PROJECT 2025 TARGETS LGBTQIA+ soldiers by calling for a ban on transgender people from the military. This would mean discharging thousands of service members who are willing to fight for their country. Discharged soldiers could lose not only their careers but also the benefits they have earned and deserve. Project 2025 calls for banning federal funds for gender-affirming surgery as well as abortion services; this extends to the military and Veterans Administration (VA). 

Veterans support the United States through their service in the armed forces; Americans have an obligation to return that service with support and health care when their service is done. Unfortunately, Project 2025 plans to erode those benefits rather than improve them (as they claim to do). Its radical plan to purge the federal civil service of 50,000 career employees (see related papers on Labor) will highly impact veterans, including disabled veterans (see below). 

Expect caps on VA claims and higher health insurance costs for veterans 

In the name of efficiency to address VA claim backlogs, Project 2025 wants to further privatize and outsource Veterans Administration (VA) programs. It would close many VA facilities and shift federal VA dollars, clinical care, and claims administration to outside private clinics and private VA subcontractors, pushing veterans into the private insurance market. The result? Expect possible caps on VA claims and higher health insurance costs for veterans, warn critics.  

Project 2025’s main points of attack on military: 

✓ Refocus the military on war fighting – as opposed to “left” “woke” policies like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) (see paper on DEI); this extends to the VA, too. 

✓ Align all armed services policies with a Christian-right anti-choice and anti-diversity ideology. 

✓ Discharge all transgender service members (gender dysphoria). 

✓ Stop approving the use of Veterans Administration monies for service members’ gender affirming care and abortion.

✓ Reverse Biden VA policies starting on “Day One” of a new administration (see below).

✓ Restore the previous Trump-era Veterans Administration policy known as MISSION (Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks) to outsource Veterans Administration care and benefits. 

Specific VA proposals and impacts: 

Political appointees: 

✓ On “Day One” of the new Republican administration, transfer all executive-level appointees to ensure political control of the VA. 

Cut Federal Workforce: 

✓ Currently 31% of federal executive-branch employees are veterans, of whom 53% are disabled veterans. Project 2025 propose to reclassify 50,000 civil service jobs and replace them with conservative political appointees. 

Privatize VA health care:  

✓ Project 2025 will restore the previous Trump-era Veterans Administration policy. It proposes outsourcing more VA health care and administration to private community based health care facilities and contractors, based on a Trump-era Asset and Infrastructure Review Commission study of the VA and a plan referred to as AIR. 

Project 2025 embraces the Trump-era MISSION plan which would transfer VA care and administration to more community health centers and private subcontractors, pushing veterans into the private healthcare insurance marketplace. (Overall, Project 2025 wants to get rid of Obamacare health insurance, or the Affordable Care Act). (see Health paper for more.) 

Fact check: veterans’ health care improved under the Biden Administration:

✓ Care for service members affected by toxins: As of March 2024, a huge expansion of veterans’ benefits took place, covering any service member who was exposed to toxins. This was a planned extension of the PACT Act, which was signed into law in 2022: 

“The VA announced that all Veterans who were exposed to toxins and other hazards while  serving in the military — at home or abroad — will be eligible to enroll directly in VA  health care beginning March 5, 2024. This means that all Veterans who served in the  Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Global War on Terror, or any other combat zone after 9/11 will be eligible to enroll directly in VA health care without first  applying for VA benefits. Additionally, Veterans who never deployed but were exposed to toxins or hazards while training or on active duty in the United States will also be eligible to enroll.” (i) 

✓ Legislation enacted by Congress in 2022 now makes it easier and faster for veterans who have become sick through exposure to toxins to receive disability benefits. So far, almost one million claims have been processed through the PACT Act. (ii)

✓ Project 2025 claims that the increase in disability benefits was not adequately planned, and has caused an ‘erosion of trust.’ It criticizes the Biden administration for “expanding the unionized federal employee workforce,” even though this expansion sped up the processing of claims. Here, Project 2025 reveals its anti-union animus – and goal of privatizing federal VA responsibilities. 

Fact Check: VA quality and safety of care are superior or comparable to non-VA  centers: 

In 2023, the American College of Surgeons published a study showing that “the quality and safety of care across surgical specialties at VA healthcare sites is as good as, or better than, non VA health centers on several quality measures.” (iii) A recent Stanford University study found that “Veterans treated at Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals had survival rates at least 20 percent better than veterans treated in non-VA hospitals.” (iv) 

Fact Check: Availability of VA healthcare facilities: 

Under President Trump, the VA performed a study of VA health care facilities to develop a plan for closing many of them and pushing more healthcare for veterans into the private sector (the plan is the Asset and Infrastructure Review, or AIR, Commission). This plan was blocked by a bipartisan group of senators in 2023. (v) The plan would have forced veterans to find health insurance for themselves in the private market. Project 2025 hopes to reintroduce the AIR plan. 

What Would Happen Next? 

Project 2025’s proposals would effectively gut VA health care benefits and reduce access to care for veterans, and this threatens disabled veterans, in particular. It would reverse Biden VA programs that have increased veteran claims for toxic exposure to chemical warfare, and make it harder, not easier, to claim such benefits. It threatens to fire a workforce that contains a lot of veterans, including disabled vets, strips federal protections for transgender soldiers and would return the US to the days of gay witch hunts, outings, and purging of transgender people from the military, while threatening their benefits. Taken together, Project 2025 would weaken, not strengthen, the military workforce as well as the VA health system and its support for veterans, including disabled veterans. – ACD, SO’D, MM