Nicole Malachowski

Do you know how long, Amy, it took for me to get VA disability compensation, to just get rated by the VA?

For the very thing I was found 100% unfit for duty for.

Take a guess.

It took me, a 20-plus year combat veteran, four years for the VA to find... And you had to probably fight every step of the way.

I fought every step of the way.

And even as tough as I like to think that I am, there were many times that I fought about giving up looking for this service-connected disability and rating.

And if not for the veteran service organizations and the military service organizations that

In my particular case, the Wounded Lawyer Project, I would not have been able to see that through to the end.

So for people who act like this is an easy process or no big deal, they need to absolutely be rethinking that.

And also, Amy, the thing I want to bring up is this, what they are doing is not a surprise to me.

This was written into Project 2025.

Okay, so this is the natural course of what this administration is doing.

And it will never cease to amaze me the number of veterans who voted against their own best interest.

And that is hurting my heart right now for the people that are going to be impacted by this decision.

For them not to bring the VSOs and the MSOs to the table for discussions prior to making this decision blows my mind.

You may recall at the end of my career, I worked at the White House.

I worked with the VA consistently on issues like this.

And during that time, there's no way they would have put out a decision like this without bringing the VSOs and the MSOs to the table to represent the veteran voice.

So this is them testing the waters as they have done with Project 2025.

The real question is, what's next?