This is bigger than the VA. It is about whether this country holds to its own rules. We use credible sourcing and objective reasoning to build the case, on every issue we take on.
Every organization says it cares about facts. Here is what that actually means for us in practice, and what we will not do.
Every claim on this site traces to a public, checkable document. If we cannot cite it, we do not publish it. That is not a style choice. It is the reason a congressional staffer will read past our first paragraph.
We hold progressive values and we are open about it. We also draw a hard line between what the record shows and what we conclude from it. Blurring those is how organizations lose the right to be taken seriously.
The documented facts are strong enough. Inflating them costs more than it gains. If a number is contested, we say it is contested. If we get something wrong, we correct it in public.
If the evidence cuts against a position we hold, we say so. An organization that can never be moved by facts is not doing research. It is doing marketing with footnotes.
Veterans have a credibility that is hard to buy and easy to spend. We are not going to spend it on arguments we cannot back. Objectivity is not a retreat from our values. It is how we make them land.
This is our anchor issue and the place we have done the most work. It is also a template. What is happening to the VA is what it looks like when a public institution is dismantled deliberately while the headline numbers still look fine.
Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Breaking the Pact (January 2026). Minneapolis VA Annual Report 2025. RAND Corporation. Congressional Budget Office. OpenSecrets lobbying data. Congressional committee assignments, 119th Congress.
88 percent of those losses were in healthcare. Even refilled positions are not equivalent. New employees lack the institutional knowledge and specialized skills of the people who left. Expertise cannot be rehired the way headcount can.
Nearly 75 percent of new medical care funding goes to private providers. Community care is up 67 percent while VA direct care funding is down 17 percent. VA Secretary Collins moved 343 million dollars to community care without the required congressional approval.
As of January 2026 the national mean wait for new mental health patients is 35 days. Maine is at 61. Maryland is at 54. One California clinic hit 134 days after losing seven of its twelve mental health providers. Some veterans are being capped at eight therapy sessions regardless of medical need.
RAND Corporation research shows veterans in community care face longer wait times and less coordinated care than those in VA direct care. The CBO independently found that private VA care typically costs more than equivalent direct care. The privatization argument fails on quality and on cost at the same time.
Introduced by Rep. Mike Bost in January 2025, the bill lowers the thresholds for routing veterans to private providers and creates private mental health access with no VA referral required. TriWest Healthcare Alliance spent 190,000 dollars lobbying across three quarters of 2025. House Veterans' Affairs Committee members received 4.5 million dollars from the health sector. Up to one trillion dollars in Community Care Network contracts are currently in procurement.
107,500 veterans served in FY2025. A five-star CMS rating two years running. Suicide prevention managed 324 high-risk flags and 2,045 crisis calls with a 99.31 percent three-day closure rate. This system works. The privatization argument collapses against the Minneapolis VA's own record.
Research workers at the Minneapolis VA lost jobs in early 2025 when federal research funding was cut. Probationary employees were included in the February 2025 firing rounds. Community care usage grew 15.3 percent in 2025. The shift toward private providers is accelerating here even while the headline performance numbers stay strong.
Senator Klobuchar holds committee assignments with jurisdiction over veterans affairs appropriations. Senator Smith is a key appropriations vote. Representative McCollum covers St. Paul and Mendota Heights. A research-prepared veteran coalition from inside their districts is a fundamentally different contact than a form letter.
Our first shared research product. One page, tightly cited, built for congressional offices and partners.
The VA is where our research is deepest. It is not where our concern ends, and this coalition was never built to be a single-issue group.
We swore an oath to the Constitution. When due process, equal protection, or the limits on government power come under real pressure, that is not a side issue for veterans. It is the specific thing we swore to defend. This is not about parties. It is about whether the country follows its own rules, and that question is answerable with evidence.
Due process, equal protection, and the limits on government power are not partisan preferences. They are written down. When enforcement actions raise credible questions about whether those limits are being observed, including here in Minnesota, we intend to examine them exactly the way we examined the VA data: sourced, cited, and without exaggeration.
Research in production
Free and fair elections, a government answerable to the people, and institutions that function regardless of who is in charge. The right to vote is the one we swore to defend and the one veterans have the standing to talk about. What is happening to the machinery of American democracy is a documentable question, not just a political opinion.
Research in production
People who served this country and were removed from it anyway. The Boundary Waters and the places this state is responsible for. And whatever else matters most to the people who show up. The open floor is where new directions come from, and every one of them has to clear the same evidence standard.
Open floor
Everything above clears the same bar or it does not go up. We do not publish a claim about immigration enforcement, elections, or anything else on weaker evidence than we demand of ourselves on VA appropriations. Holding that line on the issues where we feel the most is exactly what makes us worth listening to on all of them.
That is the work. Turn what is documented into a shared, citable case, and put a prepared Minnesota veteran voice in front of the people who decide.
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