Free Republic

The father of the terror suspect accused of gunning down two soon-to-be-engaged Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum was honored by a far-left member of Congress with an invitation to President Trump’s joint address this past March, The Post has exclusively learned. “Eric Rodriguez was our guest during the President’s Joint Speech to Congress, but we don’t know his family,” Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) said Thursday night. In March, he hailed Rodriguez as “an outspoken advocate against attacks on veterans’ services and the rights of unionized federal employees.” “Eric represents the very best of our community —...

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is making record-breaking progress in processing a backlog of veteran disability claims that mounted under former President Joe Biden, the agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The VA brought unresolved claims down from 264,717 to 198,378 — or by approximately 25% — since President Donald Trump returned to office, the VA told the DCNF. Trump’s VA has also hit the highest daily and monthly processing rates in the agency’s history while reversing a 24% increase in the backlog that occurred under Biden, the VA said in a statement. [snip] The last time the...

Some rather surprising news out of Washington. D.C., Monday morning, as Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) announced that he will not be seeking reelection in 2026. More significantly in the near term, he will be stepping back from leadership and stepping down as the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. Unfortunately, the reason for Connolly's announcement is that his cancer has returned. Connolly, who is 75, has served in Congress since 2009. Shortly before he was reelected in November 2024, Connolly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would be undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Following his reelection, Connolly...

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has confirmed that chaplains can preach sermons with obviously Christian content at affiliated medical facilities and has rescinded a letter of reprimand after a chaplain was punished last year. In a letter written in late February but recently made public, VA Secretary Doug Collins said "there is no national or local policy or standard operating procedure which inhibits Chaplain sermons." "To the extent that there have been any proposed changes to any existing policy, those proposals will not move forward and have been rescinded," wrote Collins. "VA reiterates again its commitment to upholding and...

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for website changes before canceling the contract and having an internal staffer take over, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While combing through loads and loads of data, DOGE discovered a previous contract by the VA for its website maintenance. "Good work by @DeptVetAffairs," DOGE said in a post on X on Wednesday. "VA was previously paying ~$380,000/month for minor website modifications. That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans. From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service. “At a moment...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has saved roughly $900 million after reviewing just two percent of its contracts, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced.In a video posted to his official X account, Collins addressed those complaining about changes being made at Veterans Affairs and explained that no matter what, no changes will result in cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.“VA will always fulfill its duty to provide veterans, families, caregivers and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned. That’s a promise, and while we conduct our review, VA will continue to hire for more...

While controversy swirls around last week's mass firing of 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs' employees, a far greater threat to veterans' health care is going completely unnoticed. Powerful leaders in Congress have quietly unveiled their plan to gut VA-delivered care, wrapped in the misleadingly titled "Veterans' ACCESS Act." If veterans don't act fast, they will lose the VA health care system they know and depend on. The bill appears innocuous enough, with aspirations of accountability. But don't be fooled. Hidden in its depths like a ticking time bomb is a provision intended to dismantle the integrated VA health care system...

Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Doug Collins confirmed that the Biden administration’s VA diverted “manpower” away from Veteran Care (VC) to help illegal migrants obtain health care.

Failing elevators at a veterans hospital in Miami have injured at least a dozen people over two years, according to a nurses’ union that called the lifts a “death trap.” The elevators at the Miami VA Medical Center tend to suddenly drop several floors, creating a danger for injured and ill patients, according to union officials. All of the main elevators in the 12-story hospital have had issues flagged during a 2023 assessment obtained by the Herald. The building, which has been standing for almost six decades, has been plagued with structural issues for years including problems with its air-conditioning...

Several top Veterans Affairs officials in Tennessee resigned as an internal investigation and a broader congressional probe into alleged sexual misconduct intensified, Breitbart News has learned. Congressional investigators discovered that one man who resigned, whose name they would not tell Breitbart News but sources familiar say was a bargaining unit biomedical employee, had dozens of sexual relationships with women who worked at the Mountain Home VA medical center in Tennessee. In fact, the congressional investigators told Breitbart News this one man slept with no fewer than 32 different women who worked there—and the man and several of the women bragged...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Virginia to move forward with its removal of roughly 1,600 alleged noncitizens from its voter rolls just days before the 2024 election. The high court granted a request from state officials to pause a lower court order that blocked Virginia from continuing its systematic voter removal program that was launched in August, exactly 90 days before Election Day. A provision of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to complete programs aimed at purging ineligible voters from registration lists up to 90 days before federal elections. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and...

EXCLUSIVE: A right-leaning research group is claiming that the Department of Veterans Affairs under the Biden administration back paid more than $130 million to 1,700 people fired under a Trump-era law that allows for easier accountability for federal employees. Through Freedom of Information Act filings, the America First Policy Institute will soon release the results of its probe. Its investigation also found the VA reinstated more than 100 terminated employees who were fired for indiscretions ranging from negligence to sleeping on the job... The investigation found that of the more than 4,000 terminated employees, more than 1,700 received back pay...

Dig Deeper Department of Veterans Affairs employees have illicitly accessed the medical records both major parties' vice presidential nominees, the agency confirmed to both campaigns. An investigation is ongoing. At least 12 agency employees have improperly accessed the records of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., according the Washington Post. Both men are veterans of the armed services, with Vance serving in the Marines and Walz in the National Guard. “We take the privacy of the Veterans we serve very seriously and have strict policies in place to protect their records,” VA press secretary Terrence Hayes told...

FALLS MILLS, Va. (WVVA) - A Good Samaritan shot a wanted man attempting to carjack a woman and her child on Friday. According to Major Harold Heatley with the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office, the incident happened at Lee’s Kar-Go when the suspect, identified as Cody Dailey, 30, “attempted to carjack a truck, assaulted the female driver of the vehicle and told her child that was in the vehicle, ‘I’m going to rape your mommy.’” Multiple citizens heard the victim screaming and came to her aid, and one of those citizens was armed with his 9mm handgun. The armed Good Samaritan...

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The Joseph Maxwell Cleland Atlanta VA Medical Center in DeKalb County confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that some services at the hospital have been temporarily moved to other facilities, or rescheduled, due to multiple “intermittent sightings of flying insects.” While a VA spokeswoman said they are taking immediate action to address the issue, they said it “is not classified as an infestation.” According to the Ehrlich Pest Control website, the signs of a fly infestation are “regular sightings of flies: large number of flies buzzing around refuse areas and the base of garbage bins or...

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs officials testified during a Wednesday House hearing that the department would not comply with proposed legislation barring it from sending certain information about U.S. military veterans to the federal government’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The VA reasons that reliance on a fiduciary indicates a beneficiary is mentally incompetent. Federal law states firearms dealers receive a “deny message” if a NICS check for a potential buyer determines the buyer has been adjudicated as a mental defective. … Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) challenged the VA witnesses later on in the hearing to explain their...

The View moderator Whoopi Goldberg missed today’s episode of the ABC daytime talk show after testing positive for Covid, cohost Joy Behar announced at the top of the live broadcast. “You might have noticed Whoopi is not here,” said Behar, “because Whoopi has tested positive for Covid. You know, it’s going around still. So you have to be careful!” (Goldberg appeared later in today’s episode during a pre-taped interview with The Boys‘ Antony Starr). Goldberg’s latest bout with Covid appears to be her fourth. In September 2023, she addressed her third run-in with the coronavirus by sending a video message...

Media outlet Headline USA has produced a report that indicates FBI involvement in neo-Nazi marches and rallies across the country for the past twenty years. Additional bureau involvement stretches back to the 1970s. Much of the more recent activity took place under the watch of former FBI Director Robert Mueller. The allegations are not only serious, but potentially history-altering, as one of the events with alleged FBI involvement, the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, VA, was Joe Biden's claimed impetus to run for president in the 2020 election. Based on the testimony of operatives David Gletty and Bill...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has paid out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses to executives, according to a federal watchdog report. The VA Inspector General released a report detailing that the VA "erroneously" paid out about $11 million in bonuses to executives that were later found to be ineligible for those bonuses. The bonuses totaled as much as $100,000 for just one federal employee. “During oversight visits across the country, we have consistently heard from VA police officers, medical supply technicians, housekeepers, and other VA staff about the need for VA to better retain quality employees,” House...