At the center of the debate are proposed changes affecting conditions such as sleep apnea and tinnitus, a funding mechanism that supporters and critics interpret very differently, and competing versions of the Major Richard Star Act.

The legislation would combine roughly 60 veterans bills into a single package affecting veterans, surviving families, caregivers and medically retired service members. It includes caregiver reforms, survivor benefits, mental health initiatives, community care improvements and the original 2023 version of the long-sought Major Richard Star Act.

Nearly every major veterans service organization supports those priorities. Their disagreement, meanwhile, stems from how Congress proposes to pay for them.

This fight didn’t develop overnight. Instead, it began at the convergence of three separate efforts: VA’s yearslong modernization of its disability rating schedule, Congress’ search for an offset to finance a large veterans package and different conclusions about whether projected savings from a pending rule-making change should remain available for veterans programs.

The result is one of the most significant policy disagreements among major veterans organizations in recent years.

Modernization effort years in the making

Long before veterans organizations began publicly battling over the omnibus, VA was already working through a comprehensive overhaul of the Veterans Affairs Schedule for Rating Disabilities, the regulations used to evaluate service-connected disabilities and determine monthly compensation.

The modernization effort began after the Government Accountability Office designated VA’s disability compensation program as “high risk” because portions of the rating schedule had not kept pace with advances in medicine and clinical practice.

In 2009, VA began systematically reviewing all 15 body systems. The proposed revisions published in April 2022 represented the latest phase of that effort, including changes affecting mental health, respiratory and auditory conditions, among them sleep apnea and tinnitus.

Public comments closed years ago, but the remaining rule-makings were still moving through the regulatory process when VA appeared before Congress at the beginning of this year.

During a Jan. 14 hearing before the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, Nina Tann, executive director of VA’s Compensation Service, testified that the department anticipated publishing the remaining four body systems in three final rule-makings around the summer of 2026, followed by implementation and an effective date.

In prepared testimony submitted to the committee, she wrote that VA expected to complete the remaining rule-makings by the end of fiscal 2026, concluding what she described as the first holistic modernization of the rating schedule since 1945.

Those statements became part of the factual backdrop as lawmakers worked to assemble one of the largest veterans legislative packages in years.

Finding the money

The Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act did not begin as a single proposal. Instead, lawmakers combined dozens of bipartisan measures that had already advanced independently through Congress.

Together, they would expand or improve programs affecting caregivers, survivors, veterans’ healthcare, military retirement and disability compensation.

Like most large authorization bills, expanding benefits required lawmakers to identify spending reductions elsewhere. Supporters of the legislation pointed to VA’s pending disability rating revisions.

Candace Wheeler, national legislative director for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said TAPS understood from conversations with VA and the department’s January congressional testimony that the remaining rule-making was expected to proceed during fiscal 2026.

According to Wheeler, TAPS views the projected savings differently than critics of the legislation. Rather than reducing existing disability compensation, Wheeler said Congress is attempting to retain projected federal savings associated with a rule VA had already proposed and testified it expected to complete.

Otherwise, she said, those savings would leave veterans programs altogether. She described it as “the right color of money.”

Wheeler also acknowledged why many organizations remain uncomfortable with the proposal.

“We understand organizations and people that are concerned about taking from veterans to pay for veterans,” she said. “We have long said the same thing. But in this particular legislation, it is because of a rule that was already put forward.”

That distinction helps explain why TAPS, the Military Officers Association of America, the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and several other organizations endorsed the omnibus despite opposing similar funding approaches in other circumstances.

Coming to a different conclusion

Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars have not opposed most of the legislation itself. Instead, both organizations argue Congress should identify another way to finance the package, rather than rely on projected savings associated with disability compensation changes.

Their position reflects a broader philosophy about the purpose of VA disability compensation.

In testimony submitted to Congress earlier this year, DAV argued disability compensation recognizes the lasting functional loss associated with service-connected injuries and illnesses and does not serve only as wage replacement for unemployable veterans.

The organization described the disability compensation framework as fundamentally sound and cautioned against proposals that could weaken its underlying purpose.

VFW’s January testimony addressed the modernization effort from a different perspective but acknowledged that the remaining respiratory, auditory and mental health revisions were still progressing through rule-making.

The organization noted that public comment periods had concluded, rule-making remained underway and full completion was projected for fiscal 2026. It also told lawmakers that VFW had repeatedly requested updates from VA and had consistently been told the remaining regulations were still under review.

Those statements do not suggest agreement over the proposed funding mechanism, but they do show that the organizations broadly understood the modernization effort was continuing while reaching different conclusions about whether Congress should treat projected savings from that unfinished process as available to finance new veterans legislation.

The dispute goes public

The philosophical divide soon moved beyond policy papers and congressional testimony.

Veterans of Foreign Wars launched a public campaign urging veterans to contact lawmakers and oppose the funding provision. Disabled American Veterans issued statements arguing Congress should remove the offset and finance the legislation another way. Both organizations emphasized that they supported many of the bill’s underlying provisions but opposed using projected disability compensation savings to pay for them.

The dispute escalated on July 1 when House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., publicly criticized a VFW advocacy cartoon promoting the campaign.

In a statement, Bost called the organization’s messaging “inflammatory, fear-mongering, and dangerous political rhetoric” and urged VFW to remove the image.

Another development the same day received far less attention.

Bost and Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., sent a formal letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins requesting that the department examine whether VFW’s conduct remained consistent with the requirements governing VA-accredited veterans service organizations under 38 C.F.R. §§ 14.628 and 14.629.

They also asked VA to review the organization’s commercial licensing arrangement under 38 C.F.R. § 14.628(f) in connection with merchandise featuring the disputed cartoon.

The lawmakers did not direct VA to revoke VFW’s accreditation or recommend a specific outcome. Instead, they asked the department to review whether the organization’s actions complied with existing regulations.

VFW General Counsel John Muckelbauer told Military Times the organization first learned of the letter from congressional staff after it had been sent and said neither lawmaker contacted the organization beforehand.

He said VFW remains confident its advocacy complies with VA accreditation standards and argued that speaking forcefully before Congress is central to the organization’s mission.

“Reasonable people can disagree about legislation,” Muckelbauer said. “What should never be in question is the right and responsibility of veterans service organizations to advocate independently for the veterans they represent.”

Because the matter raises legal issues, Muckelbauer said VFW has responded “through the appropriate legal channels” and declined to discuss those communications publicly.

The Major Richard Star Act change-up

As debate over the funding mechanism intensified, another significant change inside the omnibus attracted comparatively little attention.

For years, the Major Richard Star Act has sought to restore concurrent receipt for combat-injured veterans who were medically retired before completing 20 years of military service. Under current law, many lose a portion of their earned military retirement because they also receive VA disability compensation.

The original 2023 version of the legislation focused on approximately 54,000 combat-injured medically retired veterans. In 2025, lawmakers introduced a broader standalone proposal that would have expanded eligibility to roughly 255,000 medically retired veterans beyond the original combat-related population, totaling more than 300,000 medically retired veterans.

Congressional Budget Office estimates reflected a substantially higher projected cost associated with that expansion, inflating the price tag from $10 billion to $78 billion over 10 years.

The version incorporated into the Taking Care of America’s Veterans Act does not include that broader eligibility. Instead, it mirrors the earlier combat-related framework, limiting eligibility to approximately 54,000 combat-injured medically retired veterans, not all Chapter 61 medically retired veterans.

Restoring concurrent receipt can return hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month to retirees whose military careers ended because of combat-related injuries.

Wheeler said confusion between the two versions has complicated public discussion of the legislation.

“If you add in all of [the additional 255,000 medically retired veterans], then yes, it would balloon the cost,” she said. “But that is not what is currently moving forward in TCAVA.”

Wheeler noted that coalition members intentionally focused on the narrower proposal because expanding eligibility further “would make it very hard to pass,” explaining why the version of the Richard Star Act included in the omnibus differs significantly from the broader standalone proposal introduced by Congress last year.

VA’s current position

While Congress debated the legislation, VA publicly described the status of the underlying rule-making differently than it had during the January hearing.

Asked by Military Times about the 2022 proposed disability ratings revisions, Quinn Slaven, VA press secretary, said “no changes are planned or imminent.”

Slaven added that after receiving significant public comment back in February, the proposal “would need to undergo significant changes prior to being finalized.”

Military Times asked VA whether the department’s expected timeline has changed since Nina Tann testified in January that VA anticipated completing the remaining rule-makings by the end of fiscal 2026. As of publication, the department had not responded to that specific inquiry.

Veterans organizations interpreted the significance of that timeline differently as Congress assembled the omnibus legislation.

Congress has not yet decided whether to advance the legislation in its current form. VA has not finalized the 2022 disability ratings proposal, nor has it been withdrawn.

Until both questions are resolved, the debate that has divided the veterans community is likely to continue.

In written testimony submitted for the Jan. 14 hearing, VFW stated that disability compensation exists because America made a promise, and they should honor the contract.

“Several proposed changes have been delayed multiple times,” VFW wrote, “leaving veterans and stakeholders uncertain about timing and the potential effects of the proposed changes.”

With the VSOs supportive of TCAVA understanding that these rule-making changes to VA disability will be final by Oct. 1, Candace Wheeler cautions, “That money will go back to the Treasury if it isn’t used.”

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 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 Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision in its version of fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would reduce funding for Hegseth’s travel to no more than 25% until the committee receives what lawmakers describe as overdue reports and supporting documents.

The committee approved its version of the NDAA last week in an 18-9 vote, sending the bill to the full Senate. House lawmakers advanced their version the week prior.

The provision cuts Hegseth’s travel funding by 75% until the committee receives the civilian harm investigations for three separate 2025 Yemen strikes and the February strike on the girls’ school in Minab, Iran.

On Feb. 28, the first day of the Iran war, a school in southern Iran was struck by a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile, killing at least 165 people, most of them schoolgirls.

President Donald Trump claimed that Iran could have obtained the missile, despite questions about how Tehran would have gained access. The strike has been under investigation by the Pentagon since March.

Speaking on Wednesday in France, Trump was asked about the investigation and whether anyone in the Trump administration would be held accountable.

“It’s such a strange question to be asked at this state because you’re talking about a long time ago, but nobody did that on purpose,” he said in response.

“Mistakes are made. War is nasty. But I know it’s under investigation, and I could have a report for you tomorrow. I would ask Pete Hegseth that question because they have it under investigation,” he concluded.

Another provision in the Senate NDAA moved to prohibit the use of military funds for the operations against Iran without congressional authorization and restricted travel funding for Hegseth’s office until lawmakers submit a report on how the Iran war has impacted readiness. The amendment failed to pass in a 13-14 vote.

Unedited video of strikes conducted by U.S. Southern Command on terrorist organizations that were allegedly smuggling drugs in Latin American waters would also need to be submitted.

Since September 2025, the U.S. military has conducted strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that they alleged were carrying drugs.

As of June 16, the military has disclosed 64 strikes that have killed at least 191 people.

The committee is also seeking information about the Defense Department procedures for notifying Congress about sensitive military operations.

Lawmakers have previously criticized Hegseth over congressional oversight following reports that a special operations team attacked survivors of an alleged drug-smuggling vessel strike off Venezuela’s coast in September 2025.

Hegseth refused to publicly release footage of the attack, instead only showing members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee.

The provision would also require the unredacted investigation by U.S. Special Operations Command into Operation Absolution Resolve, the U.S. military operation executed on Jan. 20 to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Senate lawmakers also requested a certification that shows contractor support for clandestine and intelligence activities and a report on support to Ukraine required under last year’s NDAA.

For the second year , no VA hospitals received a one-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that publishes quality assessments for U.S. hospitals based on mortality rates, patient safety, hospital readmissions and other measures.

CMS began rating VA hospitals in 2023. That year, of 114 facilities that were evaluated, nearly 30% received five stars; 37% received four stars; 15% were awarded three stars; 11%, two stars; and 8% -- or nine facilities -- one star.

In 2026, 45% of VA facilities received five stars, 33% earned four stars, 16% received three stars and 6% were given two stars.

Since the first assessment, the percentage of VA facilities that have earned four or five stars rose from 67% to 78%, despite dipping to 58% in 2024.

The assessments compare favorably against more than 4,600 hospitals reviewed by CMS nationwide. Roughly 12% of U.S. hospitals received five-star ratings, 30% were awarded four stars, 31% received three stars, 21% earned two stars and 6% were given one star this year.

Officials said the new ratings mean VA hospitals account for nearly 15% of the country’s five-star rated hospitals.

“The Trump Administration has a proven track record of improving Veterans’ care, and these ratings underscore that success,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a release. “We look forward to continuing to deliver the results veterans have earned at VA facilities across the nation.”

The list of high- and low- performing facilities at the VA has fluctuated over time, with some marked improvements in facilities that received one star in 2023.

For example, the VA Pittsburgh Health Care System, Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode Island and the Bronx VA Medical Center in New York City each received one star in 2023 but earned four stars in 2026.

Two facilities that earned one star each in 2023 continue to be among the VA’s list of facilities performing under national averages on several measures. The Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the San Juan Medical Center, Puerto Rico, are among the seven VA facilities that received two stars.

The VA maintained its own internal star ratings and began publishing them in 2017 following a series of news reports. In late 2019, the department dropped the effort because VA leaders said it provided little value to veterans.

Twenty Veterans Health Administration medical centers were not rated because they did not meet the criteria for inclusion. CMS does not rate facilities that have a low number of cases or incidents that are specific to its assessment criteria.

It also does not rate specialty hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers and some inpatient care facilities, such as psychiatric hospitals.

The CMS star ratings can be found on Medicare’s Care Compare website.

According to budget documents released this week by the Trump administration, the VA would receive a record $488 billion, including $205.6 billion in discretionary funding for programs and operations and $282.6 billion for mandatory spending — the column that covers disability benefits, pensions, insurance and other requirements.

Highlights in the discretionary spending proposal include $500 million to build permanent facilities for homeless veterans at the new National Center for Warrior Independence in West Los Angeles, $1.3 billion to construct a VA medical center in Manchester, New Hampshire, nearly $2 billion to replace the VA medical center in Indianapolis and $30 million to buy land for a new medical center in San Antonio.

The budget supports the VA’s proposed redesign of its community care contracts and programs and planned changes to the management structure at the Veterans Health Administration. It also funds the restart of the VA’s electronic medical record system program that has been on hold since 2022. The VA plans to restart the initiative this month at four facilities, with an additional nine joining later this year.

The VA estimates that the fiscal 2027 budget would provide disability compensation to more than 7.4 million veterans and support 9.2 million veterans enrolled in VA health care.

According to the VA’s Budget in Brief documents, the proposal would support 443,327 full-time VA employees — roughly 9,000 fewer than in 2025 but up nearly 6,200 from fiscal 2026.

In a statement laid out in the documents, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the proposal will enable the department to deliver timely care and benefits for all beneficiaries.

“This budget request reflects VA’s efforts to find more effective and efficient ways to serve our mission and maximize our resources,” the document states. “The days of measuring VA’s progress by how much money we spend and how many people we employ, instead of how successfully we serve Veterans, are over.”

President Donald Trump’s $2.2 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027 includes nearly $1.5 trillion in spending for the Defense Department — up 44% from fiscal 2026 levels — and increases for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

It trims several domestic programs, including education, food and energy assistance, housing, the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.

The proposed VA budget increases spending for VA medical care provided in VA facilities but also increases the budget for community care, the VA’s program for covering the health treatment received by veterans in non-VA facilities.

The budget, which also includes a request for advanced funding for fiscal 2028, ensures that veterans benefits and services are never affected by a government shutdown. In addition, it increases medical care funding, with $96.2 billion requested for care provided in the VA medical system and $42 billion for community care.

As with fiscal 2026, VA officials asked to shift the mandatory funds designated to cover the costs associated with injuries or illnesses related to toxic exposures to the discretionary budget. The request of $52 billion from the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund is likely to raise concerns among Democratic lawmakers, who have argued that the continued use of the funds could jeopardize monies set aside for a specific purpose.

The proposal also seeks to cut what White House officials referred to as “divisive and wasteful diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” The budget documents did not specify which diversity programs the budget will defund, but officials said the reductions would ensure that “VA funding is used for critical VA missions: providing healthcare; benefits; and cemetery services for America’s veterans.”

The president’s proposed budget represents Trump’s vision for the federal government. It serves as a blueprint for Congress to consider as it starts its fiscal 2027 appropriations process.

In the last 25 years, the VA’s budget has ballooned significantly to address the needs of older veterans as well as the millions who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal represents a 10-fold increase for the VA since fiscal 2001, when the VA’s budget was $45 billion.

John Windom, who served as a program manager on the Defense Department’s adoption of the Cerner electronic health records platform before moving to the VA to manage its health records modernization program, was indicted for allegedly failing to report more than $16,000 worth of gifts.

According to a grand jury indictment filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Windom allegedly accepted cash and other items from at least seven people and companies supporting the VA’s Cerner Oracle health records contract. He met them regularly at a Maryland casino resort to mentor as part of a self-developed mentorship program on building government contracting businesses, the indictment said.

Court records say Windom allegedly accepted an $8,200 Louis Vuitton gift card, $2,000 in cash, $1,800 worth of casino chips, a $1,000 gift card, $2,000 in cash or casino chips and a $631 high-efficiency particulate air filter.

“As alleged, the defendant exploited his senior position for personal gain and concealed gifts and financial relationships that created serious conflicts of interest in the health care of our nation’s veterans,” U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said in a statement Wednesday.

“Such conduct is not only a betrayal of the public trust—it undermines confidence in the institutions dedicated to serving those who have sacrificed for this country,” Pirro added.

The VA’s health records modernization program began in 2017 under President Donald Trump’s first term, a sole-source $10 billion contract that followed the DOD’s award to Cerner for a new electronic medical records system.

The project was originally scheduled to take 10 years and cost $16 billion. But nearly nine years later, just six of the VA’s 170-plus medical sites use the program, which was paused in April 2023 following issues regarding safety and usability.

The VA plans to resume adoption this year, announcing last March that it would roll it out to 13 additional sites.

Windom served as executive director of the Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, he was reassigned to the position of deputy director of the Federal Electronic Health Management Office. He is a retired Navy captain with acquisition experience.

He allegedly accepted the gifts between June 2020 and November 2020, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Windom allegedly concealed from his leadership and ethics officials that he was “accepting, and sometimes demanding, extravagant gifts” from contractors and subcontractors working on the electronic health records system project.

Windom is charged with concealment of material facts, false statements and falsification of a record or document in relation to his failure to report his receipt of gifts, which he was legally obligated to do.

If found guilty of all charges, he faces more than 20 years in prison, as well as financial penalties.

The Justice Department noted that Windom is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty by the court.

A message left with Windom from Military Times was not answered by publication.

The department persists in attempts to recruit its civilian employees to volunteer and support DHS operations, according to a Thursday email sent to DOD civilian employees that circulated on social media.

“I am renewing the call for additional dedicated civil servant volunteers to meet continued mission-critical roles in support of DHS,” the email reads.

The email, sent by the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, first circulated on the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/sno Facebook page. A Pentagon official declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the email to Military Times on Thursday.

DOD’s encouragement of civilian employees’ interagency collaboration when it comes to DHS is nothing new. Since August 2025, the department has tried recruiting civilian employees for up to six-month details in support of the southern border mission at participating DHS agencies.

Last week DOD issued a release urging civilian employees to consider volunteering. Any civilian can volunteer regardless of their job or skills and no resume is required, according to the release, which states 1,000 civilians have been “added to the roster to assist DHS” and 200 have already been deployed.

The Pentagon official declined to comment on whether civilian volunteers approved undergo any additional training.

Details typically last 60 days, but volunteers can opt to complete three 60-day details for a total of 180 days, according to the release.

The email, meanwhile, states that many personnel have already “answered the call to defend the homeland,” claiming that 900 individuals have already submitted applications.

Detailees, which is how the email referred to the individuals, will directly support Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, according to the email.

The email states that participants have assisted ICE and CBP in developing “concepts of operations, provide logistics support, and managed informant tiplines that led to the arrests of human smugglers, drug dealers and other criminals.”

The Pentagon official declined to comment on how many applicants have been approved and deployed already out of the 900 or on what the application process looks like exactly.

Amid President Donald Trump’s push for immigration enforcement operations across the country, ICE has offered large signing bonuses and reduced their age requirements in an effort to expand its workforce.

Despite claims that ICE has exceeded its recruitment goals, National Guard troops have been mobilized in the past to offer the department support on top of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees being temporarily reassigned to ICE, according to The Washington Post’s reporting.

According to an August 2025 Defense Department memo, the agreement between DOD and DHS agencies lasts until Sept. 30, 2026.

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., kicked off a series of hearings Wednesday on legislation that would reauthorize several significant VA programs and said he wants to create a comprehensive authorization process — an omnibus-style procedure — that would ensure a yearly legislative review of all VA programs, some of which have not been reauthorized for 30 years.

Bost said such oversight is needed to ensure that the VA remains accountable to its customers, taxpayers and Congress.

“When programs fall short, it is the duty of this committee to ask questions, demand answers and make the legislative changes necessary to fix the problem,” Bost said. “Reauthorization is not simply a procedural exercise. It is how Congress evaluates whether programs are working as intended and whether the department is using its authorities responsibly.”

Last year, the Congressional Budget Office identified more than $122 billion in expenditures at the department with lapsed authorizations. According to the office, Congress has allowed 18 authorization laws — those that set policy and recommend funding levels — for the VA to expire.

Bost said the committee needs to tackle reauthorization to ensure that Congress has “the means to modernize [the] VA.”

“[These bills] are designed to restore accountability, improve transparency and ensure that VA remains focused on veterans,” Bost said.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, members of Congress have complained that the VA has become significantly less responsive to congressional inquiries and oversight. During a hearing in January, Bost scolded VA officials for repeated delays in providing responses and testimony to Congress, saying he considered preventing the department from testifying given its lack of timeliness.

Likewise, at the same hearing, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Mark Takano of California, said the delays showed “enormous disrespect.”

“It is inexcusable. This should never happen again,” Takano said. “Get your testimony here on time, especially when we’re reviewing $1 trillion [in spending].”

Bost has discussed creating a single authorization bill for the VA since last year, sharing his vision first with Politico Pro.

While none of the 27 bills considered Wednesday was a comprehensive authorization proposal, the collection featured several prioritized by House Republicans for review, including bills that address the VA’s restructuring of its health care system, evaluation of the VA’s national drug formulary and reforms of its leasing and construction and contracting and procurement process.

“The goal is simple: better coordination, stronger accountability and better outcomes for veterans,” Bost said.

For the NDAA, House and Senate Armed Services subcommittee members draft portions of the separate bills for their areas of interest, then vote and move their section along to the full committee for consideration. At each step, lawmakers can propose amendments, which are then voted on by committee and either rolled into the bill or rejected. Eventually, the bills are voted on by the respective chambers, and the versions are reconciled in conference before both are passed again. The final bill is then sent to the president’s desk for signing.

For the VA, the authorization process has been piecemeal, with lawmakers proposing policy bills as they see need. For example, other bills proposed Wednesday included legislation that would expand dental care to all veterans in the VA health system and create a Toxic Exposure Advisory Committee to support implementation of the PACT Act.

VA officials at the hearing said that while they “strongly support congressional oversight and engagement,” the department has concerns on comprehensive legislation, saying it “could cause serious disruption to VA benefits and services.”

“VA believes that a clear accounting of programs and services could be achieved through additional avenues such as additional requests for information, briefing request, additional oversight hearings or requiring additional justification materials,” said Phil Christy, the VA’s chief acquisition officer.

During the hearing, Takano said he wasn’t sure that the NDAA strategy would work but added that he is “certainly willing to try.”

“I welcome an effort by this chamber by our House and by this committee to reclaim its authorities and reaffirm our Article I powers by doing the real oversight the VA so desperately needs,” said Takano, referring to the portion of the Constitution that established Congress and gave it the powers to create laws, raise revenue and declare war.

Bost noted that committee oversight is a constitutional responsibility and VA must be accountable.

“It is a task … not an ask,” Bost said.

Both the House and Senate, where the president’s Republican Party has a slim majority, had already drafted such resolutions long before the strikes Saturday. Now they are ready to plunge into a rare war powers debate next week that will serve as a referendum on Trump’s decision to go it alone on military action without formal authorization from Congress.

“Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East?” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a leader in the bipartisan effort. He said the strikes on Iran were “a colossal mistake.”

In the House, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., are demanding Congress go on record with a public vote on their own bipartisan measure. “Congress must convene on Monday to vote,” Khanna said, “to stop this.”

Massie blasted Trump’s own presidential campaign slogan and said: “This is not ‘America First.’”

But most Republicans, particularly their leaders, welcomed Trump’s move against Iran. Many cited the longtime U.S. adversary’s nuclear programs and missile capabilities as requiring a military response.

“Well done, Mr. President,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “As I watch and monitor this historic operation, I’m in awe of President Trump’s determination to be a man of peace but at the end of the day, evil’s worst nightmare.”

War powers debate tests Congress

The administration’s decision to launch, with Israel, what appears to be an open-ended joint military operation aimed at changing the government in Tehran is testing the Constitution’s separation of powers in deep and dramatic ways. Nearly two months earlier, Trump ordered U.S. strikes that toppled Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

While presidents have the authority as the commander in chief to conduct certain strategic military operations on their own, the Constitution vests Congress with the power to wage war. Before the Iraq War began in March 2003, Republican President George W. Bush made a monthslong push to secure congressional authorization. No such vote was attempted on Iran, and an earlier Senate effort to halt Trump’s actions after last summer’s strike on Iran failed.

The congressional debate over war powers would mostly be symbolic. Even if a resolution were to pass the narrowly split Congress, Trump likely would veto it and Congress would not have the two-thirds majority needed to overturn that rejection. Congress has often failed to block other U.S. military actions, including in a Senate vote on Venezuela, but the roll calls stand as a public record.

Republican leaders back Trump’s action

The response by House Speaker Mike Johnson reflected the party’s long-standing views. Iran, he said, is facing “the severe consequences of its evil actions.”

Johnson, R-La., said the leaders of the House and Senate and the respective intelligence committees had been briefed in detail earlier in the week that military action “may become necessary” to protect U.S. troops and citizens in Iran. He said he received updates from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and will stay in “close contact” with Trump and the Defense Department “as this operation proceeds.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., commended Trump “for taking action to thwart these threats.”

Thune said he looked forward to administration officials briefing all senators — a signal that lawmakers are seeking more answers to their questions about Trump’s plans ahead.

Democrats warn strikes are illegal

Many Democrats are calling the operation illegal, saying the Constitution gives Congress alone the power to declare war. To them, the administration has failed to lay out its rationale or plan for the military strikes, and the aftermath.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president has undertaken “illegal, regime-change war against Iran.”

“This is not making us safer & only damages the US & our interests,” Van Hollen, D-Md., said in a social media post. “The Senate must immediately vote on the War Powers Resolution to stop it.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said while Iran is a “bad actor and must be aggressively confronted” for its human rights abuses and the threat it poses to the U.S. and allies, the administration ”must seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war.”

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, demanded that Congress be briefed immediately on the administration’s plans.

“Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon but the American people do not want another endless and costly war in the Middle East when there are so many problems at home,” he said.

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Matt Brown contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a move that could prevent U.S. military vendors from working with the company.

Hegseth’s remarks, delivered in a social media post, came shortly after the Pentagon’s deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences — and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Defense Department’s demands.

Anthropic ‘cannot in good conscience accede’ to Pentagon’s demands, CEO says

Calling the company “Leftwing nut jobs,” President Donald Trump said Anthropic made a mistake trying to strong-arm the Pentagon. Trump wrote on Truth Social that most agencies must immediately stop using Anthropic’s AI but gave the Pentagon a six-month period to phase out the technology that is already embedded in military platforms.

At issue in the defense contract was a clash over AI’s role in national security. Anthropic had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”

Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, could afford to lose the contract. But an ultimatum this week from Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups. Military officials had warned Anthropic earlier in the week they could deem it “a supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.

Trump also said Anthropic could face “major civil and criminal consequences” if it’s not helpful in the phase-out period. Anthropic didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the new developments.

The president’s decision was preceded by hours of top Trump appointees from the Pentagon and the State Department taking to social media to criticize Anthropic and slam their reluctance to acquiesce to the administration’s demands.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the penalties on Anthropic “combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations.”

The dispute stunned AI developers in Silicon Valley, where a growing number of workers from Anthropic’s top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodei’s stand in open letters and other forums.

The move is likely to benefit Elon Musk’s competing chatbot, Grok, which the Pentagon plans to give access to classified military networks, and could serve as a warning to two other competitors, Google and OpenAI, that also have contracts to supply their AI tools to the military.

Musk sided with Trump’s administration on Friday, saying on his social media platform X that “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”

But one of Amodei’s fiercest rivals, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, sided with Anthropic and questioned the Pentagon’s “threatening” move in a CNBC interview, suggesting that OpenAI and most of the AI field share the same red lines. Amodei once worked for OpenAI before he and other OpenAI leaders quit to form Anthropic in 2021.

“For all the differences I have with Anthropic, I mostly trust them as a company, and I think they really do care about safety,” Altman told CNBC.

Retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan wrote on a social media that “painting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end.”

Shanahan said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropic’s red lines are “reasonable.” He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude are also “not ready for prime time in national security settings,” particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.

“They’re not trying to play cute here,” he wrote Thursday on LinkedIn.

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

Effective immediately, examiners will determine a veteran’s level of disability including the effects of medication or treatment — the “actual level of functional impairment under the ordinary conditions of daily life” — according to an interim final rule in the Federal Register.

Examiners are not allowed to estimate a veteran’s disability level if they were off their medications, and if a medication or treatment lowers the level of disability, the rating will be based on the lower level.

VA officials say the clarification is needed following several court rulings they said could be interpreted as allowing examiners to estimate or guess a veteran’s level of disability without medication.

“While VA believes this is already the correct construction of current regulations, this change will make more explicit in regulation VA’s longstanding policy and practice to include, among other factors, the ameliorative effects of medication when conducting disability evaluations,” officials wrote in the notice.

Basing a disability rating without considering the effect of medication or treatment is “an unquantifiable, hypothetical, unwarranted standard that would compensate veterans for a level of disability they are not actually experiencing,” they wrote.

The rule drew backlash from veterans groups including Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Unite for Veterans Coalition and others, who issued statements saying the rule could result in lower disability compensation for veterans whose health conditions are connected to military service.

The advocates noted that the rule was published as an “interim final rule” without input from veterans groups and questioned how it would affect those who already receive disability compensation.

“DAV is extremely disappointed and alarmed by VA’s decision to issue [the interim final rule],” National Commander Coleman Nee said in a statement. “It is unclear if and how VA is implementing this dramatic change.”

“As a former Army nurse, it seems this rule change could have unforeseen and harmful downstream effects for veterans, which is why it demands serious public scrutiny and possible legislative clarification from Capitol Hill,” VFW National Commander Carol Whitmore said. “While VA has authority to amend the rating schedule, it must do so without adversely affecting veterans.”

Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joe Plenzler, spokesman for Unite for Veterans, said the rule could result in lower disability ratings. He noted that previously, the VA focused on a veteran’s “worst days,” not on how medications are working on the day of a disability exam.

“This rule is very broad and seriously risks underrating veterans who have disabilities medications can mask but do not fix,” Plenzler said in a statement.

The rule was published as an “interim final rule” to go into effect immediately — a move that also has alarmed veterans groups.

Under the normal rules process, federal agencies publish an interim rule and solicit comments from the public for a set time period, usually 60 days. The agency then uses the comments to craft the final rule, which goes into effect once it is published in the Federal Register.

For the new regulation, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the department will take public comment under consideration but would implement it immediately. Collins argued that by not being clear, the department runs the risk of increasing administrative costs, delaying claims decisions and distributing excess disability compensation based on levels that “veterans are not actually experiencing.”

“Issuing this interim final rule without delay is in the public interest because it will prevent a significant negative impact on veterans awaiting claim decisions from VA,” the rule stated.

DAV and Unite the Veterans both took issue with the VA’s assertions.

“The rule … was developed and issued in a closed and unnecessarily expedited process that effectively shut out veterans from providing any meaningful input,” Nee noted.

“The claim that quick action on this issue is required shows the degree to which the VA is putting its administrative needs ahead of veterans’ needs and the realities of their lives. This is the wrong emphasis,” Plenzler said.

Since it was published Tuesday morning, the regulation has drawn more than 650 comments, many from veterans who said medications for various conditions such as musculoskeletal injuries, mental health conditions and hypertension often don’t produce consistent results and aren’t curative, leaving veterans to still deal with their disabilities daily.

Aaron Haygood, a retired airman, said the rule ignores the physical side effects of medication that can be debilitating in their own right and the logistical burdens of following a strict treatment regimen.

But more important, Haygood added, it creates a “dangerous incentive not to seek treatment.”

“It creates a cruel choice where the veteran must decide between taking the medication for an improved quality of life knowing it could lead to a reduction in the benefits they may depend on or sacrifice their quality of life to ensure financial stability for their family,” Haygood wrote.

“This policy will discourage veterans from seeking life-saving treatments,” he added.

The numbers from the monthly report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday also showed that the jobless rates for veterans had exceeded those for the general population for the second time since President Donald Trump took office.

The first BLS jobs report of Trump’s second term showed a rise in the unemployment rate for all veterans from 2.8% in December 2024 to 4.2% in January 2025, even as the jobless rate for all Americans ticked down from 4.1% to 4.0%.

In a bright spot, the BLS report, the release of which had been delayed due to bad weather, showed that hiring increased by 130,000 jobs in January. Many analysts predicted a hiring increase in the range of 60,000 to 70,000 jobs.

“Job gains occurred in health care, social assistance, and construction, while federal government and financial activities lost jobs,” BLS reported.

The most startling statistic to come out of the latest BLS report, however, was the massive revision to the statistics from 2025, which now showed almost no job growth for the year.

Preliminary data suggested that about 584,000 jobs had been added to payrolls in 2025, but revised data with more input from the states showed that the labor market had added only 181,000 jobs last year.

In a statement, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer chose to focus on the BLS report’s data on jobs added to the economy last month.

“The January jobs report shows that the U.S. economy is off to an undeniably strong start this year,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement.

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump lauded the data as “GREAT JOBS NUMBERS, FAR GREATER THAN EXPECTED!”

“WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” he added.

In a post Wednesday, Daniel Zhao, chief economist at the Glassdoor job search platform, said the 130,000 jobs added in January were “well above expectations and an improvement from the 48,000 jobs added in December 2025. November 2025’s job gains were revised from 56,000 to 41,000.”

“The updated scoreboard for 2025 shows a job market that was much more sluggish than originally reported,” Zhao added. “However, the acceleration in job gains in January starts the year with a tinge of optimism.”

Heather Long, chief economist for Navy Federal Credit Union, also noted a loosening up of the jobs market indicated by the BLS report, but perhaps not for veterans in an economy locked into the “low hire, low fire” phase, a term popularized in 2025 by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to describe an economy where hiring had slowed while layoffs remained low.

“Almost everything about the [BLS] report is positive, at least for January, but the part [worth] zeroing in on is the wage gains of 3.7%,” Long said in a phone interview Wednesday with Military Times. “If the labor market was weakening, you would see wage gains cooling off.”

Long noted that companies “are starting to look around, I think, and say the overall economic picture looks pretty good for 2026. ... But there’s still a hangover from the decline in federal government employment as well as state government employment,” adding that both trends bode poorly for veterans looking to continue government service.

In addition, health care, hospitality and social assistance jobs highlighted in the BLS report are not typically job sectors veterans are drawn to. Massive sums of money spent by tech companies on artificial intelligence must also be taken into account, Long said.

“For 2025, I think it’s a minor part of the story” affecting the economy and the labor market, “but it’s a growing part of the story for 2026,” she said, adding that AI investment, more than AI itself, is taking jobs.

“Today, AI cannot replace many workers,” she said. “Companies recognize they can’t lay everybody off, but every company is investing heavily in AI. There’s only so much money you have as a company every year, and if most of that money is going towards AI investment there simply is not enough money left to pay your workers more, let alone hire a bunch of more people. ... That’s the choice being made in most corporate C-suites.”

The June detention of Narciso Barranco, who came to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1990s but does not have legal status, caught widespread attention as the crackdown on immigration by President Donald Trump’s administration drew scrutiny and protests.

Witnesses uploaded videos of the arrest in Santa Ana, a city in Orange County. Federal agents struggled with Barranco and pinned him to the ground outside an IHOP restaurant where he had been clearing weeds.

Barranco was taken to a Los Angeles detention center and placed in deportation proceedings. In July, he was released on a $3,000 bond and ordered to wear an ankle monitor.

In a Jan. 28 order terminating the deportation case, Judge Kristin S. Piepmeier said that Barranco, 49, had provided evidence that he was the father of three U.S.-born sons in the military, making him eligible to seek lawful status.

“I feel happy,” Barranco said in a phone interview in Spanish. “Thank God I don’t have that weight on top of me.”

Barranco said he is still staying mostly at home and not taking any chances going out until his legal paperwork has been finalized.

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that it would appeal the judge’s decision, which was first reported by the New York Times.

Barranco’s lawyer Lisa Ramirez said her client feels “extreme relief” now that immigration officers have removed his ankle monitor and discontinued his check-ins.

“The aggressive nature of the apprehension, it was traumatic,” Ramirez said Thursday. “Mr. Barranco has had zero criminal history. They came after him because he was a brown gardener in the streets of Santa Ana.”

Ramirez said Barranco has applied for Parole in Place, a program that protects the parents of U.S. military personnel from deportation and helps them obtain permanent residency. If that petition is approved, Barranco will receive a work permit. She estimated the process could take six months or more.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin reiterated previous government claims that Barranco refused to comply with commands and swung his weed trimmer at an agent.

“The agents took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that prioritizes the safety of the public and our officers,” McLaughlin said in Thursday’s statement.

His son Alejandro Barranco told The Associated Press in June that his father did not attack anyone, had no criminal record and is kind and hardworking.

The U.S. Marine Corps veteran said the use of force was unnecessary and differed greatly from his military training. He aided the U.S. military’s evacuation of personnel and Afghan allies from Afghanistan in 2021.

Alejandro left the Marine Corps in 2023. His two brothers are currently active-duty Marines.

Each year, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ internal watchdog sends a survey to all 139 of the agency’s medical centers coast to coast with a straightforward question: Which jobs have severe staffing shortages?

In fiscal year 2025, the responses raised alarm: VA health care facilities reported more than 4,400 severe staffing shortages — a 50% hike from the previous year.

And once again, the job that topped the list for clinical positions among VA facilities: psychologists. It’s the same occupation that took the lead spot in 2024 and has been in the top five since 2019.

Despite suicide prevention and veterans’ mental health being one of VA’s top priorities, there are signs that psychologists and other mental health professionals on staff are reaching a breaking point.

“I loved my veterans and had the privilege of seeing real change in their lives over time,” said Laura Grant, a psychologist who left VA in September last year after nearly a decade on the job. But “burnout increasingly felt normalized rather than addressed.”

Grant was among six psychologists who left the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2025 and told The War Horse in interviews over the past several months that mental health providers are burning out.

Last year, the number of psychologists employed by VA dropped for the first time in more than a decade. Every fiscal year since 2019 the department has added between 100 and 350 psychologists to its rosters, according to VA workforce records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request. In fiscal year 2025, however, the department lost more than 200.

Click here if you can not see the graphic above.

And in the most recent VA Office of Inspector General staffing report, 57% of VA health care facilities reported severe staffing shortages of psychologists. Shortages are defined by the government as occupations that are hard to fill, not necessarily positions that are vacant. Psychiatrists were the second-most reported clinical occupation for severe staffing shortages at 55% of VA facilities.

The shortages aren’t unique to VA; more than 135 million Americans live in an area with a shortage of mental health professionals. And VA says it is currently posting hundreds of job openings for psychologists.

Click here if you can not see the graphic above.

But the psychologists who left VA in the last year told The War Horse that the agency once renowned for top-tier training — more than half of all U.S. psychologists get training at VA — mentorship and work-life balance is now one plagued by metrics and pressures to discharge patients more quickly to make room for new ones.

“There was so much I loved about the VA,” said Melissa London, a psychologist who left the San Francisco VA in January 2025 after her caseload doubled over the course of two years. “The [staffing] shortage was constant, but it was never near as bad it was in the past year, or two years, at least.”

Filling a demand for new psychologists

A VA spokesman dismissed the criticism, called concerns from former psychologists quoted in this story “unconfirmed hearsay,” and accused The War Horse of trying to make the Trump administration look bad at all costs, regardless of the facts.

“The number of VA psychologists fluctuates from year to year based on labor market trends and demand for their services,” said Peter Kasperowicz, VA press secretary. “Today we employ more than 7,000 psychologists, which is more than VA had at many points during the Biden Administration.”

But as the number of psychologists declines, the demand for mental health care has continued to rise. VA saw 2.2 million patients for mental health care in fiscal year 2025, according to data obtained by The War Horse. That is a 40% increase from a decade ago. Meanwhile, VA has increased the number of psychologists employed at the agency by only 24% since 2016. Psychologists aren’t the only ones who treat veterans’ mental health; some are seen by other providers, such as psychiatrists and social workers.

Despite the staffing shortages, psychologists still have the highest retention rates for surveyed VA employees in the first two years on the job. But a recent report from Democrats on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs cited interviews with VA employees that indicate an ongoing “exodus” of mental health care providers at some facilities.

In a Senate committee hearing in December, Dr. Julie Kroviak, VA’s principal deputy assistant inspector general, acknowledged the trend. She said surveys found VA mental health providers “are losing clinical staff because of morale.”

Health care providers were protected from layoffs and ineligible for early retirement or deferred resignations when VA shed more than 30,000 employees last year. VA insists it is prioritizing hiring mental health care providers, and is currently recruiting more than 400 psychologists across the country, said Kasperowicz. This week, there were 171 job postings under the code for clinical psychologist at the Veterans Health Administration in the USAJOBS portal.

However, multiple former VA psychologists told The War Horse they didn’t see evidence during their time on staff that hiring new psychologists was a priority.

A psychologist at the Bronx VA said they left their position focused on suicide prevention research and psychotherapy for veterans transitioning out of the military after their study’s federal grant funding ended. They said they weren’t able to find a new position in research or working with patients at their VA medical center or get the medical center director’s approval to get sponsored for a new grant. “There wasn’t any effort to provide me with bridge funding or to figure out how to keep me,” they said.

This psychologist, like some others who spoke to The War Horse, asked to remain anonymous either because they had friends or family who still worked at VA and feared backlash, or because they planned to apply for government-sponsored research grants and were worried that speaking with a journalist could lead to retaliation.

London recalled how difficult it was to hire new psychologists, including during the Biden administration. She cited hiring freezes and having to fight for new staff, even though “it was very clear to anyone in the field additional staff was needed.”

Click here if you can not see the graphic above.

‘We need to cut down our caseloads’

Even before Trump returned to the White House, psychologists at VA were at a breaking point.

In September 2024, a psychology program manager at the Central Virginia VA Health Care System sent an email to several staff members. The subject: workload and burnout. The importance: high. In the email, the program manager stated that, since there would be virtually no new staff positions in fiscal year 2025, new strategies would be implemented to treat patients. “Effective immediately, we need to cut down on our caseloads, which have grown too large to be manageable,” they wrote.

These new strategies included ending treatment with all veterans who have been in therapy longer than two to three years, pausing or ending treatment “with people who have not made progress recently and seem to have plateau’d,” telling patients they need to take a six- to 12-month break from therapy to practice skills, and starting all new patients on a short treatment model of six to 15 sessions.

“We just can’t keep seeing everyone in individual psychotherapy for long periods of time,” the program manager wrote. “It makes them dependent on psychotherapy, and it burns us out.”

A veteran, infuriated that his one-on-one therapy was cut off, later discovered the memo and tipped off The War Horse, which obtained a copy through a public records request.

The email may have been well-intentioned for both the therapists and the veterans. In 2024, a study found that when therapists are burnt out, veterans’ mental health care can suffer as well.

But one tactic to avoid burnout and care for more veterans mentioned in the email — the short treatment model of six to 15 sessions — has frustrated patients and providers, The War Horse has found.

Click here if you can not see the graphic above.

And it isn’t unique to Central Virginia. Over the past several years, it has been rolled out at VA medical centers across the country, according to previous reporting by The War Horse.

VA has repeatedly told The War Horse that it does not have a national policy to cap mental health care.

Kasperowicz, the VA press secretary, called it “extraordinarily dishonest of you to take an email from the Biden Administration and try to misrepresent it as something that reflects the Trump Administration’s policies.”

Multiple psychologists in states across the country have told The War Horse they are still under pressure to limit one-on-one therapy.

One psychologist who left the Orlando VA Medical Center last year also said it was frustrating to frequently tell patients they couldn’t schedule future sessions for a month, or sometimes longer. “I felt like a factory worker.”

The DOGE tipping point

For several of the psychologists who spoke with The War Horse, the final tipping point came when Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, began rolling out initiatives in the late winter and spring of 2025 — including reductions in force — that seemed designed to drive employees out. “Recognition for meaningful clinical work felt scarce, while scrutiny and suspicion became more common,” said Grant.

Grant said that one of the several reasons she quit was the agency’s dismantling of DEI initiatives, which she said “were directly tied to our ability to show up authentically, ethically, and competently for a diverse veteran population.”

Kasperowicz said VA is “proud to have abandoned the out-of-touch and divisive DEI policies of the past so we can focus solely on VA’s core mission.”

The return-to-office mandate was also difficult on psychologists, who require privacy to hold sessions with their patients. The psychologist at the Bronx VA said they didn’t have their own office and had to use the offices of absent colleagues to work. They once couldn’t find an empty office and were forced to take a telehealth appointment from their car.

“There’s no respect for what these veterans need, which is privacy,” they said. “I couldn’t wait to get out, even though I love working with veterans, and I have loved being at the VA for the most part, it was just really demoralizing.”

VA has been taking steps to address staff burnout, including appointing chief well-being officers whose roles are to reduce administrative burdens and improve employee wellness. This month, the American Medical Association recognized seven VA health care facilities through its Joy in Medicine program, which highlights facilities that have met specific program requirements to address physician burnout.

VA’s press secretary did not respond to The War Horse’s request to interview one of VA’s well-being officers, and few of the psychologists who spoke to The War Horse had ever heard of the officers — none had encountered them.

London said that at the San Francisco VA, there were efforts to mitigate staff burnout, like pizza parties. But many of these efforts felt surface-level. “There’s constant jokes about burnout and the memes of the pizza party,” she said, “when what we really need is a new hire.”

Private practice after VA

The majority of psychologists who spoke with The War Horse now work in private practice, where they can set their own hours and their own rates. And while some still work with veterans, none have joined the VA’s community provider network, which would allow veterans to see them through the VA’s Community Care program.

London and Grant say that issues with payments from insurance contractors and low reimbursement rates are some of the main reasons that private practice psychologists don’t want to participate in the program.

Many of the psychologists said that they would be open to returning to VA one day. One called working with young veterans “the most rewarding clinical experience of my life.” That echoes data published by the department; 69% of psychologists who left the agency said they would be open to returning, according to the latest workforce data available.

“I think there would have to be a little bit more respect and empathy and compassion for clinicians and some strategies about burnout,” London said. “But it’s something that I would consider if there was a clear indication that they actually cared.”

Are you a current or former VA employee who would like to share your story? Reach out to our reporter via email at leah.rosenbaum@thewarhorse.org or leah.rosenbaum@proton.me, or on Signal at leahrosenbaum.01.

This War Horse news story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

During a House Homeland Security Committee oversight hearing on immigration enforcement operations, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott refused to answer questions regarding the deaths, which occurred last month during protests in Minneapolis.

Pretti, a registered nurse in the intensive care unit at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was shot and killed Jan. 24 while participating in a protest. From video footage, Pretti appeared to filming immigration enforcement officers and was helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground when he was pepper sprayed, tackled by federal law enforcement officers and pinned to the ground.

CBP agents then removed a concealed weapon from Pretti — one he had a permit to carry — and fired 10 shots at him, killing him.

In the aftermath, Trump administration officials cast Pretti as an instigator seeking to kill federal officers. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called him an “assassin” and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said he had committed an “act of domestic terrorism.”

Footage released after Pretti died showed him in an earlier incident yelling at law enforcement agents and kicking their car, breaking a taillight, a video that prompted Trump to call Pretti “an agitator, and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”

VA colleagues and Pretti’s parents say Pretti cared very deeply for his patients and others.

In a statement after his death, Pretti’s parents said the administration told “sickening lies” about their son, and called Pretti “a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse.”

Neither opening statement by Scott or Lyons mentioned Pretti or Good, a Minneapolis mom who was shot by an ICE officer on Jan. 7.

The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called for a moment of silence for the VA employee and Democrats questioned Lyons and Scott repeatedly on his death.

When asked by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., whether he would apologize to Good’s family for members of the administration calling her a “domestic terrorist,” Lyons replied “No sir. I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private but I’m not going to comment on any active investigation.”

Asked the same regarding Pretti, Lyons said he would not comment on any active investigation.

Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., asked Scott if Pretti deserved to die.

“I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigation until it is concluded and all the facts are available,” Scott said.

Thanedar then asked Scott whether Pretti had a right to protest and lawfully carry a gun. Scott replied that he believed “every person in the United States has a right to their constitutional rights.”

Panel Republicans had little to say about Pretti, with the exception of Committee Chairman Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.

In opening remarks, Garbarino discussed his death in the context of an increase in violence against law enforcement and public distrust of the police, the investigative process and government operations.

“We must take down the temperature. We have seen a significant increase in violent rhetoric and agitation and attacks on federal law enforcement. … Obviously, we have seen the deaths of two American citizens in Minnesota. This is unacceptable and preventable,” Garbarino said. “I can’t put myself in the shoes of law enforcement nor can I imagine what the families of Ms. Good or Mr. Pretti are feeling.”

Since the start of deportation operations under the Trump administration, ICE has arrested nearly 400,000 persons. Nearly 60% of those arrested have had prior charges or convictions, though just 14% had previously been charged or convicted of violent crimes.

The number of migrants intercepted at the border by CBP has declined from an average 5,000 per day under the Biden administration to roughly 250 a day in 2025, according to Scott.

But American citizens have been caught up in enforcement raids and taken into custody when they can’t immediately prove they are citizens. The families of some veterans, including the undocumented father of three U.S. Marines, have been beaten and detained.

Good and Pretti’s deaths have sparked a growing outcry over the immigration enforcement efforts.

“There appears to be no shame on the part of these officials who undoubtedly watched some of your officers conduct themselves in ways I know you do not condone,” said Rep. Troy Carter, D-La. “I can’t understand why you show no shame, no contrition, no remorse for the human lives that have been lost, the trampling of the Constitution and the tearing apart of the moral fiber of our nation.”

The officials said the Minneapolis operations have been challenging because it is a sanctuary city where local government and law enforcement refuses to assist in supporting federal operations. They alleged that many of the protestors in the city are paid agitators who have ramped up attacks on law enforcement.

“Paid agitators are actively trying to stop law enforcement action,” Scott said. “Without that, you would have no idea that most of these arrests were taking place.”

Officials did not provide updates on the status of the investigations into Pretti’s death. The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting.

Democrats have called for Noem to step down and some want to abolish ICE. Discourse over the operations has been at the center of congressional debate over DHS funding for fiscal 2026, leading to a short-lived partial government shutdown last week.

As a result of an agreement to reopen the government, DHS is funded through Feb. 13. If new negotiations fail, DHS will shut down at midnight Saturday.

Personnel not considered essential will be placed on furlough while those necessary for security and protection of life and property, including many law enforcement personnel and the U.S. Coast Guard, would work without pay until the issue is resolved.

The president moved quickly to sign the bill after the House approved it with a 217-214 vote.

“This bill is a great victory for the American people,” Trump said.

The vote Tuesday wrapped up congressional work on 11 annual appropriations bills that fund government agencies and programs through Sept. 30. Trump has said he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk, ending the partial government shutdown that began Saturday.

Passage of the legislation marked the end point for one funding fight, but the start of another. That’s because the package only funds the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks, through Feb. 13, at the behest of Democrats who are demanding more restrictions on immigration enforcement after the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officers in Minneapolis.

Leaders are digging in for a fight

Difficult negotiations are ahead, particularly for the agency that enforces the nation’s immigration laws — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries quickly warned Democrats would not support any further temporary funding for Homeland Security without substantial changes to its immigration operations, raising the potential of another shutdown for the department and its agencies.

“We need dramatic change in order to make sure that ICE and other agencies within the department of Homeland Security are conducting themselves like every other law enforcement organization in the country,” Jeffries said.

Speaker Mike Johnson said he expects the two sides will be able to reach an agreement by the deadline.

“This is no time to play games with that funding. We hope that they will operate in good faith over the next 10 days as we negotiate this,” said Johnson. “The president, again, has reached out.”

But Johnson’s counterpart across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., sounded less optimistic of a deal. “There’s always miracles, right?” Thune told reporters.

Voting with no margin for error

The funding bill that cleared Congress Tuesday had provisions that appealed to both parties.

Republicans avoided a massive, catchall funding bill known as an omnibus as part of this year’s appropriations process. Such bills, often taken up before the holiday season with lawmakers anxious to return home, have contributed to greater federal spending, they say.

Democrats were able to fend off some of Trump’s most draconian proposed cuts while adding language that helps ensure funds are spent as stipulated by Congress.

Still, Johnson needed near-unanimous support from his Republican conference to proceed to a final vote on the bill. He narrowly got it during a roll call that was held open for nearly an hour as leaders worked to gain support from a handful of GOP lawmakers who were trying to advance other priorities unrelated to the funding measure.

The final vote wasn’t much easier for GOP leaders. In the end, 21 Republicans sided with the vast majority of Democrats in voting against the funding bill, while that exact same number of Democrats sided with the vast majority of Republicans in voting yes.

Trump had weighed in Monday in a social media post, calling on Republicans to stay united and telling holdouts, “There can be NO CHANGES at this time.”

Key differences from the last shutdown

The current partial shutdown that is coming to a close differed in many ways from the fall impasse, which affected more agencies and lasted a record 43 days.

Then, the debate was over extending temporary coronavirus pandemic-era subsidies for those who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Democrats were unsuccessful in getting those subsidies included as part of a package to end the shutdown.

Congress made important progress since then. Some of the six appropriations bills it passed prior to Tuesday ensured the current shutdown had less sting. For example, important programs such as nutrition assistance and fully operating national parks and historic sites were already funded through Sept. 30.

The remaining bills passed Tuesday mean that the vast majority of the federal government has been funded.

“You might say that now that 96% of the government is funded, it’s just 4% what’s out there?” Johnson said. ”But it’s a very important 4%”

Associated Press video journalist Nathan Ellgren and writers Lisa Mascaro, Joey Cappelletti and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Democrats are refusing to provide the votes House Speaker Mike Johnson needs to push the package forward as they try to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation operations after the shooting deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis. That’s forcing Johnson to rely on his slim GOP majority, which has its own complaints about the package, to fall in line behind Trump’s deal with Senate Democrats.

Voting could begin as soon as Tuesday, which would be day four of the partial shutdown. The Pentagon, Homeland Security and other agencies saw their funding lapse Saturday. And while many operations at those departments are deemed essential, and still functioning, some workers may go without pay or be furloughed.

“We need to get the Government open, and I hope all Republicans and Democrats will join me in supporting this Bill, and send it to my desk WITHOUT DELAY,” the president wrote on social media.

“There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” Trump insisted. ”We will work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised, but we cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown.”

The stalemate points to a difficult week ahead as Johnson relies on Trump to help muscle to package to passage.

The president struck a deal last week with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer in which Homeland Security would only be funded temporarily, though Feb. 13, as Congress debates changes to immigration enforcement operations. The Senate overwhelmingly approved the package with the rest of the government funding ahead of Saturday’s deadline.

Democrats demand changes to ICE

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries made it clear Monday that his side sees no reason to help Johnson push the bill forward in a procedural step, something that the majority party typically handles on its own.

With Johnson facing a revolt from his own Republican ranks, Jeffries is seizing the leverage it provides Democrats to demand changes to immigration operations.

“On rare occasions have we stepped in to deal with Republican dysfunction,” Jeffries said at the Capitol.

Democrats are demanding restraints on Immigration and Customs Enforcement that go beyond $20 million for body cameras that already is in the bill. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday that officers on the ground in Minneapolis, including ICE, will be immediately issued body-worn cameras, and the program would be expanded nationwide as funding is available.

But Democrats are pressing for more. They want to require that federal immigration agents unmask — noting that few, if any, other law enforcement agencies routinely mask themselves in the U.S. — and they want officers to rely on judicial, rather than administrative, warrants in their operations.

They also want an end to roving patrols, amid other changes.

Jeffries said the administration needs to begin negotiations now, not over the next two weeks, on changes to immigration enforcement operations.

Certain Democrats, however, are splintering with the leader, and pushing for quicker passage of the funding package to avoid government disruptions.

Republicans launch their own demands

At the same time, House Republicans, with some allies in the Senate, are making their own demands, as they work to support Trump’s clampdown on immigrants in the U.S.

The House Freedom Caucus has insisted on fuller funding for Homeland Security while certain Republicans are pushing to include other measures, including the SAVE Act, a longshot Trump priority that would require proof of citizenship before Americans are eligible to participate in elections and vote.

Johnson and GOP leaders said they would be talking with lawmakers to see what it will take to win over support.

“Obviously the president really wants this,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said at the Capitol.

“We always work ‘til the midnight hour to get the votes,” Scalise said. “You never start the process with everybody on board. You work through it.”

Workers without pay if partial government shutdown drags on

Meanwhile, a number of federal agencies are snared in the funding standoff after the government went into a partial shutdown over the weekend.

Defense, health, transportation and housing are among those that were given shutdown guidance by the administration, though many operations are deemed essential and services are not necessarily interrupted. Workers could go without pay if the impasse drags on. Some could be furloughed.

Lawmakers from both parties are increasingly concerned the closure will disrupt the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which they rely on to help constituents after deadly snowstorms and other disasters.

This is the second time in a matter of months that federal government operations have been disrupted as lawmakers use the annual funding process as leverage to extract policy changes. Last fall, Democrats sparked what became the longest federal shutdown in history, 43 days, as they protested the expiration of health insurance tax breaks.

That shutdown ended with a promise to vote on proposals to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. But with GOP opposition, Democrats were unable to achieve their goal of keeping the subsidies in place. Insurance premiums spiked in the new year for millions of people.

Trump tries to prevent another long shutdown

Trump is already working on an immigration deal to ensure the shutdown doesn’t drag on.

Johnson said he was in the Oval Office last week when Trump, along with border czar Tom Homan, spoke with Schumer of New York as they discussed the immigration changes.

Body cameras, which are already provided for in the package, and an end to the roving patrols by immigration agents are areas of potential agreement, Johnson said.

But Johnson drew a line at other Democratic demands. He said he does not think that requiring immigration officers to remove their masks would have support from Republicans because it could lead to problems if their personal images and private information is posted online by protesters.

“I don’t think the president would approve it — and he shouldn’t,” Johnson said over the weekend on “Fox News Sunday.”

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune tapped the brakes on the demand from Democrats to require judicial warrants for officers’ searches, saying it’s likely to be a part of the negotiations ahead.

“It’s going to be very difficult to reach agreement in two weeks,” Thune said at the Capitol.

Democrats, however, said the immigration operations are out of control, and must end in Minneapolis and other cities.

Growing numbers of lawmakers are also calling for Noem to be fired or impeached.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Matt Brown and Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

Army veteran and longtime Republican staffer Curt Cashour, who currently serves as the VA’s assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, will step into the top advisory role to VA Secretary Doug Collins.

In a statement, Collins said Syrek’s departure was planned, and with Cashour’s appointment, he “looks forward to many more VA improvements.”

“Chris has been a key part of our leadership team and my most trusted advisor since day one. He’s done an amazing job helping us make the department work better and delivering on President Trump’s promises to those who have worn the uniform,” Collins said of Syrek, who served as VA deputy chief of staff from 2018 to 2021 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

“We thank Chris for his dedicated service and wish him the best in his future endeavors. We welcome Curt into his new role and look forward to many more VA improvements under the leadership of President Trump,” Collins said.

According to the VA announcement, Syrek is leaving the department for a position in the private sector. He previously served as head of federal consulting at KPMG and a lobbyist for a trucking association.

Cashour has spent his career in public affairs, starting with a four-year stint in the U.S. Army followed by nearly a decade in private and public service, including two separate periods as communications director for House Veterans Affairs Committee Republicans.

Cashour is an Iraq War veteran who earned the Bronze Star and has a Combat Action Badge

From 2017 to 2021, Cashour was the VA’s press secretary and later, the deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. During that time, he and John Ullyot, then the VA’s assistant secretary for public affairs, were implicated in the departure of VA Secretary David Shulkin, who left the VA amid a controversy over travel expenses.

USA Today reported in 2018 that Ullyot and Cashour campaigned for the ouster of Shulkin, who was appointed VA secretary by President Barack Obama and was retained by Trump. In response to the article and additional reports by the Washington Post on the pair’s alleged role in Shulkin’s removal, they issued a statement saying it never happened.

“The allegation is ridiculous,” they wrote.

The VA currently has all but one of its six top leadership roles filled. A search is underway to fill the open position of undersecretary for benefits, which oversees the delivery of disability compensation, education, housing and other benefits for more than 6 million veterans.

Margarita Devlin, VBA’s principal deputy undersecretary for benefits, is currently acting in the undersecretary’s role. The previous nominee, Karen Brazell, a senior adviser to VA Secretary Doug Collins, withdrew her nomination in October for personal reasons.

The VA issued a final rule Dec. 31 that prohibits the procedure at VA medical facilities unless the life of the mother is endangered. The decision ends a policy implemented in September 2022 that allowed VA medical personnel to conduct abortions in cases of rape or incest or circumstances that endangered the life or health of the patient.

The policy was instituted shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, landmark legislation that legalized abortions nationwide. Since the decision, 25 states have outlawed or restricted abortion services, leading federal medical providers to consider their role in providing abortion services to their beneficiaries.

The VA issued an interim rule in August that effectively halted all abortion procedures at VA medical facilities. Democrat lawmakers drew attention to the final rule last week, however, by introducing a resolution to overturn the rule.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and other congressional Democrats have sponsored a resolution seeking to overturn the rule.

During a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday, Murray and Sen. Maisie Hirono, D-Hawaii., questioned VA Secretary Doug Collins on the change, decrying a policy that limits a medical procedure for 460,000 women veterans of reproductive age.

“VA providers are not even allowed to discuss abortion as an option with veteran patients,” Murray said. “I just want everyone to know that, under this VA final rule, no exceptions for rape or for incest. And I find that outrageous.”

Collins pushed back, noting that in medical emergencies where the life of a mother is endangered, the patient would still have access to the procedure. He added that the policy is simply a return to the VA’s regulations before 2022 under administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Murray said when former VA Secretary Denis McDonough introduced the policy allowing for abortions, he “rightfully [made] sure if someone was raped or a victim of incest, they could get health care.”

“We probably see it differently,” Collins responded.

The previous regulation also allowed abortion coverage for patients in the VA’s Civilian Health and Medical Program, or CHAMPVA, the program that provides medical care for eligible spouses and dependents of veterans.

The new policy prohibits CHAMPVA coverage of abortions.

Between September 2022 and August 2025, the VA had covered or provided abortions to roughly 100 veterans and 40 CHAMPVA patients, according to data provided by the VA.

Last September, after the VA published its interim rule reversing the policy, Republican lawmakers praised the move, writing Collins in support of the decision.

In a letter signed by 72 representatives and senators, they said the VA had erred in giving access to the procedure on the basis of a pregnancy jeopardizing a veteran’s health.

“Without a narrower definition or gestational limit for this health exception, the VA has been promoting abortion on demand, at any point during pregnancy, so long as the mother-patient is able to secure a medical professional’s opinion that having an abortion would be ‘beneficial’ to her health in any way,” they wrote.

In what will be the largest reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration since the 1990s, the VA plans to restructure VHA’s administration, realign staff and resources and invest in medical facilities.

At the same time, the VA will award new contracts for community care — its program that covers medical care for eligible veterans at civilian facilities — using a new structure the VA hopes will give the department better flexibility to choose and change contracted provider networks.

According to VA Secretary Doug Collins, the restructuring will “eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead” and put more resources directly into VA facilities and community care.

Collins said in his first year of office, he has toured VA medical facilities and found significant differences in delivery of health care.

“We didn’t act like the largest healthcare provider in the world in many ways because we were trapped internally into our own policies, procedures, things that have been added on — none which added up to taking care of veterans but ended up taking care of the VA itself,” Collins told members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Under the reorganization, known as the Restructure for Impact and Sustainability Effort, or RISE initiative, the VA will decrease the number of Veterans Integrated Service Networks, or VISNs, which provide oversight, administrative, budgetary services and support to VA medical centers, from 18 to 5, with the VISNs focused namely on oversight and governance.

The reforms will create health service areas, or HSAs, within the VISNs to focus on medical centers and the communities where veterans get their health services.

And they will create a medical operations center that will ensure that policies are implemented and followed throughout the system.

Regarding the community care program, the VA issued a call for contract proposals earlier this month to provide medical services, agreements worth nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Community Care Network Next Generation contract, with its indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity structure, is meant to give the department more flexibility in overseeing the program, currently managed by two health contractors, Optum and TriWest Healthcare Alliance.

According to VA Chief Financial Officer Richard Topping, the new contracts will ensure that network providers will “compete and improve continually” to serve veterans.

“The government will have the ability to bring on multiple vendors and multiple contractors,” Topping said during a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee Jan. 22. “Those contractors can then compete across the life of the contract for different task orders. That allows VA to change program design to learn from mistakes, to increase our capabilities and capacities to innovate and evolve the program over time.”

Veterans advocates and congressional Democrats have raised concerns that any reductions in personnel related to restructuring or expanded contracts for community care will erode the VA’s medical system and lead to privatization of VA health care.

“While veterans are going to go unserved and uncared for in his actions, we see exactly who Secretary Collins really serves, driving the VA towards privatization,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., during the House hearing. “We know it only serves corporate interests, and it puts profits over veterans.”

But VA officials have said that the restructuring will streamline the administration and provide better services to veterans. Topping noted that while the community care contracts are worth up to $1 trillion over 10 years, the VA plans to spend $2 trillion for care in its own facilities during the same time frame.

“We’re opening new facilities. We’ve invested $800 million last year alone. We are investing in our direct care capabilities. And so, for veterans who either need to go to VA for direct care because it’s a unique capability that VA has, or who choose to go, they have that ability, and they have that choice,” Topping said.

The VA has lost 30,000 personnel in the past year as a result of resignations, retirements and attrition, as well as plans for an additional reduction of 24,000 jobs, which officials say were mainly positions created during the COVID-19 pandemic that are no longer required and have been vacant for at least a year.

Collins said the reorganization will allow the department to shift staff where they are needed and trim excess at underutilized locations. He added that the effort is moving forward with VA leadership taking into account input from staff, Congress and others.

“This is not an effort to diminish direct care for veterans. This is a reorganization that will eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead and push more resources directly into the field,” Collins said.

The VA announced Wednesday it will spend $4.8 billion this year to make repairs and modernize numerous health care facilities, including upgrades to elevators, electrical and climate control systems and improvements to help accommodate the rollout of the department’s electronic health record system.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike promised close scrutiny of the VA reforms over the coming months, with the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee planning another hearing on the modernization efforts and House members saying their hearing on Jan. 22 was “only the beginning” of oversight.

“It should go without saying that VA must get this right. When veterans call my committee, they want to know how they can access their earned health benefits at VA,” House Veterans Affairs Committee Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said.

Proposals for the new community care contract are due to the government in March.

In an increasingly digital world in which it is easy to mask identity, lawmakers should ensure federal agencies “don’t have a monopoly on enforcement,” Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2021 to 2025, said during the Jan. 21 House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Democrats discussion.

“We should be rethinking our enforcement strategy and policy approach,” added Chopra.

That might mean amending laws to give state attorneys general more enforcement authority in protecting troops and veterans, he said, and in many cases give private citizens the ability to pursue legal action.

The staff at CFPB has been “obliterated” over the last year with the change in administrations, said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“We went through this whole thing with [the Department of Government Efficiency] to root out waste, fraud and abuse,” Takano said. “But there’s tremendous fraud being perpetrated, and we’re not equipping our government to protect American citizens.”

A federal judge in December blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to defund the CFPB. Since its opening in 2011, it has returned $21 billion to consumers, according to Chopra.

In 2024, meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission received about 210,000 consumer fraud complaints from troops and their families, with losses totaling nearly $600 million.

Chopra said the CFPB and the FTC haven’t brought a single enforcement action over the past year related to violations of the Military Lending Act, or abuses in the Veterans Affairs mortgage program or G.I. Bill.

Among other things, the Military Lending Act puts a 36% cap on many consumer loan interest rates for active duty troops and their families.

“CFPB and the FTC have to be fully funded and staffed and doing their job,” said Jeremy Villanueva, associate legislative director of Paralyzed Veterans of America. “By the time a law comes out, people have already been victimized. CFPB is supposed to be out there ahead of that.”

Professional scammers are reactionary, Villanueva added, and will quickly find a way around new laws and regulations.

Officials at the CFPB and FTC did not respond to a request for comment as of publication.

The VA Office of Inspector General investigates fraud schemes that damage VA programs and diminish services provided to veterans, caregivers and survivors, David Case, VA deputy inspector general, said during the roundtable.

In fiscal 2025, their investigators pursued 150 criminal fraud cases, he added.

While job scams target anyone, military spouses may be especially vulnerable because of frequent moves, said Ally Armeson, executive director of Cybercrime Support Network.

“You become desperate, you’re looking for any job. ... You fall into a job scam.”

Suddenly, there’s no job, and the spouse has paid money or lost information to a scammer, added Amerson, a veteran and military spouse.

“It’s incredibly challenging ... to build a career as a military spouse and to find a profession that’s compatible with the military lifestyle,” said Eileen Huck, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association.

Huck added that some spouses are reeled in to multi-level marketing jobs, which may operate as illegal pyramid schemes. She also cited some used car dealers as entities that prey on young troops.

“They’re paying thousands on a credit card they’re not prepared for,” she said. “They don’t always have the financial expertise or knowledge before taking on obligations.”

Identity theft, romance scams, education scams, crypto scams and disability claims scams are among the many schemes that target the military community, advocates told lawmakers.

Armeson said her organization has a recovery group that attempts to help victims who have lost money, but restitution — if any — can take years, and victims only get back a fraction of what they lost.

The median amount victims have lost in crypto scams is $230,000, she said, citing organizational data. For romance scams, that number is $130,000.

In the veteran community, meanwhile, select schools often make false promises to secure troops’ guaranteed GI Bill money, said Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at Veterans Education Success.

Seven of the top 10 schools with the highest GI Bill money accrual have experienced high volumes of student complaints, he said, and even faced state law enforcement actions.

“This is a systemic issue. We need to hit the root cause,” Hubbard said.

Tech companies should also be regulated, held accountable and forced to warn people about scams, said Gretchen Peters, founder and executive director of Alliance to Counter Crime Online.

Some social media platforms are able to detect individual scammers within about two weeks of setting up a new account, she added.

Chopra said it has become easy to extract personal information about troops with social media and other platforms. Data brokers also sell information about the military community to scammers, he added.

This enables them to figure out “who is really looking for romance, who is looking for a car, who is actually in financial distress,” he said.

With military moving season just around the corner, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday announced the establishment of the Personal Property Activity, elevating the importance of oversight of military household goods moves as a key mission. In a Jan. 21 memorandum, he stated the PPA will report to him through the under secretary for acquisition and sustainment.

The new group’s mission will be to “guarantee high quality, reliable and efficient household goods and vehicle shipment services for the more-than-300,000 warfighters worldwide who move somewhere every year,” Hegseth said.

If there are failures in the process, “our job is to correct it and make it right, not deny that it happened,” he added.

For decades, military families have experienced problems with missed pickups and deliveries, broken and lost household goods and a cumbersome claims process. In his video, Hegseth described examples of dressers missing a leg, couches looking like they had been dragged down the street and a service member’s family’s belongings that were packed upside down in boxes, spilling out and getting crushed.

“We listened to the concerns of our warriors,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth fired the director of the personal property program last summer, and directed the formation of a task force to find solutions. That task force is headed by Army Maj. Gen. Lance Curtis. Hegseth also named Curtis as the PPA’s first commander.

“When our warfighters are worried about their household goods, they aren’t focused on their mission,” Curtis said in an announcement of the reform. “We are ending that distraction. Mission readiness is non-negotiable.”

Over more than 30 years, defense officials have made several attempts to reform and improve the government’s handling of the household goods move process.

The most recent was a massive effort to privatize the management of the moves under the $6.2 billion Global Household Goods Contract. DOD terminated the contract in June, citing inadequacies by the contractor, HomeSafe Alliance.

Hegseth’s designation of PPA as a special activity removes the responsibility and oversight of the personal property program from the U.S. Transportation Command.

Here are some of the changes the task force has already implemented, according to PPA spokesman Army Maj. Matthew Visser:

• This year, service members moving during peak moving season — generally May to September — can start booking moves March 20 (if they have orders to move), one month earlier than booking started in previous years.
• There have been increases in per diem paid when a family is inconvenienced because of a mover’s delays. In addition to the service member, per diem is allowed for dependents — up to 75% of what meals and incidentals would be. The inconvenience claims are paid by the moving company.
• Personal property business rules have been updated to provide more competitive compensation for industry. After listening to movers’ concerns about lack of competitive rates, the task force identified this issue as a limiting factor in getting the best movers.
• A call center has been established for troops and families to communicate directly.

End to end

The PPA will oversee the personal property process end to end — from the time the service member books a shipment to the claims process, if required — Hegseth said.

The new group will also have capabilities that commands have, such as acquisition, legal and resource management.

“This is enduring,” said Visser. “No longer will the Defense Personal Property Program not receive the attention and oversight that’s needed. There will be a commander who will be responsive and responsible for the program.”

PPA will be headquartered at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, and there will be a “small growth” in the number of personnel, Visser said.

Hegseth directed that PPA be established by May 1 and fully operational within one year. The task force will continue to issue guidance for the Defense Personal Property Program until the PPA reaches initial operational capability, according to Hegseth’s memo.

The military services’ shipping offices will remain on installations, helping service members with their moves, but they will report to and be accountable to the PPA, instead of the individual service branch, Visser added.

Movers for America, a coalition of companies, moving professionals and independent owner-operators that move military families, issued a statement applauding Hegseth for “taking decisive action to fix the military’s Permanent Change of Station system and for elevating this mission to the highest levels of leadership within the Department of Defense.”

“Treating military moves as a priority and placing direct responsibility under the secretary sends a clear message that the readiness of service members and their families matters to America’s national security,” the group said.

The $1.2 million project adds to the Pentagon’s growing investment in the $3 billion market for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) — helmets, earbuds, other wearable devices and medical implants that use artificial intelligence to make sense of brain signals.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, perhaps the most high-profile implantable example, has enabled clinical trial patients who cannot move or speak to type words that they imagine. Since at least the 1970s, the Defense Department has funded the development of BCIs that, among other things, restore eyesight and control prosthetic arms.

Now, advances in AI enable BCIs to interpret or change brain activity with unprecedented accuracy and speed. So much so that some scientists and neuroethicists say the capacity to monitor signals that reveal a warfighter’s or a veteran’s mental states, visual perceptions or inner dialogue may outpace the ability to shield that data from misuse.

“One could certainly imagine how enforced use of such devices could create a very dystopian basis for behavioral control,” warned James Giordano, director of the National Defense University’s Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare and Georgetown University Medical Center’s former chief of neuroethics studies.

Consequently, any accessing or use of neural data must require “ongoing, active informed consent,” so active and retired military have the chance to opt in or out without penalty, he said.

Giordano, who was sharing his personal views and not speaking on behalf of any government agency, added, “The security of the neurological data used for that individual — and in that individual’s wellbeing only — is paramount. It goes beyond simple HIPAA.”

He was referring to the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law regulating healthcare providers that predates global Wi-Fi and does not cover most app and algorithm developers, commercial cloud providers or consumer wearable designers.

Neurable and Air Force officials say that the non-invasive cognitive fitness tracker will build upon technology in the firm’s consumer BCI product — Master & Dynamic luxury headphones containing fabric electroencephalogram, or EEG, sensors and electrically conductive inks to gauge mental focus.

The $500 device, which launched last June, deploys an algorithm that maps brainwaves to ground-truth markers of focus — users’ speed and accuracy in finishing tasks, while undistracted and distracted. When the wearer’s brainwaves resemble those tied to flagging attention, the headphones sync with an app that alerts the user: “You’ve earned a Brain Break.”

The Air Force-funded BCI project will use other headset models, such as noise protectors or helmets, said Neurable co-founder Adam Molnar, who helped secure $4 million for prior military research and development work.

The study will measure cognitive performance with and without pressure — for instance, memory skill with and without sleep deprivation — against brainwaves to identify brain activity associated with optimal and suboptimal performance, according to Neurable.

The idea is that alerting service members to significant brain signal changes throughout the day — or, providing “neurofeedback” — will train them to adjust their behavior and brainwaves to hit peak performance.

“This is all within this concept of readiness. How do we make sure that we have a ready and able defense?” said Molnar, who anticipates wrapping development within two years.

Molnar added that the Space Force has a “really cool program where they’re using the Garmin watch,” embedded with heart rate, blood oxygen and other wrist-worn sensors, “to help improve cardio fitness and physical activity‚” but “we don’t really have that for the brain.”

A comparable neurofeedback tool, he said, may spur “more robust brain health practices, not just for defense, but also for possibly identifying Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease indicators a decade before you feel your first symptom.”

Air Force Research Laboratory officials said that Neurable’s fabric-based sensing technology may aid multiple operations, inside and outside of the cockpit.

“I suspect that there are a large number of military members for whom a real-time fatigue or cognitive state monitor would be appealing if they thought it would make them more effective at executing the mission,” William Aue, cognitive neuroscience section chief at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing, said by email.

Let them ‘make their mind up’

Some neuroethicists, however, cautioned that the use of brain wearables may also invade troops’ privacy and foster prejudice.

“We need to be much more reflective on, much more concerned about and much more focused on the implications of altering a person’s brainwaves,” through neurofeedback training, “as compared to having them work out more or do more pull-ups,” said Jared Genser, a lawyer and co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation, a group advocating for the legal protection of people’s brain data.

Similarly, Giordano said, “The concept of personalized medicine must be applied here,” meaning that military leaders must tailor training and performance metrics to the limits of each individual’s brain and body, so “that you don’t get plateaus, and you’re not beginning to see performance decrement or performance fatigue.”

The Neurorights Foundation’s Medical Director Sean Pauzauskie, a neurologist in the UCHealth University of Colorado system, added that cognitive fitness standards may overstep the proposed right to freedom from algorithmic bias based on neural data interpretations.

“If the warfighter’s brain is incapable of the appropriate plasticity to achieve the desired [mental] state,” through neurofeedback training, “they could be discriminated” against by their superiors, Pauzauskie said.

Also, EEG data flowing into and out of consumer wearables can reveal several diseases, including epilepsy and mild cognitive impairment, as well as a range of emotions.

Via email, Molnar responded to such concerns, saying, “Neurable’s focus is on supporting human performance and safety, not enforcing neurological conformity.”

“Any feedback provided by our systems is designed to be informational and user-centered, helping individuals understand factors like cognitive workload or fatigue,” he added, “much like a heart-rate monitor provides insight into physical exertion.”

Neurable officials said the system’s sensors filter out all EEG data not needed by its algorithms and encrypt the limited amount of necessary data in transit.

“Even if someone hacked someone’s brain data, they would not be able to make sense of it,” Molnar said.

The Air Force’s Aue confirmed that, during experiments, the Air Force lab anonymizes EEG data streaming from Neurable’s wearables, adding that the information is “challenging to interpret without the algorithms we use to process the raw data.”

But, such protections may not stop adversaries from decoding wearable-based intelligence in the future, as AI becomes smarter and devices utilize more EEG data.

Already, in the laboratory, algorithms can narrow down a person’s identity into a “mindprint” of their mental processing or “brainprint” of their brain structures, based on EEG data from a medical headcap, Pauzauskie noted.

Likewise, Genser explained, EEG data that is out into the open, if isolated from a person’s name and identity, will remain deidentified but only for a period. The problem is that, as generative AI-powered software develops, “you are going to be able to decode a lot more information from the data that escaped, enabling the data to be reidentified and traced back to you personally.”

In an email, Molnar acknowledged that as “AI continues to accelerate research and development, it is prudent to anticipate how capabilities might evolve and to establish safeguards early.”

He suggested additional ethical review, clear boundaries on acceptable uses, and dialogue across technologists, ethicists, policymakers and technology users.

Aue, who has been working on other research with Neurable for four years, said in an email that research study participants “are fully informed about the nature of the work before participating.”

That said, as the technology matures, conversations “need to occur about the ethical use of the technology and what military doctrine might entail,” he added.

Giordano said that the key to any adoption of AI-based neurotech in the military is mandatory informed consent during and after service.

Personnel must receive updates on any adverse effects and information on “the availability or non-availability of continuity of care if things go wrong,” he added. “That way, they can make their mind up.”

Reading the minds of wounded warriors?

Due to AI, implantable brain devices, much as non-invasive brain wearables, now offer troops and veterans novel insights into themselves — and possibly the same intel to adversaries, too.

For instance, new eyesight neuroprostheses rely on AI to “bridge artificial vision and neural tissue,” said Christopher Steele, chief of strategy at the Pentagon-backed nonprofit Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium. The consortium provided $2 million to help develop a prototype.

The camera-equipped BCI uses AI to decode brain signals that convey the landscape a person’s eyes are trying to see. AI then translates data from the camera and other external sensors focused on that view into artificial signals that the mind understands as shapes and motion.

Finally, AI compares the desired and perceived scenes and adjusts the artificial signals to show more detail, said Steele, a former director of the Army Medical Research and Development Command.

This self-adjusting AI, while a potential breakthrough for visually-impaired warfighters, also introduces risks, Giordano said.

“The AI that provides continuous closed-loop signals between the eye and the brain is not monitored,” he explained.

As such, it may self-adapt in a way that falsifies images, omits certain elements of the view or delays transmission of an image, any of which may result in a loss of situational awareness, Giordano said.

Compounding the problem, when the AI “system itself is vulnerable to hacking,” an adversary can monitor or corrupt the warfighter’s visual input, he added.

“If we deploy this device downrange” in a combat zone, ”can it be hacked by an enemy?" Steele said. “We are concerned about the hacking of any medical capability.”

Currently, the system only operates in clinical trials that are subject to HIPAA, and other protections include hardware isolation, encryption and AI guardrails that prevent unsafe adaptation, he added.

Yet, as Giordano cautioned, self-learning AI, by design, can learn good or bad behavior that may override guardrails.

Another military funding arm, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research Program, is underwriting clinical trials to evaluate Braingate, a forerunner to Musk’s Neuralink implant that translates words a patient imagines into audible speech.

The Defense Department’s $2.3 million contribution aims to help people with ALS — a disease associated with military service — who cannot move or talk.

This advance is “foundationally fantastic” for people with various neuro-motor conditions who can think of speech but not generate motor output to move their mouths, meaning “they’re communicatively locked in,” Giordano said. The device “allows these individuals the autonomy of communication.”

At the same time, because the device reads signals in the motor cortex that show attempts at moving the mouth, the tool allows for “what might be regarded as mind-reading,” Giordano said.

Currently, human beings, military or not, have no legal right to be free of mind-reading.

Neither international human rights law nor federal regulations safeguard mental privacy, mental autonomy (“free will”) or neural data, according to the Neurorights Foundation.

Only four states — California, Colorado, Connecticut and Montana afford protection to “neural data” within their state consumer data privacy laws. And one country, Chile, has adopted a constitutional amendment to protect “mental integrity.”

As the Foundation’s Genser notes, one of the only countries with a national-level set of principles on the ethical use of BCIs, China, may be the least likely to use it.

He is pressing for “clear limits” on the purposes for developing and using neurotech and neural data in the military, subject to strong oversight that safeguards the health and autonomy of service members.

“If we don’t have any tools or standards around the national security implications of emerging neurotechnologies, then how is our military different than any other military?” Genser posited.

As an illustration of unregulated brain alteration, he pointed to the CIA’s MKUltra program, a Cold War-era mind-control experiment that tested LSD and other psychedelic drugs on soldiers and others, sometimes with permanent psychological and physical harm.

“The last thing we want is for neurotech to be the next version of MKUltra,” Genser said, “not using drugs, but using neuro-stimulation or other neural approaches to alter brain activity.”

In a memo sent last month to military health system leadership, including military hospitals and dental facilities and support offices, acting DHA Director David Smith said patients have always had a right to a chaperone, but physicians now must offer them for sensitive medical exams or procedures.

Signage will inform patients that they have a right to a chaperone regardless of treatment, according to the memo, but in gynecological, breast or pelvic exams, they must be offered one.

“Having chaperones available is a crucial part of patient-centered care,” said Dr. Paul Cordts, DHA’s chief medical officer, in a statement released Thursday. “Chaperones can help protect both patients and health care staff.”

Last January, former Army physician Maj. Michael Stockin was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison for sexually abusing patients at Madigan Army Medical Center, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

Stockin had pleaded guilty to 41 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to include abusive sexual contact and indecent viewing with male patients under the auspices of medical exams.

In November, patients of Army Maj. Blaine McGraw, an OB-GYN at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center in Texas, filed a lawsuit against him alleging that he had secretly recorded and sexually exploited them during breast and pelvic exams.

McGraw was charged in December with 54 counts of indecent visual recording, five counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and other charges. He is in pre-trial confinement awaiting court proceedings.

The American Medical Association recommends that physicians ensure that their patients are aware that chaperones are available on request and that doctors should always honor a patient’s request to have a chaperone — one that is an authorized member of the health care team.

Having a chaperone present, especially during sensitive exams, provides reassurance to the patients and “demonstrates an attention to the patients’ well-being,” according to the association’s code of ethics.

It also is helpful for the “more pragmatic goal of legal protection for the physician,” according to association guidance.

Under the new DOD policy, chaperones are available to serve as a safeguard for patients and staff and are members of the medical team who will maintain privacy but also would report any suspected inappropriate conduct.

The guidelines call for staff to try to provide a chaperone of a certain sex if requested and if one is not available, the exam can be rescheduled. If a patient declines a chaperone, the medical staff must document the request but also can decline to conduct an exam if it is sensitive in nature.

Personnel who may serve as chaperones include physicians, dentists, physician assistants, psychologists, social workers, nurses, medics and corpsmen, medical technicians and support assistants, medical residences and hospital volunteers.

Non-medical personnel such as sexual assault response coordinators, victim advocates or family advocacy personnel may be in a room at the request of a patient in the event of a violence-related exam but they will not count as chaperones, according to the new policy.

Regarding pediatric care, a chaperone is not required for normal checkups for children if a parent or guardian is in the room, but health care staff must offer a chaperone if an exam or procedure is beyond routine.

For adolescents ages 11-17, the policy will follow the guidance for adult chaperones.

“This system-wide chaperone policy is just one part of DHA’s broader commitment to protect all patients and maintain the highest standards of professionalism,” officials said regarding the new policy.