Last week, I published a video and Substack post explaining why House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost accused the Veterans of Foreign Wars of promoting political violence over its Honor the Contract campaign.
I thought that story was about political speech.
It turns out it was about something much bigger.
USMC veteran, VA policy expert, and writer Elizabeth Hartman broke a story yesterday that, on the very same day Bost released his public statement condemning the VFW as promoting “inflammatory, fearmongering, and dangerous political rhetoric,” he and Representative Jack Bergman quietly sent a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to review whether the VFW should continue to be accredited to represent veterans seeking disability benefits. Hartman deserves full credit for obtaining the letter and bringing it to light. Once I read her reporting, I sat down with the letter itself.
The implications are extraordinary.
Congress entrusted organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars with the responsibility of helping veterans navigate one of the most complex benefits systems in the federal government. Every year, VFW service officers help veterans file disability claims, appeal denials, and access health care they earned through military service.
Bost and Bergman asked the VA to examine whether the VFW’s “fitness to represent claimants before the Department” remains consistent with federal accreditation regulations and urged the Department to review whether the organization’s accreditation should continue.
That isn’t just criticism.
It’s using the authority of the chairmanship of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to ask the executive branch to examine whether one of the nation’s largest veterans service organizations should retain its ability to represent veterans.
As a proud member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, I’m glad the organization isn’t backing down, and I hope that the ACLU is paying attention, because this sounds like a lawsuit to me.
Let’s be honest about what this fight is actually about.
The deceptively named Take Care of America’s Veterans Act contains provisions the VFW supports.
It also contains Section 108, which would effectively eliminate future standalone disability ratings for tinnitus and sharply reduce ratings for many veterans with sleep apnea in order to help pay for other veterans’ programs. According to the VFW, those changes would reduce disability compensation by approximately $57 billion over the next decade and affect as many as 1.5 million veterans.
Supporters of the legislation often frame this as a debate over monthly disability payments.
It isn’t.
A VA disability rating is the gateway to an entire system of earned benefits.
Establishing that an illness or injury is service-connected can determine whether a veteran qualifies for health care for those conditions, prescription coverage, travel reimbursement for treatment, hiring preferences, home loan benefits, vocational rehabilitation, and a wide range of additional programs that expand as disability ratings increase. Even a non-compensable service-connected rating can establish eligibility for important benefits.
When Congress makes it harder for veterans to establish service-connected disabilities, it isn’t simply reducing compensation.
It is closing the front door to health care and other earned benefits for countless veterans.
That is exactly why the VFW has drawn such a hard line.
The “political violence” argument falls apart under scrutiny.
Bost argues that the VFW’s political artwork promotes or normalizes political violence.
I don’t buy it.
The image in question depicts politicians, bureaucrats, and media figures as a symbolic firing squad executing veterans by stripping away earned benefits. It is plainly political satire directed at legislation.
More importantly, it is part of a tradition the VFW has maintained for generations.
The organization has documented that the illustration is a modern interpretation of political cartoons it published in 1933 and again in 1956. Those cartoons criticized government efforts to balance budgets by reducing veterans’ benefits after war. Nearly a century later, the VFW is making the same argument because it believes Congress is repeating the same mistake.
Americans are free to disagree with the VFW’s message.
But criticizing legislation through political cartoons is not the same thing as encouraging violence.
You can compare today’s image with those the VFW published nearly 100 years ago right here:
If Chairman Bost truly wanted to confront the normalization of political violence, he’d know where to start.
If Mike Bost and Jack Bergman were genuinely concerned about political rhetoric encouraging violence, there is an obvious place to devote their political energy.
President Trump pardoned the people who actually attacked the United States Capitol on January 6.
His administration then attempted to establish a multibillion-dollar “anti-weaponization” compensation fund that could provide financial payments to the MAGA terrorists who sought to murder elected officials that day. That effort remains tied up in federal court after a judge refused to dismiss the challenge because the Department of Justice declined to formally abandon the program in writing.
That is actual political violence.
Not a political cartoon.
Not a satirical T-shirt.
Not a veterans organization protesting legislation.
If Bost believes political leaders have a responsibility to reject the normalization of political violence, then pardoning the people who assaulted police officers, invaded the Capitol, and attempted to overturn a presidential election should command far more of his attention than a VFW advocacy campaign.
Instead, he chose to direct the power of his office toward the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Read the documents yourself.
One reason I wanted to write this follow-up is that none of this requires taking my word for it.
Read Elizabeth Hartman’s reporting.
Then ask yourself a simple question:
Should the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee be using his office to punish one of America’s oldest veterans organizations for First Amendment-protected speech they’re using to criticize his bill?
I know my answer.
And I’m proud that my organization knows theirs.
What You Can Do About This:
Contact Congress to Oppose Bost’s Bill:
If you’re a veteran who is eligible to join VFW, do it now:
Buy Bost’s Favorite VFW shirt:
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