David Hogg here.
This Veterans Day, I’m thinking about my dad. He served as a helicopter pilot in the Navy, an FBI agent, a teacher, and above all, a father who never stopped showing up for his family — even after he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s.
Before he passed, I watched him and my mom fight for his health, for his dignity, and for the VA benefits he had earned, even in his final days. Unfortunately I know the story of families like ours fighting for my father’s benefits while on his deathbed is not uncommon.
No family should have to spend their final moments together battling with a system that’s supposed to support them.
Just a few years prior to my father’s passing, I thought about that when I was pulling all-nighters outside the Senate fighting to pass the PACT Act. I sat beside veterans fighting for friends who had terminal cancer or who had passed from it or who were just simply asking for basic care after being exposed to toxic burn pits while serving our country.
I was proud to stand with them. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Because saying “thank you for your service” isn’t enough. We have to fight for veterans — now more than ever before.
Trump cut thousands of healthcare workers from the VA, and more cuts are still being pushed. The VA was already struggling, and now veterans are waiting weeks or even months for appointments while exhausted nurses and doctors try to hold the system together.
And the cruelty doesn’t stop there. Republicans tried to strip funding from the very toxic exposure care fund that veterans fought so hard for in the PACT Act. Trump’s VA shut down a loan program preventing veteran foreclosures, leaving thousands in fear of losing their homes.
These aren’t isolated decisions. They’re all part of a long-term plan to chip away at the VA, privatize it, and walk away from the people who put their lives on the line for this country.
It’s not just wrong. It’s the deepest betrayal to the people and families who sacrificed everything and believed their country would have their backs in return.
That’s why honoring our veterans has to go beyond Veterans Day and thank you messages. It has to mean action. It means a fully funded VA, comprehensive health care, strong mental health resources, housing stability, economic opportunity, and dignity.
I’m thinking of my dad today, and every veteran and their family. We owe it to them to fight like hell for the care and benefits they deserve, not just today, but every single day. I hope one day it won’t be on our disabled vets to prove why their rare disease or neurological condition is “service connected” and instead it should be on the government to prove that — instead of the families of those veterans when they are on their death bed. After all, if we can’t “afford” to take care of our vets we can’t afford the harm we send them into.
Thank you.
— David Hogg
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