America’s Forgotten Frontline: Inside the VA During Trump’s Shutdown

Illustration by Abdelafatah Mukhtar

The United States government has entered its second month of a shutdown, and for the nation’s veterans, the fallout is becoming difficult to ignore. The system responsible for caring for the Americans who just finished fighting a 20-year war is grinding to a halt – even as Washington continues to protect its global spending priorities.

Defense budgets remain insulated. Billions in foreign aid to allies like Israel, Ukraine, and now Argentina are guaranteed through appropriations or outright will. The money for projecting American power never stops; only the support for those who carried it out does.

Inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, the mood is described as silent and surreal – like a mission with no command. Many are still showing up to work during the shutdown without pay, trying to keep disability claims moving and answer phones that don’t stop ringing. Supervisors who once sent daily guidance have gone quiet. The sense of order that once defined the agency has evaporated, replaced by an anxious silence that feels more like neglect than discipline.

A System in Limbo

The shutdown has exposed just how fragile the VA’s foundation has become. Entire regional offices are shuttered to the public. Transition programs meant to help recently separated service members find jobs or housing are suspended.

The employees who remain on duty run skeleton crews juggling workloads that already stretched them thin long before the shutdown began. Attrition and early retirements have hollowed out entire departments, especially in mid-level management and administrative review. Clinics are running short-staffed while morale evaporates.

In smaller communities, the stress is more tangible. A single retirement can mean the loss of an entire service line for local veterans. At the Castle Rock clinic in Colorado, for example, there are just three providers – none working full-time. Getting a mental-health appointment can take weeks; dental care, even longer. The VA has begun referring more veterans into Community Care – the program that allows them to see civilian doctors when VA facilities are over capacity – but even that lifeline is fraying. Community providers are overwhelmed, and scheduling outside the VA can take months.

Even where operations appear stable, the reality beneath the surface tells another story. Claims are still being processed on paper, but supervisory reviews, appeals, and quality checks have slowed to a crawl. Veterans waiting on disability compensation or housing stipends aren’t seeing delays on a spreadsheet – they’re feeling them as missed rent, overdue bills, and untreated conditions.

Automation in the Name of Efficiency

Beneath the surface of chaos, a quieter shift is unfolding — one that could be described as a test run for privatization. Artificial-intelligence systems are now being integrated into the disability claims review process under the banner of “modernization.” These tools automatically screen submissions and route them to raters.

On paper, that sounds efficient. In practice, it means fewer human eyes on the very stories that define a veteran’s life: a combat injury, a training accident, a diagnosis that changed everything. Nuance and context — the things that make those claims human — get lost in translation when judgment is left to an algorithm.

The introduction of AI has also raised fears about staffing. With AI doing the job of VA employees, there’s less need for people. Each technological “upgrade” eliminates the justification for another full-time worker. What the department calls modernization feels, to many inside the agency, like a slow but deliberate attempt to do more with fewer humans and less accountability.

Automation might make sense in a shipping warehouse, but inside a system built on trust — it erodes the very thing veterans depend on most: belief that the people reviewing their claims actually understand what they’re going through.

The VA Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan | Susan J. Demas

Privatization by Another Name

The push to privatize the VA isn’t new. It began years ago, disguised as “choice.” The Community Care program — once a stopgap measure for rural veterans or overflow cases — has quietly evolved into a parallel system. For some veterans, it’s been a blessing. Civilian providers can offer quicker appointments for specialized treatments the VA can’t always provide. But the money for those visits doesn’t appear out of thin air; it comes from the same budget that keeps VA hospitals open. Every dollar diverted to private contracts is a dollar not reinvested in the public system that veterans were promised.

This trajectory began under David Shulkin, Trump’s first VA Secretary. A holdover from the Obama administration, Shulkin tried to modernize without dismantling. Under political pressure, he advanced the 2018 MISSION Act, expanding eligibility to private care. Months later, Shulkin said he was fired because he refused to push privatization further. His successor, Robert Wilkie, accelerated the transition — routing more veterans into private networks and steadily shrinking the VA’s internal capacity.

Now, under Doug Collins, the rhetoric has shifted to “right-sizing” and “efficiency” — bureaucratic euphemisms for staff cuts and outsourcing. The result is a slow-motion hollowing-out of America’s largest healthcare system: fewer employees, more contractors, and a workforce running on fumes.

As more veterans are pushed to outside care, the VA loses volume and justification for funding. Each drop in usage becomes “proof” that the system doesn’t work — a self-fulfilling prophecy for Republicans. The public sees the same commercials, the same slogans about “serving those who served,” but behind them, the workforce is exhausted and demoralized.

During the shutdown employees have described feeling scared and oddly lonely because of the lack of communication from above. In some offices, staff go weeks without an email from leadership. Meetings have vanished. Guidance has dried up. That silence, more than any current policy, is defining the current VA.

Retreat in Plain Sight

The shutdown has also frozen progress on what should have been a turning point for veteran care: the Honoring Our PACT Act, signed by President Biden in 2022. The legislation, which passed the House 256-174 and the Senate 86-11, was heralded as the largest expansion of veteran benefits in generations. It finally recognized the suffering of those exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and toxic environments long denied by bureaucracy. For once, Congress seemed to remember its moral obligation to the people it sent to war.

Now, that promise is suspended in a shutdown. Implementation is shut down. Claims are piling up, and Republicans could weaponize backlog later — as a talking point to claim the VA can’t manage itself and must rely more on private providers.

At the same time, the department is seeking to focus on disability review appointments — follow-ups to determine whether a veteran’s condition has improved enough to justify reducing benefits. On paper, it’s a legitimate part of oversight. In reality, many see it as a form of cost control. Service-connected conditions rarely vanish; most fluctuate or worsen over time. To the veterans undergoing them, these reviews can feel less like accountability and more like an inquisition designed to save money.

For VA workers, the human cost of these pressures is staggering. Pulling from retirement accounts just to stay afloat. Others count the days until they can retire. Every lost worker takes with them decades of experience – the institutional memory that keeps complex systems running. What looks like “staffing changes” on the outside feels like collapse inside the walls of the department.

To the public, a shutdown is a political fight in Washington. Inside the VA, it’s a lived reality: unanswered phones, suspended counseling sessions, and veterans wondering whether the country they served still sees them. Supervisors who once sent daily guidance are silent. The agency’s purpose — to be a living contract between the government and its veterans — feels like it’s being rewritten one furlough at a time.

Patriotic Hypocrisy

All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of billions in taxpayer dollars still flowing overseas. Defense spending remains untouched. Argentina has received a promise of a $40 billion stabilization package. Israel continues to collect $3.8 billion a year in U.S. assistance. Two administrations have sent tens of billions more to support Ukraine’s war effort.

Even in a shutdown, Congress finds a way to fund conflict. The same lawmakers who preach “fiscal responsibility” can approve billion-dollar weapons contracts without hesitation and see entire carrier groups prepare for regime change without batting an eye. But when it comes to caring for the Americans who fought those wars — many of whom now work inside the very department that serves veterans — austerity suddenly becomes patriotic.

This isn’t about scarcity, it’s about values. The United States can always afford war; it just refuses to afford peace — or the healing of the young men and women who fought its wars, or the paychecks of the employees caring for them.

Meanwhile, political insiders remain untouched. Kash Patel still flies on government funded private jets for date nights. The president and vice president continue their globe-trotting photo ops, guided from tarmac to podium like toddlers on autopilot. And back home, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are left wondering when their next paycheck will come, or how they’ll feed their families in the meantime.

The Broken Contract

Every delay, every unprocessed claim, every week of silence from leadership chips away at the promise our government made to care for the men and women who served their country. Workers inside the department feeling scared and “oddly lonely” while waiting over a week from guidance from above are forced to navigate a government shutdown on their own. Many are dipping into savings and retirement accounts to stay afloat — knowing they have to cover shifts on an already hollowed out crew making it work. Some are retiring early, taking decades of knowledge with them.

This is the quiet frontline of the shutdown. The public sees headlines about budgets and negotiations; inside the VA, the consequences are human. Furloughed contact offices mean veterans can’t walk in to file claims or get assistance. Disability reviews continue without full oversight, while new claims sit in virtual queues. Burn pit victims wait for the care authorized under the PACT Act, but the staff needed to process their paperwork is gone. Even the simplest tasks — answering phones, scheduling appointments – have become acts of endurance.

The hypocrisy couldn’t be more glaring. The same government that finds billions for foreign militaries, defense contractors, and corporate bailouts can’t seem to find the will to pay the people who care for its veterans. The Pentagon’s budget is sacred; the VA’s is expendable. And for what? To sustain a political shutdown meant to protect Donald Trump from the fallout of the Epstein files — a scandal that threatens to expose not just him, but an entire web of predatory enablers.

While Congress postures and the administration shields itself, the people who served this country are the ones paying the price. Veterans are going longer without care. VA workers are burning out. Families who depend on federal paychecks are emptying savings accounts to stay afloat, not knowing if they’ll be reimbursed. The shutdown isn’t about fiscal policy; it’s about power, distraction, and self-preservation.

Every day it continues, the moral divide grows wider. On one side: the endless funding of conflict abroad. On the other: the deliberate starvation of the very systems meant to heal the wounds of our own. That’s not leadership — it’s moral decay.

Inside the VA, workers are still holding the line. They’re showing up without pay, processing what they can, and trying to keep faith in a system that no longer seems to believe in them. Their quiet perseverance — unseen, unthanked, and right now unpaid – is the last thread holding together a promise this country keeps breaking.

A nation that can always afford war should never plead poverty when it comes to peace. Until that changes, America will keep abandoning its own — not on the battlefield, but in the waiting rooms and call centers of the department built to care for them.

Evan Fields is a veteran who writes the Fourth & Democracy and Weekly Wrap newsletters for Lincoln Square and the News from Underground Substack.

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