VA Suddenly Backtracks From DOGE Move to Strip Veterans’ Health Care

Massive cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs that would have had devastating effects for veterans were paused late Wednesday.  

Lawmakers and veterans’ organizations protested over concerns that the cuts would have hurt critical veterans’ health services. On Tuesday, VA Secretary Doug Collins had bragged the department was merely slashing consulting deals to the tune of $2 billion. 

“No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!” Collins said in an X post Tuesday. 

In reality, the 875 contracts on the chopping block dealt with everything from assessing veterans’ exposure to toxic materials to cancer treatment. On Wednesday, a VA spokesperson sought to backtrack, saying in a statement that its review of department contracts “is ongoing and not final.”

“We will not be eliminating any benefits or services to Veterans or VA beneficiaries, and there will be no negative impact to VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries. We are always going to take care of Veterans at VA. Period,” VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in the statement.

One of the targeted contracts had to do with reviewing veterans’ disability ratings, a critical step needed for a veteran to qualify for medical coverage and draw medical compensation if they were injured due to their military service. If a veteran doesn’t receive an accurate rating, they could end up getting worse financial support and treatment options.

According to an internal VA email, one contracting official in the agency said that the Department of Government Efficiency said it was targeting “consulting” contracts, but in reality, the cuts included chemotherapy and imaging services. Other contracts that would have been axed included radiation detection equipment, cancer care support, veterans’ cemetery management, and the ability to assess toxic exposure.  

“With funding suddenly stripped from contractors processing claims, conducting medical screenings and expanding outreach, there are growing concerns veterans will face delays, denials and disruptions in accessing critical services,” Rosie Torres, executive director of Burn Pits 360, told the AP. The organization advocates for veterans who suffer from respiratory illnesses and cancers due to toxic exposure from trash-burning fires near military bases overseas.

There’s no guarantee that the planned cuts aren’t suddenly resurrected. President Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to slash what they call fraud, waste, and abuse from the federal government has largely been haphazard, resulting in multiple cases where they had to undo the firing of critical staff or the cancellation of lifesaving programs, such as some at the VA. In some cases, cuts haven’t been reversed despite promises otherwise, and whether money is even being saved is debatable at best. The question is how many lives have been ruined by Musk and Trump just a month into this presidency.

Donald Trump screamed Republican Representative Victoria Spartz into submission on his disastrous budget bill, Puck reported Thursday.

The Indiana congresswoman, one of the three initial holdouts on the reconciliation bill, claimed Wednesday she was a “hard no” on the resolution, which would force the Committee on Energy and Commerce to reduce the deficit by at least $880 billion from 2025 to 2034. That committee oversees Medicaid, sparking widespread concerns that Republicans were simply seeking a way to slash the crucial program.

When asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether she would bend to pressure from her colleagues, Spartz replied, “You don’t know me well enough.… You should know better than that by now.

“We cannot be weak, and we have to do the right thing for the people,” she said.

But that was before Spartz took a furious phone call from the president, whose screaming could be heard by the congresswoman’s colleagues across the Republican cloakroom, according to Puck. Trump shouted that Spartz was a fake Republican set on undermining his agenda, and loudly reminded Spartz that he was the president, Puck reported.

As a freshly scolded Spartz walked out of the cloakroom, Mike Johnson patted her on the back. “You know what you have to do,” the House speaker said.

Spartz flipped, telling reporters later that she’d had a “great conversation” with Trump, who was “on board to get some great things done on health care.”

“I trust his word,” she told reporters. It seems like Spartz doesn’t know Trump well enough and should know better than that by now.

Trump claimed after his Cabinet meeting Wednesday that he was “not going to touch” Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. But without severe slashing to federal programs, Republicans will fail to accumulate the savings required to offset the cost of the tax breaks imposed by the budget bill.

Representative Warren Davidson also flipped from “nay” to “yay” after a call from Trump. In the end, the only Republican holdout was Representative Thomas Massie.

The New York Times identified several dozen employees working for the Department of Government Efficiency, but conservatives were surprisingly unhappy about the transparency.

“The so-called New York Times outs 45 people working for DOGE,” posted the Washington Examiner’s Byron York on Thursday, alongside a screenshot of the Times article, apparently frustrated to see one of the nation’s largest newspapers doing its job in rooting out government corruption.

DOGE employees have been handed the monumental task of slashing federal spending. So far, the group has gained access to and gutted portions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Education, Commerce, Defense, and Energy Departments, the Inflation Reduction Act, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Agency for International Development, and, among other agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration, even as the nation experiences an unprecedented uptick in critical aviation crashes.

Elon Musk predicted Wednesday that the organization would meet its goal of hacking $1 trillion from the budget. Many of the staffers employed under the helm of Musk’s organization come equipped with minimal Washington experience, according to the Times, while a large number of them have former working relationships with Musk.

But knowing who’s behind the seismic cuts is apparently not a priority for conservatives, who would seemingly rather keep DOGE’s operators in a literal deep state.

Former Newsmax employee Breanna Morello posted on X that identifying the individuals working for the White House was somehow “putting the lives of DOGE employees at risk.”

“You’ll notice they have no problem detailing the individuals cutting fraud and wasteful federal spend, while hiding the names of the so-called reporters who worked on this hit piece,” Morello continued, outing herself for not finishing the article, where the bylines of some 15 Times reporters are listed.

But despite DOGE’s mandate, some experts believe that the organization’s haphazard work chopping the government into nonfunctional bits will actually add to the deficit. On Tuesday, The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait argued that DOGE’s “inflated” savings thus far had amounted to little more than a “rounding error” and that the group’s decision to take a metaphorical chain saw to the IRS had effectively decimated the government’s ability to collect revenue (taxes)—moves that could actually increase the nation’s debt.

“There’s a reason that none of the innumerable budget experts who have studied the deficit have proposed anything resembling what DOGE has come up with,” Chait wrote. “By almost any ideological standard, it is the worst possible approach.”

It seems that Trump’s massive tariffs are back on.

Earlier this month, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada—which he inaccurately used drug trafficking to justify—were paused at the last minute. But on Thursday, President Trump announced the tariffs on the two countries, along with 10 percent tariffs on China, will begin on March 4. And he’s still hung up on the drugs.

“Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels. A large percentage of these Drugs, much of them in the form of Fentanyl, are made in, and supplied by, China,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled. China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date. The April Second Reciprocal Tariff date will remain in full force and effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

These tariffs will likely cause the price of various goods—from cars to gaming consoles, to over-the-counter pills—to increase dramatically.

“Trump says 25% Canada/Mexico tariffs and another 10% China tariffs are coming next week. Meanwhile, US steel prices spiked 9%-20% last week and US manufacturers just reported their highest input costs in two years,” wrote Scott Lincicome, the vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

Earlier this week, it was reported that Trump’s spending freeze has halted a counter-narcotics program at the U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, Trump is also threatening the entire European Union with a similar 25 percent tariff, further isolating the U.S. from its economic allies.

The Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly planning to ditch a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon in favor of a deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The move would be a blatant favor to the tech mogul, as it would result in overhauling a communications system underpinning America’s air traffic control system and further increase the wealth and power of the world’s richest man, The Washington Post reports.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative has been granted unprecedented power and access in the federal government by President Trump, which has proven quite beneficial to Musk’s personal interests. The billionaire owes much of his fortune to government contracts, subsidies, and loans to his various companies.

The FAA’s contract with Verizon dates back to 2023, and was meant to upgrade a communications platform used by air traffic controllers and FAA offices. Switching to Starlink would give Musk a larger foothold at the FAA, which Musk has frequently clashed with over safety and regulatory violations. The agency is responsible for the safety and stability of America’s air travel.

Musk himself attacked Verizon on his X account Monday, claiming that “the Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk.” Several employees from his SpaceX company have been working inside the FAA, ostensibly to upgrade old technology, and despite no decisions having been made, the agency said in a statement Monday that it was already testing Starlink systems in New Jersey and Alaska.

The move increases Musk’s many conflicts of interest regarding SpaceX and the FAA, and proves that Musk can get whatever he wants from the Trump administration, while claiming to overhaul government agencies in favor of greater efficiency.

“Who’s looking out for the public interest here when you get the person who’s cutting budgets and personnel from the FAA, suddenly trying to benefit from still another government contract?” John P. Pelissero, who directs an ethics center at Santa Clara University, said to the Post.

During the first meeting of White House Cabinet officials, Elon Musk admitted that the Department of Government Efficiency cut to Ebola prevention programs was a mistake that would be reversed—but federal officials say the money still isn’t flowing in yet.

“We will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we’ll fix it very quickly,” Musk, a Trump-appointed special government employee, said Wednesday in defense of his group’s haphazard cuts while looming over the Cabinet table. “So for example with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled—very briefly—was Ebola prevention.

“So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately. And there was no interruption,” the world’s richest man added.

But federal officials have said there was nothing brief about the cut, which involved hacking away at several arms of the federal government’s disease response, and which has apparently still not been reversed.

“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’ anything in prevention” when it comes to Ebola or other diseases, former U.S. Agency for International Development official Nidhi Bouri told The Washington Post Thursday.

Earlier this month, news of an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, was reported via a USAID mission, just prior to the seismic cuts. Public health experts have argued that choosing to nix the agency would force the U.S. into an information dark age that could see the country caught off guard in future health crises.

Other public health officials were more blunt, arguing that Musk was flat-out lying in telling Americans that the nation’s disease prevention programs had been restored.

“This is bunk from Elon,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who led the agency’s Ebola response during a 2014–2015 outbreak in West Africa. “They have laid off most of the experts, they’re bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC.

“What’s left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically,” Konyndyk continued.

Konyndyk noted that before the Trump administration’s cuts, there would have been a robust interagency and international response to an Ebola outbreak that would have included resources pushed to the host government, a coalition of teams deployed to the region by USAID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Defense Department, as well as real-time cooperation and data sharing with the World Health Organization.

“But not this time,” Konyndyk wrote. “Most experts and operations staff at USAID have been pushed out … USAID’s capacity to deploy response teams is totally broken.

“Bottom line: Elon’s vendetta against USAID and the federal workforce is shredding all of the systems that the USG has built up to protect the US homeland against global outbreak risks,” Konyndyk added. “Scrambling to recall a few staff and issue some belated funding is just window dressing.”

Chief Justice John Roberts stepped in at the last minute to save Donald Trump from being forced to unfreeze $2 billion in foreign aid payments that he paused upon entering office.

Roberts issued an administrative stay on the order after lawyers for the president rushed to the Supreme Court Wednesday, desperate to subvert the decision from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali. Ali had ordered Tuesday that money for lifesaving humanitarian assistance should continue to flow to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development while he considered the legality of Trump’s funding freeze. 

When Trump failed to respond, Ali imposed a deadline for Trump to pay up, which would have been at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. The Trump administration claimed it would take “multiple weeks” to satisfy the judge’s request.

The newest order from Roberts supplies the highest court in the land with more time to review the arguments in the case, and aid organizations challenging Trump’s disastrous freeze have until Friday to file their responses. It’s likely that the order will stay in effect into next week. 

Trump’s efforts to gut USAID have threatened the delivery of therapeutic food assistance to nearly 400,000 severely malnourished children abroad.

Roberts’s order is the first time the Supreme Court has responded to Trump’s flurry of legislative activity and the torrent of legal challenges it has produced. There is currently another pending Trump-related case in the Supreme Court, concerning his ousting of leadership at the Office of Special Counsel.

Earlier this year, Roberts found himself behind the steering wheel of the most conservative court in a century for the decision in Trump’s presidential immunity case. The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case single-handedly opened the door for Trump’s return to the White House and cemented this court’s conservative lean for decades to come.  

In his year-end report, Roberts echoed Trump, warning that criticism of the court constituted “illegitimate activity” that undermines independent judges—meanwhile making way for Trump and Elon Musk to challenge and in some cases openly defy the rulings of federal courts.

Trump continues to break one of his biggest promises—one that deeply impacts many of his own supporters.

The second round of aggressive Department of Government Efficiency cuts includes a massive downsizing of the Social Security Administration, which has been ordered to cut its staff in half, according to The Washington Post.

Earlier this month, President Trump promised that “Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something. It’s going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched.” But last week, he endorsed House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to make an $880 billion cut to Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Now, DOGE is cutting the Social Security Administration in half with glee, which will certainly have an impact on benefits for millions of Americans.

This is the newest wave of DOGE’s purge.

Multiple vaccine projects have been paused by the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Kennedy paused a multimillion-dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday, and the Food and Drug Administration canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine, an advisory committee said Wednesday. 

The Covid project was a $460 million contract with Vaxart to develop a new Covid vaccine in pill form, with 10,000 people scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday. Of that, $240 million was reportedly already authorized for the preliminary study.

“While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s,” Kennedy said, according to Fox News.

“I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” Kennedy added. 

Meanwhile, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, was scheduled to meet in March to discuss the strains that would be included in next season’s flu shot, but federal officials told the committee in an email Wednesday that the meeting was canceled, said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Offit told NBC News that no explanation was given for the cancellation of the yearly spring meeting, which comes in the middle of a flu season in which 86 children and 19,000 adults have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an email to NBC, Norman Baylor, a former director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccine Research and Review, said, “I’m quite shocked. As you know, the VRBPAC is critical for making the decision on strain selection for the next influenza vaccine season.” Last week, an upcoming CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was also postponed.  

These moves send a disturbing message that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views are starting to influence health policy. On Wednesday, the secretary already had an alarming, nonchalant response to the first American measles death in a decade. Now it seems American public health efforts could experience a serious setback as long as President Trump and Kennedy are in government.

Manoshpere bigot Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan—who still face rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, among others—are on their way to the United States after the Trump administration strong-armed Romania into lifting travel restrictions.

The Tate brothers have been ardent Trump supporters for years, and it seems to have paid off. A Trump official mentioned the Tates in a call with Romania earlier this month, according to the Financial Times. Trump’s special envoy Ric Grenell brought up the brothers again to Romania’s foreign minister on his trip to Munich.

Now, the brothers—who are both dual British-American citizens—are on a plane to Florida, according to their lawyer Ioan Gliga.

The Tates will likely then have a bunch of photo ops with some of the worst people Washington, D.C., has to offer.

“I have never heard of a foreign government asking Romania to lift preventive measures to allow some suspects to leave the country,” foreign Romanian Judge Cristi Danilet told the Associated Press. “If I had been a judge, this would not have happened. If it is true, it means that there is no more rule of law and sovereign countries.”

Tate, a self-professed anti-feminist, has maintained his innocence.