The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for website changes before canceling the contract and having an internal staffer take over, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While combing through loads and loads of data, DOGE discovered a previous contract by the VA for its website maintenance.

In early March 2025, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs canceled a $56,000 contract intended for watering approximately eight plants over a five-year period.

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What's True

The VA did cancel a $56,000 contract for "interior plant maintenance" in early March 2025.

What's False

However, the contract covered 104 plants, not eight, and included weekly maintenance services beyond just watering.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is facing a nearly $15 billion combined budget shortfall this fiscal year and next, and congressional Republicans are crying foul at the last-minute notification about a funding crisis lawmakers have little time to try to fix.

The Department of Veterans Affairs office dedicated to rooting out racism and harassment is itself a “hostile, toxic work environment with a permissive culture of rampant gossiping and innuendo,” where multiple layers of top officials participated in and covered up sexual harassment, an internal agency review concluded.

At one point, a senior manager fired a mid-level manager because both men wanted to sexually harass the same employee. When a complaint was filed, a political appointee sat on it, apparently partly for racial reasons.

Biden administration officials are trying to encourage as many U.S. military veterans as possible to submit a claim to receive PACT Act retroactive benefits by Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans have received additional benefits in the past year after President Joe Biden signed legislation expanding coverage for conditions connected to burn pits that were used to destroy trash and potentially toxic materials. 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has a gender gingerbread person. NASA says beware of micro-inequities. And if U.S. Army servicewomen express “discomfort showering with a female who has male genitalia,” what’s the brass’s reply? Talk to your commanding officer, but toughen up.

The Veterans Community Care Program, a Trump-era initiative designed to help veterans get access to healthcare quickly and efficiently, has been anything but, according to a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office.

The program was officially launched in 2019 under the MISSION Act, which ended the Veterans Choice Program and replaced with the newly established Veterans Community Care Program, which gives veterans access to more healthcare options outside of the Veterans Affairs system.

A decorated army veteran who tackled the shooter who killed five in a Colorado Springs gay club said he wanted to protect the close knit community inside the room.

Richard Fierro, 45, was at Club Q celebrating a birthday with his wife, their daughter and her friends when he found himself one of two people who subdued the attacker armed with an AR-15 style rifle and wearing a flak vest.

“I just know I got into mode, and I needed to save my family — and my family was at that time everybody in that room,” he said in a news conference outside his home on Monday.