Despite all the jubilation 80 years ago on May 8, 1945, however, there was still unfinished business to attend to. Soviet forces were already being transferred via Trans-Siberian Railroad to Japanese-held Manchukuo, a British army was battling its way into Burma (now Myanmar) and a Royal Navy task force was assisting its American allies in taking Okinawa, the last major island standing between the Allies and the receding empire of Japan. There, U.S. and Royal navies fought for survival against suicidal airmen, called kamikazes, while Japanese forces put up a stubborn fighting retreat designed to slow the Allied advance while inflicting as many casualties as possible.

Among the thousands involved in World War II’s last acts was Pfc. Clarence Byrle Craft, a rifleman in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 382nd Regiment, 96th Infantry Division. In May 1945, Craft’s company was pinned in place on Okinawa by a 450-foot-high patch of high ground that the Americans called Hen Hill. It was a key chess piece that represented a potential breakthrough that the Americans were grimly determined to achieve and the Japanese were desperate to prevent. On May 31, 1945, Craft led several men on a reconnaissance of Hen Hill. What followed would exceed everyone’s expectations.

Viet Cong targeted US officers — they hadn’t counted on this sergeant

Craft was born in San Bernardino, California, on Sept. 23, 1921. His father died when he was around 8 years old and his mother was a cook in a restaurant chain, ultimately settling in Santa Ana. Craft worked as a ranch foreman until Sept. 15, 1944, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Before shipping out to the Pacific, he got married.

In April 1945, Craft arrived at Okinawa, where he experienced combat for the first time. On May 31, Craft checked what resistance Hen Hill still presented and was not far along when he got an answer — in the form of heavy gunfire and grenades, which wounded three of his troops. Standing up in full view of enemy forces, Craft advanced, shooting at any sign of hostile movement until he’d driven Japanese troops into their trenches. Reaching the hilltop, he threw some grenades into the enemy positions

He was joined by his remaining troops who, following his lead, carried up cases of explosives. Between hurling explosives at enemy positions on the other side of the hillcrest, Craft directed his men as to where to lob their grenades. Craft then moved on to attack the main trench and, straddling a deep ditch, fired into it at point-blank range. He was chasing the stunned survivors as they fled when he came upon an enemy machine gun nest, which he eliminated with rifle and grenades.

One of Craft’s troops caught up to see him moving down the central trench to a camouflaged cave mouth and passed him a bag of explosives, which Craft threw into the cave — only to see it fail to detonate. Reaching down, Craft recovered the explosive, relit it and heaved it back into the cave. This time it blew, entombing any enemy troops seeking shelter there.

Craft was credited with at least 25 enemy kills, but many in his outfit opined that his seemingly suicidal advance to secure Hen Hill had unhinged the entire Japanese defensive line, hastening the Allied victory on Okinawa. Ironically, shortly afterward, Craft was withdrawn to Guam for two months, convalescing with typhoid fever.

Returning home in September 1945 — after Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II — Craft trained soldiers at Fort Ord, near Monterey, California. On Oct. 12, he was called to the White House, where he received the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman alongside 14 other Medal of Honor recipients.

Craft was honorably discharged in 1946, but he soon reenlisted for several more years, encompassing the Korean War.

In the 1960s, he moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he lived with his second wife and worked in construction. During that time, a janitor named Jim Wronski reportedly found Craft’s Medal of Honor and Bronze Star citations in a trash can in Southern California and after 10 years of tracking him down, found him and returned them.

Craft spent some of his retirement working at the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which named its primary care unit after him in 1998.

Craft died on March 28, 2002, and is buried in the Fayetteville National Cemetery.

Department of Justice officials said Brian K. Ditch, 44, faces multiple counts of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and theft of government property. Related, he has also been charged with illegal possession of firearms after investigators looking for his uncle found weapons in the home, in violation of his parole.

Court documents said his uncle, Thomas Clubb, was a disabled veteran suffering from dementia and quadriplegia. Ditch, 44, became Clubb’s primary caregiver in 2008.

But investigators charged that Ditch kept his uncle locked in a garage and without proper care for years while stealing his veterans benefits checks, which totaled $9,559 a month. In addition, federal records showed Clubb was sent more than $235,000 in Social Security Disability Insurance benefits and Retirement Insurance benefits over the last 17 years.

“Instead of properly caring for his uncle, Ditch trapped him in the garage for over 24 hours at a time, forcing his uncle to sit in his own urine and feces without the ability to eat or drink,” Justice officials said in their indictment release.

Investigators charged that after Clubb died in 2019, Ditch continued to pretend he was alive to keep the federal benefits checks from being halted. They said he used the money to buy exotic reptiles and fund “lavish vacations” for himself.

When local police searched Ditch’s home in March, they reported finding Clubb’s partially frozen body in a trash can. Family members told investigators that Ditch claimed his uncle was being cared for by a nursing home, but would not provide details where.

In a statement, Special Agent in Charge Gregory Billingsley with the VA Inspector General’s Office said the arrest came as the result of cooperation between multiple agencies and law enforcement officials.

“VA’s programs and services are established to justly compensate deserving veterans, and the VA Inspector General will bring to justice those who would defraud these programs,” he said.

Prior to this investigation, Ditch was previously convicted for burglary and battery charges. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in St. Louis on Friday.

Hitler’s Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions.

VA’s online legacy project adds names of 210,000 vets lost overseas

That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life are being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies are bonding again.

Germany itself again expressed gratitude for the change that May 8, 1945, brought to the world and to itself.

“It was Germans who unleashed this criminal war and dragged all of Europe with them into the abyss,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told parliament. “Today, 80 years later, our profound thanks still go to the Allied soldiers and the European resistance movements who mustered all their strength and endured great losses in order to defeat the Nazi regime.”

Gloomy outlook

Steinmeier’s comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive — to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize — but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year.

The body count continues to rise in Ukraine, where Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure.

“We are not celebrating this 8 May today in a spirit of calm self-assurance. Because we can see that freedom is not the grand finale of history,” Steinmeier warned. “We therefore no longer need to ask: Did 8 May free us? But we ask: How can we stay free?”

Such warnings made the continuation of the unlikely stretch of peace in most of Europe anything but a given.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which assured peace in Europe under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception.

There too, the German president, who has a largely ceremonial role but embodies the moral resolve of the nation, also took a not-so-veiled swipe at the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, saying the way the United States is turning away from the international order “is a shock on an entirely new scale.”

U.S. contributions to the war effort

The United States was instrumental in turning the tide of the war in Europe, invading along with Allies the D-Day beaches in France’s Normandy on June 6, 1944, in what proved to be the tipping point of the war in Europe that inexorably led to the invasion of Germany and the defeat of the Nazis.

On Wednesday, Trump proclaimed Thursday as a day for the United States to celebrate victory in World War II, insisting the country should better recognize its essential role in the war.

“We are going to start celebrating our victories again!” he said.

The war did drag on beyond Europe, especially in the Pacific against Japan, but even Taiwan joined in marking the day for the first time — and highlighting current-day threats. Instead of Russia, it was centering on China, its immediate rival. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory to be annexed by force if necessary.

“Military aggression against another country is an unjust crime that is bound to fail,” Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said, adding that both Taiwan and Europe were “now facing the threat of a new authoritarian bloc.”

European celebrations

Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here, too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage.

“The idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow, is completely wrong,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. “Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.”

In London, a service was held at Westminster Abbey, where the royal family took time to chat with the veterans, bending over to hear the older veterans in wheelchairs, many of whom the royals have now met at previous services.

In France, where the date is a public holiday, President Emmanuel Macron presided over a wreath-laying ceremony in Paris in front of a statue of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who refused the Franco-German armistice in 1940. De Gaulle fled to London and founded the French Free Forces, organizing networks of resistance fighters and overseeing anti-Nazi sabotage missions in France.

In Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.

Symbolically, President Vladimir Putin will be totally out of lockstep with the rest of Europe as Russia celebrates its Victory Day one day later with a huge military parade on Moscow’s Red Square to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany.

Raf Casert reported from Brussels. Mike Corder in Wageningen, Netherlands, Samuel Petrequin in Paris and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this report.

The Veterans Legacy Memorial was launched in 2019 and creates websites recognizing the lives of deceased veterans, allowing relatives to update the online memorials with details for their service, post-military work and family history.

The scope of the project now includes more than 10 million names and has roughly doubled in the last two years, with the addition of millions of veterans buried in private cemeteries worldwide to existing lists of individuals interred at VA and military sites.

Trump proclaims Thursday as day for US to celebrate victory in WWII

The expansion announced this week includes names from 26 overseas cemeteries and memorials administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

ABMC acting Secretary Robert Dalessandro said in a statement that the Veterans Legacy Project update “adds new resources to honor our nation’s veterans from all wars and brings their stories to those who aren’t able to visit our sites overseas.”

President Donald Trump this week issued a proclamation recognizing May 8 as the 80th anniversary of the end of European hostilities in that conflict.

In addition to the approximately 93,000 WWII veterans added to the veterans project, about 94,000 other names added to the list are of Americans missing in action overseas or buried at sea. Those individuals are honored in a series of overseas memorials overseen by the monuments commission.

“The brave Americans resting in ABMC cemeteries and whose names are inscribed on memorials around the world sacrificed their lives to liberate allied countries and to protect our nation’s interests,” said acting Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Ronald Walters in a statement. “It’s our honor to preserve their legacies.”

Officials in recent months have also updated the legacy project to allow veterans to provide details of their life and service before they pass away. Information on the “Your Story, Your Legacy” effort is available on the project’s website.

Cities from London to Moscow are holding parades, flyovers and memorials this week as the world observes Thursday’s 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, when Nazi Germany surrendered to Allied forces, including the U.S.

Here’s what to know about Trump’s plans:

What is Trump doing and why?

The Republican president is designating specific days for the U.S. to celebrate being on the winning side in World War I and World War II. He complained in recent social media posts that Americans don’t spend enough time celebrating those achievements, which he said wouldn’t have been possible without the U.S.

Trump plans to change Veterans Day into ‘Victory Day for World War I’

“Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I,” he said last week on social media. “We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything — That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

Can Trump rename an existing federal holiday?

No. Nov. 11 is already Veterans Day, a federal holiday in the U.S., and only Congress can create, rename or take it back. That could explain why Trump backed away from his “renaming” plan and said he’d instead be “declaring” national holidays instead.

“We won two World Wars, but we never took credit for it — Everyone else does! All over the World, the Allies are celebrating the Victory we had in World War II. The only Country that doesn’t celebrate is the United States of America, and the Victory was only accomplished because of us,” he wrote Monday on social media. “Without the United States, the War would have been won by other Countries, and what a different World it would be. Therefore, I am hereby declaring a National Holiday in celebration of the Victories of World War I, where the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, and World War II, where the Victory date was May 8, 1945.”

He signed a proclamation on Wednesday that designates May 8, 2025, as a “day in celebration of Victory Day for World War II.” He’s expected to issue a similar proclamation for World War I later this year.

Is Thursday a day off from work?

No, Thursday is not a federal holiday and therefore not a day off from work. Only Congress can create federal holidays, and Trump has complained that there already are too many of them.

What does he envision will happen around the U.S. on these days?

It’s unclear. Trump didn’t say what he envisions happening, and the proclamation didn’t include any details. But he said during an unrelated appearance Wednesday in the Oval Office that he noticed France and other countries were “all getting ready for Victory Day.”

“We don’t celebrate it and I think that’s a great disservice,” Trump said.

What happens in other countries?

On major anniversaries like this year’s 80th, Britain celebrates VE Day with parades, airplane flyovers and memorials. The British royal family traditionally watches the airplanes pass overhead from a balcony at Buckingham Palace.

Russia celebrates on Friday, and its Victory Day parades are a massive show of its armed forces, with thousands of troops, scores of heavy equipment rolling across Red Square and flyovers involving dozens of warplanes. Military parades, fireworks and other festivities are held in cities across the country.

What have veterans groups said about Trump’s plans?

Rob Couture, director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said they are encouraged by any steps that “bring attention to the service of veterans from that time.”

Just over 66,100 of the 16.4 million Americans who served in World War II were alive as of 2024.

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Mason was one of four inspector general nominations submitted by the White House this week. All of those posts — and about a dozen more — have been vacant since late January, when Trump dismissed the independent investigators from their roles without explanation.

Mike Missal, who had served in the VA Inspector General role since April 2016, has joined seven other former officials in a lawsuit challenging those firings. That case is still unresolved.

Mason was part of the Board of Veterans Appeals from 2017 to 2022, becoming the first woman ever to serve as chair of the judicial panel. The board provides a second chance for veterans seeking disability benefits to challenge Department of Veterans Affairs decisions.

She is the wife and daughter of military veterans and has been a public advocate for military spouse employment opportunities in the past.

VA, DOD oversight questioned after Trump inspector general firings

Earlier this year, Trump appointed Mason as a senior advisor to the VA secretary. Her shift from administration insider to department watchdog elicited concerns about her ability to serve as an independent voice on department operations and decisions.

“A Trump political acolyte like Cheryl Mason is exactly the wrong choice to be the VA Inspector General, a role requiring nonpartisan, independent oversight,” Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement responding to Tuesday’s nomination.

“Veterans deserve an inspector general who will conduct investigations free of interference and collusion from [VA Secretary Doug] Collins and the Trump administration. Otherwise, we will be putting veterans at even greater risk of corruption and abuse of power.”

Critics noted that Mason has been involved in department efforts to trim the size of the VA workforce, which has prompted objections from Democratic lawmakers and veterans advocates.

Hours before the nomination, in testimony before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Collins hinted that Trump would be moving soon to fill the vacant watchdog post.

“From our perspective, we welcome the oversight to make sure that we’re meeting the metrics that we need to do to take care of veterans,” he said.

Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said filling the post is “a high priority” for the panel. No timeline has been announced for a confirmation hearing for Mason.

In testimony before a Senate oversight committee, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins portrayed his department as a bureaucracy in severe disarray when he took over three months ago. But he insisted reforms from the new administration since then have set operations on the right track.

“Our shared goal needs to be making things better for veterans rather than protecting the department’s broken bureaucracy,” he told members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “To simply say that where we came in was okay, everyone knows that was just simply not true.”

In contrast, Senate Democrats accused President Donald Trump’s administration of working to dismantle the department rather than improve it, accusing Collins of exaggerating and fabricating problems to justify dramatic changes in coming months.

“You cannot slash and trash the VA without eliminating essential positions which provide access and availability of health care,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the committee. “It simply cannot be done. You may give us a lot of verbiage here, but you’re not giving us facts.”

‘There’s a war on vets’: Dems launch plans to counter Trump’s VA moves

Collins’ appearance on Capitol Hill was his first since his confirmation in February. It came amid increased criticism from veterans advocates and federal unions over Collins’ public plans to trim as many as 80,000 staffers from the 480,000-plus department workforce.

The hearing quickly became a contentious affair, with several shouting matches between Collins and Democratic critics of his policies.

Collins has said the staff cuts are needed to cut down on the “bloated” VA bureaucracy. Department staffing levels grew roughly 20% from the start of fiscal 2019 to the end of fiscal 2024, but Collins asserted problems like medical wait times and benefits backlogs have grown worse over that timeframe.

“Something has to change, and it’s up to us to make that change,” he said. “Under President Trump, we are working to solve problems that have persisted at VA for decades.”

But Democratic lawmakers disputed several of those points. Blumenthal noted that claims backlogs increased after a massive expansion of veterans benefits in 2022, and that wait times increased after significant changes to operations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other lawmakers urged Collins to back away from planned staff dismissals without a clear idea of how those reductions will affect programs.

On Tuesday, Collins said he sees the 15% workforce reduction as a goal — “it could be more, it could be less” — but bristled at suggestions that he would make any moves that could harm veterans care.

He insisted that no physicians or front-line workers have been fired so far and vowed that critical workers won’t be dismissed later.

Democratic lawmakers countered that losing schedulers, support staff and other key personnel will harm veterans seeking care.

“You’re claiming that these 80,000 are all [diversity employees] and interior designers,” said Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. “There’s no way that all of them are in those job fields.”

They characterized VA as an agency in need of improvement, not a complete overhaul. President Joe Biden’s administration also pushed that message late last year, noting an approval rating of more than 80% for veterans using the system.

But Republican lawmakers echoed Collins’ view of a Veterans Affairs department in desperate need of overhaul.

“The VA is not working for veterans,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “And if we just say, ‘Everything has to say the same and you just have to add more money and more people,’ you’re looking at this the wrong way.”

The conflict over the state of VA — and the level of changes it needs to make to prepare for the future — is expected to be on full display as lawmakers debate the department’s fiscal 2026 budget in coming months.

The White House has already proposed a 4% increase in veterans programmatic funding for next fiscal year, even with the proposed staff and contract cuts on the horizon.

But Anthony Tata — who is likely to be confirmed to the senior military post despite the concerns — offered a partial apology for past attacks on Democratic lawmakers during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and promised to focus on issues like recruiting and retention in his next role.

“I regret making those comments,” Tata said. “I can guarantee you that if confirmed, I will be an apolitical leader that is trying to take care of the men and women in uniform, their families and the Defense Department’s civilians.”

Hegseth directs 20% cut to top military leadership positions

Tata, 65, is a retired Army brigadier general who previously served as acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during Trump’s first administration.

Earlier this year, the president nominated him to serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, overseeing a host of issues regarding force readiness, quality of life programs and military pay.

In 2020, Tata was forced to withdraw his nomination for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy post because of inflammatory comments he made on social media and television shows.

They included labeling former President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” and a secret Muslim believer, as well as numerous anti-Islamic comments. He also suggested that Democratic lawmakers and federal workers were engaging in conspiracies to undermine and kill Trump, and stated that former CIA Director John Brennan deserved to be executed.

Democrats on the committee expressed surprise that Tata was renominated by Trump this year, given those past controversies.

“I respect and appreciate your military service, but your record of public statements and behavior toward individuals with whom you disagree politically is disqualifying for a position of this significance,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., ranking member of the committee.

“If confirmed, you would need to serve all members of the Department of Defense and their families, not just those whom you agree with politically. Your public record and past performance at the Pentagon do not inspire confidence in this regard.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., echoed those same concerns.

“You seem to think that if a general or admiral was promoted during a Democratic administration, that person should be automatically fired,” she said. “That’s just a political purge.”

But Republicans on the committee characterized Tata’s past comments as little more than typically political rhetoric, accusing Democrats of engaging in similar hyperbole in the past.

They praised Tata as the right person for the leadership post at a time when the Trump administration is pushing major reforms throughout the military bureaucracy.

Tata said if confirmed, a primary focus will be on recruiting and retention within the ranks. He said part of the solution will be new programs to expose high school students to the idea of serving in the military, appealing to both the job benefits and patriotic motivations.

He also promised his office will align personnel policies “with national security imperatives on increasing lethality and the warrior ethos.”

A committee vote on Tata’s nomination is expected later this month. Republicans’ majority in the Senate means that he can be confirmed into the role without any Democratic support.

Several Democratic committee members have vowed to delay or complicate the Trump administration’s senior Pentagon nominations over concerns about department staff cuts and programming reassignments, but they likely will not be able to halt the confirmations without support from their GOP colleagues.

They also promised ongoing improvements to”increase automation that will expedite survivors’ claims” in coming months as part of the effort.

In an open message to the veterans community, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the moves are designed to simplify the process and improve families’ interactions with the department.

“The last thing survivors need in their time of grief is frustrating red tape and bureaucracy,” he said in a statement. “That’s why we are creating a better system to more quickly and effectively provide survivors the services, support and compassion they’ve earned.”

White House budget plan gives 4% boost for VA amid other agency cuts

The Office of Survivors Assistance was established in 2008 as a way to consolidate benefits for deceased veterans under a single agency. The office provides information on funeral resources, bereavement counseling and estate planning, as well as clarification on which veterans benefits continue after an individual’s death.

VA officials plan to move the office from the Veterans Benefits Administration to reporting directly to the VA secretary, with five full-time staffers advising department leadership on survivors benefits issues.

Along with the change, leadership announced plans to stand up a new “white-glove” survivor outreach team in the the Philadelphia VA Regional Benefit Office to “guide and assist eligible survivors throughout every step of the Dependency and Indemnity Compensation claims process, with the goal of getting to ‘yes’ on claims decisions.”

Survivors can be eligible for nearly $2,000 in monthly payouts from VA depending on their health and their veterans’ service-connected disabilities before death. But the calculations for the benefit can be overly complicated, with additions and subtractions for length of marriage, length of service and final military ranks.

That new team is scheduled to start work later this month, after personnel complete specialized training on survivor benefits issues.

Department officials said that they currently process more than 1,000 DIC payments or adjustments a day through automated systems. But they said they hope to expand that number in coming months, pending a review of the department’s claims systems.

Collins and other senior leaders have promised a host of cost-savings and department improvements through a series of reforms, many aimed at trimming personnel and bureaucracy within the department.

The efforts so far have generally earned praise from Republicans but concern from Democrats, who worry cutback will lead to slower response times and delays in services.

In a statement Monday, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., praised the announcement.

“We have to keep pushing VA forward to meet the needs of veterans and their families,” he said. “Today’s action by Secretary Collins is in lockstep with that mission.”

Tata was originally nominated for the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness role in 2020 but withdrew his name from consideration after numerous inflammatory comments became public.

Among them were Tata’s labeling of former President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” and a secret Muslim believer. He also posted anti-Islamic comments on social media, drawing condemnation from military leaders.

Trump later appointed Tata as Pentagon policy chief, getting around the Senate confirmation process. Upon his return to the Oval Office, Trump opted to nominate Tata again for the Pentagon personnel leadership role, a decision that will bring the fight again before the politically divided Senate Armed Services Committee.

Monday, May 5

Tuesday, May 6

Wednesday, May 7

Thursday, May 8

The $1.7 trillion “skinny budget” plan for next fiscal year, released by the White House on Friday, provides only broad spending outlines for federal departments and is expected to be followed by more detailed guidance in coming weeks.

White House officials said the fiscal plan “holds the line on total spending while providing unprecedented increases for defense and border security” while also reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.

While major discretionary funding cuts are planned for agencies like the Department of Education (down 15%) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (down 44%), the White House plan calls for a $5.4 billion boost in VA program spending.

Trump plans to change Veterans Day into ‘Victory Day for World War I’

According to documents released by the Office of Budget and Management, about $2 billion of that increase would go toward accelerating the department’s electronic health records overhaul, a project that has been stalled for three years.

VA Secretary Doug Collins earlier this year announced plans to accelerate the rollout of the records system to 13 news sites in 2026, despite numerous cost overruns and system glitches.

Another $3.3 billion would be set aside for medical care improvements, although the specifics of those efforts have yet to be released.

Budget officials said the money would go toward ensuring that “the nation provides the world-class healthcare to America’s veterans that they deserve” and that “veterans who qualify for access to care with local community providers would be empowered to make the choice to see them.”

Expanding community care options — opportunities for veterans to seek private-sector care at taxpayers expense — was a major campaign promise for Trump. Collins has reiterated that focus in recent public interviews.

Planning documents also call for a $1.1 billion increase for programs aimed at ending veterans’ homelessness. Officials said the money would be earmarked for “rental assistance and augmenting VA’s existing case management.”

The spending plan estimates almost $500 million in savings from cuts to legacy information technology systems within the department, and another $37 million from diversity program cuts and planned staff reductions.

Officials also plan to shift about $50 billion in previously mandatory funding — set aside originally to pay for expenses related to toxic exposure injuries — into the discretionary budget next year.

Republican lawmakers have argued the move will make the funding more flexible and improve oversight into its use. Democratic lawmakers have countered that the move endangers long-term assurances that money will be available to care for those wounds of war.

The White House did not release its estimate for mandatory VA spending in fiscal 2026, which includes money for disability benefits, education payouts and certain medical expenses.

Veterans Affairs planners have seen regular budget increases annually for more than 20 years, even amid periodic congressional and White House efforts to reduce federal spending.

In fiscal 2001, the VA budget — both mandatory and discretionary — totaled just $45 billion. In 2011, it was about $125 billion. For the current fiscal year, the total tops $350 billion.

“We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything,” Trump wrote in the late night statement. “That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

The move to rename Veterans Day — established to coincide with the end date of World War I — would overwrite 87 years of precedent in recognizing Nov. 11 as a national holiday celebrating all veterans.

During his last term in office, Trump issued a national proclamation for Veterans Day honoring the celebration as a chance for the country to “pause to pay tribute to all who have proudly worn our nation’s uniform.” He did not make any mention of the World War I origins of the date.

White House defends Hegseth amid new Signal accusation, staff overhaul

White House officials did not respond to clarification on whether Trump’s Victory Day name would replace or run alongside Veterans Day celebrations.

Trump also did not clarify if he expects May 8 will also become a federal holiday like Veterans Day, although a decision on that designation would fall to Congress.

In his post, Trump noted that many countries commemorate the end of World War II on May 8 “but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result.”

May 8, 1945, was the end of major fighting in the European arena of World War II, but fighting in the Pacific for U.S. and allied troops continued for nearly four more months, until Sept. 2 of that year.

More than 400,000 U.S. troops were killed in fighting in World War II, according to the National World War II museum.

However, House Democrats warned that maintaining that better standard of living may hinge on how many civilian defense employees end up out of work in the coming months due to White House efforts to trim the federal workforce.

“This administration’s assault on our federal civil service threatens the essential support programs for military families and the partnership between military and civilian personnel across our military,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., during the House Armed Services Committee’s military personnel hearing on quality-of-life issues Wednesday.

Last year, as part of the annual defense authorization bill, House and Senate lawmakers approved a host of military quality-of-life initiatives designed to help with recruiting, retention and readiness in the ranks.

Among them were a 10% targeted pay boost for junior enlisted personnel, improvements to child care operations and hiring policies and expanded access to military medical appointments for families.

Troops need better health care access, top enlisted tell lawmakers

Personnel officials testifying at the committee hearing said they have received positive feedback from troops about the changes already.

“I think the quality-of-life focus for the last year has been phenomenal,” Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel, told lawmakers.

“Two years ago, the narrative out in the press was that if you come into the services, you’ve got terrible living conditions, terrible schools for your children and everything. I think we’ve turned the corner on a lot of that discussion.”

Vice Adm. Richard Cheeseman Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for personnel, noted the targeted pay raise in particular has drawn attention.

“I’ve heard from plenty of sailors that they enjoy the extra money,” he said.

But the military leaders also emphasized that they see continued areas for additional improvements. At the top of each service’s list were improvements to barracks and dorms, with better options and maintenance for troops’ living quarters.

“We can’t put enough new money into barracks,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte, Marine Corps deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs.

Katharine Kelley, deputy chief of space operations for human capital, said despite recent improvements in military child care, Space Force personnel still have an urgent need for overnight care options, given the service’s unique missions.

And all of the service officials promised plans to continue building up family services and base support options for troop to ensure recent quality-of-life advances continue.

But Democratic lawmakers noted operating those services will likely require continued hiring of civilian support personnel, which may not happen under workforce cuts planned by the White House.

“Civilian workers maintain an important role for us, and for our readiness,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler, Army deputy chief of staff. “We are doing some reorganization because of [planned reductions]. That’s something we’re looking closely at to make sure we don’t have a gap in our coverage as far as the mission is concerned.”

About 16,000 Army civilian employees, 12,000 Air Force civilian workers and 1,600 Marine Corps civilian staff have agreed to deferred resignation plans, officials said. Navy and Space Force officials expect to lose about 10% of their civilian staff through those same plans.

Houlahan and other Democrats expressed concerns that those cuts could have a severe impact on child care staffing, medical offices and family support programs, even though some of those areas have been exempted from a department-wide hiring freeze.

“We are literally, in some cases, firing or removing people, and then we’re figuring out what to do about it,” Houlahan said. “It’s just astounding.”

Service officials said they have not yet seen negative impacts from the planned and potential civilian workforce cutbacks, but will be monitoring the issue closely in coming months.

“We’re looking at the impacts of what losing these individuals is and then restructuring as appropriate to handle that challenge,” Borgschulte said.

Vietnam has been called the first “television” war. But it has also inspired generations of writers who have explored its origins, its horrors, its aftermath and the innate flaws and miscalculations that drove the world’s most powerful country, the U.S., into a long, gruesome and hopeless conflict.

Fiction

“The Quiet American,” Graham Greene (1955)

British author Graham Greene’s novel has long held the stature of tragic prophecy. Alden Pyle is a naive CIA agent whose dreams of forging a better path for Vietnam — a “Third Force” between communism and colonialism that existed only in books — leads to senseless destruction. “The Quiet American” was released when U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was just beginning, yet anticipated the Americans’ prolonged and deadly failure to comprehend the country they claimed to be saving.

“The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien (1990)

The Vietnam War was the last extended conflict waged while the U.S. still had a military draft, and the last to inspire a wide range of notable, first-hand fiction — none more celebrated or popular than O’Brien’s 1990 collection of interconnected stories. O’Brien served in an infantry unit in 1969-70, and the million-selling “The Things They Carried” has tales ranging from a soldier who wears his girlfriend’s stockings around his neck, even in battle, to the author trying to conjure the life story of a Vietnamese soldier he killed. O’Brien’s book has become standard reading about the war and inspired an exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago.

“Matterhorn,” Karl Marlantes (2009)

Karl Marlantes, a Rhodes scholar and decorated Marine commander, fictionalized his experiences in his 600-plus page novel about a recent college graduate and his fellow members of Bravo Company as they seek to retake a base near the border with Laos. Like “The Quiet American,” “Matterhorn” is, in part, the story of disillusionment, a young man’s discovery that education and privilege are no shields against enemy fire. “No strategy was perfect,” he realizes. “All choices were bad in some way.”

“The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

Viet Thanh Nguyen was just 4 when his family fled Vietnam in 1975, eventually settling in San Jose, California. “The Sympathizer,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, is Nguyen’s first book and high in the canon of Vietnamese American literature. The novel unfolds as the confessions of a onetime spy for North Vietnam who becomes a Hollywood consultant and later returns to Vietnam fighting on the opposite side. “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces,” the narrator tells us. “Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds.”

“The Mountains Sing,” Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (2020)

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai was born in North Vietnam in 1973, two years before the U.S. departure, and was reared on stories of her native country’s haunted and heroic past. Her novel alternates narration between a grandmother born in 1920 and a granddaughter born 40 years later. Together, they take readers through much of 20th-century Vietnam, from French colonialism and Japanese occupation to the rise of Communism and the growing and brutal American military campaign to fight it. Quế Mai dedicates the novel to various ancestors, including an uncle whose “youth the Vietnam War consumed.”

Nonfiction

“The Best and the Brightest,” David Halberstam (1972)

As a young reporter in Vietnam, David Halberstam had been among the first journalists to report candidly on the military’s failures and the government’s deceptions. The title of his bestseller became a catchphrase and the book itself a document of how the supposedly finest minds of the post-World War II generation — the elite set of advisers in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — could so badly miscalculate the planning and execution of a war and so misunderstand the country they were fighting against.

“Fire in the Lake,” Frances FitzGerald (1972)

Frances FitzGerald’s celebrated book was published the same year and stands with “The Best and the Brightest” as an early and prescient take on the war’s legacy. Fitzgerald had reported from South Vietnam for the Village Voice and The New Yorker, and she drew upon firsthand observations and deep research in contending that the U.S. was fatally ignorant of Vietnamese history and culture.

“Dispatches,” Michael Herr (1977)

Michael Herr, who would eventually help write “Apocalypse Now,” was a Vietnam correspondent for Esquire who brought an off-hand, charged-up rock ‘n’ roll sensibility to his highly praised and influential book. In one “dispatch,” he tells of a soldier who “took his pills by the fistful,” uppers in one pocket and downers in another. “He told me they cooled out things just right for him,” Herr wrote, “that he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope.”

“Bloods,” Wallace Terry (1984)

A landmark, “Bloods” was among the first books to center the experiences of Black veterans. Former Time magazine correspondent Wallace Terry compiled the oral histories of 20 Black veterans of varying backgrounds and ranks. One interviewee, Richard J. Ford III, was wounded three times and remembered being visited at the hospital by generals and other officers: “They respected you and pat you on the back. They said, ‘You brave and you courageous. You America’s finest. America’s best.’ Back in the states, the same officers that pat me on the back wouldn’t even speak to me.”

“A Bright Shining Lie,” Neil Sheehan (1988)

Halberstam’s sources as a reporter included Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, a U.S. adviser to South Vietnam who became a determined critic of American military leadership and eventually died in battle in 1972. Vann’s story is told in full in “A Bright Shining Lie,” by Neil Sheehan, the New York Times reporter known for breaking the story of the Pentagon Papers and how they revealed the U.S. government’s long history of deceiving the public about the war. Winner of the Pulitzer in 1989, “A Bright Shining Lie” was adapted into an HBO movie starring Bill Paxton as Vann.

The evening news brought the Vietnam War into American living rooms, but once the news was over, so was the war. Prime-time shows brought nary a mention of it as networks looked to bring uncontroversial content to the broadest possible audience. But the war simmered below the surface as subtext, and when enough years passed, television would finally take it on as a subject.

“Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” (1964-1969)

“Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” premiered on CBS six weeks after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized U.S. combat troops in Vietnam, and the daft comedy was among the chief images of the military in American homes through the peak of U.S. involvement in 1969. Naturally, the show about a country rube in the Marine Corps never directly mentioned the war. But most of the real-life Marines who marched in its introduction would soon be fighting in Vietnam. Star Jim Nabors later said watching that intro was difficult, knowing some of those men had died.

“All in the Family” (1971-1979)

It would take “All in the Family” to bring the war into prime-time discourse. The Norman Lear-created CBS comedy owed its popularity to timely political bickering between cantankerous patriarch Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and his liberal-minded son-in-law Michael “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner). Vietnam was the sole subject of a landmark 1976 episode where a draft-dodging fugitive friend of Michael’s comes to Christmas dinner, and an explosive argument ensues. “When the hell are you going to admit that the war was wrong?!” Michael shouts. A friend of Archie’s whose son died in the war shocks him by taking his son-in-law’s side.

“M*A*S*H” (1972-1983)

Set in the Korean War of the early 1950s, “M*A*S*H,” the CBS dramedy about wisecracking U.S. Army doctors, was among the most popular shows in the country during the Vietnam War’s final years. It was heavy with anti-military, anti-war sentiment, evoking the zeitgeist of a Vietnam-exhausted populace. “War isn’t Hell,” Hawkeye Pierce, played by Alan Alda, says in a typical line. “There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them.” (The Robert Altman film the show stemmed from deliberately minimized references to Korea to maximize its unspoken commentary on Vietnam.)

“The A-Team” (1983-1987)

Television’s first regular portrayal of Vietnam veterans came in the form of a cartoonish crew of daring mercenaries that reflected the era of Reagan and Rambo. NBC’s “The A-Team,” whose members included a mohawked-and-gold-chained Mr. T and a cigar-chomping George Peppard, were a “crack commando unit” who were innocent fugitives from military justice and worked as mercenaries pulling off weekly capers. Explosions and jumping cars abounded. In a fourth-season episode, the team returns to Vietnam for a job. Peppard’s Hannibal momentarily struggles with dark war memories before getting back to the lighthearted action.

“The Welcome Home Concert” (1987)

HBO aired and helped organize a 1987 charity concert dubbed “Welcome Home” that billed itself as the warm celebration Vietnam War veterans never got upon their return. Performers included James Brown, Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Wonder. The July Fourth concert was not a militaristic affair, and had a hate-the-war, love-the-troops vibe. Some of the most anti-war songs of the ’60s were performed by artists like John Fogerty and Crosby, Stills & Nash. The event would be a harbinger of a wave of cultural nostalgia and reckoning as baby boomers began turning 40 and were in the mood to reflect.

“Tour of Duty” (1987-1990)

With “Tour of Duty,” the Vietnam War finally came to prime time. The CBS series that premiered in 1987 showed actual combat and the young men who fought and died in it. It might have been called “Platoon: The Series,” after the Vietnam film that had just won Best Picture at the Oscars. Surprisingly gory and gritty for a network show, it had all the hallmarks of the era’s many Vietnam movies. But executives seeking lower costs and higher ratings — which never came — eventually moved production from Hawaii to California and introduced romances and soapy plotlines typical of TV dramas.

“China Beach” (1988-1991)

And suddenly, there were two Vietnam series on TV. ABC’s “China Beach” was part-“M*A*S*H,” part-“Grey’s Anatomy,” part-“Mad Men.” Set in a wartime evacuation hospital — the title was the Americans’ nickname for My Khe Beach in Đà Nẵng — it focused on Army medics and civilians. It was festooned with ’60s songs whose copyrights have kept the series off streaming services. Beloved by critics, “China Beach” made a star and a best-actress Emmy winner of Dana Delany, but never found a mass audience. With its cancellation, network TV depictions of the war would disappear for years.

“The Wonder Years” (1988-1993)

“The Wonder Years” was baby boomer nostalgia in its purest form. The ABC series, narrated by an adult Kevin Arnold (voiced by Daniel Stern, played as a child by Fred Savage), depicts his boyhood feelings and experiences with the backing of sentimental ’60s songs. The specter of Vietnam dominates its first season, which sees Kevin’s hero — the big brother of his neighbor and crush Winnie Cooper — die in the war. In a 2021 reboot, the story shifts to a Black family in Alabama, with narrator Dean Williams’ brother a returning Vietnam vet who faces racism at home.

“The ’60s” (1999)

The NBC miniseries “The ’60s” was a roundup of the decade’s cliches that by then had been well-established in movies and TV. The 1999 two-night event was billed as “the movie event of a generation.” Its subjects were three Chicago siblings who each go on very 1960s journeys. For Jerry O’Connell’s high-school quarterback character, that meant serving in Vietnam. He enlists in a gung-ho moment, but by the show’s second night, he’s back home with an Army jacket and long hair, drinking to bury his trauma. The show drew a big audience at a time when NBC was ratings king.

“This Is Us” (2016-2022)

The time-hopping, tear-jerking NBC family drama “This Is Us” used the Vietnam War to delve into the psyche of Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia), who refused to talk about his experience as a soldier with his wife and kids before his premature death. In dual plotlines that run through its third season, with the emotional themes and folk-acoustic soundtrack that are hallmarks of “This Is Us,” Jack is shown enlisting to try to protect his drafted younger brother. Decades later, his son Kevin (Justin Hartley) travels to Vietnam to find out what happened to his father and uncle.

“The Vietnam War” (2017)

In a docuseries that ran over 10 nights on PBS, the Vietnam War got the same hallowed treatment Ken Burns brought nearly 30 years earlier to the Civil War. Burns and Lynn Novick’s “The Vietnam War” was not as soft or sentimental as his reputation might have suggested. It was a rare PBS show with a TV-MA rating, and its tone, with a modern soundtrack from composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, matched the messiness of the conflict. The show went to lengths to include a North Vietnamese perspective along with American and South Vietnamese vets and historians.

“The Sympathizer” (2024)

It took until 2024 before a fictional television show would attempt a Vietnamese perspective of the war’s end and its aftermath, though it brought mixed reactions from Vietnamese American viewers. HBO’s “The Sympathizer” was based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The first two episodes of the black-comic limited series depict a harrowing flight during the fall of Saigon. Actors of Vietnamese descent played most of its main roles, including lead Hoa Xuande. But much of the attention given to it — and its only Emmy nomination — went to Robert Downey Jr. for his portrayal of four different white American men.

The Vietnam War was marked by an exhausting combination of major operations and small-unit actions. The South Vietnamese communists were well practiced in the latter, but when soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) began making their way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in growing numbers, they brought with them more conventional techniques. Consequently, American troops fighting in “The ‘Nam” had to be ready for Viet Cong guerrilla ambushes or light infantry tactics as practiced by the PAVN — or sometimes both at once, since each enemy force learned from the other.

One consistent doctrine among the communists was the importance of eliminating the enemy’s officers and senior noncommissioned officers. What they did not reckon on, however, was the flexibility with which U.S. Army and Marine personnel replaced their leaders under fire, regardless of rank. One of the more exceptional examples was Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Leonard.

Born in Eutaw, Alabama on Nov. 26, 1926, Leonard attended the racially segregated Avondale School up to 8th grade, followed by the Ullman School in Birmingham. While at Avondale, he met Lois Coates, his future wife, who in an interview with the Birmingham Real-Time News, remembered him “always walking the halls in his Boy Scout uniform.” On the side, he worked at a drugstore, making $15 a week to help his mother pay the bills.

Upon reaching 11th grade in 1947, Leonard joined the U.S. Army and served during the Korean War from 1950 to 1951. After returning stateside, he married Lois and they had five children.

Leonard advanced through the ranks to make master sergeant while stationed in Germany between 1956 and 1957. While there, however, he was demoted to sergeant first class for fighting with another soldier who had addressed him with a racially offensive epithet.

“He never got that stripe back,” Lois said in an interview with Hero Cards.

Returning to the U.S., Leonard was serving as a drill sergeant at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, nearing retirement from the Army, with thoughts of starting his own business and doing a lot of fishing. First, though, he requested a combat deployment to Vietnam.

“He didn’t have to go,” Lois Leonard recalled. “I said: ‘You’re crazy. You ought not to do it.’”

Leonard, however, said that drilling so many boys barely older than his sons to ship out for hazardous duty overseas made him feel a need to apply his years of training to help get them through.

“They need experienced soldiers over there,” Lois Leonard recalled her husband telling her.

On Aug. 31, 1966, Leonard was assigned to 3rd Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 16th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division — famously known as “The Big Red One.” On Feb. 22, 1967, his Company B, under Capt. Donald S. Ulm, was participating in Operation Junction City, an offensive aimed at trapping the already bloodied Viet Cong 9th Division.

On Feb. 28, Leonard’s platoon was conducting a series of 500-meter sweeps through heavy foliage, advancing in a cloverleaf pattern through heavy vegetation near Prek Klok in Tay Ninh Province. The platoon had only advanced 1,000 meters when it came under fire from small arms, automatic weapons, grenades and 60mm mortars.

Among the first Americans picked out and shot by the ambushers were the platoon leader and other key personnel, leaving it to Sgt. Leonard, as the highest ranker still standing, to apply all he’d learned as a drill sergeant to the men he now commanded.

The 3rd Platoon faced the 2nd Battalion, 101st Regiment, PAVN, which had recently come down and attached itself to the 9th Division — not VC guerrillas, but North Vietnamese regulars. They were out on a convoy ambush along Route 4 when they and 3rd Platoon literally ran into each other.

After first contact, PAVN forces tried to assault the U.S. troops, but Leonard quickly evaluated the situation, rallied the troops and drove back the enemy, at least for the time being.

Making the most of a momentary pause in the fight, he directed the redistribution of ammunition and established a perimeter to deal with the next enemy move. As he did, he noticed a wounded soldier beyond the perimeter and was dragging him back inside when an enemy sniper round shattered his left hand. In spite of this, he refused medical attention until all other wounded were taken care of.

During their next attack, PAVN forces set up a machine gun in a good location to sweep the 3rd Platoon’s entire perimeter. The platoon gunner set up an M60 squad machine gun to counter it, but it malfunctioned. Leonard crawled up to help clear it, but the NVA gun crew spotted it and mowed down the M60 team and everyone in its vicinity. In spite of his own wounds, Leonard rose, charged at the enemy position and wiped out its crew. He then propped himself behind a tree and engaged the enemy until he succumbed to his wounds.

After four and a half hours of fighting, PAVN forces disengaged, retreating like its division toward the border of nominally neutral Cambodia, while Operation Junction City proceeded on. The relative skirmish, dubbed the Battle of Prek Klok I (there would be a second) cost B Company 25 men killed and 28 wounded. They found 167 dead NVA in the area, along with 40 captured weapons.

Numerous American survivors subsequently testified that they would probably not have made it through the ordeal had it not been for the leadership of their makeshift commander.

Leonard was 37 years old when he died — just six months shy of retirement from the Army. On Dec. 19, 1968, Lois Leonard received her late husband’s Medal of Honor from Army Secretary Stanley Rogers Resor at the Pentagon, making him the first Black 1st Division soldier to be awarded the medal. Initially buried at Shadow Lawn Cemetery, Leonard was later reinterred in a better-kept resting place at Fort Mitchell National Cemetery, Fort Mitchell, Alabama.

War, like love, has long inspired artists and musicians. That is especially true of the songs written in response to the Vietnam War during the countercultural movements of the 1960s and ’70s. The songs released in that time — and in the years that followed — sought to highlight the experiences of those affected by combat and in a period of societal upheaval.

This month marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon. Below, explore 11 songs from the 1960s through the 2010s about the conflict, from artists around the world. You can listen to the tracks on The Associated Press’ Spotify playlist here.

“Saigon Bride,” Joan Baez (1967)

Based on a poem sent to Joan Baez by Nina Duschek, “Saigon Bride” is emblematic of ’60s folk music and tells the story of a solider who goes to war, leaving his wife behind. “How many dead men will it take / To build a dike that will not break?” she sings in her soft vibrato. “How many children must we kill / Before we make the waves stand still?”

“Đường Trường Sơn xe anh qua,” Văn Dung (1968)

Văn Dung’s ”Đường Trường Sơn xe anh qua” (“The Truong Son Road Your Vehicles Passed Through”) is written about the Ho Chi Minh trail, an expansive system of paths and trails used by North Vietnam to bring troops and supplies into South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the war. Dung wrote the song in 1968, when he arrived at the Khe Sanh front, about female youth volunteers. There are many wonderful covers of this one, too, including a theatrical rendition by Trọng Tấn.

“Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

It may very well be the first song that comes to mind when the Vietnam War is brought up. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s three-time platinum “Fortunate Son” is a benchmark by which to compare the efficacy of all other protest anthems. Frontman John Fogerty wrote this one to highlight what he viewed as an innate hypocrisy: American leaders perpetuating war while protecting themselves from making the same sacrifices they asked of the public. “Yeah-yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes,” he sings. “Hoo, they send you down to war, Lord.”

“I Should Be Proud,” Martha Reeves & the Vandellas (1970)

Martha Reeves & the Vandellas’ “I Should Be Proud” is conflicted. Soul singer Reeves embodies a narrator who learns her love has been killed in combat during the Vietnam War. Instead of being filled with pride for his sacrifice, she grieves. “But I don’t want no silver star,” she sings. “Just the good man they took from me.”

“Ca Dao Mẹ,” Trịnh Công Sơn (1970)

The Vietnamese singer-songwriter Trịnh Công Sơn has a rich catalog featuring a myriad of anti-war songs; selecting just one is a challenge. But “Ca Dao Mẹ” (“A Mother’s Lullaby”) is a clear standout. It details a mother’s sacrifice during wartime. In the last verse, the mother sings a lullaby to her child and also the young country. Vietnamese singer Khánh Ly does a lovely cover of it, too.

“Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1971)

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college students during a protest at Kent State University. Four students were killed, and nine others were injured. Not all of those hurt or killed were involved in the demonstration, which opposed the U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Neil Young was sitting on a porch with David Crosby when he saw images of the horrific event in a magazine and decided to write a song about it. “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?” he sang.

“What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye (1971)

There isn’t an emotion Marvin Gaye couldn’t perfectly articulate with his rich tone; the classic “What’s Going On” is no exception. The song was originally inspired by an act of police brutality in 1969 known as “Bloody Thursday”; when it got to Gaye, it was imbued with experiences gleaned from his brother, a Vietnam veteran. The message, of course, is timeless.

“Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” John Lennon, Yoko Ono, The Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir (1971)

There isn’t a lot of overlap with Christmas songs and protest music, but John Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir certainly knew how to get their message across with “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” It’s a smart choice — combining the sweetness of a holiday tune with a message of unity — delivered with guitar, piano, chimes and, most effective of all, a children’s choir.

“Back to Vietnam,” Television Personalities (1984)

Formed the year punk broke — that’s 1977, two years after the end of the Vietnam War — English post-punk band Television Personalities are a cult favorite for their cheeky, ramshackle, clever pop songs, led by frontman Dan Treacy’s undeniable schoolboy charm. The final track on their 1984 album “The Painted Word,” however, tells a different story. “Back to Vietnam” describes an insomniac man experiencing wartime post-traumatic stress disorder, replete with the sounds of gunshots and screams.

“Agent Orange,” Sodom (1989)

German thrash metal band Sodom’s 1989 album “Agent Orange” put their extreme music on the map, even breaking into the Top 40 in their native country. Beyond its ferocious pleasures, the album centers on lead vocalist and principal songwriter Tom Angelripper’s fascination with the Vietnam War, leading with the opening title track. “Operation Ranch Hand/Spray down the death,” he releases a throaty scream.

“The Wall,” Bruce Springsteen (2014)

Dedicated fans of the Boss know “The Wall” is one Bruce Springsteen held onto for a while; he performed it at a 2002 benefit long before its official release on his 2014 album “High Hopes.” The song was inspired by a trip he took to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. “This black stone and these hard tears,” he sings in the first verse, “are all I got left now of you.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Vietnam War greatly impacted U.S. society from the passage of the War Powers Resolution that restricts the president’s ability to send troops into extended combat without congressional approval to the cementing of college campuses as centers of student activism.

Millions of U.S. troops fought in Vietnam. For some Americans, the war that effectively ended with the fall of Saigon 50 years ago Wednesday on April 30, 1975, continues to shape their lives.

They include: A woman dedicated to recovering her father’s remains after the bomber he piloted disappeared over Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin. A Vietnam veteran who was heckled like scores of other troops when he returned home and now assists fellow veterans in rural Alaska. And an anti-war movement stalwart who has spent decades advocating for free speech after her brother was wounded when Ohio National Guard troops fired into a crowd of protesters at Kent State University.

Here are their stories.

Still waiting for dad to return home

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, Jeanie Jacobs Huffman has not lost hope of bringing her father home.

Huffman was only five months old when her father, Navy Cdr. Edward J. Jacobs Jr., was reported missing in action after the plane he was piloting to photograph enemy targets vanished in 1967 over the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam.

Huffman has dedicated her life to finding the plane and recovering his remains and those of his two crew members. She also serves on the board of directors of Mission: POW-MIA, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding unaccounted Americans from past conflicts.

“It’s a lot of missing, you know, a huge void in my life,” she said, breaking into tears.

A professional photographer, Huffman has made a poster featuring the faces of the 1,573 missing service members from Vietnam.

“After this many years, we should never leave anyone behind,” she said.

A year ago, she visited the Gulf of Tonkin through a trip with the United States Institute of Peace, a nonprofit that promotes education and research on conflicts to prevent future wars. The group’s translator, who was from North Vietnam and also lost family members in the war, walked with Huffman into the water. Holding hands, they both cried, sharing their grief.

“So that was the closest I’ve been to him in 58 years,” Huffman said of her father.

She’s pushing for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to conduct an underwater search operation next year in hopes of recovering the plane. The U.S. Department of Defense agency is responsible for recovering and identifying service members listed as missing in action or prisoners of war.

“He deserves to be brought back home,” she said. “Even if it’s just a bone or a dog tag. Even the tangible things, like a dog tag or a piece of his plane, mean a lot to me because I don’t have anything else.”

Finding salvation after so many decades

For George Bennett, the road to sobriety and mental health continued long after flying home through San Francisco in 1968, where “sneering” protesters met returning soldiers in the terminal.

Someone yelled out, “baby killer.” Another spit at them. He and his fellow soldiers were turned away from one airport restaurant.

Only later did he realize how much Vietnam had changed him because the war went against the strict sense of values and Indigenous practices instilled by his parents.

A member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe, Bennett said, “I would go get my beer and come home … just drink beer and do nothing.”

“I think part of it was the fact that I was ashamed and guilty because I was part of the atrocity that occurred in Vietnam. I feel that I violated the value and some of our cultural norms, and it made me want to run.”

And he did, from bar to bar and job to job.

Finally, he wound up receiving help for alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It’s taken him 30 years to feel better, largely because of the support of Mary, his wife of 55 years. She insisted they move to the southeast Alaska city of Sitka, where he has integrated back into his native Tlingit culture.

He’s now Alaska’s sole rural veteran liaison, helping veterans secure benefits in the military’s health care system.

“I really had to find my spiritual way again,” he said. “It took me a while to get there, but here I am.”

Kent State University protester sees lessons for today

Chic Canfora still becomes emotional when she talks about the fall of Saigon.

Canfora was part of an anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970 when Ohio National Guard troops fired into the crowd, killing four fellow students and wounding nine others, including her brother. The bullets sent Canfora diving for cover.

She believes the protest helped galvanize public opinion that would hasten the withdrawal of U.S. troops and ultimately lead to the fall of Saigon and the war’s demise.

A decade ago, Canfora visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington and was overcome at seeing how the number of names of the fallen dwindled after 1970.

“That was the first time it really hit me the impact of the anti-war movement and, so it’s particularly meaningful for me this year,” she said, choking up.

Canfora, who teaches journalism at Kent State, has spent her life sharing what she experienced. She said the lessons learned are more relevant than ever amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student protesters, fears of deportation for international students and what critics describe as unprecedented attacks on campus speech.

She said she sees echoes of the past when then Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who sent in the National Guard, called the Kent State demonstrators “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”

“I was too young and too naive to recognize the danger of such inflammatory rhetoric because, in essence, all of these leaders in our country were putting targets on the backs of American college students who have historically served as the conscience of America,” Canfora said.

“I think students today are going through that same metamorphosis of awareness that I did in 1970.”

Watson reported from San Diego.

Members of the House Education and Workforce Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to advance their section of the massive congressional reconciliation bill, which includes $330 billion in cuts to education spending over the next decade.

Panel Democrats objected to multiple portions of the bill and the GOP‘s overall approach to federal programming cuts.

But language in the bill repealing the “90/10 loophole” regarding GI Bill benefits drew particular concern from veterans advocates, who said the move represents an attack on oversight and accountability for post-military education benefits.

Feds close 90/10 loophole involving veterans education benefits

“The closing of this loophole was widely celebrated as a bipartisan success in 2021,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., a panel member and the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, during debate on the reconciliation measure Tuesday.

“Congress deemed that holding predatory for-profits accountable was necessary to safeguard federal education benefits and ultimately protect both taxpayers and students.”

By law, colleges and universities must have at least 10% of their revenues derived from non-federal sources in order to qualify for federal benefits. The idea behind the regulation is to ensure that for-profit institutions aren’t funded solely by federal monies, but instead also include significant investment by students interested in furthering their education.

But for years, GI Bill benefits and Defense Department Tuition Assistance programs were not counted as federal dollars for the 90/10 calculation, despite being taxpayer-funded benefits. As a result, schools could target veterans or troops receiving federal education payouts to boost their government funding well beyond the 90% cap.

Four years ago, as part of an emergency funding bill, lawmakers closed that loophole, reclassifying the GI Bill money and other military education programs as federal funding in the 90/10 calculations. The new rule has been in place for about three years.

But the Republican-backed reconciliation bill would revert to the pre-2021 rules. GOP committee members argued the change was needed to reduce regulations and promote more affordable options for student veterans.

“Rather than using the regulatory hammer to pick winners and losers, we should encourage all colleges to focus on student success,” said Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah.

Democrats disagreed. Advocates for years have argued that the loophole incentivized schools to recruit veterans to plus-up the amount of steady, government dollars they could collect, even in cases where the programs did not provide long-term benefits to the students.

“Unscrupulous institutions were using this to exploit student veterans,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore. “Now Republicans want to eliminate the rule altogether, removing a vital consumer protection and giving for-profit colleges free rein to continue to prey on students.”

VA pays out more than $8 billion in education payments annually.

A Democratic amendment to strip the repeal language from the reconciliation measure failed along party lines.

The provision could still be removed by House leadership before a full chamber vote, or by Senate lawmakers before final passage of the budgetary measure. Veterans groups who have been advocating on the issue for years promised to highlight it in coming weeks.

“The House of Representatives should be ashamed that they’re even entertaining the idea of reinstating this costly and wrongheaded policy that would threaten the future of veterans’ education,” Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America CEO Allison Jaslow said in a statement.

Republican leaders have said they hope to pass a final reconciliation bill package by mid-June.

It has become an iconic symbol of American involvement in Vietnam: Scores of desperate Vietnamese attempting to board an American UH-1 “Huey” helicopter on the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in the spring of 1975.

Yet the photograph, “like so many things about the Vietnam War,” Hubert Van Es, the man behind the famed photograph, wrote in 2005 for The New York Times, ”it’s not exactly what it seems.”

The men and women jostling to get aboard the American aircraft were not atop the U.S. embassy at all, but on the roof of the Pittman apartment building, which housed senior Central Intelligence Agency employees during the tail end of the war.

The Dutch photographer, assigned to Vietnam since 1969 for The Associated Press and United Press International, managed to get the iconic shot purely by chance.

Fall of Saigon

On this day, the beleaguered citizens within the city of Saigon witnessed the largest helicopter evacuation in history, with two United States Marine Corps helicopter squadrons, 10 U.S. Air Force helicopters and Air America carrying out 1,373 Americans and 5,595 people of other nationalities.

“At around 2:30 p.m. on April 29, 1975, Van Es captured the shot that came to symbolize the frenetic Saigon evacuation mission, known as Operation Frequent Wind,” Lauren Coontz wrote in Coffee or Die.

Working four blocks away from the Pittman building, the photographer was tucked away in a dark room when he heard a colleague shout, “‘Van Es, get out here, there’s a chopper on that roof!’”

“I grabbed my camera and the longest lens left in the office — it was only 300 millimeters, but it would have to do — and dashed to the balcony,” Van Es recounted.

After shooting about 10 frames, Van Es returned to the darkroom to process his shots.

Bad communication

“In those days, pictures were transmitted via radio signals, which at the receiving end were translated back into an image,” Van Es said. “A 5-inch-by-7-inch black-and-white print with a short caption took 12 minutes to send.”

Despite clearly identifying the downtown Saigon building, “apparently, editors didn’t read captions carefully in those days, and they just took it for granted that it was the embassy roof, since that was the main evacuation site.”

The misidentification of the iconic photo’s location persisted for decades. Van Es routinely attempted to dispel the false narrative, to no avail.

“Thus one of the best-known images of the Vietnam War shows something other than what almost everyone thinks it does,” he said.

This story originally appeared on HistoryNet.com.

The Vietnam War cast a long shadow across one of the most fertile periods of American filmmaking, and has led filmmakers for the half-century since to reckon with its complicated legacy.

These 10 films, assembled to mark the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, range from indelible anti-war classics to Vietnamese portraits of resistance, capturing the vastness of the war’s still-reverberating traumas.

“The Big Shave” (1967)

The war was more than a decade in and some eight years from its conclusion when a 25-year-old Martin Scorsese made this six-minute short. In it, a man simply shaves himself before a sink and a mirror. After a few knicks and cuts, he doesn’t stop, continuing until his face is a bloody mess — a neat but gruesome metaphor to Vietnam.

“The Little Girl of Hanoi” (1974)

A young girl (Lan Hương) searches for her family in the bombed-out ruins of Hanoi in Hải Ninh’s landmark of Vietnamese cinema. It’s a work of wartime propaganda (it begins with the intro: “honoring the heroes of Hanoi who defeated the American imperialist B-52 bombing raid”) but also of aching humanity. Set against the December 1972 bombing raids on Hanoi, “The Little Girl of Hanoi” is cinema made in the very midst of war.

“Hearts and Minds” (1974)

Controversy greeted Peter Davis’ landmark documentary around its release, but time has only proved how soberly clear-eyed it was. Newsreel clips and homefront interviews are contrasted with the horrors on the ground in Vietnam in this penetrating examination of the gulf between American policy and Vietnamese reality. Its title comes from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s line, said when escalating the war, that “the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there.”

“The Deer Hunter” (1979)

It’s arguably the preeminent American film about the Vietnam War. No other movie more grandly or tragically charts the American evolution from innocence to disillusionment than Michael Cimino’s devastating epic about working-class friends (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage) from a Pennsylvania steel town drafted into war. The final sing-along scene to “God Bless America,” after their lives have irrevocably changed, remains a powerfully poignant gut punch.

“Apocalypse Now” (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola wagered everything he had on his masterpiece — and nearly lost it. “Apocalypse Now,” which transposes Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” to the Vietnam War, is an epic of madness that teeters on the brink of hallucination. Shot in the Philippines and more faithful to Conrad than to Vietnam, “Apocalypse Now” doesn’t so much illuminate the chaos and moral confusion of the war as elevate it to grandiose nightmare.

“Platoon” (1986)

The 1980s saw a wave of Hollywood films about Vietnam, including “First Blood,” “Hamburger Hill,” “Good Morning Vietnam,” “Casualties of War” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” Foremost among them is the Oscar Best Picture-winning “Platoon,” which Oliver Stone wrote based on his own experiences as an infantryman in Vietnam. Widely acclaimed for its realism, Stone’s film remains among the most intensely vivid and visceral dramatizations of the war.

“Full Metal Jacket” (1987)

Stanley Kubrick should be more often thought of as the supreme anti-war moviemaker. His devastating World War I film “Paths of Glory” and the subversive satire “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” are classics in their own right. “Full Metal Jacket” carries those films’ themes of dehumanization into an even more brutal place. Split between the harrowing boot-camp tyranny of R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor and the urban violence of the 1968 Tet Offensive, “Full Metal Jacket” fuses both ends of the war machine.

“Little Dieter Needs to Fly” (1997)

How former soldiers lived with their experience in Vietnam has been a subject of many fine films, from Hal Ashby’s “Coming Home” (1978) to Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” (2020). In Werner Herzog’s nonfiction gem, he profiles the astonishing story of German-American pilot Dieter Dengler. In the film, which Herzog later remade as 2007’s “Rescue Dawn” with Christian Bale, Dengler recounts — and sometimes reenacts — his experience being shot down over Laos, being captured and tortured and then escaping into the jungle.

“The Fog of War” (2003)

Not long after the turn of the century, former U.S. Defense Secretary and Vietnam War architect Robert S. McNamara sat for interviews with documentarian Errol Morris. The result is a chilling reflection on the thinking that led to one of America’s greatest follies. It’s not a mea culpa but a thornier and more disquieting rumination on how rationalized ideology can lead to the deaths of millions — and still not yield an apology. Of McNamara’s lessons, No. 1 is “empathize with the enemy.”

“The Post” (2017)

Steven Spielberg‘s stirring film dramatizes the Washington Post’s 1971 publishing of the Pentagon Papers, a collection of classified documents that chronicled America’s 20-year involvement in Southeast Asia. While government analyst Daniel Ellsberg (a moving participant in “Hearts and Minds”) could be considered the hero of this story, “The Post” turns its focus to Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) and the wartime role of the Fourth Estate.

By March 1975, the situation in Vietnam, and South Vietnam specifically, was dire. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, the last in a long line of military dictators propped up by the United States was, according to historian Edward Rasen, “making decisions based on his daily astrological chart, while Graham Martin, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, had terminated daily CIA briefings, threatened to ‘cut the balls off’ CIA Saigon station chief Tom Polgar, and was becoming increasingly detached from the reality on the ground.”

South Vietnam was unraveling.

As of March 14, Thieu had conceived a strategy “called ‘light at the top, heavy at the bottom,’ pulling forces out of northern South Vietnam and concentrating them around the palace … because he was concerned his military commanders might move against him,” according to Frank Snepp, the CIA’s chief analyst in Vietnam in 1975.

“He went to Cam Ranh Bay and his message was, let’s pull the Airborne back, let’s shift them around. But he didn’t follow through. He didn’t tell his commanders about his timetable, so when the North Vietnamese moved out of the Central Highlands and concentrated in Military Region 1, the South Vietnamese army was in a confused state. That was one of the reasons they collapsed so rapidly.”

And where was America’s president? Golfing.

Amid the rapidly accumulating military losses in South Vietnam, President Gerald Ford was in Palm Springs, California, on an eight-day Easter holiday. Staying with his golfing buddy, Fred C. Wilson, founder of the Trans World Insurance Company, Ford played several rounds of golf, including one with Bob Hope, Leon Parma and William G. Salatich, president of the Gillette Company.

“He’s just a real good guy,” Wilson told a reporter on March 30, 1975. “I want to help him have a real good time and help him relax as much as possible.”

Having less of a “good time” was Ford’s White House press secretary, Ron Nessen, who had to go into PR crisis management to attempt to show both the American people and the South Vietnamese that the president’s golf games did not, in fact, make him indifferent to the military crisis and the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Vietnam.

On March 31, 1975, Ford dodged reporters by breaking out into an all-out sprint when asked by a reporter what he was doing about the “military losses of the South Vietnam Government,” according to a report by the New York Times.

“‘We are trying to get to the plane,’ he replied as he and his entourage jogged toward the Presidential jet.”

According to the New York Times, Nessen stated Ford “had been receiving complete information from Washington on the war, was concerned about it and ‘feels a great deal of compassion.’”

Yet, as the New York Times stated, “The Vietnam situation, however, has not disrupted the President’s vacation schedule. Mr. Nessen has repeatedly told reporters that there is nothing more Mr. Ford can do or say.”

Receiving a report on April 5 from Gen. Fred Weyand, Army chief of staff and former commander of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), who had just departed Saigon after assessing the situation, the president was told amid the luxe background of Palm Springs that “the current military situation is critical and the probability of the survival of South Vietnam as a truncated nation is marginal at best.”

Just 19 days later, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, in an urgent cable to Graham Martin, U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, wrote that his “ass isn’t covered. I can assure you I will be hanging several yards higher than you when this is all over.”

Saigon would fall less than two weeks later.

Presidents who golf

Ford wasn’t the first president to draw the ire of the American public for his extracurricular activities, however, and he wouldn’t be the last.

Since William Taft — who, in 1909, became the first president to pick up the sport — numerous chiefs of state have taken to the green as a form of exercise, stress relief and even as an act of diplomacy.

President Woodrow Wilson logged the most time on the green, playing more than 1,000 games of golf during his eight-year presidency, even during the height of American military action during the Great War. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not far behind, famously playing more than 800 rounds during his time in office.

President George W. Bush caught flak for his 2002 comments in which he addressed suicide bombers in Israel before adding, “Now, watch this drive!”

President Donald Trump has been equally criticized for his love of the game against the backdrop of a global pandemic and now, in his second term, amid his sweeping tariff policies and skipping the dignified transfer of four U.S. soldiers killed while training in Lithuania.

Bill Clinton, however, remains an ardent supporter of the game, telling Golf Digest in 2012, that the game was critical to help a president unwind.

“Presidents need to rest their minds, not just their bodies,” Clinton said. “They need the exercise, the fresh air. And they need to do something that, literally, takes them away from what they’re doing.”

Saigon falls

Less than a month after Ford’s excursion under the warm California sun, the eerie sounds of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” could be heard around Saigon, but it wasn’t to mark the approaching holiday season, it was the American code signaling the start of Operation Frequent Wind — the evacuation of Saigon.

Beginning on April 29, 1975, Armed Forces Radio jarringly blasted the Christmas song throughout the bombarded city as increasingly panicked American and South Vietnamese clamored to reach the safety of the U.S. Embassy and its evacuating helicopters.

For two days helicopters landed on the embassy’s roof every 10 minutes, moving more than 7,000 people out of Saigon.

This time, however, Ford was firmly at his desk in Washington. No greens to be seen.

“If any criminal or civil violations occurred, those responsible must be held accountable,” House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., wrote in a letter to Bondi Tuesday. He asked for her office to look into “the submission of false statements to Congress, obstruction of oversight, fraud, or misappropriation of federal funds.”

Top Democratic leaders decried the move as “a desperate political stunt” by Republican leaders attempting to distract from the current administration’s planned cuts to VA staff and services.

“I am appalled by his recommendation and blatant weaponization of the judicial system,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., ranking member of Bost’s committee. “It is unprecedented, and the American people — especially our veterans — deserve better than sham investigations and political theater becoming the new normal.”

Watchdog blasts VA leaders for exaggerating budget shortfall last year

The conflict dates back to last summer, when then-VA Secretary Denis McDonough and other senior department leaders told lawmakers that funding for benefits and medical care could run out in October because of increased programmatic usage earlier in 2024.

Congress approved $3 billion in emergency funding in September amid pressure from veterans groups and the White House, staving off any potential fiscal shortfall. But in late October, VA officials acknowledged their budget estimates were flawed, and that more than $5 billion in funding was available for the start of the new fiscal year.

At the time, McDonough and other VA leaders said the moves were made “out of an abundance of caution” and warned that any shortfall could have disrupted veterans’ payouts.

But Bost and other Republicans disputed that assertion, and accused White House officials of manufacturing panic about veterans benefits just weeks ahead of the November presidential election.

In his letter to the attorney general’s office, Bost said that VA leaders knew of their budgetary errors even before the emergency congressional vote, but did not share that information until after the extra money was approved.

“This delayed disclosure and the omission of available resources in key budget documents call into question the accuracy and integrity of [the department’s] budget justification process,” he wrote.

“The suggestion that senior VA officials submitted materially inaccurate funding requests and failed to disclose critical budget information … warrant immediate and independent review by your office. These failures undermined the appropriations process, misled lawmakers, and - most importantly - put the benefits and services America’s veterans rely on at risk.”

Bost specifically singled out McDonough, former Under Secretary for Benefits Josh Jacobs and former Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal for potential charges.

An inspector general review of the budget issues released last month found significant problems with VA’s budgetary projections and accounting practices, but did not recommend criminal or civil actions against former department leaders.

Democratic leaders have accused President Donald Trump of abusing his executive power to attack and harass political opponents. Takano called Bost’s investigation request an extension of those same abusive practices.

“Former Secretary McDonough and his team led VA through one of its most successful eras in history,” he said in a statement. “They deserve to be honored — not smeared by partisan attacks.”

In addition to whatever actions the attorney general’s office pursues, Bost promised continued investigation from his committee into the issue.

Relationships between Republicans and Democrats on the committee — which typically has fewer partisan fights than other congressional panels — have grown increasingly tense over the last few years, with each side accusing the other of sowing division and panic among veterans.

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was credited with solving a growing mail crisis during its stint in England and, upon their return, serving as a role model to generations of Black women who joined the military.

They cleared out a backlog of about 17 million pieces of mail in three months, twice as fast as projected. The battalion would go on to serve in France before returning home. And like many Black units during World War II, their exploits never got the attention afforded their white counterparts — until now.

Black female WWII unit hoping to get congressional honor

At a ceremony held in Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol’s visitor center, House Speaker Mike Johnson presented the medal to the family of the unit commander, Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley. More than 300 descendants of the women who served in the battalion were present in the crowd.

“This ceremony reflects one of the highest and most cherished traditions of our republic, one that’s roots stretch back all the way to General George Washington,” Johnson said in remarks at the event.

“The Six Triple Eight are great American patriots, loyal to a nation that, for far too long, failed to return the favor. And I’m glad to say that’s changing, and we’re doing that here today,” the House speaker continued.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered remarks alongside the lawmakers who co-sponsored the legislation enabling the medal. At least two dozen members of Congress were in attendance.

Kim Guise, senior curator and director of curatorial affairs at the National WWII Museum, said there are only two women living from the 855 who served in the unit.

“That really shows how long this recognition took,” Guise said. “It is really important to recognize the accomplishments of these women and what they went through to serve their country in war time.”

Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore, who co-sponsored the legislation to award the medal to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, called it a long-overdue honor for the women in the unit.

“These heroes deserve their dues; and I am so glad their story is being told,” Moore told The Associated Press on Monday. “I am especially honored to ensure my constituent, Ms. Anna Mae Robertson, and the many others who served with her, are recognized for their selfless service.”

In 2022, Congress voted 422-0 to bestow its highest honor on the 6888th.

“It’s overwhelming,” retired Maj. Fannie Griffin McClendon, who lives in Arizona, told The AP after the vote. “It’s something I never even thought about it.”

McClendon joined the Air Force after the military was integrated and retired in 1971. She was the first female to command an all-male squadron with the Strategic Air Command.

The 6888th was sent overseas in 1945, a time when there was growing pressure from African-American organizations to include Black women in what was called the Women’s Army Corps, and allow them to join their white counterparts overseas.

“They kept hollering about wanting us to go overseas so I guess they found something for us to do overseas: Take care of the mail,” McClendon said. “And there was an awful lot of mail. … They expected we were gonna be there about two or three months trying to get it straightened out. Well I think in about a month, in a month and a half, we had it all straightened out and going in the right direction.”

The 6888th toiled around the clock, processing about 65,000 pieces of mail in each of the three shifts. They created a system using locator cards with a service member’s name and unit number to ensure mail was delivered.

Over the years, the unit’s story started to gain wider recognition. A monument was erected in 2018 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to honor them, and the 6888th was given the Meritorious Unit Commendation in 2019. A documentary “The Six Triple Eight” was made about their exploits. In 2024, Tyler Perry directed a movie for Netflix about the unit, starring Kerry Washington.

Associated Press writer Michael Casey contributed to this report.

The poll — from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Columbia University’s Center for Veteran Transition and Integration — also found more than half of respondents said they were less confident in America’s long-term national security since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

More than 1,400 veterans were surveyed in the report, the vast majority of whom (89%) served in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria during their time in the ranks. More than half described themselves as politically independent, with the remainder split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

But study authors found the negative responses in the survey cut across political lines.

About 86% of veterans polled said that individuals involved in the leak of sensitive military airstrike information on the messaging platform Signal should be “held accountable” for those mistakes. That included 76% of veterans who identified as Republicans.

The Pentagon’s inspector general office is already investigating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal ahead of March airstrikes in Yemen against Houthi targets. In unsecured messages, Hegseth shared details of the timing of the attack and weapons to be used with a number of administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Walz.

Also copied on those messages was a senior editor from The Atlantic, who later publicly shared excerpts of the controversial chats.

Security experts and White House officials have sparred since then over whether the unsecure sharing of information constitutes criminal acts. Trump has stood by Hegseth and other officials, even as other potential information security violations have emerged.

The latest survey also found that 81% of veterans are concerned that plans for federal cuts to government services could impact veterans benefits and health care, despite promises from Veterans Affairs officials that support programs will be preserved.

Related, 42% of veterans in the survey said they are less likely to recommend military service to a friend or family member than they were a year ago. Almost half (48%) said they would discourage potential recruits from joining.

IAVA officials said the survey should not be extrapolated to represent the views of all American veterans, since the younger generations of former military members share distinct characteristics from the previous ones.

Past work by the group has shown veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan era are more diverse — both in terms of race and gender — than older generations of veterans, and are less likely to identify with major political parties.

They are also more likely to currently be in the workforce than their older peers. About one in five veterans surveyed said they know someone who is unemployed due to recent federal civilian job cuts.

The full survey is available on the IAVA web site.