A system where aid is conditional, where services are quietly withdrawn, and where the paperwork is designed to wear people down.

We do not honor the dead by abandoning the living. We do not preserve freedom by gutting the systems that make it real. And we do not fulfill our patriotic duties by breaking the promises made to the very people who upheld them.

Memorial Day has passed. But the test it asks of us—who we are, what we stand for, and who we stand with—remains.

So the question is this: Will we salute once a year and forget by Tuesday? Or will we become a nation that matches its pageantry with policy, its slogans with service, its rhetoric with resources?

Veterans do not need ceremony. They need care. They need consistency. They need housing. They need healthcare. They need legal aid. They need a country that doesn’t ask them to prove again and again that they are worth helping.

And they need it now.