Following recent “unauthorized disclosures,” the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday announced its intention of drafting a governmentwide NDA that agencies can implement at their discretion for workers who have access to sensitive information, such as personnel records and operational plans.

“OPM believes that a standard NDA form will promote consistency across government, better protect confidential information and better inform federal employees of their rights and obligations regarding confidential information,” the proposal reads.

OPM’s proposal was published Wednesday in the Federal Register and opened a 30-day public comment period through June 26.

The OPM said the move follows several recent leaks of internal government information.

“There have been several recent instances in which internal agency communications related to rulemaking and policy development were disclosed without authorization,” the proposal says.

“Such disclosures risk chilling candid interagency feedback, disrupting orderly decision-making and weakening trust within and among federal agencies,” the proposal continues.

The draft lists several examples, with one dating back to 2022 when a Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights was leaked to a reporter, prompting the Court to implement its own NDA in 2024.

The proposal cited a 2025 incident in which several Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security workers released immigration enforcement plans when unauthorized to do so.

More recently, in early January 2026, the proposal also claims that the New York Times and Washington Post received unauthorized disclosures from federal employees about the planned U.S. raid on Venezuela before it began, which prompted the organizations to postpone “publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops.”

The New York Times disputes that assertion.

“Contrary to some claims, however, The Times did not have verified details about the pending operation to capture Maduro or a story prepared, nor did we withhold publication at the request of the Trump administration,” the New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn wrote in January 2026 in response to questions from readers.

OPM’s announcement comes less than two months after President Donald Trump vowed to find the “leaker” behind the release of information involving a missing U.S. airman from a downed fighter jet in Iran. In an early April press conference, Trump did not specify which media company received the leak but did threaten to put the reporter in jail if they, or their organization, did not disclose their source.

OPM previously published a separate rule in June 2025 addressing federal employee “suitability and fitness” requirements with nondisclosure requirements.

The draft says that the NDA will be an “Optional Form,” allowing federal agencies to decide for themselves whether or not to use the agreement. If an agency decides to use the NDA, it would be given to new hires as well as current employees.

Even though the draft says that the proposal is not meant to implement “new substantive restrictions on employee speech or disclosure rights,” union leaders have criticized the move, calling it unnecessary and warning it could silence workers.

“This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud and abuse,” Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement.

Doreen Greenwald, the president of the second largest federal employee union, National Treasury Employees Union, said there was “no basis” for this action and that the union would oppose the proposal.

“Existing law protects our nation’s secrets. Non-disclosure agreements would preemptively chill First Amendment-protected speech and dissuade protected whistleblowing activity,” Greenwald said in a release.

There are currently over two million federal employees, according to OPM, with the largest share of workers serving in the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The bill, which also provides appropriations for veterans-related agencies such as the American Battle Monuments Commission and Arlington National Cemetery, includes nearly $450 billion for the VA in fiscal 2027, a 3% increase from fiscal 2026 but lower than President Donald Trump’s request of $488 billion.

The bill was the first appropriations legislation to clear the House this year, in a 400-15 vote May 15 that Rep. John Carter, R-Tex., called a “testament to America’s commitment to taking care of the men and women who have bravely worn the uniform.”

“I want every service member and veteran to know that this bill has their back,” said Carter, chairman of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

The bill includes $324 billion in mandatory spending for the VA that covers health care and benefits and $137.8 billion for discretionary spending, roughly 2% higher than the fiscal 2026 amount but significantly lower than Trump’s request of $205.6 billion for discretionary funds.

The White House had asked to shift mandatory funds marked for injuries or illnesses related to toxic exposures — roughly $52 billion — to the discretionary budget, but the committee rejected the idea.

Lawmakers have expressed concerns that the use of those mandatory dollars, from the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, would jeopardize the fund’s intended use for veterans sickened by environmental pollutants.

The bill provides $19.7 billion for military construction projects, including $2.1 billion for the Army; $5.5 billion for the Navy and Marine Corps; $3.7 billion for the Air Force; $3.8 billion Defense Department-wide and additional funding for the National Guard and Reserve components.

The bill also includes a provision that would cement the VA’s decision to halt notifications to the Justice Department of a veteran’s inability to manage his or her finances — a situation that precluded veterans with fiduciaries from owning guns.

The Senate still must craft its own version of the bill, referred to as the MilConVA bill. The subcommittee responsible for the legislation jump-started that process in separate hearings April 30 and May 14 on the president’s budget proposals.

During those hearings, senators appeared supportive of the VA budget request and sought affirmation from VA officials that the department use the funds judiciously for health care, claims processing and other veterans services.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations MilConVA subcommittee, called the budget proposals “important investments” in the department.

But he expressed concerns about whether the VA had sufficient numbers of physicians and nurses and noted that the budget calls for significant increases for care at private facilities covered by the VA and less of an increase for health care at VA hospitals and clinics.

“The department’s own public facing data shows that outcome for veterans are either the same or better for direct VA care compared to privatized outside care,” Ossoff told VA Secretary Doug Collins in the April 30 hearing.

Collins testified Thursday before the House MilCon Appropriations Subcommittee, six days after the House passed its proposed bill.

Collins said that conflicts and the approval process prevented him from testifying until May 21, although earlier in the deliberation process, House Democrats had successfully amended the legislation to withhold 25% of the secretary’s office budget until he testified.

“Our veterans do not deserve that kind of uncertainty and lack of transparency,” said the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.

Collins praised the committee for the legislation’s passage and called changes at the VA since he has taken office a “tale of two cities.” He said in the past year the VA has announced a restructuring, instituted a manning document, reduced its disability claims backlog, restarted its VA electronic health records system program and reduced appointment wait times.

“The VA will never be perfect and neither will its budget, but we are always going to work together to make sure one thing is true: Veterans are always going to come first at the VA,” Collins said.

The Senate is expected to roll out its MilConVA appropriations bill this summer.

A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.

The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.

As SpaceX rockets toward a $2 trillion public offering this summer – expected to be the largest ever – the company has secured its position as the world’s most valuable space company in part by being indispensable to the U.S. government with an array of technologies spanning satellite communications to space launches and military AI.

Starlink, in particular, has proved key to crucial programs – from drones to missile tracking – with a low-earth orbit constellation of close to 10,000 satellites, a scale that provides the military with a network resilient against potential adversary attacks.

But the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program, which have not been previously reported, highlight the challenges of the U.S. military’s growing reliance on SpaceX and the risks it brings to the Pentagon.

“If there was no Starlink, the U.S. government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, a deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the drone test or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.”

The Navy and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite facing growing competition from Amazon.com, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement this week to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low-earth orbit communications.

Beyond drones, SpaceX has cemented a near-monopoly for space launches and provides satellite communications with Starlink and its national security-focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars for the company.

Last month, U.S. Space Force said it had reassigned its upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time, due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.

WARNINGS ABOUT RELYING ON SPACEX

Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of its reliance on a single company led by the world’s richest man to deliver crucial national security capabilities. More recently, the Defense Department’s disagreements and blacklisting of AI startup Anthropic quickly revealed how an over-reliance on one AI vendor could create problems should that vendor be dropped.

Reuters reported last year that Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies’ trust in the billionaire.

In Taiwan, SpaceX faced criticism over concerns it was withholding satellite communications to U.S. service members based there, “possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government,” according to a 2024 letter sent by then-U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher to Musk, reported by Forbes at the time. SpaceX disputed the claim in a post on X.

Reuters could not determine whether SpaceX has since provided Starlink service in Taiwan to U.S. service members. The Pentagon and SpaceX did not respond to questions about Taiwan.

“As a matter of operational security, we do not comment on or discuss plans, operations capabilities or effects,” an official said in a statement.

STARLINK ‘EXPOSED LIMITATIONS’

SpaceX’s Starlink broadband has been crucial to the Pentagon’s drone program, providing connection to small unmanned maritime vessels that look like speedboats without seats, and include those made by Maryland-based BlackSea and Austin, Texas-based Saronic.

In April 2025, during a series of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report of the tests reviewed by Reuters.

“Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple-vehicle load,” the report stated. The report also faulted issues linked to radios provided by Silvus and a network system provided by Viasat.

In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August, another series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection issues with the Starlink network, Navy documents reviewed by Reuters show. The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear.

Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink – a cheap and commercially available service – outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute.

“You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.

In what will be the largest reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration since the 1990s, the VA plans to restructure VHA’s administration, realign staff and resources and invest in medical facilities.

At the same time, the VA will award new contracts for community care — its program that covers medical care for eligible veterans at civilian facilities — using a new structure the VA hopes will give the department better flexibility to choose and change contracted provider networks.

According to VA Secretary Doug Collins, the restructuring will “eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead” and put more resources directly into VA facilities and community care.

Collins said in his first year of office, he has toured VA medical facilities and found significant differences in delivery of health care.

“We didn’t act like the largest healthcare provider in the world in many ways because we were trapped internally into our own policies, procedures, things that have been added on — none which added up to taking care of veterans but ended up taking care of the VA itself,” Collins told members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Under the reorganization, known as the Restructure for Impact and Sustainability Effort, or RISE initiative, the VA will decrease the number of Veterans Integrated Service Networks, or VISNs, which provide oversight, administrative, budgetary services and support to VA medical centers, from 18 to 5, with the VISNs focused namely on oversight and governance.

The reforms will create health service areas, or HSAs, within the VISNs to focus on medical centers and the communities where veterans get their health services.

And they will create a medical operations center that will ensure that policies are implemented and followed throughout the system.

Regarding the community care program, the VA issued a call for contract proposals earlier this month to provide medical services, agreements worth nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Community Care Network Next Generation contract, with its indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity structure, is meant to give the department more flexibility in overseeing the program, currently managed by two health contractors, Optum and TriWest Healthcare Alliance.

According to VA Chief Financial Officer Richard Topping, the new contracts will ensure that network providers will “compete and improve continually” to serve veterans.

“The government will have the ability to bring on multiple vendors and multiple contractors,” Topping said during a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee Jan. 22. “Those contractors can then compete across the life of the contract for different task orders. That allows VA to change program design to learn from mistakes, to increase our capabilities and capacities to innovate and evolve the program over time.”

Veterans advocates and congressional Democrats have raised concerns that any reductions in personnel related to restructuring or expanded contracts for community care will erode the VA’s medical system and lead to privatization of VA health care.

“While veterans are going to go unserved and uncared for in his actions, we see exactly who Secretary Collins really serves, driving the VA towards privatization,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., during the House hearing. “We know it only serves corporate interests, and it puts profits over veterans.”

But VA officials have said that the restructuring will streamline the administration and provide better services to veterans. Topping noted that while the community care contracts are worth up to $1 trillion over 10 years, the VA plans to spend $2 trillion for care in its own facilities during the same time frame.

“We’re opening new facilities. We’ve invested $800 million last year alone. We are investing in our direct care capabilities. And so, for veterans who either need to go to VA for direct care because it’s a unique capability that VA has, or who choose to go, they have that ability, and they have that choice,” Topping said.

The VA has lost 30,000 personnel in the past year as a result of resignations, retirements and attrition, as well as plans for an additional reduction of 24,000 jobs, which officials say were mainly positions created during the COVID-19 pandemic that are no longer required and have been vacant for at least a year.

Collins said the reorganization will allow the department to shift staff where they are needed and trim excess at underutilized locations. He added that the effort is moving forward with VA leadership taking into account input from staff, Congress and others.

“This is not an effort to diminish direct care for veterans. This is a reorganization that will eliminate the glut of VA administrative overhead and push more resources directly into the field,” Collins said.

The VA announced Wednesday it will spend $4.8 billion this year to make repairs and modernize numerous health care facilities, including upgrades to elevators, electrical and climate control systems and improvements to help accommodate the rollout of the department’s electronic health record system.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike promised close scrutiny of the VA reforms over the coming months, with the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee planning another hearing on the modernization efforts and House members saying their hearing on Jan. 22 was “only the beginning” of oversight.

“It should go without saying that VA must get this right. When veterans call my committee, they want to know how they can access their earned health benefits at VA,” House Veterans Affairs Committee Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., said.

Proposals for the new community care contract are due to the government in March.

Reps. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., and Sarah Elfreth, D-Md., rolled out their proposed “Beacon Act” on Friday, aiming to foster partnerships with academic institutions and providers for treatment and finance research into alternative treatments for mild to moderate traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

During a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Cole Lyle, the American Legion’s veterans affairs and rehabilitation director, said the legislation is needed because current treatments, including medication, often fall short in alleviating symptoms.

“We believe veterans deserve care that reflects the complexity of their comorbid injuries, where healing does not happen with a one-size-fits-all bottle — care that brings innovation, research, community partnerships and, above all, hope,” Lyle said.

From 2000 through June 2025, Defense Department personnel were diagnosed with nearly 497,000 mild to moderate TBIs, according to the department. The majority were treated at military hospitals or clinics, including the Defense Intrepid Network for TBI and Brain Health or the Department of Veterans Affairs, which maintains four polytrauma rehabilitation centers and 21 sites in a polytrauma network.

Under the legislation, a TBI Innovation Grant Program would award up to $30 million in grants through 2028 to nonprofits, academic institutions and non-VA health care providers for treatment and recovery, suicide prevention, training and outreach.

The bill’s Independent Research Grant Program would provide $625,000 awards for pilot studies and $1.5 million grants for research on alternative therapies for TBI.

Bergman and Elfreth say their bill would strengthen the VA’s ability to treat TBI by expanding access to new treatments.

“The men and women who served our country deserve access to the best care available, especially when it comes to invisible injuries like traumatic brain injury,” said Bergman, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.

“The Beacon Act strengthens the VA’s ability to deliver modern, effective care by bringing proven innovation, academic expertise, and community partnerships to the table, while supporting the important work the VA is already doing,” he said.

“As the granddaughter of a veteran who suffered from [post-traumatic stress disorder], I’ve seen firsthand the complex mental health challenges that our veterans and their families face. I’ve also seen how traditional VA treatments have come up short for decades to fully address the complex challenges our veterans face,” said Elfreth.

A similar bill was introduced last November in the Senate by Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick and Nevada Democrat Jacky Rosen. Their bill, the Veterans Traumatic Brain Injury Adaptive Care Opportunities Nationwide Act, also would promote partnerships and develop research through similar grant programs.

“As I think about the soldiers I served alongside, I feel this issue deeply,” said McCormick, a former Army officer. “Our veterans deserve access to innovative and groundbreaking TBI treatments that will enhance their quality of life and finally address the suicide epidemic among servicemembers.”

The legislative proposals have the support of the American Legion, AMVETS, Avalon Action Alliance, With Honor, the Marcus Institute for Brain Health, University of Colorado Anschutz, Disabled American Veterans, America’s Warrior Partnership, Boulder Crest Foundation, Mission Roll Call and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“Studies and reporting show time and again a connection between service-related blast overpressure injuries and increased rates of suicide among service members and veterans,” said Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor said in a statement.

“This bipartisan legislation,” he noted, “brings together government, academia, and the private sector to align and accelerate research and treatment for traumatic brain injuries to reduce the skyrocketing suicide rates among active-duty service members and veterans.”

In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Thursday, the chambers’ top Democrats — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from New York — asked for a meeting on the looming fiscal issues early next week, to stave off a budget crisis.

“The government funding issue must be resolved in a bipartisan way,” the pair wrote. “That is the only viable path forward …

“It is past time you reveal your plans to meet the needs of the American people. Otherwise, it is clear that you have abandoned bipartisanship altogether and are preparing to shut down the government.”

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass a new budget for the next fiscal year (which starts Oct. 1) or approve a short-term extension of current agency funding levels.

Failure to do either will force a partial shutdown of most government activities until a new funding deal is reached.

For the Department of Defense, that will mean shuttering of some non-essential base offices and training. Troops will still be expected to report for duty, but their paychecks may be delayed.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, most hospital and benefits processing offices will remain open, thanks to advance funding approved for the agency in the past. But some information hotlines will be shut down, and other non-critical services will halt during the political impasse.

Neither Republican leader offered an immediate response to the Democratic leaders’ request. Both men have said that resolving the funding issue will be their top priority when Congress returns from its summer recess next week.

Although GOP lawmakers hold a majority in both chambers, several prominent Republicans have suggested they may not support a short-term budget deal, preferring to return to regular order in the appropriations process. But the majority of funding bills still have significant work to be completed before final passage.

That would mean at least some Democratic votes will likely be needed to approve any funding package and avoid a shutdown.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said he would meet with Schumer and Jeffries to discuss potential points of compromise, but added that “it’s almost a waste of time to meet because they never approve anything.”

Defense Department leaders have warned about the potential detrimental impact of a government shutdown on military operations, even if troops and essential personnel remain on the job. They said that shuttering support services for military families and disrupting long-term procurement plans undermines force readiness initiatives.

The last major government shutdown occurred in December 2018 during the first Trump administration and lasted for 35 days. That dispute, which centered on immigration policy and funding, did not include the Departments of Defense or Veterans Affairs, but did result in delayed paychecks for tens of thousands of U.S. Coast Guard personnel.

Lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

During an Oval Office event with military families on Monday, Trump praised the work of VA Secretary Doug Collins thus far, asserting that the department now has a “93% approval rating” under his leadership.

“We had a great first term and it was pretty close to that then,” he said. “And then [President Joe Biden’s administration] took over and it went down into the 30s and 20s. It went down at one point to 28% or 29%, which is terrible … But now you’ve blown everyone away, Doug.”

Trump’s boast appears to reference VA’s periodic survey of veterans who have used department health care services in the last 90 days. As of the start of August, the satisfaction rate with VA medical care sat at 92.8%, the highest mark in the 30 months that the survey has been conducted.

When that polling began in March 2023 — during the Biden administration — the figure was 90.4%. It has steadily improved nearly every month for the past two and a half years, regardless of which administration was in charge.

The broader VA Trust survey, conducted quarterly since early 2016, shows a similar story. At the start of Trump’s first term in the White House, only about 55% of veterans said they trusted the department to “fulfill our country’s commitment to veterans.” By the time Trump left office at the end of 2020, the number was up to nearly 79%.

VA data shows the trust score remained between 78% and 81% during Biden’s entire term in office, far above the under 30% that Trump claimed on Monday. The latest department update shows that 79.2% of veterans expressed confidence in the department at the start of the summer, down about 1% from a year earlier.

Department researchers also began an annual outpatient survey in fiscal 2017, during Trump’s first term in office, to gauge satisfaction rates.

That year, 85% of patients said they were happy with how agency staff handled their outpatient care appointments and procedures. At the end of Trump’s first term in office, it had risen to 89.1%. At the end of last fiscal year — the latest data available — the number was up to 92%.

Trump claimed the improvement in veterans perception of VA came because the previous administration “gave away choice and accountability … and we put them back.”

That claim has been at the root of continued political sparring between administration officials and Democratic critics of Trump’s veterans policies. Republicans in recent weeks have pushed through a series of reforms designed to make it easier for veterans to access health care options outside the VA system, but the impact of those moves still remains to be seen.

During Monday’s event, Collins noted that department officials have reduced the disability claims backlog by about 40% since January. That number has also been in steady decline for the last two years, since the backlog spiked to more than 400,000 cases after the passage of the PACT Act.

Late last week, the Office of Personnel Management announced in an email to federal workers that they had canceled plans for the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, typically conducted each spring. Officials had said for months they were revising the poll to better focus questions on key workplace issues and not extraneous topics, such as diversity programs.

The survey is mandated under federal code and provides an annual snapshot of employee satisfaction. Administration officials have not said whether they will provide other avenues for tracking those metrics.

Earlier this summer, in response to questions about workforce changes, Veterans Affairs officials said they would conduct their own all-employee survey in conjunction with the FEVS.

However, after last week’s decision, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that his department “is following OPM’s lead on this issue and will not be conducting the VA All-Employee Survey this year.”

He also dismissed concerns that the absence of the polling data would ignore concerns within the department’s workforce.

“VA employees are happy the department is fixing many of the problems left by the Biden administration and is making improvements across the agency,” he said in a statement.

The VA All-Employee Survey has been conducted every year since 2006. In 2012, the results ranked the department as the second-worst large federal agency to work for, out of 19 departments. By 2024, that ranking had risen to fifth-best.

About 72% of VA employees surveyed said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2024, up from about 55% a decade before. Officials from President Joe Biden’s administration frequently cited the survey as evidence that they were making workforce improvements throughout VA.

Whether this year’s survey would have shown continued optimism or new problems will remain unknown. Union officials and critics of President Donald Trump have strongly objected to a host of workforce reforms by his administration in recent months, including trimming nearly 30,000 jobs from the department payroll since January.

Earlier this month, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced plans sever ties with most federal employee unions, terminating their collective bargaining contracts.

About 450,000 federal employees currently work at VA hospitals, benefits centers and other offices. In the past, nearly three-fourths of the workforce participated in the employee surveys.

Last month, VA administrators launched a partnership with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to recover improper payments to medical providers who billed both agencies for patient services. An initial review found roughly $106 million in duplicate billings over a six-year period.

But that may be just the start. About 5.9 million veterans are dually enrolled in VA health care and Medicare, creating confusion in some instances regarding which government agency is responsible for covering the costs of appointments and medical procedures.

A new health care analysis released by the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute on Tuesday found that nearly 84% of the 8.2 million veterans enrolled in the VA health care system have some form of secondary medical coverage, including Medicare, private insurance or Tricare services.

“Enrollment in multiple forms of health care coverage indicates potential inefficiencies and raises questions about whether different programs are making duplicative payments for the same care,” researchers noted in the report.

They argue that fixing the problem requires better tracking of which medical systems veterans are enrolled in and what services they are eligible for.

The report notes that while the Veterans Health Administration is already working with Medicare officials on fixes, “making further use of Medicare, TRICARE, private insurer, and Medicaid claims … in combination with VHA enrollment, utilization, and cost data would enable VHA to better track the sources of care for its enrolled veterans.”

RAND officials also recommended better education of patients about their medical options and eligibility, to help inform their choices.

VA officials said that new data-matching agreements with Medicare officials should help curb some of the problems in the future. But they also vowed to continue to look for areas of improvement, both with those two systems and other health care systems.

The move affects members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the AFL-CIO (AFGE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

AFGE alone represents about 300,000 employees working for VA. About 80% of the department’s roughly 450,000-person staff are union members.

Department officials said the move was made to “make it easier for VA leaders to promote high-performing employees, hold poor performers accountable, and improve benefits and services to America’s veterans.”

In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins attacked the unions as inefficient and harmful to veterans’ care.

“Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers,” Collins said. “We’re making sure VA resources and employees are singularly focused on the job we were sent here to do: providing top-notch care and service to those who wore the uniform.”

Members of President Donald Trump’s administration have fought with union officials for months. In April, VA stopped withholding union dues from most employee paychecks, citing an executive order excluding some federal agencies from labor-management relations programs.

Wednesday’s move does not impact unions representing 4,000 VA police officers, firefighters and security guards. Officials said the executive order does not apply to those positions.

Union leaders for months have protested against proposed cuts at VA and other federal agencies, arguing the smaller staffs will hurt delivery of benefits and health care. They’ve also accused Collins of working to “privatize” VA services by sending more money for medical appointments into civilian hospitals and medical offices, rather than VA clinics.

The unions have also filed numerous lawsuits against the president’s proposed changes to the federal bureaucracy. On Monday, a federal appeals court paused a preliminary injunction that had blocked department heads from making changes to collective bargaining agreements, allowing Wednesday’s contract terminations to move ahead.

At the time, AFGE National President Everett Kelley called the ruling “a setback for fundamental rights in America” and promised continued opposition to Trump’s proposals.

In a statement after Wednesday’s announcement, Kelley criticized Collins for attacking VA workers’ rights.

“[The] decision to rip up the negotiated union contract for majority of its workforce is another clear example of retaliation against AFGE members for speaking out against the illegal, anti-worker, and anti-veteran policies of this administration,” he said.

“We don’t apologize for protecting veteran healthcare and will continue to fight for our members and the veterans they care for.”

Officials from National Nurses United accused the Trump adminstration of “waging class warfare against working people of America” and similarly promised continued legal challenges.

“This president has made it clear he has no respect for the Constitution, but we believe strongly that our right to join together to collectively bargain is constitutionally protected,” the group said in a statement. “It cannot be swept away through an overreach of an executive order based on spurious claims.”

VA officials said that in addition to eliminating unneeded restrictions on hiring and firing policies, breaking union contracts will free up more than 187,000 square feet of office space currently being used by group representatives.

At the start of 2025, federal unions represented more than 1.3 million government workers across a host of agencies.