The Democrats have been making clear that their most important constituents aren’t actual American voters; they are, instead, future voters who are currently illegal aliens. That’s why their rhetorical hysteria about deporting violent criminals here illegally has been ratcheted up to include physical attacks on ICE agents and facilities.
Donald Trump, however, takes seriously the fact that he is president of the United States—and especially president of those who have donned the uniform and taken an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States,” even at the cost of their lives. To date, over 1 million troops have given up their lives for America over the past 250 years.
Others who didn’t die nevertheless saw their lives destroyed or irrevocably disrupted by their military service. Of course, some would have struggled through life, with or without serving in the military. Regardless, they took the oath and donned the uniform. President Trump doesn’t forget that kind of thing.
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That’s why, in a huge shift of spending priorities, Donald Trump has focused on Los Angeles, which has one of the largest homeless veteran populations in America (something we covered years ago). He’s also noticed that federal dollars in Los Angeles are going, not to help those who served, but to support those who came here illegally, and contributed nothing to America but nevertheless expect our largesse.
Via Executive Order, Trump just said that enough is enough:
Our Nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom would not be possible without our veterans. Many service members paid the ultimate sacrifice. Many others bear visible and invisible wounds from their service. Too many veterans are homeless in America. Each veteran deserves our gratitude.
Yet the Federal Government has not always treated veterans like the heroes they are. During the previous administration, unaccountable bureaucrats treated them shamefully, failing veterans when they needed help most and betraying the taxpayers who rightfully expect better.
The story of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center is indicative of this failure. More than one hundred years ago, Senator John Percival Jones and Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker generously donated hundreds of acres of land that they owned in West Los Angeles on the condition that it be used to house disabled veterans. The campus once featured a chapel, billiard hall, 1,000-seat theater, and housed about 6,000 veterans, but the Federal Government has since allowed this crown jewel of veteran care to deteriorate over the last few decades.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (Department) leased parts of the property to a private school, private companies, and the baseball team of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes at significantly below-market prices. As of 2024, there were approximately 3,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles, more than in any other city in the country and accounting for about 10 percent of all of America’s homeless veterans. Many of these heroes live in squalor in Los Angeles’s infamous “skid row.”
[snip]
The Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Secretary) shall take all appropriate action to:
(a) designate a National Center for Warrior Independence on the West Los Angeles VA Campus in which homeless veterans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and around the Nation can seek and receive the care, benefits, and services to which they are entitled;
(b) work with other municipalities and VA facilities to ensure that homeless veterans outside the Los Angeles metropolitan area who want to avail themselves of the National Center for Warrior Independence are provided the means to do so;
(c) in coordination with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the heads of any other relevant executive departments or agencies, ensure that funds that may have been spent on housing or other services for illegal aliens are redirected to construct, establish, and maintain this National Center for Warrior Independence… (emphasis mine).
This is a president who puts the American people first, and, despite the endless anti-Trump drumbeat from the American media (92% of news reports about him are negative), people are noticing. There’s a reason that Rasmussen Reports, which nailed the election, reports that Trump is polling really well, especially amongst the Hispanics.
Democrats, with their obsession about race, forgot that Hispanics who played by the rules to come here were going to be the most affected by and the least appreciative of ten million illegal aliens flooding their communities, taking their jobs, and bringing with them the pathologies of gangs and crime. Democrats also forgot that blacks, too, have suffered badly because resources once directed toward their communities go to illegal aliens.
And everyone, no matter their political orientation, has noticed that those who served have been kicked to the curb under the Obama and Biden administrations. This may be an especially powerful observation amongst Hispanics, given that they are overrepresented in the military compared to their proportion of the general population.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
