All posts tagged "Veterans Affairs"

Sources told CNN on Thursday that Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins is expected to leave after the midterms, after becoming the Cabinet official to draw President Donald Trump's ire.

CNN reported that Collins could be on his way out because of the way he handled a veterans' health bill. Sources told the outlet that Collins' relationship with Republicans in Congress is "garbage" because of it.

The White House told CNN in a statement that the president is not unhappy with Collins, and sources said Collins may leave of his own accord....

As the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) looks to shed as many as 35,000 mostly vacant health-care jobs this month — having already cut nearly 30,000 since President Donald Trump returned to office — a disabled Vietnam veteran has gone public, railing against the administration.

Ronn Easton, 76, is the face of a new video calling out the Trump administration for its attacks on veterans and produced by Home of the Brave, a nonprofit focused on portraying what it calls “catastrophic harm” under Trump.

“This is not what I intended my retirement years to be like,” Easton told Raw Story....

An internal memo delivered to the Veterans Affairs team has ordered them to make an internal database documenting non-US citizens.

The leaked document, seen by The Guardian, has prompted outrage from government representatives who believe the order was made to "decimate and demoralize" VA workers. Democratic congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who is part of the oversight and investigations subcommittee on the House veterans affairs committee, said there could be "far-reaching" implications for the Trump administration's VA changes.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is in the process of creating a "new internal database" to log and monitor non-US citizens "employed or affiliated" with the government department. A VA spokesperson did not rule out the possibility of this internal information being fed to other government departments, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ...

Democrats hit out at Derrick Van Orden after the Wisconsin Republican representative called for the Trump administration to implement cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“So when are we going to cut the VA?” Van Orden asked at a U.S. House hearing on Thursday.

“Derrick Van Orden isn’t even trying to hide it – he wants to cut the VA,” Katie Smith, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Raw Story on Friday. ...

Both mental health therapists and the veterans they serve are "suffering" on several fronts due to President Donald Trump's job cuts and anti DEI policies, according to a new report by National Public Radio.

First, the therapists themselves say they're terrified of DOGE's plan to eliminate some 80,000 jobs within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

One mental health care provider who went by the name 'Lynn' for this report, told NPR's Katia Riddle, "I've been really struggling with my concentration and my ability to focus when I'm at work, because I feel like I have this ax over my head all the time."...

Donald Trump has long been reported to hold some resentment against veterans and members of the military, and former Republican Rick Wilson has a theory about why.

Wilson, who recently suggested Trump is tanking his own campaign, appeared on MSNBC to discuss Trump's most recent scandal involving the military and veterans, this time those who have received the highest honor they can get.

“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian, it’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor [sic]," said Trump at a political event. "But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman."...