Congress

VA secretary’s role in failed vets bill stokes new round of White House, GOP frustration

Published

2 months ago

July 28, 2026

White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.

“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.

The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.

And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.

Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.

Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.

Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.

Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.

Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.

Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.

But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.

In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.

But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.

The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.

Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.

House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.

But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.

It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.

His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.

“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”

Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.

Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.

Congress

Paul: ICE hasn’t shared information about Minneapolis shooting probes

Published

5 hours ago

September 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Department of Homeland Security still has not shared the findings from its investigations into the January killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, despite continued requests from the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the panel, said during a brief hallway interview that DHS has not yet given the committee any information from internal probes into any shootings involving immigration officers.

Asked if that included the two January shootings in Minneapolis, where immigration officers shot and killed two American citizens, Paul said: “We’ve asked for information. We’re still asking.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Paul’s comments come as DHS faces continued bipartisan scrutiny following several incidents where ICE or Border Patrol agents used deadly force against individuals they were trying to apprehend. Several of those individuals were U.S. citizens.

Most recently, ICE agents Saturday shot an unauthorized immigrant who faced deportation. The man, 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, survived. His lawyers claim he has been transferred into ICE custody despite still having a bullet lodged in his back.

Paul had asked DHS earlier this year to share more information about its reviews of the shootings, and did not schedule a confirmation hearing for the administration’s ICE director nominee as he awaited those findings. The White House ultimately pulled that nomination last week as the nomination stalled.

Congress

GOP Armed Services chair blasts White House welcome of Chinese leader

Published

6 hours ago

September 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker lambasted the White House decision to invite Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a state dinner this week, calling the foreign head of state “a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator” who cannot be trusted.

Wicker, typically a staunch defender of President Donald Trump and Republican loyalist, targeted most of his criticism at Xi and Chinese policy during a Senate floor speech Tuesday. But the comments were nonetheless a surprise rebuke of the president’s courting of Beijing amid broader concerns, such as the durability of U.S. security commitments to the Indo-Pacific, including in deterring a potential invasion of Taiwan from the Chinese mainland.

The Mississippi Republican urged Trump to press the Chinese premier on a variety of sensitive topics — including purported support for Iran, its military buildup and human rights abuses.

“Had the White House asked me for advice, I would have suggested the president not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States, based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

“I know the president tends to discuss trade and artificial intelligence with the Chinese leadership, and rightfully so,” he said. “Perhaps some progress will be made. But … during every minute of dialog, our commander in chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”

The senior Republican’s comments on the Senate floor were delivered just a few hours before Xi’s expected arrival in Washington. Trump has scheduled a formal welcome ceremony for Xi and his wife at the White House on Thursday, along with talks between the two leaders throughout his three-day visit.

Trump is facing bipartisan criticism over the state visit by Xi. Wicker’s comments followed similar attacks on Chinese leadership from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.).

“President Trump has been clear that under his leadership, the United States must engage with China, given the reality of our economic relationship,” Budd said. “But we can’t forget that China is also a competitor and an adversary.”

Congress

Appeals court’s Capitol steps ruling may signal trouble for Trump on media ban

Published

10 hours ago

September 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday on demonstrators’ access to the steps of the Capitol could bode poorly for President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban three media organizations from the White House.

The majority opinion, written by Trump appointee Neomi Rao, concluded that the East Steps of the Capitol are a “nonpublic forum” — just like most areas of the White House grounds, including the press facilities. While the government may impose restrictions on access to those nonpublic areas, the limits must be “viewpoint neutral,” apply “objective, workable standards” and not permit officials to exercise “unbridled discretion over a forum’s use,” the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded.

“A regulation that grants the government arbitrary control over who may speak invites the suppression of disfavored viewpoints and undermines the First Amendment’s core protections,” wrote Rao, who was joined in the majority by Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee.

The ruling, on the eve of a hearing over restoring White House accessfor Blue Light News, BLN and MS NOW, reaffirms the D.C. Circuit’s longstanding First Amendment precedents at an inopportune time for Trump. The president has explicitly described his ban on the three outlets as a punishment for publishing what he calls “fake news.”

“Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World,” Trump said on social media Monday.

The outlets have said their access was revoked because the White House objected to their reporting and that the ban “threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The D.C. Circuit would hear any appeals in the litigation over Trump’s media ban, and Trump has in fact already said he anticipates filing an appeal, presuming that he will be dealt a defeat in district court.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The D.C. Circuit’s Tuesday ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Patrick Mahoney, a clergyman who sought to hold prayer vigils and demonstrations on the East Steps of the Capitol several months after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, which resulted in new access restrictions. His permit was denied in part based on Capitol Police regulations that prohibit public demonstrations on the steps unless they are sponsored by a member of Congress.

Though the case has inched through the courts for years, Tuesday’s ruling resolves a key question, labeling the Capitol’s East Steps a “nonpublic forum” for which congressional authorities may restrict public access — in part because lawmakers use those steps to enter and exit the building.

But allowing members of Congress to sponsor gatherings on the steps creates an arbitrary system, the majority concluded.

“Because the protection of unpopular speech and advocacy is central to the First Amendment, we cannot leave it to the selective enforcement of members,” Rao wrote.

Notably, Rao’s opinion cites a D.C. Circuit ruling last year that concluded “it would be unreasonable to control access to White House press facilities through standardless discretion.”

The third judge on the panel, Clinton appointee Judith Rogers, dissented, but her opinion was even more protective of free-speech rights.

Rogers said she agreed with her colleagues that the “selective exception” for demonstrations sponsored by lawmakers was unconstitutional. However, she said she would have held that the lower portion of the Capitol steps was a public forum where the government was obligated to permit protest activity.