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17 April 2023

Military Times | Lawmakers demand VA fire substandard staff faster

Darin Selnick, a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and a former Trump administration staffer who helped author the 2017 law, said that VA officials have not followed through on multiple court challenges to the firing authorities and opted against using them in other cases, including the Loma Linda case. “They could have come to Congress to fix the issues, or followed through with appeals,” he said. “They didn’t seem to want to win.”

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Military Times | This week in Congress: NDAA, defense budget drafts on the horizon

Congress returns to Capitol Hill from a two-week break with a rush of posture hearings ahead of expected budget proposals from the House and Senate at the start of the summer.

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NBC News | Air National Guardsman is detained by judge on charges of leaking classified documents

Judge David Hennessy told Teixeira, in his first court appearance here Friday, that he was being charged with possessing classified documents pertaining to national security and possessing national defense materials.

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Politico | U.S., Philippines hold largest war drills near disputed waters

The United States and the Philippines on Tuesday launch their largest combat exercises in decades that will involve live-fire drills, including a boat-sinking rocket assault in waters across the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait that will likely inflame China.

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Wall Street Journal | VA pauses rollout of $16 billion health record system

The Department of Veterans Affairs is holding up further rollout of a problem-plagued, multibillion-dollar electronic health record system as the contract is renegotiated.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune | The VA should not make veterans feel hopeless. Let’s act now to prevent that

No veteran should be left believing there is no hope for them at the VA, the very department meant to serve them. And no veteran should be reading this column in fear of what they might hear at their VA appointments.

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Defense One | Biden must resist calls to send cluster munitions to Ukraine

War is never short of horrifying, but cluster munitions stand out even amid the terrible weaponry of modern war. Designed to blanket an area with “bomblets” that disperse in midair, these unguided munitions pose a unique threat to civilians. The bomblets frequently fail to detonate immediately, leaving them to wound and kill children who happen upon them as they play in fields, run errands, or travel to school.

The Overwatch | My VA Story: Former VA employee sheds light on a dream job turned nightmare

Jessica’s passion for helping veterans and giving them the care and attention they needed was met with hostility by her VA coworkers and leadership. “I was essentially bullied out of the VA. I was being targeted, being harassed, being intimidated,” Jessica recalls. “I would come home crying a lot. They made it very difficult for me.”

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MSNBC | Jason Beardsley joins MSNBC to discuss the recent intelligence leak

Senior Coalitions Advisor Jason Beardsley joined MSNBC's Way Too Early to discuss the recent U.S. intelligence leak and the war in Ukraine.

WRAL | Veterans walking from Fort Bragg to Camp Lejeune bring awareness to military suicides

A group of 10 local veterans are drawing attention to mental health one step at a time. They're marching from Fort Bragg to Camp Lejeune to bring focus to preventing suicide within the ranks. Some of the vets are marching for very personal reasons.

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