"We love our veterans," Trump said during an Oval Office photo op shortly after his inauguration. "We are going to take good care of them." Days after that pronouncement, a memo leaked showing the administration was considering sweeping job cuts at the agency. "Things need to change," warned Doug Collins, Trump's new VA secretary, in a video message to staff. Six months after Trump entered the White House, the VA had 3,800 fewer doctors, nurses and other "mission critical" staff than it did at the start of his term, according to the department's own data. While the losses made up a small percentage of overall employees, the drop compounded longstanding shortages " and contrasted sharply with a hiring spree under President Joe Biden that had begun to address them. Many of the front-line workers who quit in Trump's early days have never been replaced. Instead, the VA has eliminated thousands of open positions, including doctors, nurses and other providers.
At least 10 US Air Force refueling aircraft left a second airbase in Britain on Monday. Flight tracking data seen by BBC Verify shows the aircraft left RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and landed at other American bases in Europe and also at Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire. The Wall Street Journal reported that this was in response to a threat from Iran but the BBC has not independently verified that claim. Monday's departures come weeks after the US withdrew its bombers from RAF Fairford airbase over a suspected Iran-linked security incident. read more
Donald Trump Jr. claimed comedian Russell Brand was convicted of rape and sentenced to more than a decade in prison because of his religious conversion and embrace of conservative political views, according to a video posted to Rumble on Tuesday. Speaking after Brand's sentencing at Southwark Crown Court for rape and sexual assault, the 48-year-old son of President Donald Trump argued that the prosecution was politically motivated. "He finds God, I guess, changes his ways, sees some aspects of conservative life, and talks about them, and now he's going to spend 10 and a half years in prison for rape when no one had a problem with it in the prior 27 years," Trump Jr. said.
President Donald Trump's war victory claims drew jeers after one of his top officials quietly went into hiding. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has left his Washington-area home for a military base after Iran threatened his life, The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. Bessent has spearheaded the administration's effort to strangle Tehran's finances since August, a role the Times' sources said put him high on Iran's target list. He's the latest in a string of senior Trump officials, including White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, to trade a private home for a military base or other guarded housing.
A college Republican coalition claiming 31 affiliated student groups in 14 states that attacked the Trump administration from the right routed its email through the same Microsoft 365 account as a company controlled by white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Until Monday morning, Microsoft's public sign-in records put the College Republican Patriot Coalition (CRPC)'s web domain in an account registered to NJF LLC, a Fuentes-managed company that also runs his personal website and online store. By Monday evening, hours after the Guardian sent questions to Fuentes and the coalition, the domain no longer appeared in that account, and a Microsoft verification code had been deleted from its settings. Fuentes's own domains remained in the account. The organization has hinted at ties with Fuentes in the past, but no operational link has been definitively shown until now.
The exodus of healthcare providers has increasingly forced veterans into the private care program " called Community Care " that the Trump administration has pushed. Amid soaring caseloads there and what a government report describes as "insufficient staffing," many vets have been facing interminable waits.
Happy suckers and losers day!
~Cadet Bone Spurs~