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The new interim chief of staff for the Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly ordered employees in 2014 not to disclose information about secret wait lists to members of Congress. The VA released a statement Friday listing Vivieca Wright-Simpson as the interim chief of staff effective Sunday. ... Wright-Simpson was instrumental in blocking an investigation initiated by two Pennsylvanian congressmen, who wanted to know more about veterans waiting years for health care appointments at the Pittsburgh VA. According to a 2014 report by CNN, GOP Rep. Tim Murphy and Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle felt like the VA was running interference to...

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) has quietly stepped away from the committee that has oversight over a scandal-plagued Wisconsin Veterans Affairs facility, actions some Republicans see as the Democratic senator running from her past failures on the issue. Baldwin served on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee throughout the 114th Congress but does not appear to be on the committee in the 115th Congress, according to its roster. The committee has oversight over the Tomah VA, a VA facility in Wisconsin that was over-prescribing opiates to patients and saw a Marine die from an overdose.A memo, first circulated in...

God bless Robert Rosebrock who dedicates his lifetime to bring Homeless war vets HOME Like an indelible vision of long-gone soldiers that live forever in the memories of their loved ones, Robert Rosebrock has appeared for more than 500 consecutive Sundays and every Memorial Day since March 9, 2008 outside the gates of the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (GLAVA) park calling public attention to America’s abandoned homeless veterans. It’s a tragic pictorial of homeless and hungry war veterans coming to peer longingly through the gates at what is rightfully theirs through a wrought iron fence.

A Veteran’s Affairs (VA) “whistleblower” has reported that the VA is on the verge of throwing out “over 500,000” veteran’s applications because of errors made during the Obama administration. Scott Davis is a well-known VA whistleblower and program specialist at the VA’s National Health Eligibility Center, in Atlanta, Georgia, who has previously testified before Congress. Davis wrote an urgent letter to President Trump making the nearly-incredulous claim that, unless Trump quickly steps in to intervene, the Veteran’s Administration plans to throw out “more than 500,000” veteran’s applications in March. According to Davis, the reason the VA wants to declare the...

Every Democrat joined every Republican in voting to confirm Dr. David Shulkin as the next man to run the Department of Veterans Affairs in a 100-0 vote. Speaking on the Senate floor shortly before the vote, Sen. Susan Collins (R.-Maine) said she was thrilled by Shulkin’s nomination, and it was one of the few things Republicans and Democrats have agreed on recently. Collins said that she was especially impressed when Shulkin kept a commitment he made to her in a private meeting and visited the only veterans hospital in Maine with her. “I was truly impressed and remain truly impressed...

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees have been charged with stealing prescription medications like oxycodone and Viagra to sell on the street.Satishkumar Patel, Alisha Pagan and Nikita Neal have all been charged with conspiring together to steal and distribute highly addictive drugs, like oxycodone and hydrocodone, Christopher Thyer said in a press release. Thyer is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.Out of the three, Patel and Pagan are staring down additional charges, including intent to deliver oxycodone, THV11 reports.Management at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System complained to the VA inspector general that large quantities of drugs were disappearing from...

This past Friday, I visited a mosque in Sterling, VA to meet and hear from members our Virginia Muslim community. After a week of seeing hateful and divisive rhetoric coming from our executive branch, I thought it was important to make sure that those who might feel targeted right now know that the views of President Trump don’t speak for all of us. So today I’m asking you to sign your name to tell our every member of our Muslim and refugee community that they are welcomed in Virginia! I want members of our Muslim community to know that we...

With everything going on in Richmond and Washington, you may have missed this, but it’s important: Republicans in the House of Delegates just passed a bill to make it more difficult to vote in the Commonwealth. The GOP voted along party lines to require proof of citizenship in order to vote -- something that courts have said is unlawful at the federal level. Not only that, but they argued for the bill using the same lies about “voter fraud” that Donald Trump has been using. But we know the truth: Voter fraud is a myth, and Republican laws that claim...

The public employee unions have a pretty sweet deal with the government which is very similar to the benefits enjoyed by their civilian counterparts. Some of their workers are authorized to spend a certain amount of what’s known as “official time” conducting union business while they’re on the clock and supposedly doing the business of the taxpayers. There are supposed to be limits on this benefit, but in agencies such as the Veterans Affairs Department, just how much of this is going on? Don’t ask the agency’s administrators because it turns out that they have no way of tracking...

Please take a moment and urge our VA liberal senators Warner and Kaine to SUPPORT President Trump's nominees of Gorsuch, DeVos and Sessions! https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactpage https://www.kaine.senate.gov/contact

Has accountability finally arrived at the Veterans Administration? According to the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, a new approach to personnel management at the beleaguered bureaucracy has begun, and it coincidentally arrived on Inauguration Day. Or perhaps not so coincidentally: Days into Donald Trump’s administration, heads are finally beginning to roll at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Two notoriously corrupt employees in Puerto Rico were fired this week, indicating that more may be on the way.One is the hospital’s CEO, DeWayne Hamlin, who offered an employee $305,000 to quit after she played a role in exposing his drug arrest.“Mr. DeWayne...

Days into Donald Trump’s administration, heads are finally beginning to roll at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Two notoriously corrupt employees in Puerto Rico were fired this week, indicating that more may be on the way.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A New Jersey woman and her 5-year-old great-granddaughter have been found alive in secluded woods in rural Virginia, apparently stranded there for days after disappearing on a holiday road trip, authorities said.

January 11th is the first day of the 2017 legislative session for the Virginia House of Delegates, and our members want to hear what's important to you. Every year we conduct a legislative survey, then share the results with our members so they know the issues and priorities you have for 2017. Please fill out our legislative survey at this link: http://bit.ly/2017VALegislativeSurvey

As part of its broader package of rules for the 115th Congress, the House of Representatives revived the Holman Rule, a provision that allows House members to propose amendments to spending bills that closely manage federal agencies. These "retrenchment" amendments can affect details down to individual federal salaries and the number of staff in an office. ... The restoration of the Holman Rule means merely that when it comes to firing a federal employee, the president's signature on an act of Congress can do it. It doesn't seem extraordinary that the heads of the federal government should be able to...

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped David Shulkin to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, he announced Wednesday. "I appointed today the head secretary of the Veterans Administration, David Shulkin," Trump said during his news conference at Trump Tower in New York. "We'll do a news release in a little while, I'll tell you about David, he's fantastic. He's fantastic. He will do a truly great job. One of the commitments I've made is that we're going to straighten out the whole situation for our veterans." Shulkin is the VA's current undersecretary for health, a position in which he oversaw more...

A pair of Department of Veterans Affairs officials who defrauded the VA for $400,000 will not face any criminal charges, despite an inspector general's request that they both face a criminal investigation. In an inspector general report made public in September, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves were both accused of manipulating a VA program meant to ease the strain of moving agency employees between cities. The watchdog referred the matter to the Department of Justice for a criminal inquiry. But prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia ruled against pursuing charges late last week, the Houston...

Veterans' Health: News headlines this week screamed about how President-elect Trump is considering a plan to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration. Did nobody read his campaign website during the election? In July, Trump issued his 10-point plan to fix the VA. Number 10 on the list: "Mr. Trump will ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice. Under a Trump Administration, no veteran will die waiting for service. These days are over starting January 2017." At the time, we wrote that, while Trump's plan wasn't...

President-elect Donald Trump met with health care executives on Wednesday to begin a serious reform of the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I’ve been saying we have to take care of our vets,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago after the meetings. “We are working on something to make it great for our veterans, because they are treated very, very unfairly.” Trump met with John Noseworthy, the President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, Paul Rothman, the CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine as well as Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, Dr. David Torchiana of Partners HealthCare and Toby Cosgrove of Cleveland Clinic, according to the...