Today, we bring you the next in our series on current and former members of Congress nominated to a cabinet post by President-elect Trump, originally published by Govtrack.us
The Senate will vote on Trump’s nominees once they are formally nominated after he takes office, but senators have already begun meeting with the expected nominees. They may also hold hearings ahead of Trump’s inauguration to expedite the confirmation process.
How did Trump’s Veterans Affairs Secretary nominee, Doug Collins, vote in Congress?
Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA9) is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to replace Denis McDonough as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The position requires confirmation by the Senate.
Collins served in the House from 2013 to 2020, However, as a Military.com article noted, Collins “did not play a prominent role on veterans issues during that time [in Congress] and never served on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.”
Instead, he appears to have been nominated largely due to his military biography. Collins served as a Navy Reserve chaplain in the 1980s, left to earn divinity and law degrees, then rejoined the military as an Air Force chaplain after the September 11, 2001 attacks, including a 2008 deployment to Iraq.
He declined to run for reelection in 2020 to run for Georgia’s Senate seat, but finished third in the open primary, failing to advance to the runoff with the top two candidates. (The seat was open due to a resignation. Trump publicly advocated that Georgia’s governor appoint Collins to temporarily fill the seat, though the governor selected someone else.)
Since leaving office, Collins has served as Georgia’s state chair for the Trump-affiliated America First Policy Institute.
Bills about veterans
Collins was the lead sponsor of 117 bills in Congress, several related to veterans issues:
Newborn Care Improvement Act
This bill would have doubled the maximum length of healthcare provided for a baby born to a veteran at a VA hospital or facility, from seven days to 14. Collins introduced the bill with bipartisan cosponsorship in 2014, 2015, and 2017, but it never received a House vote.
Current law remains seven days.
Expanding Veterans’ Access to Choice Act
In 2014, a series of scandals emerged about VA hospital and medical facility backlogs and wait times, particularly focusing on one Phoenix facility. Ultimately, up to 40 veterans died while waiting for medical care in Phoenix alone. Overall, at least 42 VA institutions were placed under investigation. President Obama’s VA Secretary, Eric Shinseki, resigned.
In response, Congress enacted a new law that same year with a number of reforms. Yet even after the enactment, Collins thought something was still missing. So, he added a short addendum for clarification:
Any veteran who lived within 40 miles of a VA hospital but couldn’t be assigned a VA doctor or receive their needed medical care within that 40-mile distance still remained eligible for the government’s Veterans Choice medical program.
The bill attracted bipartisan cosponsorship but never received a standalone vote. As far as GovTrack can determine, it does not appear the measure was ever enacted.
Major votes about the VA
Collins voted for perhaps the three biggest veterans-related laws during his congressional tenure – although that’s not too revealing about his priorities, since the vast majority of Congress voted for all three as well.
However, the subsequent history of those laws reveals how congressional intent doesn’t always work as intended in practice.
First was the aforementioned Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014, a set of reforms after the VA health scandals. The House vote was almost unanimous at 420-5, with all five dissents from Republicans. Collins voted for it.
However, the Obama-era VA stopped implementing aspects of the law in 2016 related to firing and disciplining employees, claiming the provisions were unconstitutional.
Next was the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017, which GovTrack covered at the time. That bill enhanced immunities for in-house whistleblowers and made it easier for the VA Secretary to fire employees, particularly after the revelation that some employees had watched pornography on work computers yet weren’t fired. The House vote was 368-55. Collins voted for it.
At that time, 54 of the 55 dissents were Democrats, concerned that avenues for employee appeals were too restricted. Indeed, an appeals court and federal labor boards subsequently curtailed the law. L.
In response, Republicans in the current Congress introduced the Restore VA Accountability Act, which would create another mechanism making it easier for VA employees to be disciplined or fired in a way that might fare better in the courts. The GOP-controlled House Veterans’ Affairs Committee passed it in March, but it may not get a vote in the full chamber or the Senate.
Finally, there was the VA MISSION Act of 2018, which provided a series of technical changes to the agency. The House vote was 347-70. All 70 dissenters were Democrats, who opposed the bill’s lack of a sustainable funding source. The acronym MISSION stood for Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks.
What Congress is saying
Collins “knows the trials of the battlefield, having completed a deployment to Iraq… and has a strong understanding of the policies that impact veterans,” Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee top Republican Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) said in a press release. “President Trump nominated a candidate who has demonstrated his dedication to public service and a willingness to support veterans and their families.”
Democrats seem amenable to the nomination.
"I worked with Doug Collins when he was in Congress. And I look forward to continuing to work with him as VA Secretary,” House Veterans’ Affairs Committee top Democrat Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA39) said in a press release, implying that his nomination was relatively noncontroversial and Senate confirmation was likely.
“I hope we can work together to… continue to address the deadly legacy of toxic exposure, leave no veteran behind, and ensure that VA remains a strong institution that serves all generations of veterans."
The Senate will vote on Trump’s nominees once they are formally nominated after he takes office, but senators have already begun meeting with the expected nominees. They may also hold hearings ahead of Trump’s inauguration, to expedite the confirmation process.
Jesse Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.