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Pete Hegseth Will Make The Pentagon Great Again


By: Mark Lucas | December 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/06/pete-hegseth-will-make-the-pentagon-great-again/

Pete Hegseth speaking onstage

Pete Hegseth has the combat leadership experience, academic pedigree, and profound love of country necessary to make our military great again. I served with him in the 34th Infantry Division and succeeded him in leading Concerned Veterans for America, and I wholeheartedly endorse his nomination to be our next secretary of defense.

President Trump knows that the Pentagon is in desperate need of reform, and the best way to accomplish that is to send a true outsider to run the show. The Make America Great Again movement has no better outsider to fix our broken military than Pete Hegseth, and he will also be a true loyalist to President Trump’s agenda. 

Hegseth’s leadership will ensure our military returns to the basics of defeating our adversaries, rather than pushing a social justice agenda. Our military is in the midst of a readiness and recruitment crisis, and reform is needed fast. Hegseth and I served as infantry rifle platoon leaders in combat. Warfighters don’t have the luxury of being distracted by frivolous matters during combat operations. We focused on what I called the Big Four: shoot, move, communicate, and stop bleeding. Transgender surgeries and understanding white rage didn’t quite make the list.

I served as the executive director of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), succeeding Hegseth, who brought this group to national prominence. Contrary to media reports based on anonymous sources, I can confirm that Hegseth was not fired. It was common knowledge within CVA that he was going to Fox News. This is nothing more than another tired media attack from an apparatus hell-bent on destroying his nomination.

The media have falsely portrayed CVA as a dysfunctional organization under Hegseth’s leadership, but the executive team and strategy I inherited from him were world-class. The proof is in the policy victories we helped President Trump deliver for veterans by reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2017 and 2018.

I personally briefed President Trump on CVA’s policy proposals during a roundtable discussion with other leaders from Veteran Service Organizations. My message was developed in part by the Fixing Veterans Health Care Task Force, created by Pete Hegseth. We wanted to bring accountability to the VA and provide veterans with a choice in their health care, and we did just that.

The president agreed with our strategy. I quickly deployed the CVA grassroots army, which Hegseth built, to pressure Congress to pass these critically needed reforms. Our volunteers made thousands of citizen contacts by knocking on doors, hosting phone banks, and calling their members of Congress.

In less than six months, President Trump signed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act. This would allow the government to fire bad and underperforming VA employees, especially the ones who allowed vets to die on secret waitlists. The next summer, President Trump signed the VA Mission Act, which provided vets with a choice in their health care.

Thanks to the policy vision of Pete Hegseth and the leadership of President Trump, these reforms brought the VA into the 21st century and likely saved thousands of lives.

That is the Pete Hegseth I know — a warfighter and visionary who loves his country. He will make a tremendous secretary of defense.

Mark Lucas is the executive vice president of the Article III Project. Lucas served as an infantry officer in the Iowa Army National Guard and was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge and Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan during the deadliest year of Operation Enduring Freedom.

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Psychologist Punished for Questioning VA’s Gender Ideology Initiatives: ‘What Has Happened to Women’s Security?’


By: S.A. McCarthy / @pipesmoknpapist / February 22, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/22/psychologist-punished-for-questioning-vas-gender-ideology-initiatives-what-has-happened-to-womens-security/

A psychologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs was placed on administrative leave following the publication of an article she co-authored that warned of the danger posed by gender ideology. Pictured: the VA building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)

A psychologist employed by a federal agency is being penalized for speaking out against gender ideology.

Three psychologists working in the Department of Veterans Affairs penned an op-ed late last month warning of the danger posed by allowing biological men to access women’s bathrooms and medical exam rooms. One of the authors, primary care psychologist Dr. Nina Silander, was placed on administrative leave following the article’s publication, according to documents obtained by The Washington Stand.

According to a letter Silander sent to her senators and representatives in Washington, D.C., she was “put on administrative leave due to patient care/safety concerns, which are entirely unsubstantiated given the reality that I have provided quality veteran services and received no complaints to date.”

“My co-authors … anticipate facing similar repercussions for their authorship of this article,” Silander wrote. “We maintain that we are within our rights as federal employees to comment, in our own time and with appropriate disclaimer, on matters of public concern and information already available to the public.”

In the article Silander co-authored with fellow VA clinical psychologists Catherine Novotny and Edward Waldrep, the trio wrote, “VA leadership, perhaps inspired by President [Joe] Biden’s executive order on ‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation,’ recently began … injecting concepts of gender ideology into our clinical work.”

They continued, “From here on, the distinction that will matter in patients is their self-identified gender, not their biological sex. We believe this effectively extinguishes the entire class of women, undermining many physical and legal protections for female veterans.”

“Single-sex spaces within the VA—those ensuring bodily privacy, such as bathrooms, exam rooms and medical exam areas—can now be accessed by males who self-identify as women,” the psychologists noted. “We view this VA policy as a betrayal of our female patients. Women face a disproportionate statistical risk of assault, harassment and voyeurism by men. And male violence patterns are unchanged by subjective feelings about gender.”

All three authors, with a combined 44 years of experience in clinical psychology, have a particular professional focus on sexual trauma recovery, a factor on which they laid particular emphasis in their article.

“Imagine a rape victim being forced to share a bedroom in a residential program with a man,” they wrote. “Even worse, according to VA policy, if the female veteran objects, she is required to relocate, despite being the complainant. What has happened to women’s security? What of bodily privacy?”

“The VA’s current policy is based on premises we believe are contradictory, anti-female and unconstitutional. It appears to be motivated by politics and fickle media narratives rather than by sound clinical practice,” the psychologists wrote. “The VA must restore single-sex spaces in which biology is the only relevant factor.”

According to a complaint filed by Silander with the VA’s Equal Opportunity Office and obtained by The Washington Stand, Silander’s VA manager, Dr. Christine Fultyn, inquired whether Silander “had in fact co-authored this article,” two days after the article’s publication.

One week later, Silander reported, Fultyn came to her office and “asked if I was aware of some of the backlash in response to the op-ed. She presented the detail memorandum for me to read, explaining that higher ups had determined to launch an investigation based on ‘patient safety concerns.’” Silander was then removed from her clinical role “effective immediately.”

That same day, Fultyn, along with “LGBQT+ Coordinators and members of our DEI Committee,” scheduled an event for Feb. 6 “to offer support and resources for anyone with concerns related to the recent op-ed.” The event was canceled on Feb. 5 to ensure that staff had adequate time to devote to “patient care/training/administrative tasks.”

Silander recounted that minutes later Fultyn “informed me that the investigation had ended without need for disciplinary action” and that Silander could return to clinical care the very next day. “I inquired about the investigation,” Silander stated, “but Dr. Fultyn was unable to provide additional information and referred me to submit a [Freedom of Information Act] request.”

According to a report by National Review, Silander’s co-author Waldrep has also been retaliated against for publishing the article. He reported he was subjected to “a barrage of backlash in a VA group chat he belonged to that’s dedicated to LGBT matters” and was eventually “kicked out of the chat.”

Waldrep had previously been targeted for questioning the VA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which included segregating therapy groups by race. He was, according to National Review, “stripped … of his ability to supervise students, prohibiting him from doing didactics trainings with rotations and from attending meetings where students were present.”

In the wake of Silander’s and Waldrep’s article and the retaliation against the two, Reps. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., and Eli Crane, R-Ariz., sent a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough outlining their concerns over the agency’s LGBTQ and DEI initiatives.

“The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has started to enforce VHA Directive 1341(3) in a way that puts women veterans in danger,” the congressmen wrote. “Specifically, the VHA is allowing biological men into women-only single-sex spaces, including bathrooms, exam rooms, and medical exam areas irrespective of where the veteran is in their ‘transition’. We are concerned that this would put women veterans in danger … ”

The congressmen added, “The VA must ensure that women veterans are not being put at risk to appease radical transgender activists. … The VA must focus on delivering world-class healthcare and benefits to our nation’s heroes. The VA’s DEI efforts distract from your important mission and must end immediately.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand

S.A. McCarthy

@pipesmoknpapist

S.A. McCarthy is a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Shocker: Union official admits she let veterans die because doing this instead was so distasteful


waving flagBy LU Staff March 10, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/03/10/shocker-union-official-admits-she-let-veterans-die-because-doing-this-instead-was-so-distasteful

Shocker: Union official admits she let veterans die because doing this instead was so distasteful / Credit: Mark Van Scyoc / Shutterstock.com

A former federal employee union president is wracked with guilt because veterans died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility. But she was loath to tell congressional leaders about the problem. Why? Because Congress was led by Republicans, and she is a diehard Democrat.

“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., was president of the union representing doctors at the hospital as the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.

Dozens of veterans have died in recent years while waiting for appointments with doctors at multiple VA hospitals and care centers around the nation. But VA staffers systematically manipulated records to make it seem like they didn’t have long waits. The problems became so severe by 2013, that as many as 40 patients died at just the Phoenix facility.

The same practices took place at Hines, with the knowledge of its director. Additional problems also plagued Hines, like heart scans getting discarded without being read.

Clarno’s tale of haunting regret is at least the second case of people connected with VA unions admitting they did not speak up about life-and-death issues because the idea of talking to a Republican was too distasteful.Partyof Deceit Spin and Lies

Sen. Mark Kirk (IL) – R was the ranking Republican on the Senate VA Appropriations subcommittee when Clarno finally talked to him in 2013, and wielding the power of the purse, he immediately launched a crusade to expose wrong-doing at Hines.

But in the previous years, Clarno went instead to Democrats who were ill-positioned to do anything, and who indeed, did nothing. Clarno and Lisa Nee, a VA doctor she worked with, described their actions during the interview Monday with Illinois’ WLS-AM radio host John Howell.

HOWELL: Both [Sen. Dick] Durbin and [Rep. Tammy] Duckworth put out a statement last week, as did our junior senator Mark Kirk, who I know has been helpful to you, right doctor?

NEE: Yes. And I didn’t think he would be. He was the last resort.

HOWELL: And usually when a union has to go to Republicans it’s a frosty reception, I suppose.

CLARNO: Exactly. And if I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved.

HOWELL: That’s a really sad aspect of this.

CLARNO: It is.

The women first went to Rep. Danny Davis (IL) – D, a Democrat who represented the district that included Hines, but he was not on any committees with VA oversight authority. “Danny Davis was pretty apathetic not because he didn’t know what was going on but because he felt like their was nothing he could do,” Nee said in the interview.

The two women then went to Rep.Tammy Duckworth (IL) – D, a disabled veteran Democrat who also represents the area and was an official at VA before being elected to Congress. But since she was a new lawmaker without leadership roles on any committees, she did not help. Clarno and Nee said Duckworth wouldn’t even read a report about the situation at Hines.

“It was really upsetting. This isn’t about, you know, whether you have a D or an R at the end of your name. This is about the VA, this is about protecting the men and women who fought for our country,” Clarno said.

Clarno tried to work through Hines managers before going to Congress, and is now tirelessly working every possible avenue to fix problems in the VA. She is still involved with the union, but is no longer president, and says she has experienced harassment from some union members.

A similar situation unfolded in Wisconsin, the site of VA’s Tomah hospital — known as “Candy Land” because its doctors doped up veterans with dangerous combinations of sedatives rather than treating their underlying conditions.

The Tomah VA employees union didn’t take complaints to Sen.Ron Johnson (WI) – R, a Republican, even though he is not only from Wisconsin, but is chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee with jurisdiction over management issues in government agencies.

“We didn’t even talk to Republicans then,” Lin Ellinghuysen, union president and past vice president, told the Wisconsin Watchdog.What did you say 07.jpg

But there is no remorse in Wisconsin. The union is now running ads against Johnson, faulting him for not acting on information he was never given. The public employees union is campaigning forRuss Feingold , a Democrat who preceded Johnson in office and is now running to retake the seat.

The union initially said it told Feingold of problems at the facility via a hand-delivered letter in 2009, when he still occupied the Senate seat. But after the absence of any corrective action by Feingold became a campaign issue, the union retracted its claim, and said it never told him.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin (WI) – D, the state’s other senator, received an investigation report detailing problems at the Tomah facility, but nothing came of it. Baldwin admitted that it was a major failing, and fired the staffer she said was responsible.

Ellinghuysen said the union talked with Democrats about the problems, but she didn’t follow up when they didn’t get results because she is no “courageous Wonder Woman” and “needed a paycheck.”

Ryan Honl, a lifelong Democrat who worked at Tomah, reluctantly went to Johnson’s office, and got a response the next day after being frustrated with a lack of response from Baldwin and another Democrat, Rep.Ron Kind (WI) – D.

Then, after Republicans did the work of proving undeniable mistreatment, the Democratic members belatedly chimed in with expressions of outrage at the mistreatment of vets — just as Durbin and Duckworth did in Illinois — Honl told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The failure of the unions to alert relevant authorities about patient abuse, coupled with political attacks against the few congressmen who actually tried to put a stop to it, astounded Honl to such an extent that he renounced his political party.

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