November 11, 2026 (Wednesday)

The day that we now recognize as Veterans Day began at the end of World War I, when the armistice that turned into a lasting peace took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In 1954, after veterans of World War II and the Korean War had joined the ranks of returning military personnel, Congress changed the name of the U.S. commemoration from “Armistice Day” to “Veterans Day.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a veteran who had served as the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and who had become a five-star general of the Army before his political career, later issued a proclamation asking Americans to observe Veterans Day: “et us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

In our day it has become a tradition for political leaders to honor veterans on this day, and today was no exception. Trump delivered a Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, although he broke with the tradition of nonpartisan speeches and ended his speech with a defense of his war on Iran and a celebration of the attack on Venezuela that has given the U.S. control of its oil fields.

“We’re taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil and all sorts of other things. Be hundreds of billions very soon,” Trump said. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it, and we paid for the cost of the war many, many times over already.” “To the victor belong the spoils, they used to say,” he continued. “But you can say it again with us under this leadership.”

Also unusual was the president using the solemn day of remembrance to raise money. J.D. Wolf of MeidasNews reported that Trump used a holiday greeting to supporters to warn that his second term is “moving fast, and we still have major mountains to climb to finish the job.

After the unfortunate results of the recent Midterm Elections, The MAGA movement took a blow, but I will not falter…. We don’t have the luxury of slowing down. On this Veterans Day, the spirit of American courage and determination is burning bright in this movement, and we must protect it!” He announced a “Presidential Fundraising Blitz” to “send a powerful message that the American people will never surrender our liberty…the same liberty our veterans risked everything to protect.” “YOU’RE THE ONLY REASON WE SAVED AMERICA,” the message concludes. “NOW I AM ASKING YOU TO CONSIDER MAKING A SMALL SUSTAINING CONTRIBUTION, SO WE CAN COMPLETE THE MAGA AGENDA!”

After the ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his wife, accompanied by his chief of staff Ricky Buria, deputy chief of staff Patrick Weaver and senior adviser and deputy assistant Tami Radabaugh, stopped for pictures by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. One of the nation’s most sacred monuments, the tomb is guarded constantly by a Tomb Guard from the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, known as “The Old Guard,” and visitors are supposed to remain silent at the tomb.

The group was chatting and laughing, and as Haley Britzky, David Brooks, and Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported, when their laughter floated back to the Tomb Guard, he stopped his carefully choreographed patrol to turn to the offenders and call out: “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.”

Different ways of honoring veterans were highlighted today, as Trump suggested that the 250-foot triumphal arch he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery is for veterans, although Vietnam veterans are among those suing over its construction. “Soon we’re going to dedicate a magnificent triumphal arch to our veterans, and that’s in honor of our great veterans and our great militaries,” he said. “They’ve been waiting for it for 200 years.”

But in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani had a different prescription for honoring veterans. “This Veterans Day, let us renew our commitment to those who served by confronting the injustices too many veterans still face, from homelessness and isolation to the threat of deportation,” he posted. “Our responsibility to those who served does not end when they come home.”

Eric Umansky of ProPublica hammered this point home today, chronicling the dramatic cuts to the VA, or U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Cabinet-level government agency that provides lifelong healthcare, benefits, and memorial services for veterans and eligible family members. Umansky explains that the VA serves 9 million veterans, providing healthcare that is “essentially socialized medicine,” with doctors, nurses, and staff all employed by the federal government. Umansky also notes that despite occasional scandals and chronic short-staffing, the VA has better outcomes than private care.

But the right wing has worked for decades to get rid of VA healthcare and push veterans toward private sector doctors and hospitals, claiming that such private care is more efficient than government-run healthcare. With data reporting by Joel Jacobs and illustrations by Hokyoung Kim, Umansky’s piece lays out how under Trump and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, the administration initially considered sweeping cuts to the VA but, after massive pushback, appear to have settled on making work conditions so bad people would leave on their own.

Citing national security, they canceled union contracts, ordered remote staffers back to work in buildings that couldn’t accommodate them, required employees to report what they had accomplished each week, and offered incentives to retire or quit. Under President Joe Biden, the agency had been hiring personnel; in the first six months under Trump’s second administration, the VA lost 3,800 doctors, nurses, and “mission critical” staff and eliminated hiring for positions that were open. In September 2025, Collins imposed new caps on staffing levels as part of his plan to cut 30,000 employees, and numbers of employees have continued to drop.

Umansky chronicled the downward spiral of a VA medical center as it and its affiliated facilities lost nearly 10% of their staff. Umansky reports that according to the VA’s watchdog, 97% of VA hospitals report “severe shortages of doctors.” Veterans are being pushed into the Community Care system Trump supports, but those systems are overwhelmed and wait times can run into months. Under Trump the VA has increasingly acted like an insurer, Umansky writes, simply paying private doctors to care for veterans as part of their normal practice.

The privatization of veterans’ care and its emphasis on driving veterans into the private sector contrasts dramatically with the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1945, which transformed the lives of returning World War II military personnel and in the process transformed the United States.

Congress had developed the precursor to what became known as the G.I. Bill in 1943, when Democrats worried that the 15 million soldiers returning from the war would flood the labor market and bring back the Depression. Democrats wanted unemployment benefits for soldiers, as well as education benefits to keep some in school and out of the job market. They also wanted to guarantee home or business loans of up to two thousand dollars to help returning service men and women transition back to civilian life.

Republicans objected to what they saw as a welfare program, but after a great deal of pressure from veterans’ groups, they recognized that opposing a measure to help veterans would be political suicide. Almost all Republicans came around to support the bill on the grounds that they were not endorsing a general social welfare program but rather helping veterans as the government had always done.

The end of the war in 1945 revealed that fears of a returning depression were unwarranted. Most veterans found work: on average, they spent fewer than three months looking for a job; only 14 percent were unemployed for a year. This meant that the unemployment benefits of the bill were far less important than the educational provisions. In late 1945, Congress revised the bill to reflect Republicans’ focus on economic growth rather than Democrats’ fears of returning unemployment. The new bill increased both the reimbursements the government provided schools and the stipends it offered veterans. The G.I. Bill was no longer a defense against recession; it had become an agent for economic growth.

And boy, did it work. The G.I. Bill enabled veterans to get vocational training or a college degree. Fifty-one percent of veterans—7.8 million—went back to school. Colleges and universities built apartment complexes and new academic buildings to accommodate the mature students who were, in some cases, more than doubling the student body. Returning soldiers tended to be serious students, determined to succeed. The G.I. Bill added to the American workforce not only skilled managers but also 450,000 engineers, 180,000 medical professionals, 360,000 teachers, 150,000 scientists, 243,000 accountants, 107,000 lawyers, and 36,000 clergymen.

The G.I. Bill helped four million veterans buy homes. House construction pumped up building trades. Once built, the homes continued to boost the economy. Soon they would fill with the children of the baby boom, who wore diapers and clothes, ate, played with toys, rode bikes, went to school, wore out the furniture, and before long would watch television.

By providing homes and higher education to almost 8 million Americans, the G.I. Bill transformed America. Millions of families vaulted into the middle class and enjoyed a standard of living that would have been unimaginable before the war. The vacuum created as working-class men entered the middle class opened up better-paying jobs at the lower end of the economy, as well.

But the G.I. Bill created a very specific new economy. Women and Black and Brown Americans were eligible for the provisions of the bill, but its benefits nonetheless went largely to white men. White educational institutions excluded Black students, while the chronically underfunded Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) couldn’t handle the influx of veterans. Even if a Black veteran could find a place, the local and state VA offices administering the benefits rarely provided them to Black applicants.

Home mortgages and businesses had the same outcome. The mortgages the VA backed relied on local banks and lenders, who routinely refused to lend money for homes in Black and Brown neighborhoods—a practice known as “redlining”—locking Black and Brown veterans out of the measure’s benefits.

Despite its faults, the G.I. Bill did more than any other law in U.S. history to prove that investing in the American people is sound policy. And it harked back to the original Republicans, who believed the government must care for its veterans. Congress established national homes for disabled volunteer soldiers on March 3, 1865, the day before President Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, in which he asked Americans “to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”