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veterans
All Hands on Deck: a Letter From the Veterans’ Boat on the Gaza Flotilla
As veterans, we’ve put our lives on the line for the Empire; it’s past time we do the same for humanity and ourselves.
Sep 17, 2025
Nine of us veterans arrived in Barcelona on August 27. We were mostly strangers meeting for the first time, with a couple of exceptions. We began to bond immediately—which was fairly easy considering our common bonds of being veterans sailing for peace.
Two Marine veterans had served together with HMX-1, presidential helicopter. There are two combat veterans. And then there’s me. That’s all that’s left as of today, as four veterans have had to leave the boat for a variety of reasons, including the inherent delays associated with the historical size of the flotilla.
In Barcelona, our days were full of training protocols; preparing travel documentation and our “SOS videos” for our anticipated illegal kidnapping. We also had time for bonding, and we took advantage of the luxury of eating out.
The send-off from 10,000 beautiful people in Barcelona was such a heart-filling experience, it’s difficult to limit to words. Only to be outdone at Carthage by the compassionate people of Tunisia—a crowd of 20,000 from all over the country. And now in Bizerte, Tunisia, hundreds still remain on shore, allowing their support to be felt by just a glance.
As veterans we know that the war machine runs on the deaths of innocent Indigenous people all for the glory of the almighty dollar, which is the only God the war pigs serve.
We have added a journalist from Mexico and one from Finland. We had also temporarily added another sailor to our crew, but his expertise was needed on another boat. He literally just left—change is constant, that’s for certain. We just got another participant from the Finnish delegation, so we are back at 12. So we’re set with our final manifest, we’re told.
Our medic—who is an expat living in Norway, was a combat medic in Ukraine and a musician-artist and former orthodox priest.
Boat life is never dull, and there’s seemingly always necessary chores to be done. From cooking to cleaning to sail and boat repairs to man-overboard drills, drone and interdiction drills, and multiple meetings a day. Being in port and on still waters makes boat life easier. But added chores like refilling our food, water, and fuel supplies try to offset that advantage.
For our first leg of the voyage, the seas were pretty rough; almost everyone was sea sick with exception of the captain. Three of us got IV’s in Carthage. I was treated in a Tunisian hospital and was told the government would foot the bill.
We are leaving port today [Sunday, September 14]; at least the sailboats are. A Zionist-owned yacht bribed port officials yesterday and took the fuel we intended to use for our fleet.
There are variations on how long it will take to get to Gaza—from 10-14 days. So likely the 24-28 of September.
I’d like to add that this isn’t about us, but about our innocent human siblings being slaughtered in Gaza. And that’s exactly what we’re pleading for—ALL EYES ON GAZA as the Axis of Evil is expediting their ethnic cleansing that has been intensified these last two years on the tail end of 77 years of apartheid, occupation, and murder. As veterans we know that the war machine runs on the deaths of innocent Indigenous people all for the glory of the almighty dollar, which is the only God the war pigs serve.
We need all hands on deck. This is not a drill. Humanity is literally at stake, in Gaza/Palestine and at home, in the states. As veterans, we’ve put our lives on the line for the Empire, it’s past time we do the same for humanity and ourselves.
“What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now! And if we don’t get it. SHUT IT DOWN.” It’s not just a chant. It’s a creed. We shut the war machine down now, or we perish.
There’s much more to relay and convey. I’ll be posting more content routinely to social media for this last leg, and hopefully the seas will cooperate (check out @veteransforpeace on Instagram).
All my best,
Phil Tottenham
9/15/2025
P.S. All the boats from Tunisia and Barcelona have met up and are setting sail for Gaza. We will be meeting up with the fleets from Italy and Greece on our way. We should be somewhere around 40 boats.
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'A Test Case to See How Far They Can Go': Federal Indictment of Anti-ICE Protesters Raises Alarm
Afghanistan War veteran Bajun Mavalwalla is among nine people facing conspiracy charges for protesting the Trump administration's anti-immigrant crackdown.
Sep 02, 2025
Free speech and veterans' rights advocates are among those this week condemning federal conspiracy charges against a former US service member who was among nine people indicted after attending a Washington state protest against President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant blitz.
On June 11, 35-year-old Spokane, Washington resident Bajun Mavalwalla—a former Army sergeant who according to The Guardian survived a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan—heeded a Facebook call to action from former City Council President Ben Stuckart to intervene after a pair of legal asylum-seekers were apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operatives at the local Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office.
Mavalwalla, Stuckart, and others allegedly blocked a bus being used by ICE to transport the two asylum-seekers and deflated its tires. Several people were arrested; Mavalwalla was not among them.
According to The Spokane Spokesman-Review, Mavalwalla was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents a month later as he and his girlfriend were moving out of their shared home.
"This is not how I planned to spend my moving day," Mavalwalla says in a video of the arrest recorded by his father, Bajun Mavalwalla Sr. "I'm a military veteran. I'm an American citizen."
Army veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II arrested on conspiracy charges from exercising his 1st Amendment rights at an ICE protest the day he’s moving his family into a new house. pic.twitter.com/B3JePSkC4P
— Ted Cruz Called The FBI on me (@weareronin47) September 2, 2025
Mavalwalla Sr.—who is also an Army vet who was deployed to Afghanistan at the same time as his son—told the Spokesman-Review: "I demanded a warrant, they refused and wouldn't show it until everyone left the home. My son was protesting on June 11, they said he assaulted officers."
"My son worked in cybersecurity and was deployed to Afghanistan," Mavalwalla Sr. added. "He has no problems with the law."
On July 15, federal prosecutors charged Mavalwalla, Stuckart, and seven other protesters with conspiracy to impede or injure law enforcement. If convicted, they could face up to six years behind bars, a $250,000 fine, and three years' supervised release. Mavalwalla pleaded not guilty.
Following the protesters' arrest, Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, a Democrat, said: "This politically motivated action is a perversion of our justice system. The Trump administration's weaponization of ICE and the [Department of Justice] is trampling on the US Constitution and creating widespread fear across our community."
Some observers noted that the case prosecutor, acting US Attorney Pete Serrano is a Trump nominee with no prosecutorial experience who called the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrectionists "political prisoners." Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who vows to block Serrano's US attorney appointment, has slammed his "extreme right-wing views" and argues that he is unfit for office.
As news of Mavalwalla's arrest subsequently spread, so did outrage and alarm.
"Here's a guy who held a top secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone," retired Army Col. Kenneth Koop, an Afghan War veteran, told The Guardian Tuesday. "To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw."
Luis Miranda, DHS' chief spokesperson during the Biden administration, said of Mavawalla and the Trump administration, "He's a test case to see how far they can go."
Shawn VanDiver—a veteran who founded and leads #AfghanEvac, which helps relocate and resettle Afghans who aided the US invaders—wrote on the social media site X Tuesday that "the FBI didn't arrest Bajun Mavalwalla II at the protest. They waited. Then showed up at his home—on moving day."
"No violence. No property damage. Just a veteran using his voice. And they shackled him in front of his family," he said. "Let that sink in."
VanDiver noted that Mavalwalla "served honorably" and that he "stood up for Afghan allies."
"Now the government is trying to silence him and scare us," he added. "We're watching."
Mavalwalla Sr. told The Press Democrat in a July interview that his son's prosecution is an "unbelievable overreach."
"Sending out all those agents, under the pretext that my son is somehow a threat," he added. "The craziest thing is they’re charging him with conspiracy. He was at the protest, but he'd never met any of these other people. You want to know the first time he met Stuckart? It was in the jail cell."
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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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