Nevada State Senator, and Army veteran, Pat Spearman gathers with fellow Nevada veterans to show their support for the Biden-Harris presidential campaign, Thursday July 11, 2024.
Monday, July 15, 2024 | 2 a.m.
As the organizers behind Project 2025 prepare to host events at the Republican National Convention this week, some veterans in Nevada denounced the controversial blueprint to transform the federal government.
Among the ideas presented in the 900-page plan affecting veterans are to outsource many of the core health care services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs and an end to abortion services and gender-affirming care offered at VA hospitals.
Project 2025 was created for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by the conservative Heritage Foundation, with input from many of the former president’s political allies and staff members in his administration. Trump distanced himself from it, posting on his Truth Social social media website, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
Last week, groups of veterans gathered in Las Vegas and Reno to proclaim support for President Joe Biden’s second term, emphasizing that an administration led by Trump would mean a weakened VA. “Project 2025 scares the hell out of me because it goes against ‘Project 1776,’ as far as everything we have fought for, everything we have died for,” said Nevada State Sen. Pat Spearman, who spoke at the Las Vegas gathering.
Christina Thomas, a veteran also attending the Las Vegas gathering, said she had been an advocate for veterans since she was a 16-year-old, years before she ever enlisted in the Air Force.
Thomas, a Las Vegas resident, grew up in a military family – descending from her grandfather all they way to her godchildren. She watched her father deal with the aftermath of his time in Vietnam, and she recognizes how it affected her as well.
“President Biden’s investment into health care for veterans, making mental health a priority, and respecting the lives of veterans is the reason that I and my family are able to receive the quality, affordable health care that we fought for,” Thomas said. “It’s the reason I’m alive today.”
The Heritage Foundation will have a strong presence at the RNC. The organization is scheduled to host a 10-hour event, a policy fest on “fighting for America’s future,” and is listed as a sponsor on the host committee website.
“Groups rented out space and are hosting their own events outside of the convention, the RNC and the campaign. It does not mean the Trump campaign is endorsing a certain group or that they represent campaign beliefs,” an RNC spokesperson said.
Project 2025 also states that the current VA leadership focuses too much on social equity and inclusion. The document claims these social efforts only affect a small minority of veterans and distract from the VA’s core missions.
Thomas agrees there is a smaller number of veterans who could be affected by some of the proposed changes contained in Project 2025, such as the ban on abortions or gender-assignment services in VA hospitals, but said that only makes those services more important to provide.
The Republican National Committee released its party platform last week after not having an official platform for Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection run. The 2024 platform endorsed by Trump says it “will restore Trump administration reforms to expand veterans’ health care choices.”
One of Trump’s largest policy actions as president affecting the VA was his signing of the 2018 VA Maintaining Integral Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act, which expanded on the Obama-era Veteran’s Access, Choice and Accountability Act. The bipartisan MISSION Act built on its predecessor, seeking a permanent community care program for veterans while providing them additional health care access outside of the VA.
Nearly two years after Trump signed the legislation, a Government Accountability Office study found the community care program under the bill, the VCCP, was not responding in a timely enough manner for successful operation. The congressional watchdog had called out VA wait times under Obama as well and did not explicitly mention Trump in the 2020 report.
Thomas said she agreed that the VA had its pitfalls and that privatized health care for veterans should exist.
“I’m actually bipartisan. What you’re failing to realize is we have a provider shortage, which means you do not have industrialized capital-gaining health care systems that are trained and trauma-informed for a population like ours. Our population needs a complexity of issues that does not fit in (Project 2025’s) description of what health care is,” she said.
Spearman said she saw the Biden-Harris administration’s approach to the VA play out in Nevada, adding that outreach for veterans facing mental health challenges has grown the past four years.
“During my retirement years, I have seen how the VA was and how it is,” Spearman said. “I’ve only lived one place since I retired, and that’s Nevada. And I have watched as the services got better.”
“There has been no greater advocate for our brave military men and women than President Trump,” Karoline Leavitt, a former assistant press secretary in the Trump White House, wrote in a statement to the Sun. “President Trump … secured the largest pay raise for our troops in a decade and became the first leader since Ronald Reagan not to start a new war and put our troops in harm’s way.”
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