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This article appears in the April 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
If you’re interested in the long history of scientific innovation and advances at the Department of Veterans Affairs, you may want to visit the website for the Office of Research and Development before Elon Musk and company delete it. Though few Americans are aware of it, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has traditionally served as one of the nation’s largest research powerhouses, along with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Since 1925, the website relates, taxpayers have funded “the development of microelectronics and robotics to create artificial limbs that look, feel, and work more like natural arms and legs, the creation of the nicotine patch to help people stop smoking, the invention of the cardiac pacemaker, the first successful liver transplant, the development of the CAT (or CT) scan, and the development of new drugs and treatments for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and osteoporosis.”
In 2024, Congress funded $984 million in VA research, which is a pittance compared to the NIH. But VA researchers operate at 102 research sites and are engaged in 7,300 ongoing projects, while publishing more than 10,000 papers in scientific journals last year. VA research also allies with private-sector researchers and contributes to advances, which helps not only veterans but all Americans.
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The VA research website appeals to research scientists to join its team. It also asks veterans to volunteer to participate in ongoing clinical studies that could help not only them but new cohorts of former military service members. An array of ongoing studies include experimental treatments for PTSD and depression, colorectal and lung cancer, or diabetes. “Your participation matters,” the VA promises its veterans.
Well, VA research won’t matter, or even exist, for much longer, if the Trump/Musk scientific demolition derby isn’t reversed. Although the nation has been inundated with news about the administration’s attacks on the NIH and America’s renowned research universities, little attention has been paid to the attack on VA research.
Over the past few weeks, the Trump/Musk administration and new VA secretary, Doug Collins, have fired hundreds of VA researchers, while canceling, suspending, or disrupting over 370 studies, as well as clinical trials that have been funded by sources outside of the VA like industry and philanthropy. Over 10,000 veterans may have their medical care affected immediately because of this assault on VA research, the National Association of Veterans’ Research and Education Foundations tells the Prospect. “Veterans in the midst of experimental treatments for cancer may have their care abruptly discontinued, and other Veterans with cancer will not have access to the most advanced, life-saving care,” a memo from top VA medical leaders explains.
In the current climate, what is perhaps even more disturbing is that researchers are starting to self-censor.
In a statement, Carl Blake, CEO of Paralyzed Veterans of America, told the Prospect that research into veterans with spinal cord injuries like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) has been affected. “We have been alerted that VA researchers working specifically on ALS research have lost funding and that research will stop,” said Blake. “It is beyond comprehension that the federal government would not want to invest in research that could improve and even save the lives of veterans with these conditions.”
Although VA researchers were initially supposed to be exempt from the current federal hiring freeze, the new VA leadership quickly reneged on that promise. Over the past few weeks, they have started to fire researchers, who like those in most other research institutions, do not have permanently funded positions, because research positions are organized differently than ordinary civil service jobs. In the VA, many of these researchers are employed as what are known as series 601 Health Science Specialists, who are on “not to exceed” (NTE) contracts, which are typically renewable every three years depending on the availability of research funds. They are paid out of “soft” money from the VA, or other federal or philanthropic sources.
Currently, VA researchers whose contracts are about to expire are being advised that they will not be renewed, even when funding, for example through extramural grants, is already in place to pay them. Should the VA continue this policy for researchers whose contracts are renewable over the months to come, the entire VA research workforce could be decimated.
As Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member of the Senate Veterans Affairs’ Committee, wrote in a letter of protest, the Trump administration is “refusing to honor researchers’ three-year, ‘Not to Exceed’ term limits (NTEs) by rolling them over as is standard and is instead immediately dismissing these researchers—who are in the middle of research on topics including mental health, alcohol and opioid withdrawal, cancer treatments, burn pit exposure, prosthetics, diabetic ulcers, and so much else.”
The cuts are part of the government’s crackdown on so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs. In the case of VA research, that touches health equity programs that focus on diseases affecting particular communities. But because the DEI concept is so broad and vague, hundreds of programs have been caught up.
As the National Association of Veterans’ Research and Education (NAVRE) Foundations warned, there are now over 200 vacant research positions, including principal investigators and research coordinators who are some of the most respected scientists in the nation. The VA has even blocked the appointment of “without compensation” (WOC) research collaborators funded by VA-affiliated organizations such as universities and nonprofits.
There is no cost savings to be garnered from many of these firings, since these scientists are working on projects that have already been funded. To place a hold on the WOC program also doesn’t save a penny, since WOC researchers aren’t paid by the VA but by affiliated institutions. What is at stake, however, is $35 million in research funds that will be lost if studies and trials are terminated. If the VA has to return funding to external donors, that will also represent a net loss for veterans and for the research community. As one VA researcher who chose to remain anonymous told the Prospect, “Studies that have been halted and are thus partially completed are as good as useless because the data amassed won’t make it to publication. Thus the scientific data already gathered in ongoing studies is at risk.”
ON FEBRUARY 14th, THE MOST PROMINENT GROUP of VA medical leaders—the VA Chiefs of Staff Advisory Committee, who represent medical leadership at the system’s 170 VA medical centers—issued a desperate plea for help to Steven Lieberman, acting VA undersecretary for health. “Veterans,” they wrote, “will lose access to clinical trials that are integral to the care of cancer, mental health conditions, and a host of other medical and neurological conditions.” Veterans with conditions that disproportionately impact them will suffer even more if research on things like “toxic exposures, PTSD, substance use disorders, suicide, heart disease, spinal cord injury, Parkinson disease, dementia, and many others” is compromised.
The chiefs of staff are concerned that losing research programs will make the VA less attractive to clinicians who want to both conduct research and work with patients. Research relies on a support staff of data scientists, laboratory technicians, grant managers, and many more. As programs diminish, that support staff is likely to not be retained, and the ability of a clinician to conduct research on the side becomes less likely. This would have a direct impact on veteran care.
Lieberman responded that VA leaders are taking this “feedback very seriously.”
The VA researcher cited above explained that leaders like Collins, Musk, and Trump ignore (or just don’t care about) the fact that the scientists and clinicians who have been fired are irreplaceable. Many have worked at the VA for decades, amassing knowledge not only about veterans’ unique health conditions but about how to use VA databases, like the VA’s Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW). The CDW contains unparalleled and massive amounts of information, including medical records and cost of care data needed to help make care delivery less costly and more efficient, a goal Elon Musk professes to share.
The researcher explains that the CDW is not at all easy to use. “If, for example, you want to target veterans who have cancer and are still smoking, you have to know how to query an exhaustive list of the relevant diagnostic and treatment codes so you can extract, analyze and interpret the information it contains,” they said.
Some specialized researchers, the staffer continued, also have to master what’s called natural language processing (NLP) in order to make specific queries of open text medical record data. If the average Prospect reader doesn’t understand this, neither do a lot of VA researchers, which is why they work alongside data specialists, many of whom have also been fired.
VA officials have not yet responded to a request for comment.
AS IF FIRING RESEARCHERS AND THEIR SUPPORT STAFF weren’t bad enough, the Musk/Trump/Collins team has placed unprecedented restrictions on communication between VA researchers and their colleagues outside of the department. Researchers are now required to get approval from VA headquarters in Washington if they want to present at a national conference and exchange information with colleagues outside the agency.
In a truly astonishing development, the VA has even stopped allowing non-VA researchers to attend its renowned VA Health Systems Research Cyberseminar Series. This seminar series, the VA website explains, features “state-of-the art training and special interest sessions via live web conferences and 24/7 on-demand archives presentations.” As is typical of government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded programs, the seminars have been publicly available to interested parties from all over the country. Its presentations were also archived to facilitate sharing of information and insights. Following the new corporate model, only internal VA researchers can attend such sessions, and the archives have been closed to non-VA investigators.
In the current climate, what is perhaps even more disturbing is that researchers are starting to self-censor, inadvertently promoting the administration’s misguided agenda. One VA observer told the Prospect that “scientists are holding back on submitting publications about targeted interventions and clinical trials that mention anything to do with health equity.”
This has enormous consequences for improving the lives of all veterans and indeed all Americans. Effectively treating health conditions depends on identifying the various biological, socioeconomic, and even cultural differences that impact how people experience medical problems. If analyzing these differences is no longer permissible because it’s too associated with DEI or wokeness, one former VA official and health researcher says, this will not only set medicine and public health back decades, it will also hurt the very people that make up Trump’s base.
“If you’re a rural white person, your likelihood of getting a kidney transplant or having access to brain-saving emergency stroke care is different than if you are a white person who lives in an urban area. Does this new policy against anything involving equity mean you can’t study rural white people to improve their access to transplants or emergency stroke care?” If it does, then a lot of rural white Trump supporters are going to suffer.
Veteran advocates, like the nation’s veteran service organizations, have the ability to stop this latest Trump/Musk folly by mobilizing their members to protest irreparably and irrevocably damaging impacts to their health and well-being. So far, congressional protests against basic research cuts have focused on the NIH. But cuts to VA research do not only impact military veterans, but the nation as a whole.
