Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Project 2025: The Department of Veterans Affairs

Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum.

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

The health care of veterans is a matter that transcends partisanship and is part of the United States' solemn promise to the men and women who have served in its military. The Department of Veterans Affairs is responsible for administering not only the Veterans Health Administration, but also a wide range of benefits for veterans, including disability compensation, pension programs, education, home loan guarantees, life insurance, burial and memorial benefits, survivor benefits, employment services, and caregiver support.


Public polling consistently shows that Americans support enhanced benefits for veterans, specifically affordable housing, free college and free health care, more so than for the general population. A 2024 RAND Corporation study confirmed past polling reflecting broad bipartisan support for veteran-specific programs, with most Americans willing to pay higher taxes to fund these initiatives.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties also generally demonstrate strong support for veterans and their benefits. However, both parties still debate specific policy implementation and budget allocation. The Republican Party has expressed a preference for moving to a public- private partnership to administer many veterans benefits, while (most of) the Democratic Party favors investing in public infrastructure to meet VA mandates. So it’s not surprising that proposed changes to the VA included in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, focus largely on privatization.

From a nonpartisan perspective, the stated aims of Project 2025’s proposed reforms are worthy goals: to enhance the efficiency, responsiveness, and veteran-centric focus of the VA by addressing health care delivery, benefits administration, infrastructure, and workforce management. But would these reforms achieve their intended goals?

Key proposals in Project 2025

Political and operational changes: One notable political proposal would extend the term of the under secretary for health to ensure continuity and protect the position from political changes by the next administration. Additionally, the plan calls for the dismissal of Biden administration appointees on day one to establish political control over the VA.

Health care proposals: These are particularly controversial. The plan recommends eliminating services deemed contrary to conservative principles, such as abortion and gender reassignment surgeries, and emphasizes adjusting services to meet the needs of an aging veteran population transitioning from Vietnam-era to post-9/11 veterans. It also proposes codifying the 2018 VA MISSION Act standards to ensure veterans have access to private-sector care, potentially expanding privatized outpatient clinics and telehealth.

Veterans Benefits Administration reforms: For the VBA, the focus is on outsourcing and technology to streamline claims processing. The goal is to process the first disability claim within 30 days and reduce improper payments and fraud. There is also an emphasis on accelerating reviews of standardized disability ratings and increasing IT funding for automation and improved efficiency.

Office of Human Resources and Administration reforms: The HRA reforms include rescinding Biden administration delegations of authority, reevaluating hybrid and remote work policies, expediting a new HRIT system, and enhancing recruitment of veterans and military spouses. Additionally, the plan suggests sunsetting the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection and decoupling HRA from the Office of Security and Preparedness to streamline operations.

Concerns and considerations

One of the primary goals of Project 2025 VA reforms is to outsource many core health care services to private companies. This includes outsourcing exams for evaluating claims, adjudicating claims automatically with private tech companies and facilitating care through private health care providers. While some conservative groups, like Concerned Veterans for America, support expanding veteran access to private care and cite polling that indicates wide support for that plan, this polling seems to directly contradict years of surveys of veterans who use the VHA.

For the quarter ending March 2024, 80.4 percent of veterans expressed trust in the VA, with 91.8 percent specifically trusting VA health services. Why the disconnect? The difference in perceptions may come from the fact that outside polling often includes a large percentage of opinions from the public rather than just veterans who use VHA services, skewing the results, or perhaps past scandals at individual VA facilities remain salient in the public's minds. However, multiple systematic reviews comparing VA and non-VA health care outcomes show that the VHA generally provides equal or better quality care, particularly regarding mortality rates and in safety, equity, and specific surgical and clinical outcomes.

Without a doubt, there are veterans who have negative experiences with their VA-administered care, and those veterans need to be heard and have their concerns addressed. However, privately administered health care in the U.S. is already overburdened, and it doesn’t seem logical to move veterans into that private system, risking the real net positive results most veterans experience through the VHA. A recent audit by the VA Office of Inspector General concurred and highlighted concerns that increased spending on community care could erode the VA's direct care system and limit choice for veterans who prefer VA services. It warned that diverting funds from the VA to private care could reduce the quality of direct VA care.

To be clear, under the Biden administration, the VA has continued the trend of privatization that began under Obama, grew, and was codified by the MISSION Act in 2018 under Trump. The Project 2025 report on the VA hints at this when offering rare praise that the Biden appointees have "adopted some of their predecessors’ governance processes." Ensuring that changes truly benefit veterans should be the priority for the current administration as well as future administrations looking to improve the VA.

Project 2025 focuses on conservative political goals and extensive outsourcing, risking politicizing the VA further and undermining its ability to serve veterans effectively. Given the high trust and satisfaction among veterans with current VA services, nonpartisan support for veteran-centric benefits, and research indicating the importance of retaining the private model of care, it is crucial to approach these reforms cautiously

More articles about Project 2025


    Read More

    Draining the Safeguards

    Donald Trump

    Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    Draining the Safeguards

    A loyalty-forward government has formed right before our eyes. Jared Kushner has been tapped to help lead the Israel–Hamas talks. He wasn’t chosen for his expertise in delicate diplomacy; he was chosen because he’s the president’s son-in-law—and because some around him seem to treat his Jewish identity as if that alone were a qualification aligned with a pro-Israel posture. Identity and proximity are not expertise. That’d be like putting Linda McMahon in charge of the Department of Education because she once (seemingly!) went to school. Oh wait, we did that too. What are we doing here?

    Zoom out from the Kushner headline and the method snaps into focus. First, elevate friends, family, donors, and media allies into roles once filled by deeply vetted and experienced professionals. Second, lean on “acting” titles and novel personnel rules to dodge scrutiny and degrade accountability. Third, purge the referees—advisory boards, inspectors general, nonpartisan civil servants—so the only guardrail left is personal loyalty. It’s governing by who you know, not what you know.

    Keep ReadingShow less
    Dwight Eisenhower
    Without leaders like Dwight Eisenhower we will once again find ourselves on the precipice of a "world devoid of hope, freedom, economic stability, morals, values and human decency," writes M. Dane Waters.
    Moore/Getty Images

    The General's Warning: What Eisenhower Knew About Power

    On September 28, 2025, President Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities for domestic law enforcement, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorizing 200 Oregon National Guard members for a 60-day deployment to Portland. A federal judge temporarily blocked the move, calling the justification for military deployment "simply untethered to the facts." When the administration tried to circumvent the order by sending troops from other states, the judge expanded her ruling, blocking any federalized National Guard deployment to Oregon.

    That declaration marks a break with the boundary Dwight Eisenhower insisted upon between national defense and domestic politics. His 1961 farewell address warned against exactly this misuse of power.

    Keep ReadingShow less
    The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

    An armed law enforcement agent sits in an armored vehicle as residents of Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood confront law enforcement at a gas station after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents allegedly detained an unidentified man riding in his car, in Chicago, Illinois, on Oct. 4, 2025.

    (AFP via Getty Images)

    The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

    A masked, federal agent in combat uniform leans out the passenger window of a Jeep and points a military rifle directly at the face of a U.S. citizen in Chicago, simply for recording him.

    It should send a chill down every American’s spine. President Trump’s revenge on America’s liberal cities is an authoritarian abuse of power. Americans in 2025 should not have to live in police states or with the National Guard patrolling their streets or pointing weapons at them.

    Keep ReadingShow less
    Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

    People rally around a group of interfaith clergy members as they hold a press conference downtown to denounce the Trump administration's proposed immigration sweeps in the city on Sept. 8, 2025 in Chicago.

    Scott Olson, Getty Images

    Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

    When presidents deploy the National Guard, it’s usually to handle hurricanes, riots, or disasters. Donald Trump has found a darker use for it: punishing political opponents.

    Over recent months, Trump has sent federalized Guard units into Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and now Chicago—where roughly 300 Illinois Guardsmen have been federalized and another 400 troops brought in from Texas. He calls it “law and order,” but the pattern is clear: Democratic-led cities are being targeted as enemy territory. Governors and mayors have objected, but Trump is testing how far he can stretch Title 10, the section of U.S. law that allows the president to federalize the National Guard in limited cases of invasion or rebellion—a law meant for national crisis, not political theater.

    Keep ReadingShow less