Pittsburgh-area veterans are being treated like pawns in a game played by the Trump administration as cuts and a hiring freeze threaten medical treatment, U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio said Friday.
Providing this treatment is the cost of waging war, said Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel, as he blasted the administration for keeping legislators and veterans in the dark as VA cuts were put into place, despite warnings from people who work at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Those warnings were reported by ProPublica this week in a story that detailed how two cancer treatment trials, an opioid addiction treatment trial and other options for veterans to receive experimental treatments were imperiled by the cuts because enrollment in them was stopped because of hiring freezes at the VA.
VA Secretary Doug Collins’ take is the opposite of Deluzio’s.
“Many people probably don’t know the extent to which some in Congress and the media collude to push false narratives that mislead the public,” Collins posted on X, formerly Twitter.
He termed the report a hit piece and said ProPublica used old reports to craft a narrative.
“We sent the outlet a comprehensive, nearly 1,000-word response to its allegations, but ProPublica included just 200 words of it in the article,” Collins posted on X. “We even asked ProPublica for examples of any specific VA patients who had been negatively impacted, and ProPublica could not point to a single one.”
Many people probably don’t know the extent to which some in Congress and the media collude to push false narratives that mislead the public. Here’s a blatant example featuring the far left @propublica media outlet. ????
— VA Secretary Doug Collins (@SecVetAffairs) May 8, 2025
This isn’t a political issue, Deluzio said, adding he would welcome Republican support for his call for answers about the impact of the VA cuts. GOP members of Western Pennsylvania’s congressional delegations, Reps. Mike Kelly, Guy Reschenthaler and John Joyce, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
There are too many questions and issues raised by the cuts and the story about them, Deluzio said.
“I don’t know, the American people don’t know, whether any veteran has died because of these pauses in enrollments. … I think it’s unacceptable,” Deluzio said.
Deluzio also invited a handful of veterans concerned about their health care to the Friday news conference at the Sharpsburg Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 709.
Trump hurt life-saving VA clinical trials & research. @VAPittsburgh clinical trials for cancer treatment & more have been affected. My fellow veterans' lives are not some pawn in this Administration's bullshit game. This is a betrayal of veterans, period. More to come.… pic.twitter.com/h1SwKQLjm2
— Congressman Chris Deluzio (@RepDeluzio) May 7, 2025
VA research has led to previous medical advances like the nicotine patch, organ transplants and other innovations, and it is part of the overall health care services provided to tens of thousands of veterans in Western Pennsylvania.
“We know that the VA research and trials can save lives,” he said.
Read the ProPublica report: Internal VA Emails Reveal How Trump Cuts Jeopardize Veterans’ Care, Including to “Life-Saving Cancer Trials”
The cancer treatment trials were put at risk because of hiring freezes, Alanna Caffas, of the nonprofit Veterans Health Foundation, told ProPublica.
“It’s insane,” Caffas told ProPublica. “These veterans should be able to get access to research treatments, but they can’t.”
The third trial was hobbled by layoffs of key team members, according to Caffas and another person involved in the research.
Veterans in the Pittsburgh area reacted strongly to the proposed cuts when they were announced in March.
“It is shameful,” Jill Smallwood, an Army Reserve veteran from Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood, told TribLive at the time.
Navy veteran Curtis Lloyd was among those who appeared with Deluzio on Friday.
“The trials aren’t interruptible. It’s not something you can turn off and then turn back on without paying a price,” said Lloyd of Darlington, Beaver County.