In his primetime speech to the nation on Wednesday, Donald Trump bragged that he would give military service members a so-called “warrior dividend” of $1,776. Not $17.76, which would obviously be insulting, and not $17,760, which would be meaningful, but $1,776. “Nobody deserves it more than our military,” the president said.
Trump credited tariffs and the so-called Big Beautiful Bill he signed earlier this year for bringing in the money that will be used for the checks. Multiple outlets reported on Thursday that the checks aren’t quite the bonus the president cast them as during his speech, and that the money for the “dividends” will in fact be lifted out of funds Congress allocated for housing subsidies for service members earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the top one percent of Americans are set to receive $1 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill cuts around the same amount from the nation’s health programs.
At the same time, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — after initially floating plans to eliminate 80,000 positions before settling on 30,000 — will now, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post, cut an additional 35,000 health care positions, including doctors and nurses. The move inches the department closer to the goal outlined in Project 2025 and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is to essentially privatize the VA through attrition.
Privatizing the VA has long been framed as an expansion of “choice.” But what is happening to veterans under the Trump administration — losing world-class government-funded health care and slowly nudging veterans to the failing private health care system — is not a choice many of the men and women who served the United States would find very appealing.
But, that was the plan all along. It is a longstanding strategy far-right Republicans and libertarians in Congress have openly championed for decades, spelled out by conservative groups like the Cato Institute. It appears they have found a president shameless enough to make those ambitions a reality, at the direct expense of our nation’s heroes.
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The process begins with staffing. Over the past year, the VA has lost more than 30,000 employees nationwide and an unknown number of contracts that supported veteran-owned small businesses. The administration is now moving to eliminate another 35,000 positions by permanently closing “vacant” jobs it claims are no longer necessary. But anyone who understands how hospitals function knows vacancies, especially of doctors and nurses, are not excess. They exist because hiring pipelines are slow, burnout is rampant, and demand has outpaced capacity for years. Eliminating those positions doesn’t reduce workload. It locks understaffing into the system and ensures that shortages become permanent.
In Chicago, one of the larger VA systems, hundreds of vacancies are being wiped out at major VA hospitals — even as nurses describe emergency departments overflowing with patients and ICUs operating with fewer staff than at any point in recent memory. The official claim is that these changes will have no impact on care, but the lived reality on the ground tells a very different story. Burnout accelerates, morale collapses, and experienced clinicians walk out the door. What follows is predictable: longer waits, delayed appointments, and diminished quality.
The administration also seems to be retreating from brick-and-mortar VA care altogether. In Alameda, California, a long-promised outpatient clinic and columbarium — nearly 30 years in the making and backed by hundreds of millions in approved funding — was abruptly canceled. These moves will further depress the Trump economy, and heroes like VA employees, small business owners who support the VA, and veterans who rely on VA care will be the ones left holding the bag.
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It all comes as billionaires siphon a trillion dollars out of the health care system over the next decade. The result is veterans who are poorer, sicker, and abandoned, while the Trump White House worries about corralling nearly half a billion dollars on a lavish ballroom.
If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. Soon, no veteran will be able to ignore the systematic dismantling of the VA. Veterans will be pushed into private facilities that may — or may not — be able to provide the care they need. There will be no Medicare to fall back on, no stable employment to secure decent health insurance, and no affordable options like the Affordable Care Act to help cover the gap. This is the new normal — and Trump still has over a thousand days remaining in his term to make things far worse for our veterans.
