House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois and Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan, wrote Collins July 1 saying the VFW’s use of the cartoon raised questions regarding the organization’s “fitness to represent claimants before the department.”

They asked Collins to review whether the VFW’s accreditation was consistent with serving as a veteran service organization, examine whether the VFW’s licensing of imagery to vendors for commercial sales was appropriate and look into commercial arrangements the VFW has made with businesses such as Grunt Style, which sells t-shirts emblazoned with the editorial cartoon.

The cartoon, which depicts suited “bureaucrats” — presumably the VA — and the “media” pointing rifles at two veterans with the subtext “punishing veterans,” “removing benefits” and “‘waste and fraud,’ was developed last year in response to a series of articles in the Washington Post on disability claims fraud but has resurfaced following the VFW’s opposition to legislation sponsored by Bost that would reduce future benefits for veterans afflicted with tinnitus and sleep apnea.

Bost has taken issue with what he said is the violent nature of the cartoon.

On Wednesday, he accused the VFW of inciting political violence with the imagery and called on VFW to remove the cartoon from social media, stop the sale of shirts and affirm its “commitment to fact-based advocacy.”

“Every organization has the right to advocate for or against pending legislation in Congress. That right, however, carries a corresponding responsibility to do so in a manner that promotes informed civic debate rather than imagery that can reasonably be interpreted as glorifying or normalizing political violence,” Bost and Bergman wrote.

The letter was first reported by Liz Hartman, a former Marine and veterans advocate, on her All Due Respect Substack column.

The VFW opposes a portion of the proposed Take Care of America’s Veterans Act that would increase benefits for thousands of veterans but cover its cost by instituting changes to the disability ratings requirements for sleep apnea and tinnitus for veterans moving forward.

The VA accredits numerous veterans service organizations such as the VFW, the American Legion, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to help veterans file disability claims.

By law, only individuals and organizations accredited by the VA can file an initial benefits claim on a veteran’s behalf, and they are not allowed to charge them for work related to filing a claim. Once a claim is denied, veterans may hire attorneys or companies to appeal the decision.

The VFW employs thousands of veteran service officers to provide this service.

In the past decade, a number of private, for-profit companies have stepped in to assist veterans with the claims process, for a cost. The companies, which aren’t allowed to assist with claims filing, instead provide help gathering evidence to support initial claims and then help veterans on appeal.

But there is evidence that some of these companies have broken the law and are extracting fees from veterans with initial filings.

In May, a federal judge found the company Veterans Guardian operated as an unaccredited agent, engaging in deceptive business practices. In the class action suit, plaintiffs alleged the company collected more than $250 million in fees from veterans.

Bergman has introduced two bills that would allow firms such as Veterans Guardian assist legally with initial claims, capping fees at $12,500.

Both Bergman and Bost also have received political donations from political action committees affiliated with Veterans Guardian.

In response to questions from Military Times, VFW General Counsel John Muckelbauer said neither Bost nor Bergman reached out to the group before sending the letter. According to Muckelbauer, the VFW believes its advocacy campaign against a portion of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act is consistent with its mission.

“We are confident that our advocacy is entirely consistent with our responsibilities as an accredited veterans service organization. Speaking forcefully on behalf of veterans is not separate from our mission. It is one of the principal reasons Congress chartered this organization more than 125 years ago,” Muckelbauer wrote in an email Thursday.

He added that the letter challenges that advocacy and nothing in it “identifies allegation[s] that the VFW or any of its accredited representatives violated VA accreditation requirements, acted unethically, failed to competently represent a single veteran, or otherwise failed to satisfy the standards applicable to accredited veterans service organizations.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

The USS Constitution, named by George Washington and built with copper bolts forged by Paul Revere, was launched in 1797. The three-masted heavy frigate earned is famous nickname — “Old Ironsides” — during the War of 1812 after an astonished American sailor reportedly watched British cannonballs bounce harmlessly off the ship’s exceptionally thick oak hull and shouted, “Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!” according to the National Park Service.

While the wooden ship remains a symbol of durability and strength, its longevity would not be possible without a special 40 acres of land set aside for the care and maintenance of the ship from Naval Support Activity Crane.

According to National Geographic, NSA Crane dates back to the Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal-era, when the U.S. government, in the depths of the Great Depression, purchased unfarmable land across the U.S. and reforested them for the purpose of creating jobs. NSA Crane was among the plots of land purchased by the FDR administration, and its 40,000 acres of hills was soon swarming with workers planting a wide variety of oak, hickory, poplar, maple and ash trees across the acres of Crane.

The onset of the war in 1939 prompted the U.S. Navy — whose weapons and munitions at the time were housed in Delaware — to seek a location that a potential enemy could not strike by sea.

Central Indiana was the ticket and so the government purchased another 30,000 acres surrounding NSA Crane.

The first administrative buildings on the base, according to Nat Geo, were dedicated in December 1941 — just a few days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But it wasn’t until the nation’s bicentennial in 1976 that NSA Crane reentered the Navy’s consciousness.

With attention returning to the storied, yet aging USS Constitution, NSA Crane’s concentration of high-quality white oak caught the Navy’s eye.

The oak forest is one of the few in the United States that contains centuries-old oak long and thick enough to provide the necessary lumber for the hull of the hulking Constitution.

Mature trees anywhere from 110 to 125 years old and 120 to 130 feet tall are needed for the ship that requires near constant maintenance. Its two most recent dry dock restorations — concluding in 2017 — required the felling of 114 white oaks.

Today, 40 acres of the park have been dedicated to keeping the warship afloat, where much of the timber is harvested, and it remains the only forest in the U.S. that is owned and managed by the Navy to support its fleet of old wooden ships.

VA officials said Monday the number of backlogged claims — those pending for 125 days or more — has fallen by 74% since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025. They added that currently, just 11.6% of all pending claims were older than 125 days, compared with 70% of the 600,000 claims pending more than a decade ago.

The VA has invested millions in automated systems, including a program called Automated Decision Support that pulls together information from medical records and other evidence to synthesize information for claims adjudicators to consider when deciding a claim.

The department also increased the size of the processing staff by more than a third, adding 9,000 claims adjudicators from fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2024, and reinstated mandatory overtime in May 2025 to address the situation.

According to the VA, the department has decided more than a million claims in fewer than 30 days since January 2025. The average time a veteran waits now for a claim is roughly 78 days, officials added.

“This is what putting veterans first looks like,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “We are incredibly proud of these historic numbers, which mean faster decisions, better service and more benefits for the men and women who have worn the uniform.”

VA officials did not answer specific questions regarding the approval rate for the backlogged claims, but VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said from October 1 through June 1, the total approval rate for compensation and pension benefits was “60%, in line with the last 10 years.”

According to Slaven, the top five conditions that received approval for initial filings were: tinnitus; paralysis of the sciatic nerve; limitation of knee flexion; lumbosacral or cervical strain; and migraine.

The VA’s claims backlog reached a record high of more than 611,000 in 2013 but was drawn down to roughly 70,000 by September 2015, the result of improvements in processing systems, increased use of digital medical records and hiring.

From then until early 2020, the claims backlog hovered at roughly 60,000 cases. VA officials said at the time that the 60,000 figure was likely the lowest the department could reach given the number of complex claims filed that need special attention to consider.

In early 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the backlog began to climb as a result of the closure of many VA processing centers, reaching 200,000 cases by the end of the year.

Following passage of the PACT Act, the landmark legislation that provided expanded benefits for veterans exposed to environmental pollutants while serving overseas, the number of claims filed skyrocketed. With the increase came a rise in the backlog, which peaked at 410,000 cases in 2023.

The Disabled American Veterans post in Sacramento, California, needed work. The small white building with blue trim and an American flag out front was built decades ago. Its heating and cooling system was ancient. The parking lot was riddled with potholes.

So when Chapter Treasurer Eldra Jackson Jr. learned they’d be getting a check for more than $39,000 from the estate of a California woman who had recently died, he was excited about tackling overdue repairs.

“It was a windfall,” said Jackson, who, like other officers at the Sacramento post, served as an unpaid volunteer.

But last fall, after Jackson reported the donation on the chapter’s annual financial report, he received a letter back from DAV national headquarters’ general counsel: The money didn’t belong to local veterans in Sacramento, it said. It belonged to the national organization, based thousands of miles away in Kentucky and backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.

If the disabled veterans in Sacramento didn’t transfer the money to DAV’s national organization, the letter said, their chapter would be at risk.

“We’re doing the best we can to service veterans in our community,” said Chapter Commander Gilbert Tafoya, an Air Force veteran who was exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. “When all that is taken away, there’s something wrong.”

It may seem odd to see such a bitter dispute inside an organization built to serve disabled veterans. But the frustration that local vets in Sacramento feel toward their national organization isn’t unique. In interviews with DAV members from a dozen chapters in eight states, veterans told The War Horse that the national organization offered little financial support for their work with local veterans. But, they said, they felt DAV was quick to suspend or shut down small volunteer chapters over paperwork errors or requests for help with financial issues.

Local disabled veterans say that makes it harder to support veterans in their communities, whether by helping them navigate the notoriously complex Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims process, driving them to VA hospital appointments, or giving them a place to gather for Thanksgiving dinner with others who have served.

At the heart of this tension is a larger question facing America’s legacy veterans organizations: How do they serve veterans when the local post model that sustained them for generations is fading?

As the ranks of Korean and Vietnam War veterans thin, so do the member rolls of organizations such as DAV, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Younger veterans are less likely to join local posts, and groups like DAV are increasingly shifting toward national advocacy, online programming, and lobbying in Washington, D.C.

But in Sacramento and DAV chapters across the country, veterans say that sustaining local posts, where aging veterans can find community and purpose, should remain part of that mission.

“You’re supposed to be helping disabled veterans,” Jackson said. “All disabled veterans.”

Veteran Organization Membership Declines

Founded in 1920, Disabled American Veterans is a sprawling organization. More than 1,100 local chapters report to state departments, which in turn answer to the national branch.

“What DAV does at the national level, combined with what happens at the chapter level, that’s the life-changing impact,” said Dan Clare, DAV’s chief communications officer. “The chapters are feeding us veterans who need justice, who are not getting their benefits.”

DAV members typically pay dues to the national organization—topping out at $325 for a lifetime membership—and often join local chapters, where volunteers provide much of the hands-on support that veterans receive in their communities.

“We’re the grassroot. We do the work. We reach the veterans,” said Ace Taylor, a former commander of a local post near Salem, Virginia. His post was suspended by the Virginia state DAV in 2023 after, he said, he reported financial problems under the previous commander. The chapter, which was near a VA hospital, hosted veterans for meals and provided a space to relax between appointments.

The post “was a big part of the community,” Taylor said.

But DAV membership has been falling. In 2025, DAV had just over 900,000 members. In 2012, it had 1.2 million members, according to its earliest publicly available annual report. Clare, the DAV spokesperson, said the reduction in DAV’s membership was due to the organization cleaning up membership rolls to better reflect lifetime members. Meanwhile, larger veterans groups such as The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars also struggle with membership. The American Legion, for instance, dropped from more than 2 million members in 2016 to 1.4 million last year.

American veterans are a shrinking population—VA estimates that the number of veterans will fall by about 30% over the next 20 years. Younger veterans, pulled by the demands of jobs and children, may have less free time to join volunteer groups. And, at least for some, veterans organizations like DAV seem like relics from another era.

“It’s part of a long decline of civic organizations in our country,” said Stephen Ortiz, a historian who studies veterans organizations at Binghamton University, The State University of New York.

“Since the Gulf War, you’ve had the internet, and since then social media, and that has for many Americans replaced the sense of connection from intensely local places to completely global places.”

Growing Coffers But Little Local Support

As membership in DAV has shrunk, however, the national organization’s coffers have grown. According to IRS filings, in 2024, DAV headquarters had net assets of more than $530 million. That’s up from about $289 million a decade earlier.

That’s not the entire financial picture, said Laurie Styron, the head of CharityWatch, a nonprofit watchdog that recently released an analysis of DAV financials.

DAV’s national structure also includes two affiliated organizations: DAV National Service Foundation and DAV Charitable Service Trust—which shares money and personnel among them, according to tax filings and audited financial statements. For instance, DAV charged the National Service Foundation and the Charitable Service Trust more than $100,000 each in 2024 for help with administering their business operations and fundraising. DAV’s top executive, National Adjutant Barry Jesinoski, is listed as vice president of both affiliated groups.

“They sort of give this illusion of separation,” Styron said. “But really, this organization is sharing all of these people. It’s sharing financial transactions.”

Styron said the overlapping structure makes it difficult for donors to know where their money goes.

The three organizations had a combined $750 million in adjusted net assets and about $171 million in cash expenses in 2024, according to CharityWatch’s analysis.

Asked about CharityWatch’s assertion that DAV’s structure makes donor transparency difficult, Clare called the watchdog group a “fringe evaluator.”

“CharityWatch likes to go after organizations like DAV because we have a good reputation and they can spark outrage,” the DAV spokesperson said. “This is their racket.”

Clare said DAV’s three different national organizations serve different purposes within the non-profit. And he pointed to the organization’s wide-ranging programs as evidence of its impact, both at the national and local level: helping to get veterans more than $33 billion in VA benefits last year, hosting job fairs and entrepreneur bootcamps, and successful legislative efforts. In 2022, for example, DAV helped push through the PACT Act, which expanded VA benefits to millions of vets who were exposed to toxic chemicals in the military.

But little of the organization’s money flows down to local chapters.

Even though members pay up to $325 for a lifetime DAV membership, local chapters only receive a small amount of that—currently no more than $3.50 per member annually, or just over 1% of lifetime dues, according to a recent DAV memo to chapter commanders. Chapters can also apply for grants from a national trust.

A War Horse analysis of tax filings found that, over the five tax years from 2019 through 2023, Disabled American Veterans’ national organizations gave nearly $1.9 million to DAV’s California department.

During that same period, the California department awarded $175,000 in grants to dozens of local chapters across the state.

“You’re raising this money on the behalf of disabled veterans,” said Rodney Deflumeri, a former chapter commander in Florida who resigned in February after examining DAV’s finances. “Why is there just [this] little tiny trickle?”

Packing Up History

On a cloudy Tuesday in May, the DAV post in Sacramento was in disarray. Storage bins sat half-filled with old plaques. Black-and-white photographs littered the tables.

In December, the Sacramento chapter sued DAV National, asking a court to prevent the national organization from taking the donation. Days later, chapter leaders learned their bank account had been emptied and their DAV charter revoked, according to court documents.

“In light of your contentious actions,” Jesinoski, DAV National’s CEO, wrote in a letter to Tafoya, “you are not permitted to participate in DAV or Auxiliary activities in the future.”

Sacramento veterans also learned that people acting on behalf of DAV’s national organization were trying to begin the process of selling the small Sacramento building, according to court documents.

Tafoya and Jackson hope the lawsuit will stop the sale and protect the chapter. But they don’t want to risk losing the chapter’s history if the case doesn’t go their way. So they’re packing up more than a century’s worth of memorabilia and moving it out.

“It’s going into protective custody,” said Charles Anthony, a chapter member who served in both the Army and the Air Force as a military police officer.

In court documents, DAV said the Sacramento chapter violated a policy requiring all donations from wills be submitted to the national organization, which would then determine whether it would go to the local group or the national branch.

Tafoya said he first learned of the policy last summer, when DAV officially adopted it into its bylaws. That was nearly a year after the Sacramento chapter learned it was getting the nearly $40,000 donation, following a California probate court order.

In interviews with The War Horse, members of local chapters said DAV’s national organization was quick to suspend chapters that made financial or paperwork errors. After DAV enacted new requirements last year that chapters file their annual financial reports online, DAV headquarters suspended 399 of its chapters for failing to comply with the organization’s bylaws—more than a third of U.S. chapters.

“We have to comply with governance, whether that’s at the chapter level, the state level, or the national level,” Clare said. Most chapters have since been reinstated, he said.

But members said they are frustrated that the national organization moves quickly to punish paperwork errors while offering little financial support. Local chapters are barred from raising money online, a restriction national leaders say is intended to prevent chapters from competing with one another for donations.

“We end up at Walmart, giving out little flowers or something like that,” said Jim Ulinski, a Vietnam War veteran in Pennsylvania who survived the siege of Khe Sanh. “You have to just stand there, and hopefully they give you money.”

Serving Close to Home

In March, Sacramento members received letters informing them that their memberships had been transferred to a different branch in Carmichael, about 30 minutes east of their old post. Most have decided not to attend meetings there. They want to serve veterans closer to home.

Phil Rios was an art student organizing anti-war protests when he was drafted at the height of the Vietnam War. He went on to serve for 26 years. He found his way to the little white building in Sacramento while trying to file a disability claim with VA for post-traumatic stress disorder. He was denied three times over 14 years before he finally received benefits.

Rios said fellow veterans in Sacramento were the ones who pushed him to keep trying and helped him eventually win his claim. So he began volunteering with the chapter himself, helping other vets with PTSD file claims of their own.

“I go to the guy’s house,” Rios said. “He knows I’ve been there—Vietnam, Desert Storm. I’ve seen what he’s seen. I can finish his sentence. And if he breaks down, he’s home, he’s not embarrassed. And then he opens up.”

Chapter members know younger veterans aren’t joining organizations like DAV the way earlier generations did. But they had been looking to the future all the same. They had recently invested in audio equipment to start a podcast, switched to membership applications that could be completed on a smartphone, and Tafoya said, were developing a plan to transfer leadership to a younger generation.

Instead, they were packing photos into boxes and feeling abandoned.

As disabled veterans, they had joined DAV to help support fellow veterans in their community.

“My care and concern has always been about my brothers and sisters. They wore the green uniform. They wore the boots,” said Vaughn Evans, who served in the Army for 24 years.

“It stinks to all ends that this is something that is being done to us by our own brothers and sisters.”

Barely a year later, the California native found himself part of a small reaction force advancing through thick jungle near Duc Phong in Phuoc Long Province, in response to Vietnamese communist soldiers threatening another American platoon. What followed was a counterattack that put D Company in jeopardy, in which Alvarado played a vital role.

As his platoon moved toward the ongoing fight, Alvarado detected enemy movement and opened fire. In spite his swift reaction, he and his troopers found themselves pinned down by heavy small arms fire and blocked from joining the endangered platoon they’d come to assist. It soon became clear that a large, well-armed component of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was targeting his platoon for overrunning as well as the men they were trying to rescue.

Alvarado’s next action was to charge forward through a storm of machine gun fire in order to engage the enemy. Suddenly, a grenade exploded nearby, wounding and temporarily stunning him. Regaining his wits, however, he killed the North Vietnamese grenadier just as another barrage wounded him again. Nevertheless, he continued his forward crawl under heavy fire to pull several wounded comrades back within the perimeter they had hastily formed.

Evaluating the situation and deciding his unit needed to break away from the larger enemy force, he began maneuvering forward alone to cover the disengagement.

Although he was knocked to the ground repeatedly by exploding satchel charges, he continued advancing and firing, using his rifle and grenades to silence several PAVN positions, including a machine gun nest. Taking shelter in a dangerous forward position, he persistently laid suppressive fire on the enemy until the communists, rather than his platoon, broke contact.

Just afterward, however, his comrades-in-arms discovered that he had succumbed from his wounds. He left behind a wife and daughter.

The engagement at Duc Phong cost D Company four men killed and 26 wounded. Alvarado’s all-out, ultimately sacrificial role in saving his platoon from possible disaster did not go unnoticed among his fellow Air Cav troops.

“I was Leonard’s squad leader,” remarked William Lytle during an interview. “Us, as surviving members of the 2nd platoon, never forgot him on this day.”

Alvarado was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal with “V” device.

A re-evaluation of his record, however, made it clear that his sacrifice had been underrated. With the passing of the Defense Authorization Act, his daughter, Lenora, was called to the White House in Washington, D.C. on March 18, 2014, to see his DSC upgraded and receive the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama. His remains rest in his home turf, at the Greenlawn Cemetery in Bakersfield.

Bartrum, who announced his resignation to staff June 30, did not provide a specific reason for leaving the VA’s top health job, other than saying he looked forward to “focusing on my family and my health” and supporting the administration’s efforts “in the private sector.”

A retired Air Force Reserve major general, Bartrum was nominated to the post June 2 by President Donald Trump and confirmed Dec. 18 by the Senate in a 53-43 vote.

Bartrum became the first under secretary of health without a physician background and was responsible for the nation’s largest medical system, overseeing the budget and management of 171 medical centers and more than 1,000 outpatient clinics that serve roughly 9 million veterans each year.

He succeeded Dr. Shereef Elnahal, who resigned Jan. 20, 2025, with the change of administration between President Joe Biden and Trump. Bartrum was the first under secretary of health to serve under Trump; the position went unfilled by a confirmed appointee during Trump’s entire first administration.

In his message to employees, Bartrum said he was leaving the VA with “deep gratitude and a sense of accomplishment.” He noted the relaunch of the department’s electronic health record modernization program, the reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration and work to create a center in Los Angeles to address veteran homelessness among recent accomplishments.

“These were not small undertakings, and I am confident in the foundation we have built. Each of these initiatives is now on a strong and sustainable trajectory, carried forward by the talented team I have had the honor of leading,” Bartrum wrote.

Citing President George Washington’s retirement, Bartrum added “I am persuaded that, with these initiatives now firmly on track, you will not disapprove my determination to retire from public service.”

According to the department, Dr. Lee Payne, currently serving as deputy under secretary for health, will fill the role as acting under secretary. Payne, a retired Air Force major general, has worked for the VA since last November, responsible for supporting the electronic health record program and other duties.

A specialist in internal, emergency medicine and medical management, Payne commanded three military hospitals, worked as a chief flight surgeon in support of combat operations and directed combat support and the Defense Department’s electronic health record modernization program.

He also managed the DoD’s department’s diagnostics and testing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

VA Secretary Doug Collins did not make any public statements regarding Bartrum’s departure. VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven said the VA wished him well.

“We thank John for his leadership of VHA and the many VA accomplishments he presided over during his 17 months of service at the department,” Slaven said, referring to the months prior to Bartrum’s confirmation that he worked as a member of the transition team and a senior advisor to Collins.

Bartrum has spent more than 40 years in public service, spending much of his Air Force career in medical administration. He served as a mobilization assistant to the Air and Space Force surgeon general and was assigned as deputy incident manager in emergency support functions for the COVID-19 epidemic.

In his civilian capacity, he was a professional staff member of the House Appropriations Committee for more than eight years, working on labor, education and health issues, including infectious diseases like Ebola.

Bartrum’s departure leaves two of the department’s three under secretary positions open.

The administration has not announced a candidate for the under secretary for benefits position following the withdrawal last October of nominee Karen Brazell over opposition to her role as senior advisor to Collins during the administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.

Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Sam Brown was confirmed last July.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars has used the cartoon to protest a portion of the Take Care of America’s Veterans bill that would pay for new benefits by altering requirements for sleep apnea and tinnitus disability ratings.

Although veterans who currently get compensation for the two conditions would not see a change to their ratings as a result of the legislation, the VFW has opposed the provision because it would reduce future benefits to pay for other veterans’ programs.

Last week, the organization posted an ad on its social media platform for t-shirts for its Honor the Contract campaign. The shirts, made by Grunt Style, feature a political cartoon created by the VFW last year that shows suited “bureaucrats” (presumably VA employees) and the “media” pointing rifles at two veterans with the subtext “punishing veterans,” “removing benefits” and “‘waste and fraud.’”

VFW officials said the illustration was created primarily in response to a series of articles by the Washington Post on fraud and abuse in veterans benefits and disability compensation as well as visits this year to Capitol Hill by VFW leadership.

But on Wednesday, House Veterans Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., said the VFW was inciting political violence with the imagery. He called on VFW to remove the cartoon from social media, stop the sale of shirts and affirm its “commitment to fact-based advocacy.”

“The recent inflammatory, fearmongering, and dangerous political rhetoric from the Veterans of Foreign Wars is inappropriate and must end immediately,” Bost said in a statement. “While I respect the First Amendment rights of every American, including those who work at VFW and have served in uniform, suggestions that VA’s dedicated workforce – or the media – or anyone else are actively shooting and punishing service members and veterans is unacceptable and creates a dangerous, politically charged environment that can put lives at risk.”

VFW officials said the organization has used some iteration of a firing squad cartoon dating to 1933.

“The VFW has never apologized for forcefully defending veterans and we are not about to start now,” VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore said in response to Bost’s statement.

“Political cartoons have long been part of American public discourse because they communicate difficult truths in memorable ways. When bureaucrats take aim at veterans’ earned disability benefits, we will continue to use every tool available to ensure veterans’ voices are heard,” Whitmore added.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act includes more than 60 bills that would improve compensation for medically retired combat veterans and the spouses of fallen troops who decide to get remarried before age 55, among other proposals.

The legislation is supported by at least 23 military, family and veterans organizations, including the American Legion, the Military Officers Association of America, the National Military Family Association, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and more.

The coalition wrote a letter June 29 to the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees supporting the legislation but also asked for more details regarding the sleep apnea and tinnitus proposal, saying that “under ordinary circumstances it is not an approach we would support.”

“This comprehensive package reflects years of bipartisan and bicameral work to improve care, benefits, and services for the veteran community. Republicans and Democrats have authored elements of the bill, and we believe it represents one of the most thorough efforts to deliver non-partisan support and relief to both broad and narrow segments of the communities we serve,” the groups wrote.

Disabled American Veterans and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have joined the VFW in opposing the provision that addresses paying for the legislation, which could reduce disability compensation payments to veterans by $57 billion over the first 10 years.

“Veterans have earned their benefits through service and sacrifice,” Dr. Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of IAVA, said in a statement. “They should not be forced to pay for new initiatives through reductions to benefits they already rely upon, and we should never indicate to one set of veterans that their service is worth less than any other.”

To cover the cost of the legislation, which includes the widely supported Maj. Richard Star Act that would give medically retired combat veterans their full military retirement pay and Veterans Affairs disability compensation without an offset, the bill would implement a 2022 proposal to the VA’s ratings schedule for sleep apnea and tinnitus.

Under the legislation, veterans with asymptomatic sleep apnea or a mild case controlled by treatment would receive a 0% to 10% disability rating.

Similarly, tinnitus, which currently receives a 10% disability rating, would be treated as a symptom of another condition, such as hearing loss or a traumatic brain injury, and would no longer get a standalone rating.

Supporters argue that the legislation would not cut benefits and instead would protect them. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, told Military.com that the VA planned to implement the new sleep apnea and tinnitus regulations by the end of the year.

“If we don’t get out ahead of that business, the reduction in spending...will not be used for veterans,” ” Moran told the outlet.

Democrat lawmakers say the proposal does amount to cutting veterans benefits, saying the method for paying for the bill’s cost is a “shell game.”

“The Republican plan cuts existing veterans’ benefits to fund new ones — asking the next generation of veterans to pick up the tab for the last. That’s not progress; that’s a shell game that takes money out of veterans’ pockets. Caring for veterans is the cost of war. We cannot make compromises on the backs of veterans,” said Rep. Mark Takano of California, ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The House was to consider the bill the week of June 22 but the planned vote was postponed. The House returns to session July 13.

The Senate has not scheduled a vote on the bill.

But it was on July 5, 1776, that the former colonials got down to the nuts-and-bolts of governing and winning a war.

One of the first orders of business that day for members of the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia was getting cooking kettles to the militia. The Committees of Inspection and Observation were told to “furnish a good kettle to every six men, and give all the assistance in their power, that the said militia be well armed and equipped, and march with the greatest expedition,” according to the Journals of the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress.

It was also resolved “That a chaplain be appointed to each regiment in the Continental Army, and their allowance be increased to thirty three dollars and one third of a dollar a month.”

Members then had to deal with the always grumpy John Adams, who got approval to send a copy of the Declaration to Mary Palmer, the daughter of family friends of the Adamses in Braintree, Massachusetts, along with a somewhat-snotty note now preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

“I will enclose to you a Declaration, in which all America is remarkably united,” Adams’ letter read. “It completes a Revolution, which will make as good a Figure in the History of Mankind, as any that has preceded it — provided always, that the Ladies take Care to record the Circumstances of it, for by the Experience I have had of the other Sex, they are either too lazy, or too active, to commemorate them.”

On the morning of July 5, the members of the Congress also ordered copies of the Declaration printed by John Dunlap to be distributed throughout the former colonies.

The thought also occurred to them that somebody ought to tell the troops what they were fighting for now that independence had been declared.

And so John Hancock, the Boston merchant-smuggler and president of the Second Continental Congress, was authorized to tell Gen. George Washington to have the Declaration read to his fledgling army at formations.

In his letter to Washington, Hancock wrote that “the Congress have judged it necessary to dissolve the Connection between Great Britain and the American Colonies, and to declare them free and independent States; as you will perceive by the enclosed Declaration, which I am directed to transmit to you, and to request you will have it proclaimed at the Head of the Army in the Way, you shall think most proper.”

Washington was in New York at the time, warily watching the buildup near the harbor of a British armada that would grow to 400 ships and 32,000 British regulars and Hessians. He scheduled the reading of the Declaration for July 9.

“The Honorable the Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent STATES,” Washington’s General Orders for July 9 read.

“The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at six [o’clock], when the declaration of Congress, shewing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.”

Washington hoped that movement would “serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.

“And that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honors of a free Country.”

Things did not immediately go according to plan, however.

Washington was livid when a mob of troops and locals rioted, storming down Broadway to Bowling Green where they toppled a statue of King George III and lopped off its head.

The report also showed an increase in the unemployment rate for all veterans from a remarkably low 3.2% in May to 4.1% in June, despite the continued strong showing of women veterans in the labor market.

The BLS data showed that the jobless rate for women veterans has come down from 7.1% in March to 4.4% in April and 3.3% in May before ticking up to 3.6% in June, which was still well below the month’s unemployment rate for the general population (4.1%).

For many analysts, the most concerning figures in the BLS report were the weak numbers on job creation. Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in June by adding 57,000 jobs, about half of what analysts predicted.

A main concern was the hiring slowdown in the healthcare sector, which has consistently been setting the pace for adding jobs through both the Biden and Trump administrations.

The BLS report said that employment in healthcare added 22,000 jobs in June, “but at a slower pace than the average monthly gain over the prior 12 months of 38,000.”

Leisure and hospitality employment, meanwhile, usually a strong performer, declined by 61,000 jobs in June, “reflecting weaker than usual seasonal hiring,” the report said. Thus far in 2026, “employment in the industry has shown little net change.”

Overall, “it’s a pretty disappointing jobs report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, told Military Times in a phone interview.

“Tech is still strong,” she said, “but healthcare has cooled off a little bit,” and “wages are not keeping up with inflation.”

Long noted increases in the unemployment rates for veterans but added that the data is from a relatively small sample.

“That’s why you see a lot of movement” in the numbers for veterans, she said, adding that the “verdict is still out” on whether artificial intelligence will be the major job killer that many expect.

The AI impact on the jobs market is “not showing up in the data yet,” Natasha Sarin, a former assistant secretary at the Treasury Department under the Biden administration, told MS Now, which could be the result of new research showing that the expected impact of AI on white collar entry-level jobs may have been overstated.

The Trump administration sought to put the best face on the BLS report, showing a weakening labor market. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, posted that the report “reinforces that the American labor market remains solid thanks to President Trump’s economic agenda.”

He called attention to the report that the nation added 3,000 manufacturing jobs in June, although that was down from 7,000 manufacturing jobs added in May.

New acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling stated that “Manufacturing employment, which was devastated under the Biden Administration, continues to grow as we secure historic investments and reshoring of critical industries,” despite the loss of 4,000 manufacturing jobs cited in the BLS report.

“President Trump’s America first agenda continues to provide greater wages for workers and certainty to the sectors which will fuel the next 250 years of U.S. economic security,” he added.

Despite the claims, the BLS data showed that wages were not keeping up with inflation. The report showed that wages rose 3.5% in June, while the annual inflation rate through May noted in a separate BLS report (the Consumer Price Index) rose by 4.2%.

Vietnam Veterans of America, a national veterans service organization, argued Thursday that the flag “cannot serve as a positive symbol” for veterans who fought against communism. The flag shows a gold star on a red background — imagery reminiscent of multiple communist movements, VVA said in a public statement.

“For Vietnam veterans especially, the striking resemblance to the flag flown by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and seen in all the images of North Vietnamese tanks invading Saigon on April 30, 1975, is impossible to ignore,” the group wrote.

A congressional effort is underway to designate the Honor and Remember flag as a national symbol of remembrance for service members and veterans who died as a result of their military service. VVA said the proposal was recently attached to the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual, must-pass defense policy and budget bill.

The proposal was originally introduced by Reps. Don Davis, D-N.C., Jen Kiggans, R-Va., and Glenn Thompson, R-Pa. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus endorsed the measure in February.

The amendment mandates that the flag be displayed at federal sites, including the U.S. Capitol, White House and national cemeteries on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and other holidays.

“The brave men and women who laid down their lives in service to our nation deserve our deepest gratitude and lasting remembrance,” Kiggans said in a February statement. “While we can never fully repay the debt we owe them, we must always ensure their legacy is honored.”

The flag was created by George Lutz after the death of his son, Army Cpl. George “Tony” Lutz, who was killed by an enemy sniper in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005. Since its creation, 29 states have adopted the Honor and Remember flag as an official symbol.

VVA National President Tom Burke argued the idea was not adequately discussed before being proposed for a national designation. The American flag already represents the sacrifices of Americans who have died in defense of the nation, he contended.

“Rather than creating confusion and strife regarding official national symbols by introducing new federally recognized commemorative flags, VVA encourages Congress to direct its efforts towards policies that directly benefit Gold Star families, survivors, wounded veterans, and those currently serving,” Burke said.

The VA’s recently released 2025 AI Inventory identifies 215 of those use cases as high-impact systems. Although VA officials say safeguards and human oversight remain in place, veteran advocates say veterans are more likely to trust AI systems if they understand when they are being used and what role they play.

For Navy veteran Markus Williams, the issue surfaced during a recent VA medical appointment. “Yesterday the nurse asked if I was cool with them using AI during my visit with my doc to help them with notes,” Williams said. “When I told her no I wasn’t comfortable with that she didn’t seem too happy.”

Williams said he declined because he was not comfortable with AI being used during his visit and that he didn’t really know how it was actually being utilized. Veterans, advocates and former VA clinicians interviewed by Military Times described varying levels of veteran awareness about when AI is used and what role it plays in veterans’ interactions with the department.

Veterans may not know when AI is involved

VA officials say many veterans may not be interacting with artificial intelligence in the ways they assume they are. “The term ‘AI’ cannot be used interchangeably with VA’s Automated Decision Support system,” VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven told Military Times. “Automation is constrained to perform exactly what it’s programmed to do, while AI can assess patterns from data.”

Slaven said, “At the beginning of a visit, the provider will ask if the veteran wants to use Ambient AI Scribe and explain how it works. The veteran can agree, opt out or ask the provider to turn off Ambient AI Scribe at any time. If the veteran chooses not to opt out, the provider will document the visit with Ambient AI Scribe.”

Veterans interviewed by Military Times described widely different experiences with AI use and notification. Williams said he was asked whether he consented to AI-assisted note taking during a recent appointment. Army veteran Tim King said he has never been asked. “There was a big email sent out recently about it,” King said. “I have yet to be asked if I am ok with it during appointments and I do not intend to okay them using it.”

Some veterans said they did not distinguish a difference between automation and AI, while others said they viewed the technologies differently.

Advocates say transparency must extend beyond an inventory

Jon Retzer, national legislative director for the Disabled American Veterans, called VA’s public inventory an important step toward transparency because it provides a centralized accounting of how AI is being explored and deployed across benefits, health care and operations.

However, Retzer said the inventory largely operates at a high level and provides limited insight into how systems are monitored after deployment, how performance is evaluated over time and what accountability mechanisms are triggered when problems arise.

“Veterans would benefit from more detailed, consistent, and publicly accessible information about how these systems function in practice, not just their intended use,” he said.

Retzer explained veterans should expect clear notification when artificial intelligence is used in decision-making affecting their care or benefits, along with ongoing monitoring, strong privacy protections and meaningful human oversight. But Retzer warns that human oversight alone does not answer broader concerns about whether veterans are informed when AI contributes to their medical appointments, records or benefits experience.

Even when a clinician or claims processor makes the final decision, he said, veterans may receive little information about how AI influenced the documentation or workflows supporting that decision.

Clinical use raises new questions

Notification may be particularly important in health care settings. In January, the VA Office of Inspector General issued a preliminary advisory identifying a potential patient safety risk related to the Veterans Health Administration’s use of generative AI chat tools for clinical care and documentation.

The watchdog found that VHA lacked a formal mechanism to identify, track or resolve risks associated with generative AI and expressed concern that the absence of a standardized process could limit the department’s ability to safeguard patient safety.

The advisory states that outputs generated by approved AI chat tools can be used to support medical decision-making and copied into veterans’ electronic health records. The OIG also noted that generative AI systems can produce inaccurate outputs, including omissions, that could affect diagnosis and treatment decisions.

The OIG review remains ongoing, and the advisory did not identify specific instances of patient harm. However, investigators said the absence of a standardized process for managing AI-related risks could limit VHA’s ability to identify patterns, improve safety and address problems associated with generative AI tools used in clinical settings.

Clinical documentation can affect future treatment, disability claims and continuity of care for years. A missing detail or inaccurate entry may require repeated appointments, additional paperwork or lengthy efforts to correct the record.

Veterans and clinicians see both risks and benefits

Not every veteran views artificial intelligence with skepticism. Helen Cooper, Marine Corps veteran and retired registered nurse from a Tennessee VA medical center, said she would welcome AI-assisted documentation if it results in more accurate records.

“If I were to choose between AI assisting in thorough documentation of our visits or the status quo of overworked nurses and doctors blatantly ignoring things we tell them or filling our charts with absolute nonsense, I’ll choose AI,” Cooper said.

“Time and time again VA doctors completely neglect to document veterans’ concerns,” she added. “I’m happy to allow a robot to do their job if they can’t.”

Air Force veteran and former VA physician Dr. Charles Faulk said documentation requirements have expanded dramatically during his career, often forcing clinicians to spend hours completing records after clinic hours. “The notes burden in the VA has probably tripled in the past quarter century,” Faulk said. “Maybe the AI will make life more livable for the clinician.”

But even veterans who support the use of artificial intelligence said they want to understand when it is involved in their care. “I need to know what it really does before I can be okay with them using it,” explained Tim King.

DAV’s Retzer said veterans should expect clear notification when AI is used in decisions affecting their care or benefits and should be able to understand how those systems affect their interactions with VA.

“AI must never diminish due process, reduce access to earned benefits, or replace necessary human judgment in decisions that affect veterans’ lives,” Retzer said.

Modeled after similar legislation the permits service members to sue DoD for damages caused by military medical malpractice, the proposed Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act would let service members and veterans file civil claims for negligence over service-related sexual trauma.

Service members are barred from suing the federal government for injury or harm that occurs as a result of military duties under the Feres doctrine, a legal precedent based on a 1950 Supreme Court ruling on several service-related cases of injury.

But in late 2019, Congress passed a law that gave service members and surviving families the right to file medical malpractice claims against the Defense Department for harm or negligence caused by a military physician or civilian contractor in a military health facility.

Bill sponsors Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and John Kennedy, R-La., would carve out another exception to Feres and allow service members to hold the DoD accountable when it fails to prevent, investigate or was otherwise negligent in sexual misconduct cases.

“It makes no sense that civilians can seek justice from the government when the warriors who have sacrificed everything to protect our nation cannot. Our landmark legislation would right this wrong by tearing down the barriers that prevent members of the military and veterans from engaging the justice system to demand accountability and finally begin to heal,” Shaheen said in a statement.

“Service members give up a lot to defend this country, but they should not have to give up their right to hold the government accountable when its negligence contributes to sexual assault or harassment,” Kennedy said.

The legislation is supported by several veterans advocacy groups, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Service Women’s Action Network and Protect Our Defenders.

Service members filed 6,973 reports of sexual assault that occurred during military service in fiscal 2024.

Protect Our Defenders, which is representing at least 82 plaintiffs in a case that involves Army gynecologist Maj. Blaine McGraw, who faces 273 charges, including secretly photographing and taping his patients, noted in a media release that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sexual assault cannot be treated as “incidental” to military service, but that decision only applies to the Ninth Circuit.

“The Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act would extend that principle to every service member in every court in the country,” Protect Our Defenders advocates said.

According to the group, the Congressional Budget Office estimates 120,000 service members would file successful claims under the proposed bill in its first decade.

Under the provision of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that allowed service members to file medical malpractice claims against military health facilities, some patients have prevailed, although not the legislation’s namesake, Master Sgt. Richard Stayskal, whose claim was denied by the U.S. Army.

According to the Army, since 2020, 351 claims have been filed, with 45 settled or pending settlement and 160 denied. Roughly 146 claims remain open or pending determination.

The service did not provide an amount for the total payout of the 45 claims.

“We recognize that behind every medical claim is a soldier or family member deserving our utmost respect. Consequently, the Army treats the medical claims process not merely as a legal mechanism for addressing grievances, but as a vital catalyst for systemic improvement, utilizing thorough reviews to enforce rigorous safety protocols and uphold our duty to our personnel with the highest level of integrity,” spokeswoman Heather Hagan wrote in an email Monday to Military Times.

Between January 2020 to February 2026, 184 medical malpractice claims were filed against the Air Force, and of those, 25 were approved, including 11 that were related to another claim, for a total reward amount of $2,159,895.93.

The Navy has received 250 medical malpractice claims since 2021 and approved 14, with a total payout of $5,364,882.86.

A Navy spokesman added that the service rejected 138 claims for reasons that included failing to provide required information or filing a claim outside the statue of limitations.

The time frame for filing is two years.

From Jan. 1, 2020, to October 2022, the Navy had received 146 claims from sailors, Marines or their families who sought more than $1.1 billion in compensation. The service denied 58 claims and settled one for $250,000.

Under Feres, service members may not file a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries or mishaps that are incidental to service including, training accidents and other on-duty harms.

This immunity has previously been extended to military contractors providing services in combat zones as well, but in April, the U.S. Supreme Court upended earlier rulings by affirming an Army soldier’s right to sue a military contractor whose employee detonated a suicide bomb on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2016.

In the decision, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the contractor’s argument — that it had immunity in wartime under federal law that shields the military from being sued for combat-related decisions — swept “too broadly.”

Thomas has argued for years that the Feres decision should be reconsidered. In 2025, he penned a strongly-worded 14-page dissent after the court rejected a case that would challenge the doctrine, calling the law “indefensible” and “senseless as matter of policy.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated June 30 to include information on malpractice claims filed to the U.S. Navy.

Former Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, now undersecretary of defense for Personnel and Readiness, was initially met with skepticism on the budget cuts at the annual DPAA briefings for the families of those lost during the Vietnam era. Tata sought to mend fences, however, by pledging to work for restoration of about $40 million in DPAA cuts as proposed in a bill currently before Congress.

Tata first had to convince a skeptical audience member who questioned whether he would follow through on his promises.

“I’m up here telling you — please let me go look at the legislation. That’s my commitment,” he said. “I absolutely support increasing the budget for DPAA. The more money, the more questions we can answer for you.”

Tata, who previously commanded the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions, and was deputy commanding general of the 10^th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, was referring to a bill introduced by Sen. Deb Fisher (R-Neb.) to restore $40 million in funding to the DPAA. The bill was attached to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.

Budget cuts and fuel shortages caused by the war in Iran already resulted in the cancellation in April of searches for the missing in Laos.

“Due to significant impacts resulting from fuel shortages in Laos, DPAA was forced to cancel four recovery teams that were planned for April 27 through June 10,” a DPAA release at the time stated.

Tata sought to assure the audience of family members that he had the “full unmitigated support” of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his new mission, one in which former Army Maj. Gen. Kelly McKeague, director of the DPAA, will report directly to him.

“I will do anything possible to help Kelly and his team,” said Tata, whose past inflammatory remarks, including calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader,” led to the withdrawal of his nomination to the post of under secretary of Defense for Policy during the first Trump administration.

McKeague said the main thing Tata could do would be to lobby for increased funding for the DPAA budget, which has gone from $185 million in Fiscal Year 2025 to $167 million in FY2026, and is projected to be capped at $160 million in FY2027, according too DPAA.

The lack of funding has forced DPAA to cut the number of recovery and investigative teams operating in Vietnam from 27 to seven; from 13 to five in Laos; and from three to one in Cambodia, a DPAA release said.

The $40 million DPAA was seeking from the Fisher bill was a pittance compared to the size of the overall defense budget, which was expected to come in at upwards of $1 trillion, McKeague said.

“It’s chump change, it’s peanuts,” McKeague said. The added funding, meanwhile, would allow him to boost the number of recovery teams.

Tata also touched on another issue that has stymied and infuriated families of the missing for decades — the red tape blocking the declassification of records that could hold information on their loved ones.

Tata said there was “very little reason” why the military “should be withholding any records. I’m super committed” to getting answers, he told the audience.

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate — the “Bring Home Our Heroes Act” — to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles that often make access to information difficult for families.

According to language in the bill, the legislation would “establish an independent Missing Armed Forces and Civilian Personnel Records Review Board to identify missing personnel records, facilitate the transmission and disclosure of these records, and review any decisions by federal agencies to postpone declassification for purposes of protecting sensitive classified material.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) in a statement noted that the “bipartisan Bring Our Heroes Home Act takes meaningful steps to ensure that vital records are preserved, responsibly declassified and made accessible so that families can finally gain the clarity they deserve.”

The Take Care of America’s Veterans bill, a Republican-backed proposal that contains 62 measures aimed at increasing benefits for veterans and survivors has stalled as the House wrestles with the president’s demands to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, legislation that would require voter identification and reduce mail-in ballots.

The House was expected to take up the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, H.R. 9267, this week. The legislation would greatly expand benefits for hundreds of thousands of veterans and survivors, albeit by covering the cost by reducing disability compensation for two conditions, tinnitus and sleep apnea, for future veterans.

Trump canceled his signing of a popular housing bill earlier this week over the SAVE Act, and votes on all bills in the House have been halted as a result of an impasse between Congress and the president.

During a press conference on H.R. 9267 Thursday, Democrats celebrated the delay after they had raised objections to the proposed method of paying for the bill.

According to veterans advocacy groups, 1.5 million veterans receive disability compensation for tinnitus and more than 1.3 currently get compensation for sleep apnea.

While the reductions would not affect veterans currently receiving that compensation, the changes could generate $57 billion in future savings that would cover the cost of the bill.

“Veterans benefits should not be looked at as offsets,” said Rep. Mark Takano of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, during the press conference.

Democrats instead want to pass the most significant portion of the legislation, the Major Richard Star Act, by unanimous consent. The Major Richard Star Act does not include any provisions for covering its cost.

Major pieces of the legislation, including the Major Richard Star Act, which would give combat veterans who medically retired full access to their retirement pay and VA disability compensation, and the Love Lives On Act, which would allow military widows and widowers to retain benefits if they remarry before age 55, have widespread support in Congress. However, many lawmakers also insist that there be a way to pay for proposals to rein in the federal budget.

On Tuesday, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., said the Take Care of America’s Veterans bill would “give the House a serious responsible path to promoting real change for veterans.”

The bill also includes the Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act, which would increase disability compensation for families of veterans with catastrophic injuries and payments to survivors; it would raise VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation for the survivors of veterans with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; and it would allow the VA to send traveling physicians to U.S. territories and Pacific Island nations to treat resident vets.

The move is transforming a force currently managed by individual medical centers and civilian administrators — a change that should make it easier to recruit, pay and train officers, according to the department.

Wednesday’s announcement follows a series of reports critical of the VA police and a May Senate hearing that examined problems in the force.

The Government Accountability Office published a report in April that found numerous safety concerns at VA facilities. During a covert review of 30 VA hospitals and other facilities, GAO investigators found that just two had medical detectors, and of those, one was inoperable and staff failed to intervene when the other was activated.

Investigators also found that staff failed to stop knives from entering the buildings, didn’t intervene when an investigator drank water out of a vodka bottle and allowed investigators to enter non-public spaces, including labs and treatment rooms.

The GAO reported similar problems in 2025, finding that contracted guards – the VA has about 800 – did not prevent prohibited items such as blades or batons into facilities about half the time.

The VA’s Office of Inspector General found last year that 58% of VA facilities experienced shortages in their forces, making VA police “the most frequently reported severe nonclinical occupational staffing shortage.”

Reginald Neal, assistant secretary for operations, security and preparedness, told Senate Veterans Affairs Committee members in May that the structure, along with incorrect pay classifications for officers, made it “difficult to recruit, retain and promote seasoned officers.”

“Our VA police endured inconsistent policing standards, which led to a lack of both accountability and discipline. Often our professional officers were used to perform non police functions, including in some cases, serving as valets to park cars,” Neal said.

Under the consolidation, the VA now will have a law enforcement chain of command that falls under an assistant secretary in VA headquarters. Officials said the reorganization will be completed by October.

VA also will classify police officers at higher pay grades, starting at the Government Services-6 level, or roughly $48,000 a year for a rookie in a location such as Atlanta, Georgia, an increase of $5,000 from the starting position of a GS-5. Jobs also will be offered through the chain of command up to the senior executive service level, providing room for promotion and seniority.

According to the VA, this will create stability and make the VA a “more attractive place to work” for law enforcement.

“These reforms will help us accomplish that mission by creating a stable VA police force with clear lines of authority, accountability and career progression. The result will be better police recruitment and retention as well as improved safety and security for Veterans, staff and visitors,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement Wednesday.

While roughly 98% of the VA’s police work involves non-violent crimes, VA police officers may face life-threatening situations, including patients who threaten visitors and staff, suicidal veterans and opportunists looking to steal from the VA or deal drugs on VA campuses.

In March, a VA social worker was killed at a VA clinic in Jasper, Georgia, by a gun-wielding patient; a uniformed security guard on duty took part in apprehending the suspect.

Daily, Neal said, the VA police focus on assisting veterans.

“VA policing involves so much more in law enforcement,” according to Neal. “When [veterans] come and they seek care, it’s more than just going to see the doctor — the issues, the emotions, all the frustrations that we carry with us when we go to a facility. Our VA police are the first ones that you see when you come to a facility. They’re the last ones you see when you leave. The VA police officers set the tone for that visit.”

Matthew A. Cox was charged April 2 for “endangering the welfare of an incompetent/physically disabled” person, 60-year-old former Marine Corps Cpl. Albert O’Toole. In a video secretly recorded by O’Toole’s wife on March 1, a person identified as Cox is seen grabbing food away from O’Toole, smacking him and shoving him.

Cox also allegedly struck O’Toole on the head with a broom, and later, off camera, the veteran cried out in pain.

The case generated outrage when it was first reported June 18 by News 12 in New Jersey.

But it drew national attention Sunday when John Tiegen, a former Marine and CIA contractor who defended the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, called out VA Secretary Doug Collins on social media, demanding Cox’s immediate firing.

O’Toole’s wife, Angela Sangro, had contacted News 12 reporter Tara Rosenblum after learning that Cox still worked at the VA Hudson Valley Health Care System despite being fired from the New York State Veterans Home in Montrose.

Cox had been removed from direct duties with patients but remained on staff while his case was adjudicated, according to statement from the VA hospital.

“This is a disgrace,” Tiegen wrote, describing the incident and posting the news report.

Collins swiftly responded.

“While this disturbing incident didn’t happen at a VA facility, @DeptVetAffairs will immediately initiate removal proceedings for this employee,” Collins wrote.

While this disturbing incident didn't happen at a VA facility, @DeptVetAffairs will immediately initiate removal proceedings for this employee. https://t.co/crfk3id6xI

— VA Secretary Doug Collins (@SecVetAffairs) June 21, 2026

State veterans homes are not managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA does, however, pay 100% of the cost of care for veterans living in state homes who have service-connected medical conditions that require full-time care, and it also pays the facilities to ensure that they meet federal standards.

The VA is also required to inspect the homes each year to ensure they meet those strict federal standards.

In fiscal 2023, the VA paid about $1.5 billion for veteran nursing home care provided in state veterans homes, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Shuffled between facilities

In the case of the Montrose facility, the state-run home shares a campus with the VA Hudson Valley hospital and a VA community living center where O’Toole spent three months before he was transferred to the state home.

Sangro told Military Times that her husband, whom she married in 2019, received a head injury while serving in the Corps and later developed dementia. When she became unable to care for him full-time, she placed O’Toole in the long-term care facility at the Hudson Valley VA.

He was transferred to the state facility in December when it was determined he needed a higher level of care.

But nearly as soon as he arrived at the new facility, Sangro noticed changes in behavior. O’Toole became agitated and got into altercations with patients and staff. He scuffled with an 86-year old patient who fell and later died.

Sangro said the staff began heavily medicating her husband, which made his agitation worse.

“They started giving him Klonopin for sleep and then more and more medications, like they were trying to control him, but the medications were doing the opposite,” Sangro said in an interview.

O’Toole was sent multiple times to a psychiatric facility, but his doctor there said he did not have a mental health condition.

Suspected abuse

When Sangro noticed bruises and cuts on her husband, she hid a camera in his room to monitor him. After O’Toole’s primary care physician and psychiatrist asked whether she suspected abuse, she checked the footage, she said.

“I left the hall around 4 o’clock, and that recording started at 4:15,” Sangro said, referring to the video used in the News 12 report that has gone viral. “My gosh, that was only one day.”

She showed the video to her husband’s doctors who in turn notified the authorities.

Sangro said that after Cox was charged, the facility “dumped” her husband at the James J. Peters Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., without telling her.

O’Toole spent two months there. Sangro said she faced challenges visiting him, but she was thrilled with the care he received.

“They started weaning him off a couple of the medications. They couldn’t understand why he was so heavily medicated,” Sangro said. “I have nothing but great things to say about that VA and the VA facility at Montrose. It may be old and run-down, but the staff is so caring and loving. They cut his hair, they shaved him often, they let him walk around the halls. They really took great care of him.”

O’Toole has now returned to the state facility, where he has been placed in isolation and attended to by a four-person staff.

“He is deteriorating,” Sangro said of her 60-year-old husband. “He doesn’t have much time left.”

Calls for an investigation

The incident has generated calls for an investigation from New York state legislators. During a town hall Monday, Sangro and lawmakers, including State Sen. Pete Harckham, said they were outraged by the abuse.

“We [have] called for an investigation from the [state] attorney general and also from the Health Department that runs this facility,” Harckham said. “This is not just an isolated case. This cannot happen in a vacuum. Where is the supervision? Didn’t other people — anyone — notice the bruising, the wounds, the behavior change? This is a symptom of a much larger issue.”

According to state officials, the facility immediately reported the incident to the Office of Aging and Long-Term Care, as well as law enforcement.

Cox was a newer, probationary, part-time employee at the state home who had undergone background checks. He was placed on leave three days after the incident and fired on March 26.

“Maintaining a safe environment for the residents and workers at this facility is our top priority,” Health Department spokeswoman Marissa Crary said in a statement to Military Times. “As soon as we became aware of this incident, the staff member was immediately put on leave, terminated after a review of the incident, and is facing criminal charges.”

Attempts to reach Cox on Wednesday went unanswered.

Westchester County, New York, District Attorney Susan Cacace said in a statement that she was “horrified by the allegations of abuse arising out of” the facility, and her office took action as soon as it was reported.

“Those who make the painstaking decision to place a family member in the care of a veteran’s hospital expect that their loved one will be treated with the dignity befitting a military veteran. Sadly, in this case, it appears that standard of care was not met,” Cacace said.

Cacace added that those with information about mistreatment or abuse at the home or any other facility that cares for veterans should call her office’s Elder Abuse Hotline at (914) 995-8477.

Sangro said that in addition to having concerns regarding Cox’s employment status at the VA, she went public because staff didn’t listen to her when she tried to help her husband. She didn’t want other veterans and family members to suffer, she said.

“He was — is — the love of my life," Sangro said. “Now he doesn’t remember who I am. They took that away from me.”

It was August 2004. Army Col. Peter Mansoor and his brigade had spent days preparing to clear the enemy stronghold, located across from one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. Then coalition officials canceled the operation, deciding the political risks were too high.

The enemy remained in place. Mansoor still had an AC-130 gunship circling overhead. There was no instruction manual for what happened next.

Leveraging years of experience at the National Training Center with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Mansoor improvised.

He moved a tank company to probe the perimeter of an area coalition ground forces had been ordered to avoid. The maneuver drew enemy fire, allowing the gunship to strike the militants’ positions.

“Doctrine didn’t tell me to do that,” said Mansoor, who has since retired.

As thousands of post-9/11 veterans approach retirement eligibility, military leaders and veterans interviewed by Military Times said the challenge faced by the U.S. military today extends beyond replacing personnel to preserving the judgment, leadership experience and combat intuition accumulated during two decades of war.

Mansoor and retired Marine officer and defense researcher Ben Connable said the question is particularly acute for the Army and Marine Corps, where repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan produced a generation of leaders whose careers were shaped by combat.

Doctrine can capture many lessons from war, Mansoor said. The harder task is preserving the judgment leaders develop after years of making decisions under pressure.

What Combat Experience Leaves Behind

Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed leaders to uncertainty, risk and the burden of making decisions when lives were at stake.

The experience gave the U.S. military a significant advantage during the post-9/11 wars, said Mansoor, who commanded the Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division in Iraq and later served as executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus during the surge.

“As that experience leaves the force, you can only try to replicate it, but you can’t replace it,” he said.

Retiring Army operations leader Aaron Welch, who plans to leave the service in November after more than two decades in uniform, said the most difficult thing to pass on is judgment.

“Knowledge can be taught. Procedures can be documented. Skills can be practiced,” Welch said. “Judgment is different because it is built through years of making decisions under pressure, accepting consequences and learning from both successes and failures.”

Welch said he has spent much of his career explaining not just what decisions he made, but why he made them. Even so, some lessons can only be fully understood after experiencing similar circumstances firsthand.

The Army’s combat training centers, including the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, expose units to realistic battlefield scenarios designed to test leaders and formations under pressure.

But no matter how realistic the training becomes, Mansoor said, it still cannot replicate real combat.

“You can make training as difficult as you can, but it’s impossible to fully replicate the fear and the various emotional aspects of battle,” he said.

A simulated artillery barrage, he said, is not the same as taking enemy fire during an ambush or operating under mortar attack.

Welch pointed to what he called the “human dimension” of leadership as another aspect of combat experience that cannot be fully captured in doctrine, training or formal education.

“Leadership is ultimately about understanding human beings,” Welch said. “It is about recognizing when a soldier is struggling even when they say they are fine. It is about maintaining trust during difficult times.”

Capturing Lessons Learned

For decades, the military has relied on doctrine centers, professional military education institutions and lessons-learned organizations to capture and pass on combat experience and institutional knowledge.

Established in 1985 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Center for Army Lessons Learned, or CALL, is the Army’s premier agency for adaptive learning.

Lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan can still find their way into classrooms through updated doctrine and professional military education, according to Mansoor.

Still, documenting wartime experiences through oral histories, digital archives and interviews does not guarantee the successful transfer of knowledge to future generations, Connable said.

“It’s almost a belief that knowledge now exists in this kind of ether,” he said. “We don’t really have to do much with it anymore.”

Military organizations do not learn simply because information exists in an archive, Connable added. Someone still has to study it, teach it and apply it.

Mansoor pointed to counterinsurgency as a cautionary example. The military learned important lessons during Vietnam, he said, but much of that knowledge faded as the services shifted focus elsewhere. When U.S. forces entered Iraq and Afghanistan decades later, many of those lessons had to be relearned.

“What I’ve seen is that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are doing a better job of sustaining those lessons, at least in their professional military educational institutions,” Mansoor said.

The military’s struggles during the early years of Iraq and Afghanistan reflected, in part, those experiences from Vietnam that had not been effectively shared with a new generation of leaders, Connable argued.

“Because we do, at best, a mediocre job, at worst, a bad job of passing that information down, then we lose people, and we can start losing wars,” he said.

Mansoor said preserving those lessons ultimately comes down to leadership priorities.

“Those things can be maintained, but only if the leadership wants to maintain them,” he said.

Preparing Leaders For The Next War

Preparing for future wars should not come at the expense of preserving lessons from counterinsurgency, Mansoor said. Even as the military focuses on large-scale combat operations, Mansoor argued that broad leader education cannot become a casualty of that shift.

“Troops can be retrained relatively quickly for counterinsurgency warfare,” Mansoor said. “But it takes years to educate a leader on what it would take to fight a counterinsurgency war.”

Mansoor argued that leaders exposed to multiple forms of warfare are better positioned to adapt when conflicts evolve in unexpected ways.

Connable said he is particularly concerned that expertise developed during two decades of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare could disappear as post-9/11 veterans retire.

“All of our irregular warfare knowledge is at risk of being dumped,” he said.

After two decades of war, the military and much of the American public simply grew tired of Iraq and Afghanistan, Connable added, increasing the risk that hard-earned lessons could fade.

Welch said his concern is not with the quality of younger leaders entering the force, but whether they are being given enough opportunities to develop through experience.

“Experience cannot be created in a classroom,” Welch said. “It is built through responsibility, decision-making, mistakes and recovery.”

As organizations become more risk-averse, Welch noted, senior leaders can sometimes intervene too quickly or shield junior leaders from failure, limiting opportunities for younger leaders to develop judgment.

“We cannot be so afraid of mistakes that we deny future leaders the opportunity to develop judgment,” he said.

Connable recalled serving under retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who routinely asked Marines what they were reading and challenged them to think critically about military history.

“That is cultural,” Connable said. “That is a cultural norm that he was creating.”

Doctrine and archives alone will not preserve wartime experience, Connable added. Leaders, he said, still have to mentor younger service members and foster organizations where studying military history remains part of the culture.

Two decades after Karbala, Mansoor still remembers making a decision for which no doctrine existed.

“There isn’t a manual that says, ‘When you can’t go in with ground forces, try probing the edge and use air strikes instead,’” he said, reflecting on the battle. “You have to make those decisions based on experience.”

For Welch, leadership, at its core, remains a human endeavor.

“Technology will change. Doctrine will evolve. The battlefield will continue to evolve,” Welch said. “But character, judgment, trust, relationships and a commitment to developing others will remain at the heart of effective leadership.”

The recently released 2025 VA AI Inventory catalogs cases of AI use across the department, from clinical tools used during patient care to systems that help process benefits, automate records management and support customer service functions.

Among the systems identified is Ambient AI Scribe, a clinical documentation tool used during medical appointments.

According to VA, the technology listens to clinician-patient conversations and generates clinical notes, reducing administrative workload and allowing providers to spend more time focused on veterans.

VA’s disclosure also details widespread use — by more than 50,000 personnel — of commercial AI products across the department, including Microsoft Copilot Chat, Microsoft Teams Premium, Grammarly GitHub Copilot and other platforms for support tasks such as meeting transcription, document drafting, report summarization, information retrieval and software development.

Nearly Every Major VA Function Features AI

Health and medical applications represent the largest category of use cases, followed by systems supporting benefits administration, information technology, service delivery, financial management and administrative operations.

Applications identified in the inventory assist clinicians with imaging analysis and diagnostic workflows, identify disease risk, summarize records, analyze feedback, process forms and provide information through chat-based tools. VA also classifies its VA.gov chatbot as a high-impact use case.

VA says the chatbot is a tool that helps veterans locate information, complete tasks and access support services through self-service interactions.

Another high-impact use case, TERA Memorandum Automation, helps claims processors complete toxic exposure memoranda by pre-populating answers using information already contained in veterans’ records.

VA reports the system achieved a 98.12% accuracy rate and was used to assist with more than 181,000 forms, saving an estimated 54,581 work hours since deployment.

“VA is using artificial intelligence to improve how veterans access care, benefits and services, while also helping employees work more efficiently and effectively,” said VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven in a statement to Military Times.

According to Slaven, the inventory reflects “steady growth, stronger governance and expanding real-world impact, particularly in health care, benefits processing and operational efficiency.”

Inventory Provides A Detailed View Of Governance Requirements

For currently deployed high-impact systems, the inventory tracks whether agencies completed pre-deployment testing, impact assessments, independent reviews, monitoring processes, operator training, fail-safe mechanisms and appeal procedures.

Individual entries also identify potential risks associated with specific applications. For several health care systems, descriptions note that inaccurate outputs could contribute to downstream clinical or operational impacts if not detected and corrected, while also stating that providers receive training and oversight intended to mitigate those risks.

VA says all high-impact systems are required to complete an AI Impact Assessment and Risk Mitigation Plan before being put to work.

“Deployed high-impact AI use cases are continuously monitored,” said Slaven. “And any use case that cannot be brought into compliance is discontinued.”

Some AI systems previously reported by VA are now classified as retired. Those systems include healthcare, training and operational applications. The inventory does not specify why individual systems were deactivated.

Performance Data Varies Across Systems

The level of detail provided in the inventory varies from one system to another. Some entries provide measurable performance outcomes, testing results or operational metrics. Others provide only basic descriptions of intended functions and governance requirements.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which developed an AI Accountability Framework for federal agencies, says meaningful oversight requires documentation that can be independently reviewed.

“GAO’s AI Accountability Framework highlights the importance of documentation and a paper trail that an independent third party can follow,” GAO officials told Military Times. “As AI inputs and operations are not always visible, a central tenet to oversight is, ‘Show me, don’t just tell me.’”

GAO said organizations should be able to demonstrate who is responsible for AI systems, how those systems operate, whether they rely on quality and reliable data and how limitations are identified and addressed.

The agency also emphasized the importance of monitoring metrics such as accuracy and error rates and establishing thresholds that help determine when corrective action or retirement of a system is warranted.

Veterans Advocates Want Human Accountability

Chris Macinkowicz, deputy director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Veterans Service, said the organization’s concerns focus less on whether VA should use artificial intelligence and more on how those systems are managed after deployment.

“AI needs to be a tool, not an employee,” Macinkowicz told Military Times.

He said human review remains essential, particularly when systems are involved in processes affecting veterans.

“We need to make sure human eyes are on it afterwards,” he said. Macinkowicz also stressed the importance of continued evaluation after deployment.

“We need to have assurances from VA that they’re going to go back after these AI agents are deployed to make sure that they’re still accurate a month down, six months down, a year down [the road],” he said.

GAO officials said organizations should establish metrics that help determine when corrective action is needed and when an AI system should be retired because it no longer meets its intended objectives.

As VA expands the use of AI across healthcare, benefits processing and other operations, GAO officials said meaningful oversight depends on agencies being able to demonstrate, through documentation and measurable performance data, that systems continue operating as intended.

The research, released by the the Washington think tank Tuesday, examined veterans’ use of psilocybin mushrooms, LSD and MDMA, along with their levels of support for legal use of the drugs and their understanding of the VA’s policies on them.

The study comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has funneled funds into studying psychedelics as a form of mental health therapy, often promoting their potential to treat veterans, in particular. Despite recent support from the federal government, the study revealed confusion among veterans about the VA’s policies regarding the substances.

“VA policy around psychedelics remains unclear, and we found that about half of veterans were unsure about discussing them with a VA doctor,” Michelle Priest, lead author of the report, said in a statement. “That uncertainty matters, especially as veteran issues are prominently featured in policy conversations surrounding psychedelics, both at the federal and state levels.”

About half of veterans were unsure whether discussing their use of psychedelics with their VA doctors would risk their benefits. The VA issued a policy in 2023 that encourages veterans to discuss their marijuana use with their doctors — and specifies that marijuana use wouldn’t affect their benefits — but there’s no such guidance or guarantee for other drugs, RAND said.

Asked about the findings Tuesday, a VA spokesperson directed reporters to the department’s webpage, which states the agency “strongly discourages self-medicating or attempting to replace other mental health treatment options with psychedelics or any other unprescribed substances.”

“Proven, evidence-based treatments, are currently available at VA facilities to treat veterans with mental health conditions,” the VA website continues. “Veterans should always consult their health care providers before making any treatment decisions.”

About 27.5% of all veterans have used the substances, the study states. LSD was the most common, with veterans being more likely than the general population to have used LSD in their lifetime.

The study found that veterans were more likely to support the legal use of psilocybin mushrooms and LSD — 23% for mushrooms and 11% for LSD — but support for MDMA, at 9%, was about the same as the rest of the country.

Last year, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center received a $4.9 million Defense Department grant to fund a study of MDMA and its effects on active-duty soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Trump signed an executive order in April committing at least $50 million in federal funds to boost research on ibogaine, a powerful hallucinogen derived from the African shrub iboga.

During the signing ceremony, Trump said, “It’s for a lot of people, but it’s for our military in particular. The suicide epidemic among veterans is a national tragedy.”

Less than 1% of veterans have used ibogaine, the RAND study found. About 5% of veterans who hadn’t used it were willing to try it.

Following the executive order, which directed the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate reviews of certain psychedelic therapies, the VA announced its launch of a clinical trial to evaluate MDMA-assisted therapy on severe mental health disorders.

One of the most dramatic events of that first day involved orders from the fleet commander, Rear Adm. Frank Friday Fletcher: “SEIZE CUSTOM HOUSE. DO NOT PERMIT WAR SUPPLIES TO BE DELIVERED TO HUERTA GOVERNMENT OR ANY OTHER PARTY.”

When the Americans advanced on the building, they suddenly found themselves pinned down by what an officer on the scene, Ensign George Lowry, described as “murderous rifle and machine gun fire.”

Not wishing to risk any more men than he had to, Fletcher called for a handful of volunteers. Five men from the battleship Florida — Harry C. Beasley, George Cregan, Joseph G. Harner and J. F. Schumacher and Joseph Sinnett — alongside Hospital Apprentice 1st Class William Zuiderveld, volunteered.

Setting out, Lowry planned to flank the Custom House and attack from the side. Hopes of a surprise assault did not succeed as planned, however. A bullet clipped a button off Lowry’s cap and another creased his right legging. Beasley was slightly wounded and Schumacher was struck in the head.

An Aug. 19 after-action report from Adm. Fletcher included a description of what followed:

“After the five volunteers from the First Company, Florida Battalion, had advanced with me under heavy fire along the narrow alley between the customhouse and the open warehouse, and Schumacher was shot in the head, I called down the alley for the ambulance party. Zuiderveld, W., Hospital Apprentice First Class, responded quickly and advanced up the alley in a heavy fire to the position occupied by the five volunteers. There kneeling in an exposed position and unaided, he bandaged Schumacher’s head to stop the flow of blood, while a steady fire was being maintained against the Mexicans in the doorway of the Oriente Hotel.”

Amid the shooting, one of the Custom House’s most spirited defenders was José Azueta Abad, a 19-year-old Mexican navy lieutenant manning a machine gun and inflicting casualties on the Americans, most likely Schumacher as well.

Lowry’s volunteers had their own ace in the hole, however: Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Joseph Gabriel Harner who had a reputation as a crack marksman.

Engaging Azueta, he severely wounded him at 300 yards. As the Americans closed in and fired into the customhouse, its garrison finally threw out their weapons and surrendered. After the exchange, the Americans found 12 bullet impacts in the vicinity.

Sadly, in spite of Corpsman Zuiderveld’s efforts, Schumacher died of his head wound. Nonetheless, Zuiderveld was cited for having “showed extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.”

The Americans occupied Veracruz until Nov. 23, when they withdrew. After hostilities abated, Adm. Fletcher, after learning of Azueta’s valor at the Custom House, sent a message asking to visit him and pay his respects. Azueta’s purported response was: “If the American enters my house, I will either kill him or myself.”

Later, when Fletcher offered to put his own surgeon at his disposal, Azueta again declined, insisting on relying on a local surgeon, Dr. Rafael Cuervo Xicoy, who was handicapped by lacking the quality of equipment. Partly due to that, the young officer succumbed to his wounds on May 10. Promoted to captain by the President of the Republic before his death, Azueta has since been honored among Mexico’s heroes of Veracruz.

He was not alone. On Jan. 6, 1915, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels came aboard USS Florida in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to award Medals of Honor to Lowry, Beasley, Cregan, Harner, Sinnett and Zuiderveld.

Adm. Fletcher also received the Medal of Honor, as did his nephew, Lt. Frank Jack Fletcher.

In the inter-war years, Lowry held four destroyer commands. He entered the Reserves in 1927, but in 1940 he returned to regular service and in 1941 he served as operations officer in the Western Sea Frontier, for which he received the Legion of Merit.

Lowry retired as a rear admiral in October 1946. He died at Carmel by the Sea, California, on Feb. 5, 1978, aged 91, and was subsequently buried at sea.

Both provisions are among the 62 consolidated in the Take Care of America’s Veterans bill proposed June 10 by the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to address several top priorities.

The legislation includes the Maj. Richard Star Act, which would give 54,000 wounded veterans who are eligible for combat-related special compensation their military retirement pay and VA compensation without offsets, and the Love Lives On Act, which would let surviving spouses keep VA and Defense Department benefits if they remarry.

Sponsors Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said they worked with veterans and advocates to find a “path forward” to pass the legislation — particularly the Major Richard Star Act, which, despite having broad bipartisan support, has been blocked by members over cost concerns.

“Over the past few months, we have heard from the thousands veteran voices who want to see Congress pass the Major Richard Star Act to grant thousands of disabled veterans the benefits they are eligible for,” Bost said in a statement while introducing the bill.

“It takes hard work and consensus building to pass legislation that meets the needs of veterans and has the ability to become law. This is not just like a symbolic thing that we are ‘with our veterans.’ it’s how do we make something that matters so greatly to them [into] actual law,” Moran said June 9 in remarks on the Senate floor.

Paying for it

The Star Act has the support of 336 House members and 79 senators. But since the bill did not include proposals for covering the estimated $11 billion cost over the next decade, it has been blocked by lawmakers who said it must have a mechanism for paying for it.

To address that issue, the Take Care of America’s Veterans bill would accelerate updates proposed in 2022 to the VA’s ratings schedule to update sleep apnea and tinnitus standards.

Under the bill, veterans with asymptomatic sleep apnea or a mild case controlled by treatment would receive a 0% to 10% disability rating.

Similarly, tinnitus, which currently receives a 10% disability rating, would be treated as a symptom of another condition, such as hearing loss or a traumatic brain injury, and would no longer get a standalone rating.

While the changes would affect only veterans who apply for disability compensation for these conditions moving forward, the approach has rankled several veterans service organizations and lawmakers.

Disabled American Veterans National Commander Coleman Lee noted that the change could affect 1.5 million veterans and reduce disability compensation over the next 10 years by $57 billion.

“While we appreciate all good faith efforts to develop and enact a package of positive veterans legislation, we reject the premise that the only way to fulfill the promises made to the men and women who served in the past is by cutting benefits for veterans in the future,” Lee said in a June 10 statement.

“The VFW strongly opposes the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act as currently drafted because it asks future disabled veterans to bear the cost of expanding benefits through changing the VA rating schedule for tinnitus and obstructive sleep apnea which are common conditions associated with combat poly trauma,” VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore said June 11.

“We have long maintained that veterans’ benefits are an earned obligation of the nation, a promise made through the military service contract, and should not be financed through offsets, fee increases or reductions that place additional burdens on veterans, military families and survivors,” Whitmore added.

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, has called on Congress to pass the Major Richard Star Act unanimously, because, Blumenthal said, the Defense Department could cover its cost by using funds from the $1.7 trillion Military Retirement Fund.

The method of payment proposed in the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act is “wrong and must be stopped,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

“Correcting this injustice for combat-injured veterans should be done without depriving other veterans of benefits they need and deserve which this Republican package would do,” Blumenthal said.

Roughly 1.3 million veterans receive disability compensation for sleep apnea while more than 1.5 million veterans currently receive disability benefits for tinnitus.

A ‘pragmatic path’

Some major veterans organizations said the proposal is needed to move forward on the widely supported legislation that will help thousands of veterans.

“Critics may focus on trade-offs, but the alternative is continued gridlock on major reforms in an increasingly challenging budgetary and political environment. Legislative success requires a pragmatic path forward, not just good intentions,” American Legion National Commander Dan Wiley said in a statement.

In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he supported the Richard Star Act but did not make any recommendations on covering the cost.

Other provisions in the 554-page bill include: the Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act, which would raise disability compensation for families of veterans with catastrophic injuries by $10,000 a year and increase payments to survivors by 1%; increases in VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation for the survivors of veterans with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; authorization for the VA to send traveling physicians to U.S. territories and Pacific Island nations to treat veterans; and grants for mental health professionals to provide treatment to veterans.

The bill also would require several studies, including an annual VA report on the causes of death among veterans; a study on access to rural care to veterans; a Government Accountability Office review of hyperbaric oxygen therapy treatment for traumatic brain injuries; and an Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry on health conditions affecting the descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances.

The House is expected to consider the legislation, H.R. 9237, this week. The Senate has not yet placed the bill on its calendar.

Forty-year-old goalie Josimar “Vozinha” Dias recently earned a certificate from the Guinness World Records book as “the oldest goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet” in a World Cup debut with his acrobatic play on June 15 for the Tubarões Azuis — Blue Sharks — of Cape Verde, turning away shot after shot to hold powerhouse Spain to 0-0 draw.

Cape Verde again produced a stunner on Sunday, coming from behind to earn a 2-2 draw with heavily favored Uruguay, a score that featured the tiny island nation’s first-ever goal in a World Cup.

“This means everything for our country,” Cape Verde coach Pedro Leitão Brito told the Associated Press. “We have always said that we wanted everybody to see our country, our team and we have shown organization and braveness and this is proof of what our country is about — resilience and to try to overcome hardships.”

Vozinha, however, was in tears after the June 15 match over the money and red tape for a visa that kept his mother from attending her son’s shutout of Spain.

“I cried after the game because I grew up with my grandparents when I was a kid, and they could not be there,” he told reporters. “They passed away a few years ago. My mum could not be here either for a visa issue, and the money we had to pay for it. We did not manage to do this in time.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the only member of Congress of Cape Verdean descent, then worked with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to clear up the $15,000 visa issue.

“No mother should miss the chance to see her child make history,” Jeffries said in a statement. All fees were subsequently waived, Jeffries added.

Vozinha’s mother was in attendance on Sunday to watch her son against Uruguay. Cape Verde next plays on June 26 against Saudi Arabia, with a possible chance to punch their ticket to the elimination round on the line.

The goalie’s heroics and the flap over the visa, meanwhile, drew attention to the long history of the U.S. connection to Cape Verde, sometimes called Cabo Verde, an island chain and former Portuguese possession about 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.

In comments for a Smithsonian Magazine article, Donald Heflin, the former U.S ambassador to Cape Verde, noted, “Cabo Verdean Americans are one of [the U.S.’s] oldest immigrant communities, going back to the colonial whaling days.”

“We have the names of five Cabo Verdeans who fought in the American Revolution,” Heflin continued. “And their proud military tradition grows from there, with the numbers of Cabo Verdean Americans in uniform getting larger with each of America’s wars.”

One of those Cape Verdeans was Joachim Pease, who served aboard the Union sloop of war Kearsarge during the June 19, 1864, epic battle against the Confederate raider Alabama off the French port of Cherbourg.

The Union Army was segregated at the time — the Navy was not. Aboard Kearsarge, Pease served as the loader on a 32-pounder gun that helped sink the Alabama, according to the Smithsonian article.

His Medal of Honor citation — considered by many to be the first for an African-born service member — said that he “exhibited marked coolness and good conduct and was highly recommended by the divisional officer for gallantry under fire.”

Pease disappeared after the Kearsarge returned to Boston. He was never located.

The Navy was unable to present him with the medal, which is now on display at the National Museum of the United States Navy in the Washington Navy Yard in Washington.

The first episode of the two-hour event premieres on Wednesday, June 24, at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Discovery Channel.

On Sept. 21, 1944, the Hōfuku Maru, alongside 10 other ships forming Convoy MATA-27, was transporting more than 1,000 Allied Dutch and British service members when it was sunk by American planes.

Among combatants on both sides, the Japanese alone refused to guarantee the safety of POWs at sea or mark their prisoner transports. Friendly fire accounted for a staggering 93% of the POW deaths on these ships, according to Gregory Michno, author of Death on the Hellships.

According to historian David Aquila, to add to the sheer terror of the experience, by 1944 these hell ships were carrying prisoners in numbers six times greater than what the Japanese had deemed acceptable at the beginning of the war. This practice, called chomansai, or super-full capacity, gave each man less than one square yard of space for voyages that lasted up to 70 days. The crowded, disease-ridden conditions, says historian Gavin Daws, were comparable to those on the slave ships of the 18th century.

One of the few survivors of the Hōfuku Maru sinking, Capt. Nigel Evans, later testified in British war crimes trials held in Singapore shortly after war’s end.

“Conditions on board became terrible,” Evans said. “It was a common sight to see prisoners of war eating their meals within six feet of a corpse being prepared for burial. On the day before we sailed, over a third of officers and men were unable to walk unassisted and there were a number of mental cases.”

Evans survived the sinking by boarding another Japanese ship and was taken to a POW camp in Taiwan.

By the end of the war, conservative estimates suggest that 50,000 Allied POWs boarded hell ships, and 21,000 of those men did not survive. That tally accounts for more deaths, according to Michno, than were sustained in combat by the U.S. Marines during the entire Pacific campaign.

The sinking of the Hōfuku Maru that September day marks one of the largest single-day losses of Allied POW lives.

Struck by an Allied torpedo, the vessel was split in half and went under the water in less than three minutes. More than 1,000 Allied POWs were still trapped in its hold. Due to incorrect U.S. records of the event, searchers were led too far north for decades.

That is until researcher John Duresky of the Hellships Memorial Foundation and historian Tim Beckensall stumbled upon a digitized Japanese after-action report written by officers on board the convoy’s lead ship. It contained a hand-drawn account detailing the location of each ship within the convoy and a note stating that the Hōfuku Maru sunk at 10:35 a.m.

But the revelations didn’t stop there. Hidden in plain sight was an aerial photograph captured by the lead American Curtiss SB2C Helldiver just moments before the attack.

“This is what they refer to in the business, guys, as a smoking gun,” says Gates.

“We were absolutely stunned that Japanese sources had information on where the convoy was attacked and what ships were hit,” says researcher Randy Anderson.

Beckensall shared his archival findings with the British Embassy, then the Dutch and Philippine military attachés.

After the compelling evidence, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands agreed to fund an initial sonar survey and a preliminary dive mission to the site, which took place this past December and January, CNN reports.

But the dive mission initially hit a snag. Despite divers finding some kind of wreckage that pointed to the Hōfuku Maru, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and the subsequent flood of volcanic ash threatened to engulf the wreck.

With the help of Calvin Mires, a maritime archaeologist for Marine Imaging Technologies, and Evan Kovacs, an underwater imaging specialist, hundreds of images were taken of the wreck and then turned into a 3D model via a technique known as photogrammetry.

Mires and Gates have dived the wreck several times, reporting that they encountered human remains on the deck. Neither went into the holds.

“This ship is a grave, and now that she’s been identified, the governments of the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States have been notified, and they’ll determine the next course of action,” Gates told CNN.

Using “a combination of navigation analyses and archival, cartographic, and archaeological evidence,” the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands confirmed on June 8 that the vessel is “most likely” the Hōfuku Maru.

“The pieces all fit,” states Beckensall in the release. “The vessel is the right size, in the right place and from the correct period. I am convinced this is the Hōfuku Maru.”

The former Secret Service Agent, whose actions became a defining part of that fatal Dallas day, was laid to rest this week at Arlington National Cemetery — the same burial ground as President Kennedy — with military honors.

Hill was 93 when he passed away Feb. 21, 2025, according to the United States Secret Service Association.

Hill was drafted and served three years in the Army Counterintelligence Corps before he was sworn in as a Secret Service agent in 1958. He went on to work as an agent under five presidents, including Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

He was awarded the Treasury Department’s highest civilian award for bravery and Jacqueline Kennedy personally requested that Hill remain a member of her security team after the assassination, accompanying her from the fated limousine to the hospital and eventually to the president’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

When the North Dakota native retired, Hill had climbed the ranks to become responsible for all Secret Service protective forces as the assistant director of protective operations.

But he never forgot the moment that a second bullet barreled into President Kennedy’s head, killing him.

Though he progressed in his career, Hill sunk into depression and was tormented with post-traumatic stress, self-doubt and guilt. He retired from the service in 1975 at the advice of medical professionals.

Hill later said that he spent the seven years after his retirement, which was at the age of 43, sequestered away from the world.

“Nobody talked about PTSD. There was no counseling for guys like me,” Hill said in a quote from the cemetery’s Thursday release. “Now when I talk to groups or people struggling with trauma, I tell them to find somebody they can talk to,” he said, adding “no matter how old you are, talking about it will help.”

Hill worked with journalist Lisa McCubbin on four different books and the pair eventually married in 2021.

McCubbin Hill said the couple chose the national burial ground because “it gave him a lot of peace,” to be laid to rest where he stood decades before at President Kennedy’s funeral. Mourners placed their hands on his urn in farewell.

After Hill’s ceremony and service, his wife and her family visited President Kennedy’s gravesite. “It feels full circle,” she said.

Relative obscurity notwithstanding, less famous units, often as temporary as the Flying Tigers and Merrill’s Marauders, did their share of harassing the enemy and reoccupying Burmese territory. One, the 5332nd Brigade (Provisional), also known as Mars Task Force, was among the most unlikely regimental assemblies of World War II.

Consisting as it did of the Redesignated Infantry, the unit largely contained survivors from the Merrill’s sickly but highly experienced fighters; the 1st Chinese Regiment (Separate) and the 124th Cavalry Regiment of the Texas National Guard, activated in 1940 and re-equipped as infantry.

Strange though this fighting trio seemed, it, too, got the job done and one of its officers, 1st Lt. Jack L. Knight, made history as a U.S. Army member to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the China-Burma-India theater.

Born in Weatherford, Garner County, Texas, on May 29, 1917, Knight attended Valley Springs and Garner High School. When war broke out, however, he and two brothers enlisted in the Army at Mineral Wells, Texas, in October 1940 and were federalized in November at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Joining the 124th, Jack enrolled in Officer Candidate School at Fort Riley, Kansas, as did one of his brothers, Lloyd. A third brother, Curtis, declined OCS because he’d just been married. By 1945 Knight had risen to first lieutenant and commanded F Troop of the Mars Task Force, while brother Curtis served as the troop’s first sergeant. Lloyd later commanded a tank destroyer unit.

The force’s objective at that time involved marching 200 miles into northern Burma and cut the Burma Road 30 miles below its junction with the Ledo Road. As the unit advanced through the jungle and mountain terrain, first contact was made with Japanese troops on Jan. 19, 1945, and would continue in and around the area of Loi-kang Ridge over the next 17 days.

At 6:20 a.m. on Feb. 2, the 124th Cavalry advanced 1,500 yards through the Hosi Valley and up a 250-foot slope to take up positions on a strategically vital hill, which they reached in 35 minutes. As they did, Knight reconnoitered ahead and encountered two Japanese soldiers, who he killed with his M1 carbine. He then came upon three enemy pillboxes, at which he threw some of his grenades and then called out to his troopers: “Come on up. There’s a whole nest of them here.”

What Knight’s citation described on his conduct that morning was outstanding even for a battalion full of elite fighters:

Knight “Led cavalry troops against heavy concentrations of enemy mortar, artillery, small-arms fire, after taking the troops’ objective and while making preparations for a defensive, he discovered a nest of Japanese pillboxes and foxholes to the right front, preceding his men by at least 10 feet. He immediately led an attack, single-handedly he knocked out two enemy pillboxes and killed the occupants of several foxholes.”

While he was attacking out a third pillbox, a Japanese grenade landed in front of him. Although he stepped back, he was wounded by it. In spite of that, he rallied his platoon and told one of his officers, 2nd Lt. Leo C. Tyson, to bring up more ammunition. He then continued leading the assault on a fourth pillbox, which he engaged with a grenade and his carbine.

As he did, a Japanese soldier rushed him with his bayonet, but Tyson arrived back in time to kill Knight’s assailant. By then some of F Troop saw blood dripping down his face and even as he joined in the attack, he intimated to Tyson, “I can’t see.”

In spite of that, Knight was crawling up toward the enemy when a second grenade mortally wounded him. His brother, 1st Sgt. Curtis Knight tried to take charge, but was struck by a bullet under his heart. Miraculously, he survived the wound and the war.

After 17 days of fighting, Mars Force’s objective was secured on Feb. 5. Both the Burma and Ledo roads were securely in Allied hands. Leo Tyson later received the Silver Star for his performance in the struggle. As for Jack Knight, his contribution was concluded in his citation: “First Lieutenant’s Knight’s gallantry and intrepidity were responsible for the successful elimination of most of the Japs’ positions and served as an inspiration to officers and men of his troop.”

After learning of his actions, the commander in chief of the CBI, Lord Louis Mountbatten, named the site of F Troop’s late commander’s last fight “the Battle of Knight’s Hill.”

On June 6, 1945, Knight posthumously was awarded the Medal of Honor, which Maj. Gen. Bruce Magruder presented to the lieutenant’s father, Roy Knight, at Camp Wolters, Texas, on June 25. Knight’s remains now lie in Holders Chapel Cemetery in Cool, Texas.