Our nation is preparing to return to the moon, but not for another one-off flag-planting mission. It is part of a long-term strategy to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-awards-astrobotic-firefly-intuitive-machines-lunar-lander-contracts-moon-2026-06-30/">build the infrastructure</a> needed for humans to live, work, and eventually establish a permanent presence in one of the most hostile environments imaginable.
Just last week, NASA awarded nearly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/science/nasa-awards-astrobotic-firefly-intuitive-machines-lunar-lander-contracts-moon-2026-06-30/">$600 million</a> to advance that mission, while <a href="https://spacenews.com/musk-says-spacex-focus-is-on-the-moon-rather-than-mars/">Elon Musk announced</a> that SpaceX&#8217;s near-term focus has shifted from Mars to the moon. Both share the same objective of building the infrastructure necessary for a permanent human presence there.
America understands that preparation determines success. We instinctively apply that principle when sending astronauts into space, yet abandon it when preparing America&#8217;s homeless veterans for life after military service. It doesn&#8217;t take a rocket scientist to understand something NASA and SpaceX both know: success doesn&#8217;t begin with the launch; it begins with careful planning.
Long before astronauts ever leave Earth, engineers build the training, logistics, communications, supply chains, contingency plans, and eventually, base camps that make the mission possible. They aren&#8217;t launching astronauts with hope as a strategy; they&#8217;re building the infrastructure for success before the missions even launch. Whether it&#8217;s NASA or SpaceX, the principle is the same: sustainable success requires building systems that make success possible.
Now, extend this principle to our veterans. In the fall of 2024, after I <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/EYsTdqyJlCk?si=yuj4kIyEoKHpNWD7">discussed America&#8217;s homeless veterans crisis</a> on Fox News, Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859601923453722936">responded on X</a> with a simple observation: &#8220;Wow, this is messed up.&#8221; Millions of Americans would likely agree. The injustice is obvious. The challenge is having the vision and resolve to build a system that fixes it.
So why do we treat our homeless veterans any differently than a mission to the moon? We should show the same forethought when preparing America&#8217;s veterans for success as they transition to their next mission after completing one of the nation&#8217;s most demanding jobs — military service.
Many vets come home carrying invisible wounds: trauma, addiction, mental health struggles, and the sudden loss of the structure and purpose the military provided. California is <a href="https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2025/01/hud-pit-count-2024/">home to roughly 28% of America&#8217;s homeless veterans</a>, making it the epicenter of a crisis that demands a new approach. Yet instead of building the comprehensive support infrastructure they need to thrive, we too often launch them into society with nothing but temporary shelters and unreliable services. “Housing first” sounds compassionate until you realize you cannot house your way out of addiction or untreated trauma.
As I detail in my book, &#8220;The Race to Save California,&#8221; the Golden State’s homelessness crisis proves that this isn’t primarily a housing shortage, nor is it a funding shortage — it’s a failure of diagnosis, accountability, and incentives. “Compassion” policies that tolerate open drug use and disorderly encampments are just abandonment dressed up as empathy. We warehouse people in misery instead of providing the structure and infrastructure they desperately need.
We’ve spent tens of billions with results <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-california-spending-24-billion-it-2019-homelessness-increased-what-happened">visibly worsening</a> because the system rewards the haphazard management of the crisis, not the ending of it, celebrating meaningless metrics of so-called “success,” like the number of beds constructed. Can you imagine if the space exploration industry treated these lunar projects the same way? Imagine NASA endlessly funding new thermal protection tiles that keep burning up on faulty spacecraft that never reach the moon, then proudly touting the huge number of new tiles produced for those perpetually faulty rockets, as though it’s some impressive metric of success. It’s absurd, and serious people recognize that.
California carries the heaviest burden of homeless veterans in the nation. These are disciplined, mission-focused Americans who once operated with clear rules, camaraderie, and purpose. Leaving them on the streets isn’t just a tragedy — it’s a colossal waste of talent and a moral failure.
The solution isn’t more of the same expensive, ineffective housing programs. It’s Basecamps — structured, secure environments modeled on the very discipline that made these veterans successful in the first place, and costing a fraction of the failed programs currently preferred by greedy politicians and NGOs.
Envision drug-free stability with clear rules, accountability, treatment programs, and an atmosphere of community, camaraderie, and contribution. This would provide essential social and psychological infrastructure. Meanwhile, cafeterias, laundry, chapels, life skills training, and workforce pathways would offer physical and occupational infrastructure. And within this Basecamp community, residents — especially veterans — can take advantage of the opportunity to mentor others and pay it forward as they accomplish their own successful transitions back into society.
This blueprint isn’t glamorous, lucrative, or politically correct, but it works. It treats the whole person: addiction, mental health, lack of purpose, and the need for both structure and community. Transition into taxpayer-funded housing without personal transformation is just another revolving door back onto the streets.
NASA and SpaceX understand that lasting success in the most unforgiving environments doesn&#8217;t happen by accident. If we can meticulously plan basecamps and support systems for the Moon, then we can certainly do the same for the heroes who defended this country here on Earth.
No more warehousing misery. No more accepting expensive failure as the status quo. It’s time to apply the same foresight, discipline, and results-oriented mindset to our homeless veterans that we apply to space exploration.
America is building the infrastructure to sustain life on the Moon. It&#8217;s time we built the infrastructure to restore the lives of those who defended ours.
***
Kate Monroe is the CEO of VetComm, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and author of The Race to Save California and The Race to Save America.

Veteran Homeless Encampment in Westwood

We Prepare Astronauts For Space, Why Not Veterans For Civilian Life?

DW Opinion

Homelessness

Veterans

“Semper Fidelis” (always faithful) is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps. Held to this standard, Graham Platner should have his ribbons revoked. He sent sexually explicit text messages to other women during his marriage, demonstrating disloyalty to his wife. His chest is emblazoned with a Nazi tattoo, demonstrating disloyalty to his country. His social media and Reddit track record certainly deems him disloyal to the public trust he is seeking.
All of this has been covered ad nauseam throughout Platner’s bid to take Susan Collins’s seat in the Senate, an effort he just ended amid rape allegations. The breadcrumbs in the trail that is Graham Platner’s life are rotten and moldy, with the distinguishing characteristic of disloyalty.
But what hasn’t been covered enough is his disloyalty to our country’s veterans. The men and women he served with. And I’m not even referring to his comments about Army Pfc. Ted Daniels (a Purple Heart recipient), whom Platner called a “Dumb motherf*cker who didn’t deserve to live.” I’m talking about Platner’s representation of veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
About <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp">7% of all U.S. veterans will experience PTSD</a> at some point in their lives. That’s roughly 1.1 million veterans out of today’s veteran population of about 16 million. Platner has repeatedly cited his struggles with PTSD to explain much of the conduct that engulfed his campaign, particularly his online commentary. In one notable Reddit post, he mentions having to masturbate every time he sits in a porta-potty because “that blue water smell conditioned me.”
I personally know many veterans who suffer from PTSD. Not one has been accused of rape, lent allegiance to Hitler, or pleasured themselves in dirty outdoor boxes. While PTSD affects individuals in a myriad of ways, very few individuals become violent or engage in criminal behavior. Most often, the suffering is inward-facing: fear, avoidance, depression, and anxiety. Many resort to substance abuse.
In Platner’s case, PTSD has become the umbrella explanation after controversies have piled up. It should be noted that he got his infamous tattoo just a couple of years into his service, long before he most likely developed PTSD. Regardless, one diagnosis cannot become the universal answer for every bad decision someone has ever made.
The real damage isn’t what Platner says about himself. It’s what his explanation teaches the public to believe about PTSD and the damage it does to decades of progress. Veterans have fought for years to convince Americans that PTSD is treatable, survivable, and not a character defect. Our country spends over $300 billion annually on PTSD. We don’t do this to keep our veterans out of jail. We do it to repay the debt we owe them for their service to us.
We often hear about our veterans when something goes wrong. But many of them are raising kids and serving their communities while carrying a burden that most citizens will never understand. The individuals living in this shadow are the ones who are forgotten whenever PTSD becomes shorthand for moral failure.
I think about the Marine quietly awaiting counseling. The little league coach fearing a flashback at the crack of a bat. The combat veteran worried about disclosing his diagnosis to an employer. And every time PTSD is portrayed as synonymous with moral collapse, this stigma only grows. But no one ever says, “My anxiety caused me to steal,” or “My depression is why I abuse my wife.” Rational people would reject this reasoning. Mental disease deserves our compassion, but it doesn’t eliminate responsibility.
We judge a group by its norms, not by its outliers. There are bad cops, lazy teachers, and abusive parents. But the majority are none of those things, which is why we celebrate these vocations. Every profession, diagnosis, and community has exceptions. The damage occurs when we allow the exception to redefine the whole.
The norms among veterans with PTSD are resilience, treatment, and carrying the burden of it while carrying out their lives. The exception…is Graham Platner.
Americans owe veterans compassion for the wounds they didn’t choose. But it also owes them something else: refusing to reinforce the false stereotype that PTSD inevitably leads to moral failure. Millions of veterans prove every day that trauma can shape a person without defining them.
“Always faithful” wasn’t a promise that Marines would never struggle. It was a promise to remain faithful to them even when they struggle. When Platner uses PTSD as a blanket explanation for misconduct, the people who pay the price are the countless veterans quietly living with it. Is that being faithful to your fellow Marines? The easy thing is to explain away our failures. The harder thing — the more faithful thing — is to own them. Semper Fidelis.
***
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast &#8220;We The People.&#8221; Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.

Democratic Candidate Graham Platner Holds A Town Hall As He Campaigns for Senate In Maine

Graham Platner Betrayed Veterans And A Sacred Oath

graham platner

PTSD

Semper Fidelis

New York City&#8217;s freshly-inked <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/07/01/us-news/mamdanis-nypd-cops-cut-blindsided-city-council-leaving-lawmakers-bracing-for-other-surprises-in-126b-budget-they-passed/">$126 billion budget</a> shows exactly where Mayor Zohran Mamdani&#8217;s priorities lie — and it&#8217;s not with the men and women who served in uniform.
The City Council, with Mamdani&#8217;s sign-off, carved out roughly $7 million for so-called &#8220;trans equity&#8221; initiatives, including $6.45 million funneled to a laundry list of LGBT advocacy groups and another $40,000 specifically earmarked for &#8220;Drag Story Hour&#8221; programs in city schools and libraries, The New York Post<a href="https://nypost.com/2026/07/01/us-news/nyc-budget-funnels-7m-to-transgender-programs-drag-story-hours"> reports</a>. Council Speaker Julie Menin alone kicked in $10,000 for drag readings in her district, while six other council members, Shaun Abreu, Tiffany Caban, Julie Won, Shahana Hanif, Gale Brewer and Crystal Hudson, chipped in $5,000 each.
Meanwhile, over in the Department of Veterans&#8217; Services, the story is the opposite: a <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/veteran-services-face-1-million-cut-under-zohran-mamdanis-nyc-budget-11952694">roughly $1 million cut</a>, shrinking the department&#8217;s budget from about $7.6 million to $6.6 million — a drop of more than 13 percent. The mayor&#8217;s plan would also scrap the &#8220;Homecoming of Heroes&#8221; ticker tape parade in favor of a cheaper substitute march, and trim funding for annual events honoring former service members by about $60,000 a year through 2030.
Put plainly: the city is spending more on gender-identity programming and drag performances than it&#8217;s spending on services for the roughly 200,000 veterans who call New York home.
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For the record, Drag Queen Story Hour now receives more city funding than the Department of Veterans Services.
Understand where we are. <a href="https://t.co/vwQxqBVxUK">https://t.co/vwQxqBVxUK</a>
&mdash; Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) <a href="https://x.com/VickieforNYC/status/2072473558786134098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Critics wasted no time pointing out the math. State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar questioned why police funding lags while cash flows toward what he called fringe initiatives, saying, “Why isn’t there more money for police? There are countless dollars going toward extreme, far-out programs. This goes way beyond recognizing transgender individuals into spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote transgenderism.”
Nassau County Executive and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman echoed, “Only in [Democratic Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York are your hard-earned tax dollars funding drag queen story hours instead of new police officers, roads, and schools. It’s a slap in the face to every New Yorker who goes to work every day to provide for their family, and it ends when I’m governor.”
Veterans advocates are similarly furious. Marine Corps veteran Osbert Orduna called the cuts insulting to disabled veterans who sacrificed for the country.
But this is par for the course for a mayor who hates what America stands for.

2025 New York City Pride March

Mamdani Budget Bankrolls Drag Queen Story Hour While Veterans Take a Hit

Drag Queen story hour

Drag Queens

New York

New York City

Transgender

Zohran Mamdani

Former MTV reality television star Spencer Pratt is the first to admit that he has no political experience — but he says he does have a plan to help the homeless in Los Angeles if he&#8217;s elected mayor, and it&#8217;s modeled on a veteran training center in Arkansas.
Pratt, speaking with CNN&#8217;s Elex Michaelson, said that he wanted to build a rehabilitation center for homeless addicts — a move that he argues would swiftly and dramatically cut down the number of homeless in L.A. — similar to a training center for military veterans operating in Bentonville, Arkansas.
&#8220;You don’t get off these drugs with beds,&#8221; Pratt said, digging at incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, whose plan was to throw more money, clean needles, and shelters at the problem. &#8220;You need support. You need a real solution. And what’s happening? We’ve done it now, what, for 10 years. Their plan does not work. Their experience is complete failure. This is not Spencer saying this. This is every single person with eyeballs driving around L.A.&#8221;
Instead, Pratt argues that the treatment should be mandatory and that those in treatment should be pushed not just toward recovery but toward the skills and discipline that will help them succeed.
&#8220;If they want to come back to the city, we have a job for them — not just a bed off Skid Row,” Pratt explained. “They’re sober off fentanyl for two days, they go into a bed, they come out right back on to where all the drugs [are]. We need to actually help these people and get that back into society.&#8221;
The model is the <a href="https://uhp.com">University of Health and Performance (UHP)</a>, a 19-day immersive training program designed to help veterans transition from military to civilian life. Tuition, meals, health and fitness instruction, and lodging are all free — and veterans leave with the confidence and skills to build a new civilian life.
Pratt told Michaelson he was eyeing property in &#8220;beautiful nature&#8221; and had already approached several people about helping fund the project. In addition, he said he wanted to bring in &#8220;top doctors&#8221; to make sure he was doing things the right way, because he wanted the center to become &#8220;a shining light of hope.&#8221;
&#8220;You need to offer people a chance,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s going to be somewhere where people will go, and they will say, &#8216;Thank God for Spencer.'&#8221;
Pratt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-obliterates-leftist-policies-in-heated-l-a-mayoral-debate">squared off</a> with his opponents during a recent televised debate, arguing that Bass had done little to solve the problem and that Democratic socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman&#8217;s offer of help was likely to be met by violence from addicts just looking for another fix.
WATCH:
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me-spencer-pratt-south-la

Spencer Pratt Thinks He Found The Fix For L.A.’s Homeless Disaster

Spencer Pratt's Plan To Help Homeless Is Modeled After Red State Veteran Training Center

Drugs

Los Angeles

Spencer Pratt

Far-left Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-ME) has once again landed in hot water over a now-deleted Reddit post that appears to mock a wounded soldier.
The <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/platners-deleted-reddit-sparks-outrage-appears-mock-wounded-soldier-didnt-deserve-live">post</a>, written in 2019, was a brutal takedown of a viral video from the helmet-cam of Pfc. Ted Daniels during a 2012 firefight with the Taliban. Daniels received a Purple Heart after being shot four times during that firefight — but Platner argued in a post attributed to his old account, &#8220;P-hustle,&#8221; that Daniels did not &#8220;deserve to live&#8221; because he&#8217;d made &#8220;sh*t&#8221; decisions in combat.
&#8220;This video never gets old,&#8221; the commentary began. &#8220;Dumb motherf*cker didn&#8217;t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat-*ss wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban&#8217;s part is the only reason this mouth breather made it home, he managed to make every possible sh*t decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.&#8221;
Daniels, in later interviews, has explained that the actions he took were not tactically the best ones he could have made, but said that he had to make decisions in the moment he believed would &#8220;draw fire&#8221; away from others in his unit.
&#8220;I put my *ss on the line for other guys,&#8221; he said, even as he conceded it was not &#8220;a sound thing to do.&#8221;
Army Ranger veteran and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) minced no words in his response to Platner&#8217;s comment: &#8220;Graham Platner is a lying, antisemitic fraud who has no business serving in the Senate.&#8221;
&#8220;Let’s see the courageous Democrat vets defend this one … can’t wait to hear it,&#8221; Navy SEAL veteran and Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) added.
Rep. and retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) unloaded on Platner as well, saying, &#8220;This Nazi tattooed raging a*shole should be resoundingly condemned by every active duty military member and veteran. He is a disgrace to the uniform he previously wore and should be mocked and shamed.&#8221;
Platner has faced criticisms over a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nazi-tattoo-dem-blames-u-s-army-culture-for-ink-nasty-social-media-posts">Nazi tattoo</a> — which he recently had covered — as well as several offensive and vulgar social media posts, but still managed to rise as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Maine. He will face longtime incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) in November.

Maine Democrat Graham Platner Is Winning Voters All ‘Pissed At The Same Thing’

Platner Mocks Purple Heart Recipient In Resurfaced Post: ‘Didn’t Deserve To Live’

Far-Left Maine Candidate Says Wounded Soldier 'Didn't Deserve To Live'

Maine

Soldiers

Susan Collins

A Minnesota community is grieving the tragic loss of a local leader and former military medic who died following a confrontation with individuals targeting his personal vehicle last week.
The incident unfolded on Friday afternoon outside Rick’s Coffee Bar, which is run by Every Third Saturday, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting former service members. Amos Ferrier, 38, was attending a graduation ceremony.
“He was in the coffee shop and observed at least one individual, maybe two or three, but they had gone into his truck and took his bag, and he ran out to stop them,” Tom McKenna, co-founder of Every Third Saturday, told <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/he-was-a-courageous-soul-south-minneapolis-coffee-shop-mourns-veteran-killed-in-attempted-car-theft/">KSTP.</a>
When Ferrier stepped outside to intervene, the situation escalated rapidly, Fox9 <a href="https://www.fox9.com/news/veteran-amos-ferrier-killed-south-minneapolis-car-theft">reported</a>. As the perpetrators attempted to flee in a vehicle, Ferrier became trapped on the hood of the accelerating car. It is unclear if they returned to their car or drove away in Ferrier&#8217;s, according to KSTP. The driver traveled nearly an entire block before abruptly turning, causing Ferrier to be violently ejected onto the roadway.
Emergency responders transported the unconscious father of two to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he underwent urgent neurological surgery. Tragically, he never regained consciousness and was removed from life support two days later. “They did emergency brain surgery at HCMC, and he never woke up,” McKenna stated.
Law enforcement authorities acted swiftly following the fatal encounter. On Tuesday, the Minneapolis Police Department&#8217;s specialized apprehension unit located and arrested Riniyah Allen, 19, and Jalaya Frost, 18. Both young women face initial charges of first-degree murder and remain detained at the regional jail facility.
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Amos Ferrier is a veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan.
He was just murdered in Minneapolis while trying to thwart a carjacking
Riniyah Allen and Janaya Frost are now facing murder charges <a href="https://t.co/ZFLu3AMiNj">pic.twitter.com/ZFLu3AMiNj</a>
&mdash; Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) <a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2056984802679574778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The tragedy has deeply shaken the local community, where Ferrier was a revered figure. He spent a decade and a half in the United States Army, enduring multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, where he was recognized for rescuing numerous comrades on the battlefield. Upon returning to civilian life, he channeled his experiences into helping other former service members transition back into society. In his professional role at the nonprofit, he managed career development programs, guided peers through complex bureaucratic paperwork to secure medical benefits, and actively participated in a newly formed suicide prevention campaign.
“He loved seeing people grow and seeing people get better and become better versions of themselves. And he brought that out in people,” said McKenna. “He was our do-it-all. He was kind of a Swiss Army knife. He ran an internship program, but he also had a huge role helping veterans with challenges like paperwork or filing claims, accessing benefits and resources. And he was part of a suicide prevention initiative we were launching. &#8230; He taught us that laughing is the best medicine. He certainly leaves behind a legacy of lives that he touched, and a way of doing things that will continue here for a long time.”
Colleagues and loved ones have established a temporary monument — featuring floral arrangements and a wooden cross crafted by Ferrier himself — at the exact location where he was injured.

Minneapolis police car showing name and license plate.

Community Mourns Veteran Turned Civic Leader Killed In Violent Confrontation

Minnesota

Murder

President Donald Trump on Saturday signed a sweeping executive order aimed at fast-tracking access to psychedelic-based treatments for veterans suffering from PTSD, depression, and other severe mental health conditions.
On paper, the order directs agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs to accelerate clinical trials, cut bureaucratic delays, and expand “right to try” access for patients who have exhausted traditional treatment options. But the real-world impact is far more immediate, and far more personal. For millions of Americans, this isn’t an abstract policy debate, it’s about whether treatments that show real promise are stuck in years of red tape while people continue to struggle, relapse, or fall through the cracks of a mental health system that often relies on trial-and-error prescriptions.
Trump framed the move as a long-overdue shift toward urgency.
“These treatments are currently in the advanced stages of clinical trials to ensure that they&#8217;re both safe and effective,” Trump said. “But usually with things like this, nothing ever happens … we’re changing that.”
The executive order builds on a growing body of research suggesting psychedelic therapies, particularly compounds like ibogaine, can deliver dramatic results where conventional treatments fail. Trump pointed to a Stanford study in which special operations veterans saw an 80 to 90 percent reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms within a month.
At the signing ceremony, one veteran put it more bluntly.
“This treatment saved my life,” he told the president. “Helped me get off opiates … sleep for the first time in over 10 years.”
“And you have no doubt?” Trump asked.
“Zero,&#8221; he answered.
“To me, that’s the best research of all,” Trump said.
More than 14 million Americans suffer from serious mental illness, according to the White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-is-accelerating-medical-treatments-for-serious-mental-illness/">fact sheet</a> accompanying the order, and for many, existing medications and therapies simply don’t work. Even when they do, they often come with significant side effects or require years of adjustments. Among veterans, the crisis is even more acute, with more than 6,000 suicides per year for over two decades, a statistic that has remained stubbornly high despite billions in federal spending.
The order attempts to break that cycle by not just funding research, but forcing the system to move faster. It directs the FDA to prioritize psychedelic drugs already designated as “breakthrough therapies,” a classification reserved for treatments that show substantial improvement over existing options. It also pushes regulators to shorten review timelines that can typically stretch close to a year, and in some cases, much longer.
At the same time, the administration is expanding access before full approval. By opening a clearer pathway under federal right-to-try laws, patients with treatment-resistant conditions may be able to access these therapies under medical supervision rather than waiting years for final regulatory clearance.
That shift could prove significant not just for veterans, but for civilians facing similar conditions; first responders, trauma survivors, and millions of Americans dealing with depression, addiction, and anxiety disorders.
Health agencies are also being pushed to coordinate more aggressively. The order mandates increased data sharing between federal departments, expanded clinical trial participation, and at least $50 million in federal support for state-level research efforts. States like Texas have already invested heavily in ibogaine research, and the federal government is now stepping in to match those efforts.
Even skeptics in the medical field say the evidence is becoming harder to ignore.
“One single administration can change behavior toward a therapeutic effect,” a researcher at the signing said. “We have a tool that could allow the body to heal itself, if we know how to properly use it.”
That’s the gamble behind the order: that accelerating access doesn’t just help veterans, but could reshape how the country approaches mental health treatment altogether, moving away from long-term symptom management and toward therapies that may offer more lasting change.
For everyday Americans, the implications are straightforward. If these treatments continue to show results, they won’t remain confined to niche trials; they could become part of mainstream medicine, available through doctors rather than years-long waitlists or costly alternatives abroad.
If these therapies work — and early data suggest they might — the question is no longer whether they should exist, but how quickly people can access them.
Trump’s answer, at least for now, is simple: faster.

The Wait Just Got Shorter For Veterans Seeking Breakthrough Mental Health Care

Donald Trump

Health

Mental Health

Politics

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/hosts/michael-knowles?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Hosts&amp;rowType=Hosts+Portrait+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
A Honduran national, deported four times from the United States, reportedly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiall5yi0wM">pushed</a> an elderly Air Force veteran onto the tracks of the New York City subway. You can <a href="https://www.wkrn.com/news/national/honduran-man-accused-of-shoving-2-onto-nyc-subway-tracks-was-deported-4-times-dhs/">read about it</a> in the local news, however, you&#8217;re not going to see a lot about it in the national news.
This guy was arrested last Tuesday for pushing two people: a 30-year-old man and an 83-year-old man onto the tracks. This was unprovoked. This guy is a serial criminal, a four-time deportee. According to the deputy assistant secretary of <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/03/12/four-time-deported-criminal-illegal-alien-15-prior-charges-arrested-after-shoving">DHS</a>, he should never have been able to walk our streets and harm innocent Americans.
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He’s probably going to get off the hook. Soon, he&#8217;ll be receiving various taxpayer subsidies and eating a dollar-a-slice pizza. He’s also probably living it up at the Roosevelt Hotel, where illegal aliens have been able to get better accommodations than most actual taxpaying New Yorkers for years now.
The reason this story matters is not that it&#8217;s shocking or surprising. It&#8217;s not “man bites dog.” This has been happening for a long time.
This is directly attributable to mayors and governors like Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul. Mamdani and Hochul and all the Democrat mayors and governors of sanctuary cities and states are aiding and abetting these crimes. They are actively encouraging these crimes because sanctuary cities and states refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and they refuse to turn these criminals over to ICE.
According to the current policy in New York City, this guy — if he is sent to prison — will be allowed to get out and run free in the city afterward. When ICE shows up and says we want to pick this guy up and deport him for the fifth time, New York will say, No. We will not hand him over to you. We will protect the guy who threw the 83-year-old Air Force veteran onto the subway tracks, the guy with a rap sheet a mile long who has broken our laws countless times.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/hosts/michael-knowles?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Hosts&amp;rowType=Hosts+Portrait+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
At this point, the only way to stop him from doing it again is probably capital punishment. Yes, right now he wouldn&#8217;t get back into the country because President Trump closed the border. But the next time you get a Democrat president, he or she will once again make the border wide open. And this guy will walk back in.
These Democrat mayors and governors — Zohran Mamdani, Kathy Hochul, and the rest of them — are actively working with this guy. They have blood on their hands. Every woman these people light on fire in a subway car in New York, every throat these people slash, every crime these people commit is on their hands.
And that&#8217;s not hyperbole. They are very practically, very literally protecting these people from federal immigration enforcement. They are keeping them in the country, holding them tight when federal immigration enforcement tries to enforce the law.
Furthermore, we have to recognize something about illegal immigration: every single crime that illegal immigrants commit here is needless, gratuitous, and preventable. Every single one.
The libs like to say, Actually illegal aliens commit much less crime than the native-born population.
First of all, that isn’t true. Then they try to say illegal aliens commit less violent crime than the native-born population. You can make some arguments for that, but they’re pretty weak arguments — and it misses the point.
We have to deal with the crime that native-born Americans commit. That’s baked in. We don’t have an option. We can’t strip them of citizenship. But every single illegal immigrant who commits a crime here — whether it’s rape and murder or jaywalking and tax evasion — every single one of those crimes is preventable.
And therefore the people who fight tooth and nail to keep illegal immigrants in this country — even the convicted criminals, felons, and murderers — those people have blood on their hands.
That is why immigration is not an abstract policy debate. It is a question of responsibility.
And the American people should hold every single Democrat accountable for it.

Crowd of people in a NYC subway station waiting for the train

Air Force Vet, 83, Shoved Onto Subway Tracks — The Dem Policy Now Under Scrutiny

Democrats

illegal immigrants

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Michael Knowles

Opinion

Sanctuary Cities

Subway

U.S. Air Force

In the last year of the Biden administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs inaugurated an effort to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion principles that would outlast their time in power.
In January 2024, the VA&#8217;s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Council met to discuss the results of a survey, wherein employees were asked to identify &#8220;pain points&#8221; connected to their individual identities — based on race, gender identity, and a number of other factors — in order to further embed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the agency.
The discussion centered on &#8220;identity insights&#8221; and was designed to &#8220;improve employee experience,&#8221; records obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America reveal.
Just under 300 participants identified some 5,710 &#8220;pain points&#8221; that ranged from complaints about a colleague making an &#8220;inappropriate comment&#8221; to concerns that office holiday decorations excluded certain religious preferences. Other &#8220;pain points&#8221; were centered on general workplace environment and feeling that other employees did not understand certain sensitivities connected to those identity characteristics.
The 2024 meeting, which was planned three years earlier, began as a partnership between the Veterans Experience Office&#8217;s Employee Experience Organizational Management Directorate and the Office of Resolution Management, Diversity and Inclusion to improve employee experience by addressing the &#8220;pain points&#8221; they experienced in the workplace based on their identities.
Those identities — in addition to race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity — divided participants along religious lines and listed separate categories for Baby Boomers, Generation X-ers, Millennials, and Generation Z employees as well.
Of the 281 who were interviewed, only 3% answered based on only one identifier. Nearly one-fourth (24%) selected two identities, and 39% selected three. Of the remaining participants, 21% chose four identities, 11% chose five, and 2% chose six.
Following the late January meeting, the Council recommended a series of steps designed to make the VA a more receptive place for employees to express their &#8220;whole, authentic identity.&#8221;
&#8220;The three most pressing data fields that would benefit from a redesign as having emerged from the Identity Insights project include &#8216;gender,&#8217; &#8216;sexual orientation,&#8217; and &#8216;race,&#8217; as these categories either do not exist or do not exhaustively provide inclusive options for employees to holistically and accurately self-identify,&#8221; the study advised.
Another recommendation was for a &#8220;streamlined escalation pathway&#8221; for employees to resolve identity-based complaints — particularly &#8220;in the event of mistreatment, including reporting I*DEA issues, harassment, and general concerns with conduct in the workplace.&#8221;
Those complaints, the study indicated, could stem from interactions between employees, between employees and supervisors, and even between employees and the veterans they serve — with emphasis placed on the potential for veterans to create &#8220;pain points&#8221; that impact employees.
The study also suggested there should be an avenue for dealing with &#8220;the impacts of negative customer experiences on employees such as health practitioners providing additional coverage when LGBTQ+ Veterans are denied care by a colleague&#8221; — but did not provide evidence that such denial of care was happening within the VA system.
Almost one year to the day after that meeting — on January 27, 2025 — the VA under President Donald Trump had already begun to <a href="https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-ends-dei-stops-millions-in-spending-on-dei/">root out the DEI initiatives</a> within the department.
&#8220;Under President Trump, VA is laser-focused on providing the best possible care and benefits to Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors,&#8221; VA Director of Media Affairs Morgan Ackley explained. &#8220;We are proud to have abandoned the divisive DEI policies of the past and pivot back to VA’s core mission.&#8221;
In the year since, under Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, the agency has <a href="https://department.va.gov/2025accomplishments/">cut $14 million</a> in spending that went solely to DEI-focused initiatives and training. It is unclear whether the recommendations made during that meeting were ever implemented, and if so, what the new administration may have in place to put a stop to the process.

Department of Veterans Affairs

How The Biden Admin Tried To Keep The VA Woke After It Left Town

How The Biden Admin Tried To Embed DEI In Dept Of Veterans Affairs On The way Out The Door

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Doug Collins

Joe Biden

Hollywood rarely gets veterans right, portraying returning soldiers as caricatures or perfect heroes.
“Sheepdog,” which opened nationwide on January 16, doesn’t have that problem. The film is intent on showing the reality of the veteran experience from all sides — something the film’s writer, director, producer, and star, Steven Grayhm, says came at a cost.
“It was hard. It was really hard,” Grayhm told The Daily Wire in an interview reflecting on the film’s 14-year journey to the screen. “We could have cut corners early on that would have made our lives easier. And we would never have been able to live with ourselves. We never bent the knee, and we never kissed the ring.”
“Sheepdog” is about Army combat veteran Calvin Cole, who is court-ordered into treatment and into the care of a VA trauma therapist in training. 
“Things become even more complicated when Calvin&#8217;s father-in-law, a retired Vietnam Veteran, shows up on his doorstep having just been released from prison,” a description of the film reads. “As Calvin’s plan to run from his past becomes even more challenging, he learns through the support of his community, tough love and compassion, that he must put himself back together again for his family and for himself.”
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The film is personal for Grayhm, whose grandfather was a Polish farmer captured by the Nazis during World War II and held as a prisoner of war for five years. After being widowed, he moved in with Grayhm’s family.
“I had bunk beds in my room,” Grayhm recalled. “So I slept on the top, but I would fall asleep to his stories at night. Some of them were hard … but he did share his being liberated by the American and Allied troops. As a young boy, that’s ingrained in you. That goes into the DNA of who you are.”
His grandfather’s influence laid the foundation until a chance encounter planted the seed that would lead to “Sheepdog’s” creation. In 2011, Grayhm’s car broke down three hours north of Los Angeles. He said his conversation with a tow truck driver is a major source of inspiration for the film. 
“He opened up about his life, the challenges in his marriage, being a father of three, financial hardship,” Grayhm said. “Then he began to share all the different medications that he was on … tethered to his post-traumatic stress from multiple military deployments.”
Grayhm recalls listening without speaking.
“He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I’ve never told my wife. I’ve never told a therapist,’” Grayhm said. “And that lit the spark. The teachable moment was to sit and listen without prejudice.”
The idea that it was easier for a veteran to speak to a stranger than to his own family stuck with the filmmaker.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about him weeks after,” he said. “I thought there had to be more men and women like him suffering in silence.”
That summer, Grayhm and co-star Matt Dallas, who plays Calvin’s best friend in the film, embarked on a nationwide road trip to interview veterans and families. Along the journey, they found many similarities in the stories.
The result is not a traditional war movie, Grayhm said. “‘Sheepdog’ is not a post-traumatic stress movie,” he said. “It is a movie about post-traumatic growth.” He went on to say that too many films in this genre portray veterans as broken beyond repair.
“My character has been to hell and back, but he’s not broken,” Grayhm said of Calvin. “He doesn’t feel sorry for himself.”
He said Hollywood wasn’t biting, at least not without totally changing the vision.
“I cannot tell you how many rooms we were laughed out of,” Grayhm told The Daily Wire. “They said, ‘These movies don’t make money. Nobody cares about these stories.’”
When someone did show interest, it always had stipulations. “We started getting script notes to sanitize the story,” he said. “They wanted to turn my character into some paranoid guy having visions … almost a thriller. That’s not the truth.”
Instead, Grayhm made the project independent, raising private equity out of Texas and filming on a tight budget. After making the rounds on the festival circuit, the film just opened in 500 theaters nationwide.
The authenticity extends to the cast. Academy Award nominee Virginia Madsen (“Sideways”), who plays trauma therapist Dr. Elecia Knox, is a Gold Star family member. “She knew the stakes were very high,” Grayhm said. “She bared her heart and soul.”
“She has this speech where she says, ‘You were willing to give your life for your country. Now maybe you should try living for it,’” Grayhm recalled. “You could hear a pin drop. She did it in one take.”
Grayhm says he has just one goal for “Sheepdog.” 
“If we can save a single life with this film, it will be the greatest Hollywood success story,” he said. “There are currently five million veterans not accessing their VA care,” Grayhm added. “Sometimes walking through that front door can be the longest we’ve traveled.”
For civilians, the film serves two purposes. First, it’s a glimpse into what a veteran is going through. And second, it’s a chance to appreciate the freedom they’ve been given.
“The one percent is defending and protecting the other ninety-nine percent,” Grayhm said. “Just being aware of that matters.”
“Sheepdog” is currently showing in theaters.

Sheepdog

Hollywood Told This Filmmaker ‘Nobody Cares’ About Veterans’ Stories. He Told Them Anyway.

Hollywood Told Him ‘Nobody Cares’ About Veteran Movies, But This Filmmaker Made One Anyway

Entertainment

Hollywood

Military

Movies

A 104-year-old WWII Veteran absolutely crushed the National Anthem Saturday on a saxophone before the New York Islanders faced the New York Rangers in the rivalry hockey game, and the crowd went wild!
Staff Sergeant Dominick Critelli was helped onto the ice, where he performed a wonderful rendition of the anthem in a custom Islanders jersey, complete with the number 104.
His century-old lungs carried the anthem as if he were just 20 years old. Islanders and Rangers fans with hands over their hearts and pride in their eyes sang along with Critelli. It was a moving scene—a scene that, unfortunately, has become rare since the Colin Kaepernicks of the world tried to diminish the anthem.
It was nearly 10 years ago in 2016 when Kaepernick first sat out the anthem. Since then, the Star Spangled Banner has sadly often been a point of contention. But thanks to Critelli&#8217;s pipes, it seems as though America is back.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
104 year old World War 2 Veteran Dominick Critelli performed the National Anthem on the saxophone at tonight’s game! <a href="https://t.co/m0v0WT6L2Y">pic.twitter.com/m0v0WT6L2Y</a>
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYIslanders/status/2005107346662436870?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
“USA!” chants rang out following his pre-game performance. The Army Veteran gave a strong salute to the crowd following his last note.
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Critelli served as an aircraft mechanic with the 95th Infantry Division Headquarters Battery after immigrating to the United States from Italy. According to the <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/wwii-veteran-us-national-anthem-new-york-islanders">National Hockey League</a>, Critelli spent 151 days in combat during WWII. He fought at Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. Critelli went behind enemy lines during the war to help isolated American troops who needed supplies. His service to our country earned Critelli the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three Bronze Stars. As well as the American Theatre Medal, the WWII Victory Medal, and the Good Conduct Medal.
Critelli was honored last summer on the 80th Anniversary of D-Day by French President Emmanuel Macron, who <a href="https://x.com/NLintheUSA/status/1798794940891136143?s=20">awarded</a> Critelli the Legion of Honor, France&#8217;s highest military award.
The highly decorated serviceman&#8217;s performance Saturday in front of 17,000 hockey fans wasn&#8217;t his biggest audience he&#8217;s ever played for.
In an interview with The New York Post prior to Saturday&#8217;s game, Critelli said he’d once performed on the top of a rolling army tank for thousands after helping free the Netherlands from Nazi rule.
“I guess, it must have been 50,000, 60,000 people,” Critelli told The Post.
All these years later, the proud New Yorker can still put on a show.

Credit: Steven Ryan/NHLI via Getty Images

104-Year-Old WWII Veteran Brings House Down With National Anthem

New York Islanders

News

WWII

&#8220;Extreme gratitude” has sustained retired Marine and Purple Heart recipient Gabe Martinez after he lost both of his legs to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan 15 years ago.
Martinez spoke to Morning Wire about his injury, recovery, life after the military, and the Semper Fi &amp; America’s Fund that helps wounded veterans with severe injuries and disabilities.
Martinez was in seventh grade on September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial planes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, while a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The tragedy spurred Martinez to enlist in the Marines in 2006, immediately after graduating high school.
In 2008, Martinez found himself on his first deployment with a Marine Expeditionary Unit assigned to Navy ships across the Middle East. Two years later, in 2010, he was on his second deployment, this time in Afghanistan.
“Thanksgiving 2010 is obviously a day I&#8217;ll never forget. I remember everything about it,” said Martinez. “I was in for about three years at that point. We were going to the Helmand province of Afghanistan. … We knew it was going to be a tougher deployment. That was a real brutal year for some of the Marine Corps units out there.”
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About an hour into the convoy near a Taliban stronghold, an IED exploded underneath one of the vehicles in Martinez’s line. Martinez’s immediate job was to hunt for secondary explosives hidden in the surrounding dirt. The wreckage of the destroyed vehicle made his metal detector worthless. He was forced to dig in the dirt with his hands, carefully sweeping for more potentially buried explosives. 
Martinez had just finished investigating one spot and was moving to another area where the dirt appeared to have been recently disturbed when another IED — a 25-pound bomb in a glass jar — exploded beneath him.
“I remember getting tossed up into the air, and then I landed in this crater that the IED had created,” he recalled. “I remember everything was red — like all my vision was red — and I remember thinking, like, something really got rattled loose up, you know, up in my head. And what I realized is that it was blood going down from my skull into my eyes. The piece of shrapnel had gone through my helmet and into my forehead.”
“I remember wiping that free and looking down and seeing that my legs were, they were still there. One was hanging off to the side, one was on my chest,” Martinez said.
A whirlwind 48 hours followed. Martinez and two more Marines, one concussed from the first IED and the other with his legs also blown off from a bomb just after Martinez, were loaded together on a helicopter and rushed to the nearest medical facility capable of performing surgery. Within an hour of his injury, Martinez, still conscious, was able to call his wife using a satellite phone on the base.
Doctors at the facility finished amputating what was left of Martinez’s legs. From there, he was flown back to the United States and arrived in Bethesda, Maryland, less than two days after stepping on an IED in Afghanistan.
After finding out that he would survive, Martinez’s thoughts shifted to how he would live with his injury. But despite the difficulties, he was mostly grateful to be alive.
“I didn&#8217;t really know what life looked like for me, especially now having no legs — lost both my legs at 22 years old, I was recently married — and so life was very uncertain at that point. In my mind, I figured that was pretty much it. I didn&#8217;t have legs, so I was figuratively and literally half the man I once was,” said Martinez.
“The day I woke up in the hospital in the United States was when I met the Semper Fi &amp; America&#8217;s Fund, and they were able to answer a lot of that for me, you know, because fortunately-slash-unfortunately, they had a lot of experience with my situation,” he continued. “My mentality then is similar to how it is now — and it&#8217;s gratitude despite ups and downs. It&#8217;s extreme gratitude.”
The Semper Fi &amp; America’s Fund <a href="https://thefund.org/hero-stories/marine-sergeant-gabe-martinez-why-i-became-a-marine/">provided</a> Martinez opportunities to push himself and conquer new challenges despite his disability.
“My wife still to this day says I was like a ‘yes man.’ Like, I said yes to anything and everything, whether it was rock climbing, skiing–things I&#8217;ve never even done before, I found myself doing it. And it was great for my recovery because it showed me what I could do. And really, there weren&#8217;t any limits to what I could or couldn&#8217;t do,” he said.
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The toughest challenge for Martinez was leaving the military and losing the community that had sustained him throughout the early days of his injury. Martinez again found himself relying on the Semper Fi &amp; America’s Fund. The fund assigned Martinez a case manager who checked in on his progress and connected him with other veterans in similar situations.
In the military, the anniversary of wounds like Martinez’s is called “Alive Days,” and so Martinez’s Alive Day comes around Thanksgiving every year. (He suffered his injury the day after Thanksgiving in Afghanistan, which happened to be the day of Thanksgiving in the United States). 
Having his Alive Day fall on Thanksgiving has reinforced the gratitude he felt early on at just surviving and being able to return home.
“For me and my Alive Day being either on or around Thanksgiving was one of those blessings in disguise because it brings me back to that day 15 years ago … and like I said, gives me that reset perspective,” he said. “I&#8217;m able to, you know, look around and see my family, my kids, you know, my wife and family — kind of how my future has evolved from 15 years ago.&#8221;
“It gives me that perspective of even though every day is not perfect, even though many days I wish, you know, I had my legs or this didn&#8217;t happen to me, it gives me so much to be thankful for. And then being on Thanksgiving just kind of amplifies that while I&#8217;m surrounded by family and friends and all the chaos that ensues with that,” he continued. “I mean, it&#8217;s a huge blessing, and it&#8217;s a great reset for me to kind of have that perspective.”

Purple heart

Gabe Martinez Lost His Legs In Afghanistan 15 Years Ago. Here’s What Thanksgiving Means To Him.

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Marines

Thanksgiving

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