Are Veterans Better or Worse Off After 2 Years of Trump?

In 1865, when Abraham Lincoln called on the United States “to care for him who shall have borne the battle,” he established a federal promise to veterans that has endured for over 160 years. In the modern age, that responsibility extends beyond simply curing the ailments of war.

These days, it falls to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide a multitude of services for former military men and women, to which President Donald Trump has made numerous changes since his return to the White House in January 2025. During his 2024 election campaign, Trump promised to eradicate veteran homelessness, while his appointee for VA Secretary Doug Collins promised to improve access to benefits and medical treatment. Those ambitions have been pursued alongside the administration’s wider efforts to reduce the federal workforce.

Now, nearly two years after Trump’s return to office, the results have been mixed. Disability claims are being processed much faster, and veterans have access to more health care appointments. But substantial workforce reductions, seen across the federal government, and staffing shortages are impacting some of the key services veterans are entitled to.

Newsweek has approached the VA for comment via email.

Disability Benefits

Under Trump, the VA has substantially reduced disability claims processing times and cleared much of its backlog.

According to the VA, the average time to decide a claim fell from 141.5 days when Trump took office, down to 75.6 days in September 2026, a reduction of almost 47 percent. The department has also touted a record number of claims processed: 3.11 million in fiscal year 2026, compared to just over 3 million in fiscal year 2025, and reduced a backlog of claims by “more than 70 percent.”

“Under the leadership of President Trump, VA is making historic progress to better serve Veterans, and these record-breaking claims processing numbers prove it,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in October this year. “Whether we’re lowering wait times, improving healthcare, or opening new VA facilities, we will continue to put Veterans first.”

Jason Redman, a retired Navy SEAL, Purple Heart recipient and founding member of TurboVets, told Newsweek the VA’s improvements deserve recognition.

“Reducing the disability claims backlog is meaningful progress,” he said. “I’ve experienced firsthand how frustrating the process can be for veterans trying to navigate paperwork, understand eligibility requirements and get answers about their benefits.

“Better information, better updated systems, better data management and more personalized assistance would make a tremendous difference.”

But questions have emerged about the reliability of some of those decisions. An investigation published this week by The Beam, an accountability newsroom at Arizona State University’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, reports that amid the VA’s expansion of its Automated Decision Support (ADS) system, errors through reviews increased from more than 66,000 in fiscal year 2021 to over 329,000 in 2026.

Introduced in 2021, ADS collects and summarizes medical evidence from veterans’ service and treatment records. It searches documents for relevant information and assesses whether there is sufficient evidence for a claim to proceed or whether additional medical examination is needed. Human claims processors remain responsible for deciding eligibility, disability ratings and compensation amounts.

The investigation said the VA statistics used do not provide a distinction between whether a human or the automated process made the mistakes. A VA spokesperson told The Beam there is “no evidence to suggest the Automated Decision Support tool is causing errors.”

The VA has also announced plans to hire 2,000 more claims processors in the 2027 fiscal year to process the rising number of Veteran claims.

VA Healthcare Staffing

Like many other federal departments under the current Trump administration, the VA is no stranger to a shrinking workforce since January 2025. According to the Government Accountability Office, the department employed just over 480,000 people in December 2024 under the Biden Administration, compared to around 445,000 in January 2026, a reduction of more than 34,800 employees.

Separate GAO figures show the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which provides health care services, employed 398,994 people in January 2026, down from 400,821 in October 2025, including clinical and non-clinical employees.

Meanwhile, the VA Office of Inspector General reported that severe occupational staffing shortages across VA health facilities increased from 2,959 in FY2024 to 4,712 in FY2026, a rise of around 59 percent. All 139 facilities surveyed reported shortages, with 97 percent reporting difficulties recruiting medical officers and 86 percent reporting nursing shortages.

The findings were based on VA facility officials identifying occupations that are “difficult to fill,” rather than confirmed vacancies. The watchdog also said the figures were not independently verified.

Despite staff numbers dropping, the VA reported delivering more medical appointments to veterans. In figures supplied to Newsweek, the VA said it completed a record 82.68 million direct care appointments in FY2026, an increase of 4.9 percent from FY2024, as well as 67.42 million community care appointments, treatment delivered by non-VA providers at the department’s expense, up 25.5 percent over the same period.

The department has also enrolled more than 300,000 new veterans in the VA Healthcare program in 2026, according to figures released in October.

Hospital ratings have also improved, with the proportion of VA hospitals receiving four or five stars from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) having increased from 58 percent in 2024 to 78 percent in 2026.

However, federal investigations have found access problems persist. Another Inspector General report, released in August, found that 20 percent of community mental health appointments exceeded the 30-day standard, with impacted patients waiting an average of 56 days. A separate September report found that fewer than half of nearly 2.6 million requests for additional treatment were decided within three business days, citing staffing shortages and administrative backlogs.

Both of those investigations covered periods spanning the Biden and Trump administrations, so it is not possible to establish whether delays have worsened since Trump took office.

Veteran Homelessness

Preliminary estimates show veteran homelessness has declined during the current Trump administration, though Trump’s promise to eradicate the problem is still some way from being fulfilled.

The latest official federal figures recorded 32,495 homeless veterans in January 2025, down from 32,882 in January 2024. Figures for January 2026 have not been published yet. However, a November 2026 analysis by the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimated that homelessness among veterans dropped by 7.8 percent between January 2025 and January 2026, compared with a 6.7 percent decline across the overall homeless population.

Meanwhile, the VA permanently housed 47,925 veterans in 2024 and 51,936 in 2025 fiscal years. The department told Newsweek it housed 48,968 in 2026, below the previous year’s total.

Next year, the VA will distribute a “record high” of $1.17 billion in grants to organizations that help unhoused veterans.

Veteran Jobs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics measured annual unemployment among veterans at 3.5 percent in 2025, up from 3 percent in 2024. The latest Department of Labor figures put the seasonally adjusted veteran unemployment rate at 2.9 percent in October, below the 4 percent rate among nonveterans.

The VA has programs in place to help former servicemen and women into employment after their military service. Speaking before Congress in April 2026, VA Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits Margarita Devlin said participation in the Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E) program had reached around 210,000 veterans in 2025, up 74 percent from 120,000 as of August 2022.

The program, which helps certain disabled veterans access training and employment, also reported a record 10,527 veterans securing jobs in fiscal year 2025. Comparable figures for 2026 have not yet been published. The department also announced plans to recruit more than 300 rehabilitation counselors and specialists to meet demand.

SNAP Benefits

For low- and no-income veterans who claim Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Trump’s July 2025 tax and spending legislation removed an exemption protecting qualifying veterans from SNAP’s time-limited work requirements.

The overall policy, which impacts all SNAP recipients and not just veterans and is not under the responsibility of the VA, was touted by the Trump administration as way to promote “work, responsibility and restores SNAP to serve the truly needy.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, estimated this week that approximately 260,000 veterans could be subject to the requirements, although any confirmed benefit losses remain unknown.

Veterans groups were strongly opposed to the rule changes. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) called the change an “unacceptable betrayal,” while the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans said it would “jeopardize food security for veterans already struggling to find stability.”

What Veterans Think

Surveys of veterans have revealed concerns about the impact of the Trump administration’s staffing reductions, although a high proportion of veterans still have confidence in the department.

An April 2025 survey by IAVA found that 81 percent of respondents were at least slightly concerned that federal workforce cuts could affect veterans’ health care and benefits. One in five said they knew a veteran who had lost their job because of the cuts.

Meanwhile, a November 2026 survey by left-leaning veterans’ advocacy group Common Defense found that 77 percent trusted the VA to provide the care they needed, while 85 percent supported improving and expanding its health care services. Just 4.6 percent favored cutting or privatizing VA staffing and services.

Both surveys involved members of the respective organizations rather than nationally representative samples of U.S. veterans.

Benjamin Krause, an Air Force veteran, VA-accredited attorney and chair of the United Veterans Leadership Council, said the Trump administration’s “pursuit of smaller government and faster processing has too often come at veterans’ expense.”

“It has expanded AI and automation without adequate safeguards, reduced experienced staff and pursued consequential benefits changes without meaningful advance public input,” he told Newsweek. “For veterans depending on these services, the consequences include delayed care, disputed benefits and greater financial insecurity.”

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Oliver Pritchard.