{"id":175,"date":"2025-03-06T06:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T06:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/?p=175"},"modified":"2025-03-06T06:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T06:26:08","slug":"report-fbi-agents-refused-to-show-trump-lawyer-the-search-warrant-for-mar-a-lago-raid-kicked-her-out-of-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/2025\/03\/06\/report-fbi-agents-refused-to-show-trump-lawyer-the-search-warrant-for-mar-a-lago-raid-kicked-her-out-of-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Veterans Would Rather Go Back to War Than Deal With the Bureaucratic Hell That Is Veterans Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Wallace White, The Daily Caller News Foundation \u2022 Mar. 5, 2025<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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(DCNF<\/a>)\u2014Stephen Fisher joined the United States Marine Corps after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. After three tours in Iraq and surviving three roadside bombs, he suffered nerve damage, vision loss and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among many other injuries from his service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when he returned home to civilian life, he left one battle in Iraq and began to fight another against the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) bureaucracy attempting to receive healthcare he needed. Fisher filed his first claim in September 2007. Since then, the VA has repeatedly dragged its feet because Fisher couldn\u2019t make all his review appointments for his claims due to working a part-time job as a police dispatcher. His fight for benefits continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fisher\u2019s situation is unfortunately the reality for many military veterans who risked their lives fighting America\u2019s enemies overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The VA has a track record marred with a myriad<\/a> of problems spanning multiple<\/a> presidential administrations, such as long wait times, skimping on quality coverage and crumbling facilities that are unable to properly care for veterans. Numerous veterans told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the VA fundamentally misunderstands veterans, and needs major reform in order to stop leaving soldiers behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m just stuck in this cyclical loop of being asked to provide additional evidence for something that the VA have fallen short on,\u201d Fisher told the DCNF. \u201cThis is something that should have been handled over a decade ago. This has been through four or five presidencies now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center, where Fisher received care, told the DCNF that they could not comment on specifics of a patient\u2019s care without Fisher signing a separate release form, which he declined to provide. The national VA also declined to discuss specifics without a release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t question our leaders before going into battle, not knowing whether or not we would come out alive or whole. We just did it,\u201d Montgomery Granger, former U.S. Army major serving for 28 years, told the DCNF. \u201cIf I could say something to Donald Trump and to [VA Secretary] Doug Collins, or to Pete Hegseth, or even Elon Musk doing the [Department of Government Efficiency] work: It\u2019s your turn. Just do it. And when you do it, pay attention to the details.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wade Miller, former U.S. Marine and senior advisor at Center for Renewing America, suffered nerve damage during his deployment and received quick treatment while overseas through military hospitals. However, when he was discharged and used the VA Medical Center in Dallas to receive care, he quickly realized that VA care was a far cry from what he received overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The North Texas VA also told the DCNF that they do not comment on the specifics of cases without patient consent, with Miller declining to sign a release form with his personal information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe encourage any Veteran with concerns to contact us so we can swiftly act and deliver the high-quality care they deserve,\u201d the North Texas VA told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he moved to the Washington, D.C., area he was forced to go to a VA hospital nearly an hour away, with little flexibility on appointment times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy biggest ongoing complaint is not just the extraordinary amount of time in which it would take you to get seen at a VA hospital, but it\u2019s also the VA hospitals that they assign you to,\u201d Miller told the DCNF. \u201cI live in Burke, Virginia, and they make me go to the VA hospital that\u2019s on the east side of DC. So it\u2019s like an hour plus away. I\u2019ve got numerous hospitals within 10 to 15 minutes of me here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s already an existing hospital system around us all, and so we don\u2019t need a duplicate VA system, or we at least don\u2019t need to expand it,\u201d Miller told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, suicides continue to plague the ranks of veterans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veteran suicides have remained relatively steady since 2001, hovering around 6,000 reported veteran suicides in 2022, according<\/a> to 2024 data from the VA. Granger told the DCNF veterans end up taking their own lives in part because of the lack of understanding of veteran problems at the VA, and that disconnect could be the tipping point that sends some veterans over the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAsking me to describe my PTSD or how many blasts I was exposed to\u2026It\u2019s degrading,\u201d Granger told the DCNF. \u201cThe only two things that the VA gets right right now are the death benefit and burying the whole person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey wonder why there\u2019s an epidemic of veteran suicide. Most guys can\u2019t handle this process,\u201d Granger told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claims backlog has risen dramatically since 2019, going from under 100,000 claims before 2019 to over 250,000 in 2025, according<\/a> to VA data. The VA denies nearly 30% of claims made without an attorney, and nearly 15% made with one, according<\/a> to a 2020 VA report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite small improvements, wait times for primary care averaged<\/a> 22 days in May 2024, exceeding the 20-day standard<\/a> the VA sets for access to care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average age of a VA patient was 64 years old for men, and 49 years for women, according<\/a> to 2021 VA statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A VA spokesperson told the DCNF that Collins is \u201cfocusing relentlessly on customer service and convenience,\u201d highlighting its cuts<\/a> to DEI policies, personnel changes<\/a> saving $98 million a year, and its cooperation with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to curtail \u201cwaste.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The VA requested<\/a> $369.5 billion for fiscal year 2025 under the Biden administration, another<\/a> increase in the already massive amount of tax dollars granted to the department. Despite the increases in funding, many veterans haven\u2019t seen much progress on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, he greenlit the Community Cares program under the VA MISSION Act, which allows<\/a> veterans to get specific care from non-VA providers if the department approves the request. Often, veterans will use the provision to go to private practices to get faster, higher-quality care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, a group of 24 veterans organizations wrote<\/a> a letter to the VA in December 2024 alleging that the VA under President Joe Biden was stonewalling access to private providers by abusing a waiting period for inquiries into accessing community care. The VA blamed budgetary constraints within the department on the existence of community care options, despite the fact that a patient only becomes eligible if direct VA care is not available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collins said<\/a> in his confirmation hearing in January that the MISSION ACT was one of the most important pieces of legislation he will seek to fully enforce as secretary. He also pointed to the enforcement of other Trump-era legislation as critical to his new administration, such as the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act and the PACT Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granger told the DCNF that he is confident that the new administration can reform the VA, and reiterated that it shouldn\u2019t be forgotten that the original mission of the VA was to simply care for veterans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbraham Lincoln didn\u2019t say in the second inaugural address \u2018care for him who bore the battle, but only if it\u2019s service-related,\u2019 right?\u201d Granger told the DCNF. \u201cHe didn\u2019t qualify the statement. If he had, the whole idea of a veterans administration would have been a complete failure from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter\u2019s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Wallace White, The Daily Caller News Foundation \u2022 Mar. 5, 2025 (DCNF)\u2014Stephen Fisher joined the United States Marine Corps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuckersurvival.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}