EXCLUSIVE: Rep Mike Bost Asked VA to Pull VFW's Accreditation
the cartoon, the letter, and the case law
“It is every veteran's right to have an opinion – even one I find radical.” — Mike Bost, 2021
On July 1, Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) put out a public statement accusing VFW of “inciting political violence” over a protest cartoon. That statement got some attention. What didn’t get reported, because no one else has had it, until now, is what Bost did the same day, in writing, to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
I can now confirm and publish that Chairman Bost, joined by Rep. Jack Bergman, sent a formal letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins that same day, asking the Department to review whether VFW’s conduct is consistent with its accreditation to represent veterans’ claims under 38 C.F.R. §§ 14.628–14.629 — and separately demanding VFW disclose its commercial licensing arrangements under § 14.628(f). This was not a press release. It was a request to the Department of Veterans Affairs to examine whether a 1.5-million-member, congressionally chartered veterans organization should keep its authority to represent veterans in front of VA. Over a cartoon.
On June 10, Bost and Senate counterpart Jerry Moran introduced the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act — a package built around the long-overdue Major Richard Star Act, which ends the retirement-pay offset for combat-injured veterans. Buried in the same bill: Section 108, which guts the standalone VA disability rating for tinnitus and sharply cuts sleep apnea compensation, hitting up to 1.5 million veterans over the next decade to help pay for it. VA’s own spokesman told reporters on June 16 that the underlying rule change wasn’t “planned or imminent” — directly undercutting Bost’s justification that Congress was merely codifying something VA was going to do anyway.1
The VFW promptly issued public opposition to the TCAVA, with National Commander in Chief Whitmore stating “Congress should Honor the Contract and strengthen veterans’ programs without creating new costs for those who sacrifice in service to our country. A grateful nation pays its debts to veterans; it does not send them the invoice.”
The words “Honor the Contract” used by Commander Whitmore were not, by any means, new. They have been used by the VFW in its Congressional advocacy efforts, since 2024. Their efforts have included agit-prop, with members frequently sharing (and wearing) protest-poster-style graphics depicting “bureaucrats” and “media” as a firing squad aimed at veterans, which traces back to the 1932 Bonus Army protests and The Economy Act of 1933.
Stripped of the public framing, Bost’s July 1 letter to Collins does two things. First, it asks VA to consider whether VFW’s “Honor the Contract” imagery and its licensing of that imagery to a for-profit apparel company are “consistent with the character, reputation, and professional responsibilities expected of accredited organizations” and, in the same breath, “urge[s] the Department to review whether VFW’s accreditation, and the good standing of its representatives, remain consistent with” federal accreditation regulations. Second, it invokes a narrow provision governing claims-related fee arrangements, 38 C.F.R. § 14.628(f), to demand VFW turn over the financial terms of its merchandise licensing deal — a request that stretches a rule written for individual claims representation to cover a general commercial partnership that has nothing to do with any veteran’s specific claim.
In layman’s terms: we have a sitting committee chairman asking the agency that oversees VFW’s ability to represent veterans’ claims to consider pulling that authority, because he didn’t like a piece of political art.
I’m not a lawyer, and I want to be upfront that what follows is my own read of the relevant case law, not a claim about what any court would actually rule if this ever got litigated. But if I were VFW’s counsel, here’s the framework I’d be building a file around.
Start with Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). The Supreme Court held that a government official doesn’t need to issue a formal order to violate the First Amendment — informal pressure on a speaker, or on someone with leverage over that speaker, aimed at suppressing protected expression, is itself unconstitutional coercion. Bost didn’t seize anything or issue a subpoena. He wrote a letter. Bantam Books says that distinction doesn’t matter, though. The courts look through the form of an action to its substance.
“Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment requires that regulation by the States of obscenity conform to procedures that will ensure against the curtailment of constitutionally protected expression, which is often separated from obscenity only by a dim and uncertain line. It is characteristic of the freedoms of expression in general that they are vulnerable to gravely damaging, yet barely visible, encroachments. Our insistence that regulations of obscenity scrupulously embody the most rigorous procedural safeguards, is therefore but a special instance of the larger principle that the freedoms of expression must be ringed about with adequate bulwarks. — Bantam Books v Sullivan
Then there’s NRA v. Vullo (2024), decided unanimously just two years ago. NRA holds that a government official violates the First Amendment when they use the power of their office to pressure a third party into punishing or silencing someone else’s speech. Bost doesn’t have direct authority over VFW’s congressional charter, but he does chair the House Veterans Affairs Committee — the committee VFW testifies to every year (not that Bost shows up for those hearings, but I digress) for its legislative priorities, and he used that position to ask the one agency that does have leverage over VFW’s operating authority to take a look. Personally, I believe NRA is most damning for Bost. Because, while the underlying policy (TCAVA) may be contested on party lines, the Court ruled unanimously in NRA. There is no debate. There is no question. A government official (Bost) cannot use their power to pressure a third party (the VA) into silencing someone’s (VFW) speech.
“The Court explained that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion . . . to achieve the suppression” of disfavored speech.” — NRA v Vullo
To be fair to Bost: nothing here proves a court would actually side against him. His letter frames the request as concern about “character, reputation, and professional responsibilities” rather than an explicit demand that VFW retract anything and agencies get real deference in how they administer accreditation programs. If VA opens a review and can point to something beyond the cartoon itself, this whole theory falls apart. But if the only thing on the table is VFW’s speech about a bill, the doctrine above is the exact kind of argument presented in a legal filing. It’s Supreme Court precedent, twice reaffirmed, most recently unanimously.
Whatever happens next, this isn’t really a story about a cartoon anymore. It’s a story about whether a sitting committee chairman can turn a political disagreement into a threat against an organization’s ability to represent the veterans it exists to serve and whether the rest of us are paying enough attention to notice when that happens quietly, in a letter, instead of loudly, in a press release.
https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/06/gops-va-overhaul-bill-narrows-some-employees-rights-spurs-privatization-union-says/414230/
Coming after the VFW's accreditation while taking campaign funds from Veterans Guardian? Interesting....
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/veterans-guardian-va-claim-consulting/C00771196/candidate-recipients/2024
I hate to say it about a couple of Marines but these two are very corrupt and have known for years about the censorship the veterans Health Administration has been doing to Veterans, VHA has been utilizing workplace violence, VHA Directive 1112 no reply status and disruptive behavioral programs enforced by VA Police- with no due process or appeal. Bergman office was involved in Major Ion Fishbacks death, I say murder as the Michigan veterans health administration had entered him into their surveillance and red flagging system at this time and were threatening him with law enforcement, Bergman and his constituent services covered it up. The house investigation committee has had evidence of the VHA massive unlawful expansion of the disruptive behavior reporting system for over four years now and have done nothing. So this is just par for the course of the government trying to censor veterans voices utilizing unlawful means. Both of them need to lose office and be investigated for criminal activity and suppression of Veteran constituent reports of errors and wrongdoing by the VHA.