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veterans
Trump Is Breaking the Promise Our Nation Made to Military Veterans
How the administration is dismantling and privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Aug 24, 2025
US President Donald Trump is famous for calling our military veterans “suckers” and “losers,” so you won’t be surprised that the president is now breaking the nation’s promise to veterans and active service members by dismantling and privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the VA.
In 1865, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln called for the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan." Today the motto of the VA reads, “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.”
The VA provides over 18 million veterans and their dependents and caregivers with a multitude of services—healthcare, a Veterans Crisis Line for urgent assistance, disability payments and rehab, education assistance, career counseling, support for veteran-owned businesses, home loans, life insurance and financial services, help for caregivers to the disabled, burial in national cemeteries, and more.
And, of course, the nation has promised those same VA benefits to the 2 million men and women currently serving in the armed forces (1.3 million on active duty and another 761,000 in the reserves) after they retire from service.
Dismantling the VA through privatization, staff cuts, and contract cancellations means future veterans will face a fragmented, profit-driven system that doesn’t understand military service and doesn’t know what veterans have been through.
The plan to privatize the VA was hatched during the first Trump administration. By 2024 a real plan was ready. Project 2025—the MAGA [“Make America Great Again”] blueprint for the authoritarian takeover of the United States—strongly favored private healthcare for veterans.
The VA’s own healthcare system includes 170 hospitals and nearly 1,200 clinics spread across the country. It is the nation’s largest integrated healthcare system. Since 2014, the VA has also had a private side, now known as “community care.” If a veteran lives too far from a VA healthcare facility or needs a service the VA can’t provide, they may be eligible for “community care” from a private local doctor or clinic, paid for by the VA.
The Trump administration is expanding privatized “community care.” The “VA Mission Act of 2018,” enacted during the first Trump administration, nearly doubled the VA’s budget for private “community care” from $15 billion in 2018 to $28.3 billion in 2023.
Trump’s 2025 VA budget proposal increases total VA spending, but 75% of the increase (or $14.4 billion) doesn’t go to the VA at all—it goes to private medical providers. This represents a 67% increase for privatized care.
Many see the growing private healthcare budget as a stealth way to eventually privatize the VA’s entire system. Every dollar devoted to private care is a dollar denied to the VA’s own doctors and nurses, ultimately undermining the entire VA system. Doctors and nurses see the handwriting on the wall and leave. Their likely replacements see an agency under siege and stay away.
So far in 2025, the VA lost 600 doctors and 1,900 nurses. During the first three months of the year, about 40% of doctors who were offered jobs declined—four times the rejection rate a year earlier.
In March 2025, a leaked memo revealed Trump’s plan to eliminate 83,000 jobs from the VA, as much as 15% of the agency’s workforce. In response, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the plan “a gut punch… breathtaking… in its malevolence and cruelty.” After major pushback from veterans, the agency announced it would only need to cut 30,000 jobs because so many staff had agreed to leave voluntarily.
To make it easier to cut VA staff, on August 6 VA Secretary Doug Collins ended collective bargaining agreements for most of the VA’s 377,000 unionized employees, including nurses, doctors, benefits processors, food service workers, technicians, and janitorial staff. The VA is the first major federal agency to fully strip collective bargaining rights from its unionized workforce.
Since 1865, veterans have been given preference for government jobs, though they must prove they are qualified to do the work. More than one-quarter of the VA’s 482,000 employees are veterans. (Project 2025’s plan to eliminate half of all government employees by 2026 and 75% by 2029 would cut jobs for about 300,000 veterans.)
In August 2025, the VA’s inspector general reported 4,434 health staffing shortages—a 50% increase from the previous year. In all, 94% of 139 VA health facilities reported severe shortages of medical officers and 79% reported shortages of nurses. As private-care funding is increasing, the VA itself is fraying.
In recent years, a mental health crisis among veterans has been growing worse and the Trump administration has responded by slashing the services designed to save lives. On average, 17 veterans commit suicide every day. Since 2007, the Veterans Crisis Line has handled more than 1.6 million calls and dispatched 351,000 emergency responders (about 100 per day) to help veterans in crisis, yet Trump and VA Secretary Collins have targeted suicide prevention programs for cuts. Furthermore, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2025 revealed that veterans receiving private “community care” are not satisfied with the quality of care they receive outside the VA and they have a 21% higher suicide rate.
Now the ”One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress enacted July 4 is expected to eliminate Medicaid health insurance for some veterans. Medicaid currently provides care for 1.6 million veterans, including those with the most complex medical needs.
In addition, when veterans transition out of the military it often takes six months or longer to find steady work. During that time, they may rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food stamps”) to feed their families. The One Big Beautiful Bill denies SNAP benefits to able-bodied people who don’t have jobs, specifically including veterans. Trump says he “loves our veterans” and will take care of them—but the Big Beautiful Bill is how he thanks them for their service.
It gets worse. In 2022, Congress enacted the PACT Act to deliver healthcare to millions of veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals during their years of service. Now Trump is undermining that law.
During the Vietnam War (1962-1971), about 3 million veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, a potent cancer-causing herbicide sprayed over vast areas to kill jungle vegetation. An estimated 300,000 Vietnam veterans have already died from exposure to Agent Orange (about five times as many as the 58,000 killed in combat).
Another major source of toxic exposures to veterans has been smoke and fumes from “burn pits.” Burn pits are big holes in the ground where, for decades, roughly 300 military installations (large and small, worldwide) have burned plastics, electronics, chemicals, munitions, medical waste, and human waste. Somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million veterans have been exposed to toxic fumes from burn pits. (Use of burn pits finally ended in 2021.)
In 2022, Congress enacted the PACT Act [“The Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act”] to assess and care for veterans exposed to toxicants. The PACT Act created one of the largest expansions of VA benefits ever enacted. Until the Trump administration hit the brakes.
Many of the features of the PACT Act required specialized services provided under contract with private-sector suppliers, but the Trump administration in early 2025 canceled at least 650 of those contracts. Trump cancelled contracts that provided the necessary personnel and resources to conduct outreach to eligible veterans, screen applicants, and process claims—cutting the heart out of the PACT Act. Evidently not everyone in the Trump administration is proud of their efforts to undermine the PACT Act. US Senate investigators have accused VA Secretary Collins, of trying “to hide the truth from Congress” about staff cuts and contract cancellations related to PACT.
Dismantling the VA through privatization, staff cuts, and contract cancellations means future veterans will face a fragmented, profit-driven system that doesn’t understand military service and doesn’t know what veterans have been through. In truth, every cut, every step toward privatization, every canceled contract is a betrayal of the promise we have made to all those who serve: When you return, we will take care of you.
This piece has been updated with the information that the Trump VA ended collective bargaining for most of its unionized staff.
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'Unconscionable': Trump Admin Blasted for Plan to Ban Abortions at VA Hospitals
"Those who fight for all our freedom must have the most basic freedom to control their own bodies and futures—and this rule robs them of it," said the head of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Aug 04, 2025
Advocates for veterans, reproductive rights campaigners, and Democrats in Congress on Monday continued to lambaste the Trump administration's quiet move to end abortion care for former U.S. service members and their relatives.
"Since taking office, the Trump administration has repeatedly attacked service members, veterans, and their families' access to basic reproductive care, including gender-affirming care," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a Monday statement.
Planned Parenthood and its leader have frequently criticized actions by President Donald Trump, including his signature on Republicans' recently passed budget reconciliation package that targets the group's clinics—which provide a range of healthcare services—by cutting them off from Medicaid funds if they continue to offer abortions.
"Those who fight for all our freedom must have the most basic freedom to control their own bodies and futures—and this rule robs them of it. Taking away access to healthcare shows us that the Trump administration will always put politics and retribution over people's lives," McGill Johnson said of the new proposal for veterans' care. "Planned Parenthood will never stop fighting to ensure everyone has access to the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive healthcare—no matter what."
The Trump Administration just moved to BAN abortion care for VETERANS, even in instances of rape and incest.This is just another attack on our veterans and reproductive health care.We owe it to our servicemembers to provide them the care they need.
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— Rep. Ted Lieu (@reptedlieu.bsky.social) August 4, 2025 at 1:06 PM
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration allowed the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide abortion counseling and care for service members and beneficiaries in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnancy threatened the health of the patient. On Friday, the VA proposed a rule that would "reinstate the full exclusion on abortions and abortion counseling from the medical benefits package," and the Civilian Health and Medical Program.
The document says the VA would continue treating ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages, and would allow abortion care "when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term."
The proposal quickly drew rebuke from a range of critics, including U.S. lawmakers. Blasting the proposed rule as "disgusting and dangerous," Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said on social media Friday that the government "should not be able to impose a pregnancy on anyone—least of all survivors of rape, abuse, or those whose health is at risk."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had advocated for the Biden administration's policy, declared Saturday that "Republicans don't care if your health is in danger, if you're a veteran, or if you've been raped—they want abortion outlawed everywhere, for everyone."
As the 30-day public comment period for the proposed rule began Monday, U.S. House Veterans' Affairs Committee Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-Calif.) warned that "stripping away access to essential reproductive healthcare at VA, the largest integrated healthcare network in the United States, puts veterans' lives at risk and violates the promise we made to them. Veterans have earned the right to healthcare. Full stop. This ban on reproductive healthcare will harm veterans and is dangerous."
The proposal makes clear that VA Secretary Doug Collins "is substituting his judgment for that of the hundreds of thousands of women veterans who have earned the freedom to make personal medical decisions in consultation with their providers," Takano said in a statement. "It also gags medical providers and does not allow them to provide complete and honest care to veterans who get their care from VA. Rolling back this rule is a direct attack on veterans' rights. It will jeopardize the lives of pregnant veterans across our country, especially those residing in states with total abortion bans and other reproductive healthcare restrictions, which have already led to preventable deaths."
Reproductive rights advocates have similarly weighed in over the past few days and highlighted the anti-choice state laws enacted since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision reversed Roe.
Katie O'Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women's Law Center, said that "at a time when extremist lawmakers are passing cruel abortion bans and restrictions, this move only deepens the crisis those laws have created—stripping veterans of their reproductive freedom and creating even more confusion about where they can turn for care."
"Veterans already face unique challenges to their health and well-being, including experiencing PTSD, recovering from military sexual trauma, and facing an increased risk of suicide," she noted, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder. "Banning access to the full range of reproductive services, including abortion, further jeopardizes their health and safety. No one should have to travel hundreds of miles, endure financial hardship, or risk their health just to get the medical care they need. Our veterans deserve better."
Center for Reproductive Rights president and CEO Nancy Northup declared that "this administration is sending a clear message to veterans—that their health and dignity aren't worth defending. To devalue veterans in this way and take away life-changing healthcare would be unconscionable. This shows you just how extreme this administration's anti-abortion stance is—they would rather a veteran suffer severely than receive an abortion."
Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, a practicing OB-GYN and CEO of Power to Decide, also warned that the new "needlessly cruel policy change," if it goes through as expected, will harm veterans and "once again betrays our nation's commitment to them."
"Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 12 states have enacted total abortion bans, one additional state has no abortion clinics, and seven states have gestational restrictions often in effect so early that people don't even know they are pregnant," she explained. "All of this exacerbates an ongoing public health crisis. For some veterans, VA was the only place they were able to obtain abortion care in these states."
"Restrictions on abortion coverage—the effects of which fall hardest on people who already face unequal access to healthcare, including Black women, people of color, and people with low incomes—hinder a person's reproductive well-bring and deepen inequities," the doctor added. "Power to Decide condemns this policy and urges Congress to pass legislation to ensure all veterans have access to the abortion care they need when and where they need it."
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Trump CFPB Cancels $95 Million Settlement With Credit Union Accused of Charging Illegal 'Junk Fees'
"How many millions did this CFPB just take from servicemembers?" wrote one consumer financial protection advocate.
Jul 02, 2025
According to an order published Tuesday, the country's top financial protection watchdog nixed a $95 million settlement reached in 2024 with Navy Federal Credit Union, which serves military servicemembers, veterans, Department of Defense employees, and their families. The President Joe Biden-led Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last year accused the bank of illegally charging overdraft fees to customers and ordered the credit union to refund consumers and pay a civil penalty.
Multiple observers, including a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) employee, said that the move appears to run counter to the CFPB's stated priority of focusing "its enforcement and supervision resources on pressing threats to consumers, particularly service members and their families, and veterans."
The Tuesday order means that Navy Federal will not have to pay $80 million to impacted customers, or a $15 million civil penalty.
In November 2024, the CFPB under then-President Joe Biden said that from 2017 to 2022, the credit union charged customers "surprise overdraft fees on certain ATM withdrawals and debit card purchases, even when their accounts showed sufficient funds at the time of the transactions," in a statement announcing the $80 million refund and the civil penalty.
Then-CFPB Director Rohit Chopra accused the credit union of "illegally harvested tens of millions of dollars in junk fees, including from active duty servicemembers and veterans."
The order on Tuesday is not the first time the Trump administration has canceled enforcement actions brought under the Biden-led CFPB. The Trump administration has sought to drastically cut personnel at the CFPB, which is currently led by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit association of pro-consumer organizations, wrote on X on Tuesday that "it doesn't square when the CFPB gives a free pass to Navy Federal for charging illegal overdraft fees AND claims it cares about servicemembers."
"How many millions did this CFPB just take from servicemembers?" he asked.
Allison Preiss, a former senior advisor to the director at the CFPB, reacted to the news by writing on X that "for months, Trump's CFPB has insisted it is focusing its efforts on protecting servicemembers and veterans," and included some screenshots of statements from the CFPB, such as a statement from May 2025 announcing that the bureau will not prioritize enforcement action related to Buy Now, Pay Later loans.
"The bureau takes this step in the interest of focusing resources on supporting hard-working American taxpayers, servicemen, veterans, and small businesses," according to that statement.
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