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By Sophie Clark
Live News Reporter
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The U.S. is celebrating Veterans Day, commemorating the work of service members past and present, but defense experts have spent months raising their fears about Project 2025's proposals for veteran care.
Project 2025, a mandate for conservative leadership created by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C., includes plans for restructuring the Department of Veterans Affairs—such as increasing "robust political control" of the VA, removing abortion access for VA health care recipients and reviewing the VA's protocols for disability aid.
Michael Embrich, a former member of the Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, has been vocal about his fears surrounding the manifesto, saying in July that Project 2025's policy proposals to overhaul the VA—the largest health care provider for veterans—is the "worst-case scenario" for veterans in the U.S.
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In August, the nonpartisan Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute said, "A second Trump term would decimate veterans' healthcare and benefits," as it analyzed Project 2025's proposals. It added: "The Heritage plan aims to finish, in a second Trump administration, the VA demolition job that was launched in the first one. It's an unconscionable approach to those who've risked their lives for this country."
Project 2025 covers a wide scope of issues, including banning pornography and using federal policies to prevent the dispersion of abortion pills.
While Donald Trump, who was elected president a second time in Tuesday's election, has repeatedly said he is not associated with the 900-page document, several of his former aides were directly involved in creating Project 2025, including Brooks Tucker, who wrote the chapter on the Department of Veterans Affairs. Brooks served as the VA's acting chief of staff during the first Trump administration.
Newsweek has contacted a Trump administration spokesperson for comment via email.
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What Does Project 2025 Say About Political Control of the VA?
Tucker wrote that he wanted to "bring about better solutions" to the workflow challenges facing the Veterans Benefits Administration, which involved taking "robust political control of the VA."
This would mean removing the previous administration's VA appointees, reevaluating the VA's hybrid work model and, on day one, transferring all career senior executive service members out of specific positions within the VA to "ensure political control" of the agency.
Embrich, in a July op-ed for Government Executive, criticized the final point, writing: "Cutting jobs, especially in the midst of ongoing economic recovery, is not a move that should be taken lightly. We have a responsibility to consider the broader societal implications, not just the short-term political gains.
"Our veterans, who have already given so much, should not have to pay the price for hasty political decisions."
What Does Project 2025 Say About Abortion Provision by the VA?
Project 2025 is staunchly anti-abortion, including within the VA. Tucker wrote: "For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform.
"In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department's core missions."
In October 2023, the Military Times reported, "For the last 13 months, VA medical centers have provided abortion access to veterans and eligible dependents in cases of rape, incest and pregnancies that endanger the life or health of an individual."
Abortion-rights advocates have said that as many as one in three female veterans experienced sexual trauma while serving in the military. And according to a 2021 brief written for the VA, veterans experience higher rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault than nonveterans.
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What Does Project 2025 Say About Disability Aid From the VA?
Tucker proposed that the VA overhaul its Schedule for Rating Disabilities to decrease the number of funds going to disabilities he said were "tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service."
"The further growth in presumptive service-connected medical conditions pursued by Congress and Veteran Service Organizations, begun with Agent Orange and most recently for Burn Pits/Airborne Toxins, has led to historic increases in mandatory VBA spending in recent years," he wrote.
According to the VA, exposure to burn pits and airborne toxins can cause severe and life-threatening conditions, including brain cancer, lymphoma, pancreatic cancer and respiratory cancers.
Beau Biden, President Joe Biden's son, died of brain cancer following exposure to burn pits in Iraq.
In a July op-ed in Task & Purpose, Russell B. Lemle and Jasper Craven of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, criticized Project 2025's proposal regarding disabilities, which they feared would cut into ongoing health care needs for veterans.
"There are five million veterans who have a service-connected designation, and they all potentially stand to lose access for the bulk of their healthcare needs," they wrote. "Two million veterans without a service-connected designation could potentially be disenrolled from VA healthcare entirely."
What Else Does Project 2025 Say About the VA?
Project 2025 also seeks to increase the number of people seen by doctors every day to meet the same standards as the Department of Defense.
Lemle and Craven criticized the move as "shortchanging" veterans, who they said require significantly more care than active service members.
They wrote: "Veterans are also far more likely to have multiple, co-occurring medical conditions compared to U.S. servicemembers. As a result, VHA healthcare providers need to spend more time with veterans during their appointments to effectively address their complex health needs."
Project 2025 also advocates for ending the VA's provision of gender-affirming care, which it calls "contrary to principles of conservative governance"; establishing a veterans bill of rights so "veterans and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive"; and expanding community-based outpatient clinics "without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses."
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