By Randy Shaw
BeyondChron
July 13, 2026
A Powerful Account of Veterans’ Resistance
Veterans are among the many constituencies harmed by the Trump Administration. Yet the negative impact of Trump policies on vets has not gotten enough attention.
Trump’s team talks about helping vets while doing the opposite.This has led to vets fighting back against efforts to privatize their health care, the increasing politicization of the military, and the Trump Administration’s anti-union attacks.
A new book by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early lays out how veterans are resisting. “Courage or Complicity? How Veterans are Responding to the Assault on Democracy” features 27 essays on a wide range of issues impacting vets. All point to what the authors see as the key challenge: getting more of the seventeen million vets, a majority of whom backed Trump over Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, to join the opposition.
Privatizing VA Health Care
Few Trump attacks are more under the radar than the attempt to privatize veteran’s health care. While the Trump Administration claims vets deserve the “opportunity” to choose private health providers, the goal is to dismantle VA Health care. Part V of the book, “Why the VA is Worth Saving,” explains what the Trump Administration’s push for “market competition” means for vets seeking health care.
Suzanne Gordon wrote about the first Trump Administration’s privatization plans. Gordon is the most prolific and insightful writer on this ongoing fight. Her essays expose the plan to get giant health care corporations to profit from veteran’s health needs. The privatization drive also seeks to prevent VA health care from being a model for how Congress could implement Medicare for All.
Labor and Vets Unite
Co-author Steve Early is a longtime labor activist who writes extensively about labor issues. His chapter, “When Soldiers Become Workers,” highlights labor’s successful campaigns to bring workplace protections to all workers, not just those in unions. Federal unionized workers are under siege, and in this essay and others the growing unity between labor and veterans is highlighted.
Organizing the National Guard
Connected to the theme of vets facing labor issues is a thought-provoking chapter which asks, “Can the National Guard Be Organized?” Early asks to consider workers who “with little notice, their employer changed work schedules and transferred them to a new job location.” Further, “tuition assistance was sharply curtailed and paychecks no longer arrived promptly or at the firth address.”
Texas National Guard workers associated with an affiliate of the Communication Workers of America back in 2022. The essay explains how this played out. It also raises critical questions as to why a president or governor can unilaterally change working conditions and demand–as Trump has–that the National Guard engage in actions that violate the Constitution.
The MAGA Majority
After most of the book discusses veterans fighting back against reactionary policies, the last section reveals that right-wing Republicans who served in the military “far outnumber moderate Democrats who did.” It recalls that the GOP’s vet caucus led attacks on Harris running mate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was a twenty-four-year member of the Minnesota National Guard.
Veterans politics remain complex. The chapter, “Can ‘Service Candidates’ Save the Republic,” describes the many progressive vets running for Congress in 2026. We’ll learn after November if vets who backed Trump have become convinced it was a mistake.
A Unique Book
I am not aware of another book that covers so many facets of the struggles veterans face today. And the book’s format—short essays rather than a single long text—makes it very readable. While many books leave me questioning why the author used so many pages to make their point, I found myself regretting many chapters in this book were not longer.
It’s rare to find such a diversity of veterans issues in one book. If you are at all interested in veterans’ fight for justice, Courage or Complicity? is a must read.
