SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
veterans
The VA is Ripping Away Abortion Care for Veterans... Again
This isn’t just a rollback. It’s a deliberate erasure of rights that we fought for in the wake of deeply personal and collective loss.
Jan 25, 2026
In 2022, my wife and I lost our first child. We named them June. They were deeply wanted and fiercely loved. In one fateful appointment, our entire worlds changed. We learned that June had a severe fetal bladder abnormality and was unable to produce amniotic fluid. Without it, their lungs would never develop. They would not survive.
We made the impossible decision to end the pregnancy—an act of compassion, love, and medical necessity.
At the time, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had a total ban on abortion care and counseling.
No exceptions for rape. No exceptions for incest. Not even to save a veteran’s life.
Veterans and our families deserve futures built on compassion, justice, and love—not fear.
After our loss, the only way I felt I could keep breathing was to turn that grief into meaning. I shared our story with lawmakers to help reverse this dangerous policy so that veterans and their families could turn to the VA—no matter the circumstance or where they lived. That fall, the VA finally took steps to reverse the ban, signaling a long-overdue shift toward care, autonomy, and dignity.
But that progress was short-lived.
The VA just finalized a new abortion ban policy that, once again, excludes exceptions for rape or incest and offers only vague assurances that it will intervene if our lives are at risk. They initially implemented this enormous change in secret without telling veterans or their families.
In effect, it returns the VA to what was once the most extreme abortion ban in the country—an outright prohibition on care and counseling that applies to every VA facility nationwide, regardless of state law.
This isn’t just a rollback. It’s a deliberate erasure of rights that we fought for in the wake of deeply personal and collective loss.
And it is not happening in isolation. The same administration driving this ban is also working diligently to eliminate gender-affirming care, defund programs for minority and underrepresented veterans, and strip inclusive language and data collection from federal policy. The message is unmistakable: Some veterans count. Others don’t.
Veterans are not a monolith. We are a diverse community—LGBTQIA+, people of color, disabled, parents, caregivers, survivors, and yes, women too. Our community exists at every intersection of identity and experience, and our families serve alongside us. Our care cannot be conditional. Our humanity is not negotiable.
Policy is never just about one issue. It is intersectional—because our lives are intersectional.
Reproductive care cannot be separated from gender-affirming care, from disability access and mental health, from racial justice, or maternal health. Our needs don’t exist in silos, and neither do we. When one right is taken away, the loss reverberates across all the others.
I’ve seen what’s possible when we refuse to stay silent—how lived experience can reshape policy and expand care that has never existed before. And I know exactly what is at stake when care is denied. Pregnancy can change on a dime.
June’s life, though brief, transformed mine. Through their memory, I found purpose. I found a voice. And in their honor, I will continue working to ensure that no veteran or family ever has to face what we faced alone.
We should be building systems rooted in care, equity, and truth. We should be honoring the fullness of who veterans are, how we serve, and how we build our families. Instead, our fundamental rights are being stripped away—one policy memo at a time—and once again, we are being asked to fight for the right to make personal decisions about our health, our futures, and our families.
I will not allow June’s legacy to become another casualty of politics. Their life will be a call to care.
This moment demands more than endurance. It demands action.
The policies we pass—within the VA and beyond—shape the futures of veterans and the people who love us. Had my wife not been able to access critical care in her time of need—had we not been given the chance to make the most compassionate choice amid impossible circumstances—we might never have known the joy of raising our child today, a joy born from grief and shaped by love.
Veterans and our families deserve futures built on compassion, justice, and love—not fear.
Because in the end, we are all only human.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Vets in Labor Are Standing Up to Trump
Veterans in the labor movement have played a frontline role resisting Trump administration attempts to cut government jobs and services and strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Jan 24, 2026
The US is home to 17 million military veterans. About 1.3 million of them currently work in union jobs, with women and people of color making up the fastest-growing cohorts. Veterans are more likely to join a union than non-veterans, according to the AFL-CIO. In half a dozen states, 25% or more of all actively employed veterans belong to unions.
In the heyday of industrial unionism in the decades following World War II, hundreds of thousands of former soldiers could be found on the front lines of labor struggles in auto, steel, meatpacking, electrical equipment manufacturing, mining, trucking, and the telephone industry. Many World War II vets became militant stewards, local union officers, and, in some cases, well-known union reformers in the United Mine Workers and Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.
The late labor organizer and author Jane McAlevey argued that the post-war union movement better understood the “strategic value” of veterans than organized labor does today. In her own advice to unions about contract campaign planning, she recommended enlisting former service members whose past “experience with discipline, military formation, and overcoming fear and adversity” could be employed on picket lines and strike committees.
In addition, the high social standing of military veterans in many blue-collar communities can be a valuable PR asset when “bargaining for the public good” or trying to general greater public support for any legislative or political campaign.
A D-Day Rally In DC
The wisdom of that advice has been confirmed repeatedly by the front-line role that veterans in the labor movement have played in resisting Trump administration attempts to cut government jobs and services and strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. At agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), more than 100,000 former service members have been adversely affected by these right-wing Republican attacks.
In response, the AFL-CIO’s Union Veterans Council brought thousands of protestors to a June 6 rally on the Mall in Washington, DC, where they heard speakers including now retired United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, a Vietnam veteran.
"We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
With local turnout help from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United, and the Federal Unionist Network (FUN), other anti-Trump activists participated in 225 simultaneous actions around the country, including in red states like Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, and Kentucky. Some “watch parties,” organized for real-time viewing of the DC event, were held in local union halls to highlight the labor-vet overlap.
James Jones, a FUN member and Gulf War veteran from Boone, North Carolina, traveled all the way to DC on the 81st anniversary of D-Day because he wanted Congress to understand the importance of VA services to veterans like himself.
Jones now works for the National Park Service and belongs to AFGE. He’s urging all his friends who are vets, fellow VA patients, and federal workers to start “going to rallies, and join these groups that are really fighting back. The government needs to keep the promise it made to veterans. We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
VA Not for Sale
Private-sector union activists have also been rallying their fellow veterans, inside and outside the labor movement.
Communications Workers Local 6215 Executive vice-president David Marshall, a former Marine, has joined rank-and-file lobbying in Washington, DC against Trump’s cuts in VA staffing and services, calling them “a betrayal of a promise to care for us.”
Marshall is a member of Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group. Common Defense’s “VA Not for Sale” campaign is fighting the privatization of veterans’ healthcare, which many fear will destroy what Marshall calls the “sense of community and solidarity” that VA patients experience when they get in-house treatment, as opposed to the costly and less effective out-sourced care favored by President Trump. “Regular hospitals don’t understand PTSD or anything else about conditions specifically related to military service,” he says.
An AT&T technician in Dallas, Marshall was also a fiery and effective speaker at that city’s big “No Kings Day” rally last June, when he explained why he and other veterans in labor are opposing MAGA extremism, political and state violence, and related threats to democracy.
“We’ve seen peaceful protestors met with riot gear, and we’ve heard the threats to deploy active-duty Marines against American citizens,” he told a crowd of 10,000. “Let me be clear: Using the military to silence dissent is not strength; it’s tyranny. And no one knows that better than those who have worn the uniform.”
Veterans for Social Change
Marshall is a third-generation union member born and raised in southern West Virginia. His father and grandfather were coal miners; his grandmother Molly Marshall was active in the Black Lung Association that helped propel disabled World War II veteran Arnold Miller into the presidency of the UMW in 1972. During his own 25-year career as a CWA member, Marshall has served on his union’s safety committee, as a delegate to the national convention, and now as an officer of his local.
Marshall belongs to CWA’s Minority Caucus, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and the NAACP. Along with Britni Cuington, a Local 6215 steward and Air Force vet, he attended a founding meeting of Common Defense’s Black Veterans Caucus at the Highlander Center in Tennessee.
“We have to stay in lock-step with them and show everyone following the Constitution that we have their back.”
Both Marshall and Cuington have since lobbied against the redistricting scheme concocted by Texas Republicans to secure more House seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Testifying at a public hearing on behalf of the Texas AFL-CIO, Cuington pointed out that “minority veterans already face barriers to access to the services, benefits, and economic opportunities we have earned.” She condemned the state’s new districts as racial gerrymandering in disguise that will disenfranchise “veteran heavy, working class neighborhoods.”
In his role as a CWA organizer, Marshall has signed up 30 Common Defense field organizers around the country—almost all fellow vets—as new members of his local. He’s now helping them negotiate their first staff union contract. In addition, Marshall encourages former service members in other bargaining units to participate in the union’s Veterans for Social Change program, which has done joint Veterans Organizing Institute training with CWA.
One fellow leader of that network is Keturah Johnson, a speaker at the 2024 Labor Notes conference. After her military service, she got a job at Piedmont Airlines in 2013 as a ramp agent, and then became a flight attendant. A decade later, she became the first queer woman of color and combat veteran to serve as international vice president of the 50,000-member Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
A National Guard Casualty
One CWA member, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, a Frontier lineman in Martinsburg, West Virginia, was seriously wounded in late November after being sent as part of the National Guard deployment to Washington, DC. A fellow Guard member was killed. (Their assailant was a mentally ill, CIA-trained former death squad member from Afghanistan, relocated to the US after the collapse of the US-backed government there in 2021.)
According to Marshall, “it’s shameful that they were ever put in that position”—by a Republican governor going along with Trump’s federalization of guard units for domestic policing purposes. “It’s all political theater,” he says. “They were just props, just standing around, with no real mission.”
Along with Common Defense, Marshall praises the six fellow veterans in Congress whose recent video statement reminding active duty service members of their “duty not to follow illegal orders” led President Trump to call them “traitors” guilty of “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”
“We have to stay in lock-step with them and show everyone following the Constitution that we have their back,” Marshall says.
This piece was first published by Labor Notes.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Into Sunlight': Commemorating the Vietnam War Through Dance
Choreographer Robin Becker reimagines this story of the human tragedy of war and the eruption of violence during student protests into a powerful and poignant dance production.
Jan 02, 2026
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the American War in Vietnam, Hofstra University hosted a performance of choreographer Robin Becker’s “Into Sunlight.” Inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss’ book, They Marched Into Sunlight,
Becker reimagines this story of the human tragedy of war and the eruption of violence during student protests into a powerful and poignant dance production. Through expressive movement and visual artistry, the performance explores the psychological, emotional, and moral complexities, as well as the historical significance of this tumultuous period.
As a combat veteran of the American war in Vietnam and having yet to “put the war behind me and go on with my life,” as is often advised by those who were not there, I must admit that I was profoundly conflicted by this performance. “Into Sunlight’s” portrayal of the horror and ugliness of war set against the artistic backdrop of Robin Becker’s brilliant choreography and the skilled movements of her dancers, provided a striking contrast that mirrored a personal unease, one that I have long endured and labored to express in my poem "The Rose":
I remember once, in another lifetime,
noticing a lone rose rising defiantly
from beneath the rubble
of a destroyed city North of Danang.
It had no business being there,
adding color to the drabness of war,
beauty to the ugliness of destruction,
and the hope of life
when life held nothing
but suffering and death.
It was a contradiction
and created confusion
amidst the clarity of killing to survive.
...I stepped on it.
There are no flowers in a warzone
nor color, nor beauty, nor hope.
During the talkback that followed the performance, my uneasiness found expression in my rather abrupt request that audience members refrain from applauding my “service” as they had for previous veteran speakers. While I understood that their intentions were sincere—especially at an event intended to honor the "selfless sacrifices" of veterans—I do not believe that my actions as a warrior deserve praise or appreciation. Nor do I believe that participation in war should routinely be met with honor or celebration.
Moreover, after experiencing the horror of war so powerfully portrayed aesthetically in dance, I thought it crucial that the lessons conveyed by the performance not be misunderstood or, worse, glorified. I felt compelled to point out that the common practice of heroizing veterans is not only misguided and dangerous, but perhaps more importantly, fails to serve the interest of both veterans and civilians for several important reasons.
The Mythology of Warrior Worship
- The glorification of warriors hinders readjustment. By providing veterans a refuge of sorts where they may choose to see themselves as heroes, they can avoid facing the realities of their experiences—especially their personal responsibility and guilt for the deaths and destruction they may have caused. Confronting these realities is an essential step toward healing, or better, for reestablishing a sense of normalcy in their lives.
- Heroization of warriors significantly affects public discourse about militarism and war. By making warriors into heroes, open discussion and debate about the necessity, legality, and morality of military engagement become far less likely. As a result, veterans and civilians may be more inclined to support the deployment of military forces to distant battlefields and, increasingly, to American cities, under the pretext of “quelling” what in many cases are manufactured crises.
- Glorification of warriors functions as an effective propaganda and military recruitment tool, an asset to maintaining public support for militarism and endless war, attracting the next generation of “cannon fodder” into military service, often without adequately addressing the realities and consequences involved.
- Though public displays of gratitude and support for veterans and members of the military may appear genuine, they are often superficial and mask the reality of the scandalous way this nation has neglected the needs of returning warriors—the high rates of unemployment, PTSD, moral Injury, homelessness, addiction, and suicide.
- And finally, the heroization of warriors benefits no one in this nation other than the militarists and war profiteers and does little to serve the true interests of veterans and the broader public. Instead, glorification upholds a system that prioritizes military endeavors over the well-being of those most directly affected by them.
Rejecting Troop Blame: Shared Responsibility in War
While recognizing that the mythology of warrior worship must be rejected, and that war is not noble, it is equally important to reject its antithesis as well, the mythology of troop blame. This view regards veterans as murderers and places the entire burden of responsibility for illegal and brutal war on their shoulders while backhandedly absolving civilians of culpability. In a democratic society, governance and responsibility for war is a collective burden—by and for the people. Thus, in a very real sense, there is blood on all of our hands.
The Integrative Power of “Into Sunlight”: Dance as a pathway to Healing
The genius of “Into Sunlight” lies in Robin Becker’s ability to choreograph the sublime movement of her dancers to provide audience members a face-to-face confrontation with the harsh realities of military violence, human suffering, and death. By blending the visual beauty of dance with the discomfort, awe, pain, and exhilaration experienced by warriors on the battlefield, Becker creates a powerful contrast that evokes, in the realm of art, the intense and complex emotions associated with personal trauma.
“Into Sunlight” is not to be passively enjoyed in the conventional sense. Rather, it is participatory, reactive, and demands personal engagement and interpretation. Such art provides an immersive experience transforming audience members from passive observers into active co-creators of meaning. By blurring the boundaries between creator and audience, this performance encourages personal growth, introspection, understanding, self-forgiveness, and reconciliation, opening a pathway for audience members to begin the difficult task of identifying, processing, and healing the lingering effects of personal trauma and moral injury. Or, at least, it provides a way to come to terms with these experiences—to find a place for it in one’s “being.” It is precisely at this intersection where beauty meets the sublime that anguish is transformed into poignant artistry, allowing “Into Sunlight” to succeed in ways other more conventional therapies may have failed.
Conclusion
Though the performance is undeniably unsettling, I know I have benefited from the experience and am confident that other “victims” of war or of personal trauma, will benefit as well. Facing the demons we have for so long tried to suppress, though uncomfortable, is a difficult, though necessary, prerequisite on the path to healing.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular