veterans

Former members of the military will be able to start applying for a digital version of their identity cards from Friday.

About 1.8 million veterans are eligible to download the new digital ID to a smartphone – with ministers saying the rollout can serve as a “case study” to show the public how the technology for a planned scheme for all British citizens and residents will work.

Physical veterans’ cards will continue to be issued, but the digital version will allow holders to prove their status more easily to access to public services, the government says.

Digital government minister Ian Murray said the veterans’ digital ID could also help address “legitimate concerns around privacy and security” of the UK-wide scheme.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the plans for the wider scheme last month as part of efforts to clamp down on illegal working. It will be introduced by 2029 and mandatory in order to work.

The digital veteran card is optional but the government says it will allow former service personnel to show their entitlement to services such as GP and mental health support, supported housing, careers advice as well as reduced entry prices at museums and money off their shopping.

Murray said the veterans ID was “probably a demonstration to the public by default… on the basis that this is the first use case for having a digital credential on your smartphone, and that digital credential is the first sort of verifiable one that government have now launched”.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: “We are modernising our public services so they work around people’s lives and keep pace with the digital world we live in.

“The digital veterans’ card will help remove barriers, reduce red-tape and make it easier for people to access the public services they need.”

The digital veteran card will be the first document to be stored in the government’s One Login smartphone app, with digital driving licences set to follow at a later date.

More than two decades after their peak, the music of Yellowcard is a pop punk message in a bottle. The note that washed ashore from a simpler time describes the image of a young, sharply-dressed band full of aspirations, thrashing on their instruments — violin included — in the echoey tomb of an underground parking garage in the music video for “Ocean Avenue” as the chorus kicks into overdrive.

“If I could find you now, things would get better, we could leave this town and run forever, let your waves crash down on me and take me away,” frontman Ryan Key sang ecstatically at the top of his lungs.

That hit song, the title track of 2003’s “Ocean Avenue,” created a tidal wave of success that changed the course of their career from struggling artists to a world-touring headliner and darlings of MTV’s Total Request Live.

“The first time it happened, we were really young,” Key said, gingerly grasping a spoon with his heavily tattooed hand while stirring a cup of hot tea. “We were quite literally a garage band one minute, and then we were playing on the MTV Video Music Awards and David Letterman and whatever else the next minute.”

It’s a moment that hasn’t escaped his memory 22 years later. Now, he and his bandmates — violinist Sean Mackin, bassist Josh Portman and guitarist Ryan Mendez — are far from the ocean but not too far from water as they look out at a sparkling pool from the window from a suite at the Yaamava’ Resort and Casino in Highland. A couple hours from now, the band will play a splashy pool party gig for 98.7 ALT FM. The set will include a raft of all the old hits, including “Ocean Avenue” of course, as well as their first new songs in almost a decade.

Before the release of the first singles for the new album, “Better Days,” it might’ve been easy to write off their 11th album as another release destined to be overshadowed by their early catalog. However, with the right amount of internal inspiration and outside help from Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, who produced and played all the drums on the album, the result was a batch of new songs that haven’t simply been washed out to sea. Quite the opposite, actually.

Prior to the album’s release, the title track “Better Days” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. This achievement came after a 22-year wait since their first appearance on the chart with the “Ocean Avenue” single “Way Away.” Key also notes that it’s the first time fans are using the band’s new music for their TikTok videos instead of “Ocean Avenue.”

“That’s crazy,” Key said. “Everyone is using ‘Better Days.’ I don’t think we’re alone in that. I think for bands in our scene, new music is getting a lot of love and a lot of attention again, and it’s amazing to see.”

It’s been about three years since the band reemerged to play a reunion set at RiotFest in Chicago, following their 2017 farewell show at the House of Blues in Anaheim. At the point they were ready to call it quits, the band was struggling to sell enough tickets to their shows to keep the dream alive. For Mackin, fatherhood forced him to also consider his family’s financial stability, prompting him to enter the corporate workforce as a sales rep and eventually becoming a service director for Toyota. At one point, he was responsible for managing 120 employees. “I just thought that was going to be what I was going to do to take care of my family for the next 20 years,” Mackin said.

After Yellowcard’s hiatus, Key continued playing music in several projects that distanced themselves from the pop punk sound — including recording solo work under his full name William Ryan Key, touring with bassist Portman at his side. Key also produced a post-rock electronic-heavy project called Jedha with Mendez, and the pair also does a lot of TV and film scoring work. For a long time, Key and his bandmates mourned the loss of what they had with Yellowcard. It was the most important thing in Key’s life, though he said he didn’t realize how much the band truly shaped him until it was over.

During their hiatus, band members took day jobs. One member managed 120 Toyota employees before the 2022 Riot Fest reunion reignited their passion.

(Joe Brady)

“Ungrateful is not the word to use about how I felt back then. It’s more like I didn’t have the tools to appreciate it, to feel gratitude and really let things happen and and stay in the moment and stay focused. Because I was so young, I was so insecure about my place, my role in all of it,” Key said.

But after some time away, the raucous 2022 Riot Fest reunion show relit the band’s fire in a way they hadn’t expected. They followed up with a 2023 EP “Childhood Eyes” that pushed the band to take things further with a new full album. Along with these plans came the stunning news that Barker would sign on to produce and play drums for them on the project. For a band that grew up idolizing Blink 182 and Barker specifically as the band’s red-hot engine behind the kit who spent the last 20 years evolving into a music mogul, it was a surreal experience.

“We look at him like a general. It was never lost that the best drummer of our generation is playing drums with us,” Mackin said. “We know him as Travis now, but man, this guy is just oozing talent — he’s doing all these amazing things and he doesn’t seem overrun by it, not distracted one bit. While we were recording, he was right there with us.”

Key says he was initially intimidated singing in front of Barker in the studio and had a few moments where negative, self-conscious thoughts were getting the better of him in the vocal booth during recording. Instead of getting annoyed, he says Barker helped ease his anxiety with a few simple words.

“Travis came into the booth, closed the door, put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, ‘You’re gonna do this as many times as you need to do it. I’m gonna be here the whole time.’” Barker was truly speaking from experience. He told Key at the time that he’d just recorded 87 rough takes of his parts on “Lonely Road,” his hit song with Jelly Roll and MGK. “That was a real crossroads for me,” Key said.

The aspect of the album that feels most akin to “Ocean Avenue” was that Barker never really allowed them to overthink anything when it came to songwriting, a skill the band had unwittingly mastered as kids back in the “Ocean Avenue” days by writing songs on the fly in the studio with little time to care about how a song might end up before they recorded it.

“There’s something about the way we did this record with Travis, where we would walk in and did it in a way we haven’t done in 20 plus years with him saying ‘We’re gonna write and record a song today,’” Key said. “ It was a return to that style of songwriting where you have to kind of get out of your comfort zone and just throw and go.”

The final product moves swiftly over 10 songs, the track list starts with a flurry of energy from the bombastic opening drums of “Better Days” that propel a song on inner reflection on the past. It moves on to the high-energy heartbreak of “Love Letters,” featuring Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio. Avril Lavigne lends her soaring vocals to the unrequited love song “You Broke Me Too.” Songs like “City of Angels” and “Bedroom Posters” track episodes in Key’s life where his band’s hiatus took a negative toll on his outlook on life but also about looking for a way back to rediscovering himself. The album wraps with the acoustic lullaby “Big Blue Eyes,” which Keys wrote as a tribute to his son.

Though the songs on “Better Days” frequently wrestle with self-doubt and uncertainty, the response from fans has been surprisingly supportive, Key said.

“I cannot recall seeing this level of overwhelming positive feedback. People are just flipping out over these songs,” the frontman said. “The recording was such a whirlwind. When I listen to it, it’s still kind of like ‘When did I write that song?’ It happened so fast, and we made the record so fast, but I’m glad we just did it.” Despite the success, Key is hesitant to label the band comeback kids, “probably because we are officially passed kids label,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the return of the gentlemen?” Mackin joked.

Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker produced the album, helping the band recapture the spontaneous energy that defined their 2003 breakthrough “Ocean Avenue.”

(Joe Brady)

Whatever they call themselves, coming back to the band after so many years of different experiences has made Yellowcard’s second shot at a career feel all the more rewarding.

“Because you feel like you know you’re capable of something other than being in this band, capable of connecting with your family in a way that you couldn’t when you were on the road all the time,” Mackin said. “There’s things that happened in that break that set us up for success as human beings, not just as creative people.”

For Key, it’s about taking all the lessons they’ve learned as a band and applying them to their future, realizing that the album’s title refers not just to the past behind them, but what lies ahead.

“This record needed to be the ultimate revival, the ultimate redemption song for our band,” Key said. “And so far it’s, it’s proven to be that.”

ISTANBUL — During a pool training session months ago, Ukrainian war veteran Oleh Tserkovnyi was struck by an idea: What if a group of veterans swam across the strait of Bosphorus, between Turkey’s European and Asian shores? And if they did it on Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day?

The symbolism of the day would draw attention to the toll and devastation inflicted by Russia’s full-out war on Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

When the 34-year-old pitched the idea to fellow veterans in their One for Another support group, none raised injuries, particularly their amputations, as a barrier. Two joined him right away.

They trained for months, with the support of Superhumans Center, a veterans’ rehabilitation clinic in Ukraine, and coached by CapitalTRI, an amateur triathlon team in Kyiv. They agreed their race would have another goal — to raise money for prosthetics, which remain costly and urgently needed by many of Ukraine’s wounded.

“We’re not asking for pity,” Tserkovnyi told The Associated Press shortly before the competition. “We’re asking for support.”

A race that links continents

After months of rigorous training, discipline and physical challenges, the three Ukrainian veterans on Sunday joined more than 2,800 swimmers from 81 countries in the 6.5-kilometer (4-mile) crossing from Asia to Europe.

The Bosphorus Intercontinental Swimming Race is an open-water event held each year in Istanbul, organized by the Turkish Olympic Committee since 1989.

All three Ukrainians completed the crossing, each swimming for more than an hour. The two veterans with amputations faced setbacks even before the start — the organizers initially barred them from competing, insisting they have to be in a separate category for people with disabilities.

But they persevered and swam the race, alongside the others.

For the Ukrainians, it wasn’t just about endurance but about reclaiming control over bodies transformed by war — and sharing their recovery with a world that often seems indifferent to the injuries they carry.

Seeking balance in the water

Sports had always been a part of Tserkovnyi’s life, but war and injury pushed him to use it as a survival tool after two severe, life-changing concussions — a bridge back to life for war veterans with disabilities.

“Sport itself heals — we’ve seen that firsthand,” he said. “And the community, it pulls you through. It pushes you, it disciplines you.”

When he speaks, he’s quick to point out the changes he sees in himself — the stutter, the involuntary twitch in his eye.

“It’s what’s left over. It used to be much worse,” he said.

Both of his concussions were the result of prolonged exposure to artillery fire while serving on the front line. He was a sniper when the second one hit. Afterward, he said, it felt like he had lost his sense of balance entirely.

“There were times I could walk, but then suddenly I’d just tip over like a pencil,” Tserkovnyi said. “I have third-degree hearing loss on one side, no peripheral vision.”

The sense of being “a sick person,” he said, felt so foreign to him that he threw himself into recovery with everything he had. For a long time, he also had PTSD symptoms, including dramatic flashbacks to the war.

But it was in the pool that he found a way to recognize the warning signs. “I began to understand what triggers them, when they come, and how to stay ahead of them,” he said.

A path back to oneself

Engineer Pavlo Tovstyk signed up as a volunteer in the early days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Serving as a driver in an intelligence unit, he stepped on a landmine in June 2023.

The blast took his foot and subsequent surgeries led to a partial amputation of his left leg.

The 47-year-old, who used to be an active swimmer as a child, never thought swimming would become a lifeline. He was still recovering from his injury when he began sneaking into the swimming pool, keeping it a secret from the doctors.

“Water became a kind of savior for me,” he said. “At the time, everything felt disoriented. But in the water, my thoughts, my strength, my body — it all came together again. I became myself again. Just … different.”

The idea to swim the strait in Turkey started almost as a dare, then became a plan.

“To cross the Bosphorus, you need not just physical strength, but a certain mindset — a state of determination that all of us managed to find within ourselves,” he said.

Calm found in purpose

Oleksandr Dashko discovered swimming only after losing his left leg.

The 28-year-old had joined the military at the start of the Russian invasion and served in the infantry in various front-line areas.

In June 2023, a mine exploded near him and shrapnel tore into his knee.

“I didn’t take it very graciously, let’s say,” he said as he recounted the conflicted feelings that tormented him for so long. Adjustment to life with an amputation has been slow and mentally taxing.

It was only over the past year that he was able to focus on physical rehabilitation — and swimming, he said, has become the activity that brings him a sense of calm.

The challenge of swimming the Bosphorus became a purpose for Dashko.

“When I do nothing, I slip back to that state right after the injury — depression, apathy, the feeling that the amputation is winning,” he said. “But when something like this shows up on my path, it gives me a jolt — to live, to move forward, to motivate others.”

Physical goals, he said, help anchor him. He hopes for more such challenges, not just for himself, but for other veterans.

“Honestly, if it weren’t for this, I’d probably be drunk and lying under a fence somewhere,” he said.

Maloletka and Arhirova write for the Associated Press. Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — U.S. veterans of the war in Afghanistan are telling a commission reviewing decisions on the 20-year conflict that their experience was not only hell, but also confounding, demoralizing and at times humiliating.

The bipartisan Afghanistan War Commission aims to reflect such veterans’ experiences in a report due to Congress next year, which will analyze key strategic, diplomatic, military and operational decisions made between June 2001 and the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021.

The group released its second interim report on Tuesday, drawing no conclusions yet but identifying themes emerging from thousands of pages of government documents; some 160 interviews with cabinet-level officials, military commanders, diplomats, Afghan and Pakistani leaders and others; and forums with veterans like one recently held at a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Columbus, Ohio.

“What can we learn from the Afghanistan War?” asked an Aug. 12 discussion session with four of the commission’s 16 members. What they got was two straight hours of dozens of veterans’ personal stories — not one glowingly positive, and most saturated in frustration and disappointment.

“I think the best way to describe that experience was awful,” said Marine veteran Brittany Dymond, who served in Afghanistan in 2012.

Navy veteran Florence Welch said the 2021 withdrawal made her ashamed she ever served there.

“It turned us into a Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us worked for,” she said.

Members of Congress, some driven by having served in the war, created the independent commission several months after the withdrawal, after an assessment by the Democratic administration of then-President Biden faulted the actions of President Trump’s first administration for constraining U.S. options. A Republican review, in turn, blamed Biden. Views of the events remain divided, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered yet another review this spring.

The commission wants to understand the bigger picture of a conflict that spanned four presidential administrations and cost more than 2,400 American lives, said Co-Chair Dr. Colin Jackson.

“So we’re interested in looking hard at the end of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, but we’re equally interested in understanding the beginning, the middle and the end,” he said in an interview in Columbus.

Co-chair Shamila Chaudhary said the panel is also exploring more sweeping questions.

“So our work is not just about what the U.S. did in Afghanistan but what the U.S. should be doing in any country where it deems it has a national security interest,” she said. “And not just should it be there, but how it should behave, what values does it guide itself by, and how does it engage with individuals who are very different from themselves.”

Jackson said one of the commission’s priorities is making sure the final report, due in August 2026, isn’t “unrecognizable to any veteran of the Afghanistan conflict.”

“The nature of the report should be representative of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine experience,” he said.

Dymond told commissioners a big problem was the mission.

“You cannot exert a democratic agenda, which is our foreign policy, you cannot do that on a culture of people who are not bought into your ideology,” she said. “What else do we expect the outcome to be? And so we had two decades of service members lost and maimed because we’re trying to change an ideology that they didn’t ask for.”

The experience left eight-year Army veteran Steve Orf demoralized. He said he didn’t go there “to beat a bad guy.”

“Those of us who served generally wanted to believe that we were helping to improve the world, and we carried with us the hopes, values, and principles of the United States — values and principles that also seem to have been casualties of this war,” he told commissioners. “For many of us, faith with our leaders is broken and trust in our country is broken.”

Tuesday’s report identifies emerging themes of the review to include strategic drift, interagency incoherence, and whether the war inside Afghanistan and the counterterrorism war beyond were pursuing the same aims or at cross purposes.

It also details difficulties the commission has encountered getting key documents. According to the report, the Biden administration initially denied the commission’s requests for White House materials on the implementation of the February 2020 peace agreement Trump signed with the Taliban, called the Doha Agreement, and on the handling of the withdrawal, citing executive confidentiality concerns.

The transition to Trump’s second term brought further delays and complications, but since the commission has pressed the urgency of its mission with the new administration, critical intelligence and documents have now begun to flow, the report says.

Smyth and Aftoora-Orsagos write for the Associated Press.

On a tense, chaotic night, with the eyes of the nation trained on the Iowa caucuses, that state’s Democratic Party was counting on a new smartphone app to make everything go smoothly.

In 2016, for the first time, precinct chairs used a smartphone app built by Microsoft to relay results to party headquarters, enabling faster reporting than communicating via telephone hotline. This year, with the state party promising to disclose more granular data than in the past, the job of coding the app went to a fledgling tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

It turned out to be a crushing failure.

Throughout the long night, precinct chairs found themselves unable to get the app to work. Many never figured out how to download or install it in the first place. Those who tried to report their results via a backup phone line wound up on hold, sometimes for more than an hour.

After blaming the delay on “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” it wasn’t until well into Tuesday afternoon that the Iowa Democratic Party was confident enough in the accuracy of its figures to begin releasing partial results, drawing complaints that the process had been rendered unfair — the front-running candidates robbed of their rightful momentum, the underperformers able to hide their weakness. And all because of an app that disrupted what it was meant to streamline.

The firm behind the app, Shadow Inc., took responsibility in a series of tweets Tuesday.

“We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers,” the company said, adding that “the underlying data and collection process via Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not.”

“We feel really terrible,” Shadow Chief Executive Gerard Niemira told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday. He blamed the breakdown on a bug in the app’s code, which he said had been discovered and fixed by 10 p.m. But by then, the damage was done.

Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination. In January 2019, it was acquired by ACRONYM, a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. ACRONYM’s founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Niemira had previously worked at kiva.org, a San Francisco nonprofit that makes loans to entrepreneurs and others in the developing world, and Davis had spent eight years as an engineer at Google. Shadow’s chief operating officer, James Hickey, also worked in engineering for Clinton’s campaign.

“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” its website says. “We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”

The company’s main products, according to its website, are a peer-to-peer messaging tool that helps campaigns send text messages to potential voters and a campaign data integration tool. Among Shadow’s larger clients is Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions,” according to public disclosures. A Buttigieg representative said that fee was for the text-messaging tool.

Federal Election Commission records also show payments to Shadow from the Texas Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Kirsten Gillibrand’s short-lived presidential campaign also paid the company for unspecified software and fundraising consulting.

In the days leading up to caucus night, Shadow’s app was seen as “a potential target for early election interference,” according to the Des Moines Register.

Those fears didn’t materialize, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. “This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

But other warning signs before the caucus hinted at the problems ahead, said John Grennan, co-chairman of Iowa’s Poweshiek County Democratic Party. The lack of opportunities to train on the app in advance did not bode well, he said.

“We were supposed to be getting invitations to use it. The invites would never arrive,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t even load the app because it’s such a pain.”

When the big night came, Grennan, who was running the caucus site at Grinnell College, said he couldn’t tell whether the results he input transmitted properly.

“I kept getting kicked off,” Grennan said. He said he called the party’s hotline with a question, but gave up after nearly half an hour on hold. “I’m 90% sure it went through [on the app]. I’ll have to work under the assumption that if it’s not there, they’re going to call me.”

Ultimately, only one-quarter of precinct chairs were able to upload results successfully via the app, Bloomberg reported.

Shadow and its co-founders did not reply to emails seeking comment. ACRONYM appeared to distance itself from the company, describing itself late Monday as a hands-off investor and scrubbing mentions of the January acquisition and launch from its site.

The Iowa Democratic Party did not respond to questions about why it chose Shadow to build the caucus-reporting app.

Nevada’s Democratic Party planned to use Shadow’s app for its upcoming Feb. 22 caucus, but Chair William McCurdy II said Tuesday that his organization “will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus. We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”

Shadow was reportedly cobbled together in two months, with the Iowa and Nevada state Democratic parties each paying around $60,000, a fee several civic tech experts called low.

It was not evaluated by the Department of Homeland Security, which offers free assistance to state and local election officials and authorities to help improve the cyber security of their election systems through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established in 2018.

Rodrigo Bijou, a security researcher at Sensent, said a two-month development timeframe “sounds kind of insane, especially considering that user testing and a well-planned rollout would be critical for the app to succeed in a caucus format.”

This is not the first snafu the Iowa Democratic Party has run into this election cycle. The party planned to roll out for the first time “virtual caucuses” — a tool for voters who could not attend in person. The plan was dropped in August after the Democratic National Committee raised security concerns.

For a lower price, the party could have staffed phone banks instead of commissioning a mobile system, which is a “security nightmare,” said Douglas Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, who has studied election security and also served as co-chair of a precinct in the Iowa caucuses four years ago. Telephoning in results works fine, he said, even if it’s slightly slower.

“It was low-tech but it was reliable” he said “[The app] doesn’t sound like it was cost-effective. I can buy a lot of temp workers and phone lines for $60,000.”

Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization, pointed to a decidedly low-tech choice made in Iowa that might prove vital: tallying votes on paper as well.

“The chairs have the actual results recorded. They’re preserved and can be aggregated from those records. That’s a good thing,” Schneider said. “It’s OK that we take the time to get it right.”

Times staff writers Melanie Mason, Matt Pearce, Melissa Gomez and Sam Dean contributed to this report.

Washington, DC – Josephine Guilbeau’s voice remained steady as it rose with anger and frustration outside the United States Capitol while she described the Israeli-imposed hunger crisis in Gaza.

“The level of evil that it takes to make a decision to starve a baby as a means of war, as a weapon of war – what have we come to as a humanity? What have we come to as a country?” the 17-year US Army veteran said on Thursday.

Guilbeau had joined several fellow veterans, doctors, former officials and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in calling on the lawmakers and President Donald Trump to listen to the US public and end unconditional support for Israel.

The advocates banged on empty pots outside the Capitol to draw attention to the starvation in Gaza, where many have not eaten in days and more than 100 have died of hunger due to the Israeli blockade, according to United Nations agencies and local health officials.

Holding photos of famished Palestinian children, doctors and veterans stressed the US role in enabling Israel’s conduct through military aid, weapons provision and diplomatic support.

Tlaib called on her colleagues in Congress to join their constituents in opposing Israeli atrocities.

Recent public opinion polls have shown growing US public discontent with Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, but Congress remains staunchly supportive of Israel on a bipartisan basis.

“Americans serving in Congress, wake up because the American people are telling you over and over again: We’re not in support of this,” Tlaib told reporters outside the US Capitol.

“So maybe for once, would you listen to your constituency? Poll them like you like you poll everything else. They will tell you they do not want one goddamn freaking dime going to starve a whole people.”

‘Stop enabling the genocide’

Tlaib appeared to criticise a vote by her progressive ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez against a measure to stop $500m in missile defence aid to Israel.

Only six lawmakers voted in favour of the amendment, introduced by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, last week.

Ocasio-Cortez, who was one of 422 legislators to vote against the proposal, argued that cutting off “defensive” aid to Israel does not help end the bombardment of Palestinians.

Tlaib, however, suggested on Thursday that she is not convinced by that justification.

“No matter what weapons – I don’t care if it’s offensive or defensive, whatever you call it – let’s stop enabling the genocide,” the Palestinian American congresswoman said.

Although Ocasio-Cortez has described Israel’s war on Gaza as genocide and supported measures to restrict arms to Israel, her vote last week stirred a backlash from left-wing activists who said any weapons to Israel would enable its bombardment campaign against Palestinians.

Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance annually despite allegations of rights violations that would make the country ineligible for security aid under US law.

UN experts and leading rights groups have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Stacy Gilbert, who resigned from the US Department of State last year after a 20-year career in protest to a government report denying that Israel is blocking aid to Palestinians, said on Thursday that the starvation in Gaza is the result of a “deliberate” decision by Israel.

“I am calling on Trump to make a break with this policy that started under Joe Biden, this disastrous policy of unconditional military support for Israel,” Gilbert told reporters.

Doctor says Trump ‘failed’ supporters

Nidal Jboor, a Michigan-based physician with the advocacy group Doctors Against Genocide, also warned Trump against following the same policies as his predecessor, stressing that the US president has the power and leverage to end the war.

“If you don’t stop it today, then you are as sleepy as Joe was. It’s your call,” Jboor said, invoking Trump’s moniker for Biden, “Sleepy Joe”.

“This is not who we are. Americans are better than this. What we are supporting in Gaza does not make America great again. Shut down the killing zone. Flood Gaza with aid. End the genocide. History will remember at this point and this moment what we did and what we failed to do.”

During the election race last year, Trump courted the sizable Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan with promises of bringing peace to the region.

The US president initially took credit for a truce that came into effect in January. But shortly after taking office earlier this year, he proposed removing all Palestinians from Gaza – a plan that rights advocates say would amount to ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity.

Moreover, he has continued to arm Israel, and his administration has backed Israel’s resumption of the war in March, the siege on Gaza and the upending of the aid system in the territory.

Jboor said Trump “failed” his Arab and Muslim supporters.

“People were voting for him because he promised peace, and now he’s breaking his promises,” the doctor told Al Jazeera.

US touts GHF

In May, the US and Israel launched an initiative to monopolise aid distribution through a private entity, dubbed GHF.

But Palestinians and rights groups have described GHF aid distribution sites, concentrated in the south of Gaza, deep inside areas under Israeli army control, as death traps.

Israeli troops have been opening fire daily at aid seekers, killing hundreds of people.

While the US proudly proclaims that GHF has distributed 90 million meals since May, the tally amounts to a fraction of the food needed to feed the territory’s two million people.

In recent weeks, Israel has allowed some aid convoys to enter the north of Gaza, but the assistance trucks have also come under Israeli firing and shelling there, as well.

Despite the bloodshed, the US has been touting the GHF operation as a success, reiterating false claims that Hamas steals aid distributed through the UN and its partner organisations.

Asked about the hunger spreading in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters on Thursday that the US is “aware” of the humanitarian situation in the territory and wants to see an end to the devastation.

“That’s why we have seen this commitment to get aid to the people who need it, in a way where it is not weaponised by Hamas,” Pigott added, referring to GHF.

Shortly before Pigott expressed continuing support for GHF, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu appeared to confirm that his country is purposely starving Gaza, saying that “there is no nation that feeds its enemies.”

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said in a radio interview, according to The Times of Israel.

Back on Capitol Hill, the advocates appeared confident that their voices could make a difference, even after 22 months of war that have seen the crisis deepen and the death toll mount daily.

“Every single voice is so powerful to move the needle; we have to change the minds of our leaders and make them understand that if they do not stop funding Israel, we will vote them out,” Guilbeau, the US Army veteran, told Al Jazeera.

July 17 (UPI) — The Department of Labor on Thursday announced a new resource designed to increase employment rates and apprenticeship program participation among millions of disabled veterans.

“Currently, more than 5 million American veterans aged 18 or older have service-connected disabilities,” a release from the DOL said. “Each year, roughly 200,000 service members – including approximately 22,000 who have some type of disability – transition to the private sector and many remain unemployed after transition.”

The Veterans Accommodations Toolkit includes tips on job recruitment, hiring, training and retaining disabled veterans. The DOL said the service also benefits employers, apprenticeship sponsors and labor force development specialists.

The toolkit was released just prior to National Hire a Veteran Day and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and supports the Trump administration’s goal of developing a million new apprentices in the United States.

The employment rate for veterans with disabilities is 45.5% compared to 79.8%, the DOL said.

WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) — Despite an apparent reversal on mass layoffs, the Department of Veterans Affairs is still planning a workforce reduction, prompting legal challenges, staff unrest and warnings from frontline nurses who say the cuts will harm the very veterans the VA is meant to serve.

The VA has signaled it would not move forward with mass layoffs initially envisioned, but recent developments show the agency is still on track to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs by the end of 2025.

Internal contracts and legal challenges suggest broader restructuring efforts are underway, yet the scope and restructuring framework is unclear, raising concerns among lawmakers, unions and frontline workers about their potential impact on veteran care and employee rights.

In a VA press release last week, the agency secretary, Doug Collins said the “VA is headed in the right direction,” thanks to departmental reviews conducted since March.

“A department-wide [reduction in force] is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA. Our review has resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving veterans that we will continue to pursue,” Collins said.

30,000 employees to be cut

The VA, which employs over 467,000 medical professionals, administrative staff and others, also announced the press release that it’s on track to reduce its workforce by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025 through retirements, resignations and attrition.

The department says this voluntary path eliminates the need for a formal reduction in force.

However, that conflicts with a $726,000 contract signed in May by the VA and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to prepare for a mass layoff. The contract was prepared because the VA said it lacks the internal expertise for such a wide-scale restructuring and requires OPM to supply seasoned human relations specialists to guide layoffs.

Neither the VA nor OPM responded to multiple phone and email requests for comment on the status of the contract. And, so, the VA’s actual plan remains mired in lack of information and confusion for employees, veterans and congressional representatives.

A VA spokesman said Monday that the department is “in the process of winding down that contract with OPM.”

Of the 83,000 VA positions Collins previously set as a goal to cut, according to the department’s latest update, the agency had shed nearly 17,000 positions as of June 1, with another 12,000 departures expected by Sept. 30.

“Nobody in their right mind thinks you can cut 80,000 workers and not cut resources to the veteran,” said Irma Westmoreland, chair of the Veterans Affairs division of National Nurses United, who was reacting to the original plan.

Nurses skeptical

VA nurses on the front lines remain skeptical that reduced staffing can be carried out without affecting patient care, one of their union representatives said. The VA is the largest integrated health care system in the United States, providing services at 1,380 facilities to more than 9.1 million enrolled veterans each year, according to the agency.

“The VA says nurses and doctors won’t be affected, but that just means they’re cutting all the support staff,” Westmoreland said. “That’s still going to impact patient care.”

Westmoreland said the VA has failed to include frontline staff in restructuring discussions, and that the resulting fear and confusion already have caused widespread staffing shortages. That’s because many have decided to retire or switching to another health care system.

The remaining staff is facing burnout by being assigned additional tasks outside of their role to fill the staffing gaps, Westmoreland said.

“People who can retire are retiring. People just hired are leaving. And the rest of us are being stretched thin to do non-nursing work like cleaning, delivering trays, even transporting patients,” she said.

Although the VA plans the staffing cutbacks, the department is requesting $441.3 billion in fiscal year 2026, according to its budget request released in May. Paradoxically, that is a 10% increase from the 2025 fiscal year budget.

Budget approved in House

House Republicans approved a $435.3 billion budget on June 25, but the Senate must prepare its version of the spending plan. The Military Times noted that “the plan is unlikely to pass as its own standalone measure, but instead is expected to be approved sometime this fall as part of an all-of-government spending package.”

The VA said the funding increase, if it happens, would be prioritized toward health care, benefits and national cemeteries.

Much of what is coming has not been shared with Congress, and congressional staffers who work for the House Veterans Affairs Committee say they are in the dark about the agency’s plan.

“VA indicated to the committee in June that they are ‘allowed to do planning, but no execution’ of a reduction in force,” a committee statement said. “They have developed recommendations for an RIF for VA Central Office positions, but that plan has not been signed off on.”

Requests ignored

Staffers also noted that repeated requests for documentation by Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee have been ignored, raising questions of whether veterans will be negatively impacted by the proposed changes.

“We continue to have serious concerns about the effects of VA’s plan because details remain so limited,” said a Democratic staffer who asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak for the committee. “We are conducting an ongoing investigation into VA’s workforce reduction efforts.”

Meanwhile, legal challenges to President Donald Trump‘s March 2025 executive order to mandate sweeping federal workforce reductions had complicated VA’s path forward.

The order was initially blocked by a federal court, but the Supreme Court lifted that injunction Tuesday, allowing agencies like VA to resume planning for workforce cuts while the legality of the order is still under review.

In a separate lawsuit, a federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction in June against the Trump administration for stripping federal workers of their union rights.

Unions file suit

Six major unions — National Nurses United; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; National Association of Government Employees; National Federation of Federal Employees; and Service Employees International Union — filed that suit.

In a June press release from National Nurses United, the unions argued that Trump’s order violated the First and Fifth amendments by taking away collective bargaining rights without due process from nearly 1 million federal employees. Westmoreland said the case is critical for protecting care quality and the rights of VA staff.

“Collective bargaining rights are critical for union nurses so we can advocate for our veterans and ensure they get the care they deserve,” National Nurses United’s Westmoreland said. “We will fight for our veterans who put their lives on the line for us.”

The court has temporarily stopped the administration from stripping federal workers of their union rights. The injunction is still in place while the lawsuit plays out.

Representing veterans as president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2092, Robert Malosh said the administration’s actions have created a culture of fear and uncertainty among staff.

Life-threatening gaps

Malosh, a veteran, recounted the union’s role in addressing life-threatening gaps in emergency care at the main VA hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“For almost 30 years, [certified registered nurse anesthetists] were expected to respond to emergency airway calls from home. We identified that risk and bargained for 24-hour on-site coverage,” he said. “Just last month, a CRNA told me they saved a life. If they weren’t already in the building, that veteran would have died.”

Malosh said that cases like this spotlight the value of unions in identifying blind spots and advocating for both staff and veterans. He described a troubling case involving podiatric surgeries being delayed due to administrative interpretation of care eligibility rules, potentially placing diabetic veterans at risk of amputation or worse.

He also pushed back against a VA back-to-office mandate, calling it a disruptive change that was poorly planned and worsened care delivery.

Back to the office

According to the VA, it announced its back-to-office mandate Feb. 3, ordering all employees, except those with approved arrangements, to work full-time at their assigned duty stations.

The announcement followed Trump’s presidential memorandum Jan. 20 for a back-to-office mandate across all agencies and departments in the executive branch, according to the White House.

Malosh said a number of issues arose with that mandate: For one, employees struggled with Wi-Fi issues due to the influx of people connecting, causing disruptions for telehealth medical appointments.

Also , mental health professionals who had been working privately from home were moved to shared offices and cubicles, causing veterans to feel uncomfortable due to lack of privacy. Malosh said some veterans saw people in the background of a private call.

As the VA moves forward with plans to reduce its workforce, questions remain about the long-term effects on veteran care and employee stability.

With ongoing legal challenges, congressional scrutiny and staff uncertainty, the future of the agency’s restructuring efforts and their consequences for the nation’s largest health care system remain unresolved.

Ever since President Trump seized control of the California National Guard and deployed thousands of troops to Los Angeles, calls from distressed soldiers and their families have been pouring in to the GI Rights Hotline.

Some National Guard members and their loved ones have called to say they were agonizing over the legality of the deployment, which is being litigated in federal court, according to Steve Woolford, a resource counselor for the hotline, which provides confidential counseling for service members.

Others phoned in to say the Guard should play no part in federal immigration raids and that they worried about immigrant family members who might get swept up.

“They don’t want to deport their uncle or their wife or their brother-in-law,” Woolford said. “… Some of the language people have used is: ‘I joined to defend my country, and that’s really important to me — but No. 1 is family, and this is actually a threat to my family.’ ”

Although active-duty soldiers are largely restricted from publicly commenting on their orders, veterans’ advocates who are in direct contact with troops and their families say they are deeply concerned about the morale of the roughly 4,100 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles amid protests against immigration raids.

In interviews with The Times, spokespeople for six veterans’ advocacy organizations said many troops were troubled by the assignment, which they viewed as overtly political and as pitting them against fellow Americans.

Advocates also said they worry about the domestic deployment’s potential effects on military retention and recruitment, which recently rebounded after several years in which various branches failed to meet recruiting goals.

“What we’re hearing from our families is: ‘This is not what we signed up for,’ ” said Brandi Jones, organizing director for the Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for military spouses, children and veterans. “Our families are very concerned about morale.”

Horse riders make their way past U.S. Marines near the Paramount Home Depot during the Human Rights Unity Ride on June 22, 2025.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Janessa Goldbeck, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and chief executive of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, said that, among the former Marine Corps colleagues she has spoken to in recent weeks, “There’s been a universal expression of, ‘This is an unnecessary deployment given the operational situation.’”

“The fact that the LAPD and local elected officials repeatedly said deploying the National Guard and active duty Marines would be escalatory or inflammatory and the president of the United States chose to ignore that and deploy them anyway puts the young men and women in uniform in an unnecessarily political position,“ she said.

She added that the “young men and women who raised their right hand to serve their country” did “not sign up to police their own neighbors.”

Trump has repeatedly said Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” if he had not sent troops to help quell the protests.

“We saved Los Angeles by having the military go in,” Trump told reporters last week. “And the second night was much better. The third night was nothing much. And the fourth night, nobody bothered even coming.”

The troops in Los Angeles do not have the authority to arrest protesters and were deployed only to defend federal functions, property and personnel, according to the military’s U.S. Northern Command.

Task Force 51, the military’s designation of the Los Angeles forces, said in an email Saturday that “while we cannot speak for the individual experience of each service member, the general assessment of morale by leadership is positive.”

The personnel’s “quality of life,” the statement continued, is “addressed through the continued improvement of living facilities, balanced work-rest cycles, and access to chaplains, licensed clinical social workers, and behavioral health experts.”

U.S. Marines guard the Federal Building at the corner of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

It is unclear whether the National Guard troops, federalized under Title 10 of the United States Code, had been paid as of this weekend. Task Force 51 told The Times on Saturday that the soldiers who received 60-day activation orders on June 7 “will start receiving pay by end of the month” and that “those that have financial concerns have access to resources such as Army Emergency Relief,” a nonprofit charitable organization.

U.S. Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange), an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “for his plan to manage the logistics of this military activation, but he has failed to provide me with any clear answers.”

Tran said in a statement to The Times that “the pattern of disrespect this Administration has shown our Veterans and active-duty military personnel is disgraceful, and I absolutely think it will negatively impact our ability to attract and retain the troops that keep America’s military capacity the envy of the world.”

Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in an email that the governor is “worried how this mission will impact the physical and emotional well-being of the soldiers deployed unnecessarily to Los Angeles.”

On June 9, Newsom posted photos on X depicting National Guard soldiers crowded together, sleeping on concrete floors and what appeared to be a loading dock. Newsom wrote that the president sent troops “without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep.”

Task Force 51 told The Times that the soldiers in the photos “were not actively on mission, so they were taking time to rest.” At the time, the statement continued, “it was deemed too dangerous for them to travel to better accommodations.”

Since then, according to Task Force 51, the military has contracted “for sleeping tents, latrines, showers, hand-washing stations, hot meals for breakfast, dinner and a late-night meal, and full laundry service.”

“Most of the contracts have been fulfilled at this time,” the military said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Times that Newsom “should apologize for using out-of-context photos of National Guardsmen to try and make a political argument.”

“Under President Trump’s leadership military morale is sky high because our troops know they finally have a patriotic Commander-In-Chief who will always have their backs,” Jackson wrote.

Troops have been posted outside federal buildings in an increasingly quiet downtown Civic Center — a few square blocks within the 500-square-mile city.

Their interactions with the public are far different from those earlier this year, when Newsom deployed the National Guard to L.A. County to help with wildfire recovery efforts after the Eaton and Palisades fires.

At burn zone check points, National Guard members were often spotted chatting with locals, some of whom brought food and water and thanked them for keeping looters away.

But downtown, soldiers have stood stone-faced behind riot shields as furious protesters have flipped them off, sworn at them and questioned their integrity.

Members of the California National Guard stand by as thousands participate in the “No Kings” protest demonstration in downtown Los Angeles on June 14.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

During the boisterous “No Kings” protests on June 14, a woman held up a mirror to troops outside the downtown Federal Building with the words: “This is not your job. It’s YOUR LEGACY.” On a quiet Wednesday morning, a UCLA professor, standing solo outside the Federal Building, held up a sign to half a dozen Guard members reading: “It’s Called the Constitution You F—ers.”

James M. Branum, an attorney who works with the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said that, in recent weeks, the task force has received two to three times more than the usual volume of referrals and direct calls. The upward trend began after Trump came into office, with people calling about the war in Gaza and increased military deployment to the U.S. southern border — but calls spiked after troops were sent to Los Angeles, he said.

“A lot of these folks joined because they want to fight who they see as the terrorists,” Branum said. “They want to fight enemies of the United States … they never envisioned they would be deployed to the streets of the United States.”

In his June 7 memo federalizing the National Guard, Trump called for their deployment in places where protests against federal immigration enforcement were occurring or “are likely to occur.” The memo does not specify Los Angeles or California.

California officials have sued the president over the deployment, arguing in a federal complaint that the Trump administration’s directives are “phrased in an ambiguous manner and suggest potential misuse of the federalized National Guard.”

“Guardsmen across the country are on high alert, [thinking] that they could be pulled into this,” said Goldbeck, with the Vet Voice Foundation.

Jones, with the Secure Families Initiative, said military families “are very nervous in this moment.”

“They are so unprepared for what’s happening, and they’re very afraid to speak publicly,” she said.

Jones said she had been communicating with the wife of one National Guard member who said she had recently suffered a stroke. The woman said her husband had been on Family and Medical Leave Act leave from his civilian job to care for her. The woman said his leave was not recognized by the military for the domestic assignment. He was deployed to Los Angeles, and she has been struggling to find a caregiver, Jones said.

Jones said her own husband, an active-duty Marine, deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment based at Twentynine Palms — the same infantry unit now mustered in Los Angeles.

The unit was hard hit in Afghanistan in 2008, with at least 20 Marines killed and its high rate of suicide after that year’s deployment highly publicized.

Jones said she was stunned to learn the battalion — nicknamed the War Dogs — was being deployed to Los Angeles.

“I said, ‘Wait, it’s 2/7 they’re sending in? The War Dogs? Releasing them on Los Angeles?’ It was nuts for me,” Jones said. “To hear that unit affiliated with this — for my family that’s been serving for two decades, it brings up a lot.”

The Los Angeles deployment comes at a time of year when the California National Guard is often engaged in wildfire suppression operations — a coincidence that has raised concerns among some officials.

On June 18, Capt. Rasheedah Bilal was activated by the California National Guard and assigned to Sacramento, where she is backfilling in an operational role for Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a National Guard firefighting unit that is now understaffed because roughly half its members are deployed to Los Angeles.

“That’s a large amount to pull off that mission … so you have to activate additional Guardsmen to cover on those missions,” said Bilal, speaking in her capacity as executive director of the nonprofit National Guard Assn. of California.

National Guard members are primarily part-time soldiers, who hold civilian jobs or attend college until called into active duty. In California — a state prone to wildfires, earthquakes and floods — they get called into duty a lot, she said.

Many of the same National Guard soldiers in downtown Los Angeles are the same ones who just finished a 120-day activation for wildfire recovery, she said.

“You have the state response to fire and then federal activation? It becomes a strain,” Bilal said.

“They haven’t complained,” she added. “Soldiers vote with their feet. We’re mostly quiet professionals and take a lot of pride in our job. [But] you can only squeeze so much of a lemon before it is dry. You can only pound on the California Guardsmen without it affecting things like retention and recruiting.”

June 6 (UPI) — The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Health and Benefits mobile app has achieved more than 3 million downloads, or nearly 20% of all veterans, since its launch in 2021.

The app has 1.4 million active users, according to an agency news release Friday on the 81st anniversary of D-Day, which was the Allies’ amphibious invasion of German-occupied France.

The app provides veterans access to healthcare and benefits information from their mobile phones, and features fingerprint and face recognition. Users can refill and track VA prescriptions, review appointments, review claims and appeals status, submit evidence for claims and appeals, review VA payment and direct deposit information, locate the closest VA facilities, access the Veterans Crisis Line and show proof of veteran status.

“We encourage all VA-enrolled Veterans to stay connected and informed by downloading the app,” Eddie Pool, acting assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and acting chief information officer, said in a news release.

In all, there are 15.8 million veterans, which represents 6.1% of the civilian population 18 year and older. Of those, 7.8 million served in the Gulf War era between 1990 and now, 5.6 million during the Vietnam era from 1950 to 1073, 767,000 during the Korean conflict in the 1940s and 1950s, and less than 120,000 World War II veterans, according to Pew Research in 2023.

As of 2023, 78% of veterans served during wartime.

The Department of Veterans Affairs employs approximately 482,000 people, including 500,000 workers at 170 hospitals and 1,200 local clinics in the nation’s largest health care system.

Like with other agencies, the agency is being downsized with plans to cut 83,000 jobs.

EXPLAINER

Evidence shows Jeffries’s statement that about 20 percent of veteran households rely on food stamps is mostly false.

The leader of the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, has slammed House Republicans for considering cuts to federal safety net programmes, pointing out that they would impact veterans.

“About 20 percent of households with veterans rely upon supplemental nutritional food assistance,” the representative for New York’s 8th Congressional District said on Thursday, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), sometimes called food stamps.

Jeffries’s statement followed news reports that House Republicans are pushing to limit future SNAP benefit increases, add additional work requirements and shift some SNAP costs – which historically have been entirely paid by the federal government – to states.

Jeffries cited an inaccurate figure. The share of veterans relying on SNAP benefits is about 8 percent, according to an April 2 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.

Jeffries’s office did not provide evidence to back up his statement.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report cited Department of Agriculture data showing that 11 percent of veterans aged 18 to 64 nationwide experienced food insecurity from 2015 to 2019. The department defined food insecurity as “limited or uncertain access to enough food” because of a lack of economic resources. The department found that veterans were 7 percent more likely than nonveterans to experience food insecurity after controlling for a range of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.

The centre’s report used US Census Bureau data from 2021 to 2023 to estimate the number of veterans living in households that received any SNAP benefits during the 12 months before being surveyed.

The report estimated that more than 1.2 million veterans lived in households receiving SNAP benefits, which is 8 percent of the total population of 16.2 million US veterans during that period.

Luis Nunez, a research analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of its report, said the 8 percent covers all veterans whether they live alone or with others.

The highest percentage of veterans on food stamps in any state was 14 percent in Oregon, followed by 11 percent in Louisiana, New Mexico and West Virginia.

Nationally, 8% of veterans receive food stamps; no state is higher than 14%

Data from a few years earlier showed lower percentages than the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report.

The Rand Corporation think tank studied data from 2015 to 2020 and found 4.9 percent of veterans nationwide lived in households receiving SNAP benefits at some point in the previous 12 months. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report found 6.5 percent of all veterans received SNAP benefits in 2019. And the Agriculture Department found that in 2018 and 2019, the average was 6.6 percent.

Our ruling

Jeffries said, “About 20 percent of households with veterans rely upon” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

An April 2 study found that 8 percent of veterans in the US rely on SNAP benefits. No state had a share higher than 14 percent.

Studies with data from a few years earlier show rates from 4.9 percent to 6.6 percent.

There’s an element of truth that veterans face food insecurity at a higher level than nonveterans. But the statement ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. So we rate the statement mostly false.