Amy McGrath (2:54)

I want to start out, you're the CEO of the Iraq Afghanistan Veteran of America organization and we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about the VA and veterans in general. But I wanted to start with your background because you are a veteran, you were a Marine, you were a pilot like I was. And so just tell us, why did you join the Marine Corps to begin with?

Dr. Kai Hunter (3:25)

Yeah, so for me joining the Marine Corps, it was really a sort of a three pronged decision when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted a job that wasn't necessarily traditional. I had a lot of friends from growing up who went into, you think of as like kind of the normal professions that everyone knows about, right? You know, teachers, lawyers, bankers type type thing that you have. And I knew I wanted something that wasn't where I was going to be sitting in an office all day long and working. Wanted something that was a little different. I also knew I wanted something that had a service component to it, a job that wasn't just about me. I didn't want to, you know, maybe it was the little bit of the still the San Francisco growing up in me that I didn't want to like be a slave for the man either. The whole time, you know, wanted something where I was actually giving back. I was doing, I was doing good and I was a part of something bigger than myself that was always really, really important for me. And I also wanted a job that was adventurous when I was young. In particular, when other opportunity do you have to go do things that might take you all over the world, do things that are physically very hard, that are intellectually tough, that are kind of cool, you can do that in your 20s. It's the right time to do it. And the Marine Corps really was the intersection of all of those things for me. There was that sense of adventure, that sense of it being something that was, was difficult but was really rooted in service and values and in doing things beyond just your just yourself. Right. No one who's a Marine does it just selfishly for them. So that's what drew me to the.

Amy McGrath (5:04)

Marine Corps and so what drew you to flying?

Dr. Kai Hunter (5:08)

Well, so now that I know how recruiters work, I got tricked into flying. I think at this point, you know, when I was talking to the officer selection office, he had told me that I could, if I could take an air contract or a ground contract, I was super ignorant. I didn't really know what that the difference was at that point other than air, I'm like, oh, that's like flying like Top Gun. And that would be cool. But when he was telling me this, he was like, well, you know, if you're an air contract, you can fly whatever you want, right. As a woman in particular. So he really sold this, like, you can do. Do anything. You could fly any of the things. He's like, and if you have a ground contract, you might be like a secretary to a general or something like that. And I was like, well, I want to do the cool, right? I want to do the cool. The tough thing, that that was there, that was, that was different. So I got tricked into it a little bit. Now I know that they needed pilots. And so, you know, they were going to sell that one, sell that one hard, hard for me. But it was an awesome.

Amy McGrath (6:03)

Yeah. And this was a year. So you were my time frame. This was the time when women could do all the aviation jobs, combat aviation jobs in the Marine Corps, but could not do all of the ground combat jobs. Now, since then, all of those have been open. But at that time, when we started out, aviation was open to us. So if you wanted to sort of be on the tip of the spear and you wanted to go to combat and you wanted to do that sort of, that kind of stuff, you had to go into aviation.

Dr. Kai Hunter (6:36)

Yeah. And that was another piece of it. I always thought too, like, if I'm going to be a Marine, I should go be a Marine, right? Do the most tip of the spear thing that is possible for me to do. And that was. It was also, I think it being that time when combat aviation had just opened up. It was also a place of real opportunity in the Marine Corps because as you had said, on the ground side, not everything was open, which in the back of my mind, I always had a fear that that would sort of hinder my ability to grow if I wasn't able to be part of the sort of most tip of the spear of the community that, that I was in.

Amy McGrath (7:16)

Yeah, and that's really real in the Marine Corps.

Dr. Kai Hunter (7:18)

Very real.

Amy McGrath (7:19)

So they valued what was called combat arms jobs in order to be promoted and respected at a certain level within the Marine Corps. So then you, you went on, you became a Cobra pilot, which is an attack hel. Combat tours. What did you learn coming out of your combat tours?

Dr. Kai Hunter (7:42)

So it was a really interesting time in my own life. When I think back into the sort of combat time, it was in some ways some of the most simple times that we had because I had one job and I knew what my job was and I knew what I had to do to achieve the mission. And that sense where everyone, regardless of gender, race, religious background, right, like there is some simplicity in the fact that we had a job, we knew what that job was, it was a difficult job, but it was simple because we were all moving towards the same outcome, right. The same purpose. And so one of the things for me that I really learned and took to heart and have you really pushed throughout the rest of my career is that really that importance of tax task based cohesion. Right. We were a group of people who were super different. I mean, this is one thing about the military broadly, right? You don't have any control over who you're serving with. You don't have any control over who you are going to be in the aircraft with on any given day or who's going to be working on your aircraft, right? You have people who come together that otherwise wouldn't be right. These are people that wouldn't. I don't think there's any other way in which this group of people will have come together, but you give them a task, particularly one that's hard and difficult, and everybody starts moving together, everyone becomes a really strong cohesive unit that works really, really well together. And it was a lesson coming out of combat that I try to really keep to heart. If you want to get a group of diverse people working together, give them something hard to do. But then you also see how beneficial diversity is, right. I think we both have had those experiences where when you've got to go do something really, really difficult, when you get people who are thinking differently and working differently together to do it, it works really, really well. Particularly if you're, you're bringing it around a task that we have there, you know, and then I think from a personal level, thinking about learning things in combat, like I learned I can do really hard things. I think that it's become, you know, it's become one of those things that, you know, we can do hard things is like almost uses like a slogan, like back of the napkin bumper sticker type thing now. But I mean, I Think for. And I'm sure you had these experiences too, where you were like, I, like, that was hard, like fundamentally hard tactically, physically, emotionally. And, you know, I can do it. And there is a confidence in, you know, facing other challenges of, you know, if I could, if I could do this right, if I could learn how to fly a covert. If I could learn how to fly a helicopter, number one. Right. Then fly an attack helicopter and then fly an attack helicopter in a combat zone.

Amy McGrath (10:39)

Yeah.

Dr. Kai Hunter (10:40)

You know, like, okay, I can do a lot of things.

Amy McGrath (10:42)

You can. I always equate when people had asked me, well, what is it like flying a fighter jet? What is it like in that kind of high performance aviation, combat, that kind of thing? And I try to equate it for them. And I said, you know, it's sort of like the way you feel when you have walked off the field from a soccer match in which was the, the state championship. You have given everything. You have no more ounce left in you. That's how you feel physically. You're just drenched in swe and you're physically drained. That plus you remember the feeling you had after you walked out of like the ACT and the sat, like taking a really hard test where your, your mind is just sort of mush because you've been thinking so hard. And then you add in the way you feel after like a really tough radio interview or something where you have to like continually talk and listen and you know, you've got a lot going on and you've got an earpiece in your ear. I mean, it's, you just feel spent because you have given everything. It's sort of like the ultimate challenging job. That's how I try to describe it to people.

Dr. Kai Hunter (12:04)

Yeah. Well, and it's, it's the time when you have that combined, as you said, physical, intellectual, but then you have to be anticipatory and thinking about it too. Right. So it's not even just being reactive. But now, okay, well, what am I going to do next? And the, one of the things that you, I mean, your aircraft was much, much faster than mine. But thinking ahead as you're learning to fly there, as you have to think ahead of the aircraft that you have there, which I think just makes the brain fatigue always that much more too, because it's not even like you can react in the, oh, I'm crossing the street and I see something coming and I'm walking, you know, two miles an hour. You have to think so much faster too. You do.

Amy McGrath (12:40)

But, but also my aircraft was higher up, you know, where you were lower and that, that folks, is way more dangerous. So, you know, let's, let's not get ourselves. I'm not down at 200 or 300ft. If I do go down that, that far, it's, it's for a very short split second time. You're down there all the time.

Dr. Kai Hunter (13:02)

And the, the other piece of it, not to get into the super weeds of flying though, but the, like, the, from being low. Right. The sensory aspect of that too, the things that, like the changes in smells and textures and even temperatures that you would feel when you were flying, which is a weird, like very different. You're like, I'm in an aircraft. But all of the sensory stuff that's happening on the ground is being experienced in a different way, which just adds to an interesting emotional fatigue from like the sensor, you know, absorbing so much at once.

Amy McGrath (13:33)

But, you know, you served, you did those really hard things, served our country, wore the uniform United States Marines. And then, you know, you got out and you became a PhD, you, you, you went back to school and did lots of different things. And now you're in charge of the, what I think is the Post Premier, Post 911 Veterans Organization in the country, which is Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans of America. And I want to get into that. But why did you want to get a PhD before we get into what's going on in the VA and that sort of thing.

Dr. Kai Hunter (14:16)

So for me, the impetus is really when I was on the Hill, so I was a legislative fellow, similar to your legislative fellow as well in the House, which is something that I still encourage anyone in uniform to go do. Actually spending that time and understanding how policy is made, how the decisions that impact us when we're wearing the uniform is made is such an important thing to do. And then I worked in the Office of Legislative affairs for the bigger Marine Corps, and at that time there were several pretty significant personnel changes that were happening. The don't ask, don't tell was being repealed. When we were there, it was some of the initial legislation around the removal of the women in ground combat exclusion or the attempts to get that in right. It didn't actually become legislation. It was duty policy. But there were a lot of those debates on the Hill that were going on and the women in submarines was happening around all this time too. And one of the things that was very, very stark to me was that there was a lot of passion and emotion on both sides of the discussion. People really, really cared, which is important. We need people in policy to care and Go out and be passionate and care about it. But emotion doesn't actually write good policy or good implementation plans. One of the things that became very, very stark to me was that the don't ask, don't tell repeal is really what hammered home for me, the decision to go get a doctorate was that there was not a lot of research being done on really this connection between personnel and who serves and what personnel policy is, and the people side to the more operational or strategic aspects of the military. Right. Like, how do these people. The fact that we are saying we need more diversity and we need people to bring their full and authentic selves and who they are to the military. There was just very little research that connected the two. And the same thing when I tried to dig in on women in particular and women in the military. And there's a lot of studies that will count the numbers of women, right? Oh, we have 20 women in this unit and 10% of women over here, but not a lot that really dug into why all of this matters. And so for me, I said, well, if this research doesn't exist, I want to go figure out how to do it. But also my time on the Hill taught me that data and evidence and research is really essential to give voice and support to our most vulnerable in policy debates and discussion. And those people who can't necessarily advocate for themselves and aren't in the position to stand up and have a voice for a huge variety of different reasons, we can get into why that happens, but that research can do that. And if it doesn't exist, I'll figure out how to do it myself.

Amy McGrath (17:14)

I mean, good on you, because it takes a lot of years. And I feel that, too, a lot of times in policy, especially around the military and personnel, there is a lot of emotion and there's not a ton of data to back up some of these things. I mean, I think about the Women in combat piece, and that's a discussion that we should have at some point, but there was so much emotion tied around that and still is, you know, with our current Secretary of Defense. One of the things that. That struck me when he was in his confirmation hearings, he was able to get away with so much bullshit with so much sitting in that chair saying all this, all these things about women in the military, based on absolutely nothing other than his hunch. He had no data to back it up at all. And it was infuriating to me.

Dr. Kai Hunter (18:16)

And it was almost the opposite. The data show the opposite story. Right? That's the. Like the data, if you Want to actually follow where the data are and let the data speak for themselves. The data tell the complete 180 out story then is being told a lot of the, the emotion, right? If we look at these, we, we look at these units that are integrated, we look at where women have become part of particularly sort of forward operational units, whether that's tactical aviation, combatant ships and now ground combat units. The more integrated units actually are better at solving complex problems. And at the end of the day, like a lot of what we do in the military is solve complex problems. It's not just how fast can you, how fast can you run an obstacle course. It only matters that you can run it fast if you can actually do the thing at the end that you are expected to do. There's not a stopwatch in war. It is complex problem solving. But also from a personnel and well being and treatment perspective, integrated units have lower instances of sexual harassment and sexual assault and just general harassment and bad behavior. Because when you're working shoulder to shoulder with someone, again doing that really hard thing, it becomes a lot harder to actually dehumanize them. It becomes a lot harder to degrade or denigrate them than if you are separated and you can really otherize people.

Amy McGrath (19:50)

There's a respect thing going on. And I saw it, you know, I saw it in my time in the Marine Corps. You know, when I was a junior officer, the respect wasn't there as much because I didn't have the qualifications. So there was more sort of loss, locker room antics, shall we say, denigration of women and all of that. By the time I rose through the ranks and it wasn't just me, I was surrounded with other women who did the same thing. It was harder for folks to get away with in my mind that really unprofessional type of behavior. Because now you're the one with the quo.

Dr. Kai Hunter (20:30)

Yeah, exactly.

Amy McGrath (20:32)

You're the one with the experience. And, and also your peers have been your peers the whole way. I was one of these few Marines, female Marines at the time that was integrated in my training. I'd never had segregated training because I went through the Naval Academy. I went through the Naval Academy's weeding out process to become a Marine and then the basic school. All of those things when I went through were, were all with men. And I. So my experience in, in that has, has showed me and my belief is that that was always a better way because when, when somebody is next to you and does the 20 mile hike with you and carries the same load as you and does the exact same thing. Boy, they see it, they lived it. It's very hard for them to say, oh no, no, no, she didn't, they didn't do, she didn't do it. No, no, man, I was right there.

Dr. Kai Hunter (21:35)

Right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean my, my training is, well, all integrated and it is right. When it's much harder to segregate. But then it also, you know, if we go back to some of the, the studies, like studies and air quotes that were done around like the women in ground combat exclusion, if we look at the ones that they tried to say, oh well, like a group of all men is faster than a group of all women. Well, you took groups and you kept them completely segregated from each other. And you, in those studies that were done, they were typically male combat arm units that had been together for decades. Right. Often deployed together. And then you just patch a bunch of women together who had never been in a unit together before and give them like a week to train. Right. It goes back to. And I think it tells exactly the same story. You are right. When you work side by side with people, not only do you see them do the thing and you build trust around their character, but you build efficiencies in how you do things together and you work together and you become a more cohesive team. And you see that if you were to remove one of those members, the whole team is going to fail. And so if you take women away in this perspective, you're going to, everybody is going to ultimately fail.

Amy McGrath (22:46)

That's a great discussion. I do want to get into the veterans and what's going on right now because I don't think there's anybody out there who is more in tune with the needs of veterans with what is happening. I mean, this is what you do and what you dedicated yourself to do as the CEO of the post 911 advocacy organization IAVA. And so you are in the weeds. And we hear this a lot about, we all want to help veterans and that sort of thing. And so my goal in this show today was to spend some time with you, for you to tell our listeners a little bit more about what is happening to veterans from the policy perspective right now with this current administration and kind of give us a sense of where veterans are at. And so I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions. But the way I talk about veterans benefits to people, as I say, you know, veterans sign their name on the dotted line for four years, at least for four years that Uncle Sam can send that young person, usually young person, man or woman, anywhere in the world, possibly send them into harm's way and ask them to go to combat, putting their life at risk potentially. And in return, we give them a deal. And the deal is you get three, in my mind, sort of basic benefits, which I don't believe. And we, we could have this discussion, but I don't believe are those benefits are like, super incredible. Okay. I think they're, they're good, but this is kind of the handshake deal. And the first benefit is health care. You know, our nation has said you're a vet. You deserve health care for the rest of your life. Not for your family, you know, not for your mom or your dad or even your kids. But you as a veteran will get quality health care for the rest of your life. That's number one. Number two, you will get the GI Bill, the GI benefits, educational benefits. We will help you if you want to, to go to college or go to a trade school, Uncle Sam will pay for a lot of it. Now, if you want to go to Harvard, Uncle Sam's not going to pay for all of it, you know, but, but, but it's, it's decent. It's a really good benefit. And then the third piece is housing, which is not. It's not. The government doesn't give you a house. It gives you a modest VA loan, which isn't, you know, 0%. It's, it's whatever the percentage rate. I tell people it's slightly lower than the normal percentage rate, but it's modest. And that's it. There's nothing else, you know. And so I want to start by asking you about the first one, which is healthcare. This administration has done a lot of moves. They've just banned reproductive healthcare for women in terms of abortions at VA centers or the ability for women vets to get these procedures, even in the case of rape. Okay. Or something, you know, or sexual assault. And that's just kind of a start. But there's also the move to fire many people who work at VA healthcare centers. I think there's been thousands that have already either quit or fired under this administration. So I'm going to start there and kind of ask you to give us an assessment of where VA healthcare is right now.

Dr. Kai Hunter (26:34)

Yeah. So, I mean, I think your breakdown is also really good. Right. In terms of the things that we get. And I would agree with you that they're good. It's not like they are. You know, we're getting showered in riches with these things. But if we want to just focus on healthcare right now, VA healthcare, I think to set a little bit of a stage and then go to where we are right now, the outcomes. Right. If we go back again to the data, what the data say is that VA care, and particularly VA direct care does result in much better physical health outcomes for veterans than civilian healthcare does. And that is largely for three reasons. One is an actual culturally competent understanding of what members of the military go through. Right. And that is everything from knowing, like, for those of us who went downrange and deployed where we were and what things we could have been exposed to so we can do some preemptive and proactive screening for particular, you know, cancer toxic exposures. Also with regards to things like military sexual trauma and assault. Right. Understanding how that may integrate with other physical and mental health aspects. Right. So that military cultural care or competent care is really, really important. The next is that VA care is a patient centered model for care and it is built around what is referred to as patient aligned care teams, which the care teams, they're not necessarily physicians, are usually administrative positions, which gets into some of the concerns about who's getting fired right now and who is leaving right now. Even if they say, well, it's not direct health care providers, these patient aligned care teams ensure that the veteran's military record is fully integrated so you don't have to go around and sort of retell your, your story to every single person that you see. They know they, they have a full view of your physical and mental health record. It also takes the burden for scheduling and care integration off of the individual. Right. So it is a patient. The VA was designed with the veteran at its core, not unlike a lot of the, the private healthcare system.

Amy McGrath (28:43)

For profit.

Dr. Kai Hunter (28:43)

Yeah, it's not for profit that you have there. And then third, and I think what's really most important for the post 911 generation, where we are the most diverse generation of veteran, that's there. I know that's sadly a dirty word right now, but we are. It's just the reality of it that's there is that for women and for people of color in the civilian world, they are much less likely to be assumed to be a veteran. And so if you, for women who go out to try to get care in the community, they often have to spend a lot of time justifying why they're asking for things like earlier mammograms or different reproductive health screenings that are there because of their exposures, because it's not assumed that you were in the military and often we've seen there's been critical missing of cancers, of chronic diseases and illnesses to set the standard that VA care is better. But we're seeing three, three things happen right now that are really, really troubling and concerning and that we're hearing a lot about from our members as being troubling and concerning. One is, as you mentioned sort of at the end, a very systematic dismantling of women's health care within the VA that we're seeing that we are just whether it was even on social media, the merging of women's, the women's centers was like the big VA social media thing. And they're like, oh, we'll still give you the information. It's like, yeah, but will you. Right. Like if you're not specifically thinking about this, is it actually going to be targeted and done well here?

Amy McGrath (30:20)

And I always try to keep in mind that if you're doing a four year enlistment and you go in at the age of 18, you come out at the age of 22.

Dr. Kai Hunter (30:28)

Yeah.

Amy McGrath (30:28)

I mean you're a woman, a woman vet could be 23 years old.

Dr. Kai Hunter (30:33)

Yeah. Do they necessarily want to be hanging out with the 75 year old dudes in the clinic? There's a lot of concerns, yes, particularly for these young women. So we're seeing this dismantling of some of the women's centers, the reproductive healthcare attacks. And this is one of the things where from even just our membership across the political spectrum. So this was not a partisan sentiment, but across the political spectrum we have a real desire for the VA to step in in the post Dobbs environment for women to be taken care of. And that was over 70% of our members, regardless of political affiliation, said no, that we need to ensure that women have access to the full suite of reproductive health care because women veterans are more likely to have pregnancy complications than their age matched civilian peers. And so we need to have competent health care providers. And what we've seen in the post ops environment broadly is a, an ob GYN flight from a lot of states. And now in the VA was sort of one of the last places where there was good competent care or at least information about.

Amy McGrath (31:55)

And now that's going away.

Dr. Kai Hunter (31:56)

Now that's going away under this administration and it's removing one more option. And then finally we have a lot of concerns about how opaque the process has been of any of these changes that are happening to the va. We're hearing a lot of, trust us, it's going to be okay. There's no direct care providers that are gone. Well, we've known for decades that there's been shortages of critical staff. The VA has had a critical staffing problem for a while, particularly with mental health care providers, but then with some, with the specialists as, as well. And I mean, this is something that all the VSOs have been harping on. And then to say, oh, well, we're going to.

Amy McGrath (32:39)

VSOs are veteran service organizations like your VFW, American Legion, that sort of thing.

Dr. Kai Hunter (32:45)

Yeah, everyone has been really, really concerned around the lack of critical staff that we, that we see. And now, you know, we're saying, oh, we're going to have fewer people at the va. We're going to make it more difficult to hire. Like, that's not putting the veteran first. And there's a lot, a lot of concern from our members there.

Amy McGrath (33:04)

I'm worried about the state of the va. I fear when you read stories about, oh, we really want to plan to cut 60,000 workers from around the VA health clinics around the nation, there's no way in my mind that you can cut those types of jobs.

Dr. Kai Hunter (33:26)

Who.

Amy McGrath (33:27)

Many of those people that work at the va, by the way, are veterans themselves and not affect the health care of veterans. You're hearing stories of, you know, veterans having to call in and not being able to get to anyone to get appointments and all this stuff. So, I mean, I'm worried currently, but, you know, thanks for giving an assessment here.

Dr. Kai Hunter (33:54)

And there's also a lot of the staff that they're saying, okay, it's not a direct. Maybe it's not a, an RN or an MD that you have, but your, your janitorial staff at hospitals are essential and critical workers. Right. Because if you don't have a fully clean and sanitary and safe medical environment, you can't practice medicine. Right. That is a. And like, so, you know, it may not be a clinician, but it's an essential piece of the healthcare puzzle. Same with a lot of your, your lab techs, right, who bring in, like, literally just run samples around. Right? No, they may not be directly interfacing with the patient, but they provide critical functions without which healthcare is not gonna work.

Amy McGrath (34:37)

I'm a little more cynical about this in terms of the Trump administration and Republicans in general. My belief is they're trying to break it and in order to privatize it. I'm very worried about that. For all the reasons you talked about earlier is that the V is a promise. The healthcare is a promise to our veterans. And I just don't think in this country, we have shown that fapping that out to the highest bidder on the private side is the way to go in my mind. But I want to move on to GI benefits because that's the second piece that is really being affected right now. Earlier this year we had the DOGE people come in and do this sort of sweep of federal agencies. They've ripped into the Department of Education, they've ripped into the Department of Labor. And for a lot of people they're like, okay, well how does that affect me? Well, it affects veterans because there's a hundred, six hundred thousand veterans right now who use GI benefits. And the GI benefits are your educational benefits and they have to be managed by the government. And so we're seeing delays in these educational benefits right now. And when you see these delays, you know, veterans start to drop out of school, I mean, they can't pay for it. So what are your thoughts on, on what's going on?

Dr. Kai Hunter (36:13)

Yeah, and so what we're hearing is that there's, there's huge delays in sort of two pronged. One is actually getting the schools paid. Right? So the money from the government that's supposed to go to the school to pay tuition for these folks is being delayed by up to six months in some cases. And so veterans are receiving bills, receiving bills for tens of thousands of dollars that they weren't expecting to have because the school is basically like you're enrolled. And so your options are pay and hope that the GI Bill actually comes back to reimburse you, take out student loans to make up the difference and then again, hope the GI Bill comes back to, to actually reimburse you or drop out of school. Right? So that's the one is we're seeing, and unfortunately we're seeing a not insignificant number of veterans just drop out of school because they don't want to assume that risk. But these are also payments. You get basic housing allowance payments as full time student on the GI Bill. That's actually a pretty decent amount. You get paid as an E5 with dependents, which is a decent chunk to pay for rent or a mortgage. And if you're a full time student, you're not bringing in a lot of other income generally. And so those payments are late as well, which also then creates, creates unfortunate housing crisis for veterans. Right. Because if you're reliant on you, and most especially if we're looking at you, back to your example of someone who signed up for four years, is now in their early 20s going to school full time, they don't have a whole lot of like equity and just ready cash sitting around to be able to, you know, pay rent. And so you've got a dropping out of school and now facing housing insecurity. And that's a bad thing. Right. For all the talk of like we want to combat veterans homelessness, we want better veterans employment. Well, the best way to do that is still education. Right. Education still is a solid pathway to better financial and housing outcomes. And we're making it harder. And we're making it harder for no. Right. There's no efficiency gains in making it difficult other than the efficiency gain is we have people not in school. That just doesn't seem very efficient to me. The other thing that is very, very concerning is that a few years ago, the veteran advocate community had worked very hard to close what's referred to as the 9010 loophole. This is a super wonky thing about how schools get their money. But basically when we closed the loophole, what happened was that predatory for profit colleges, right, The ITT Tech, even if that's still around, you have the world, the Grand Canyon University, the University of Phoenix. Right. These schools that are for profit and often end up with kind of junk degrees, like they're not. You're not actually getting the degree that you're paying for. So there were protections against these schools preying on veterans and their GI Bill benefits. Right. And the cfpb, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau actually did a lot to recover GI Bill funds from these for profit place and restore them to the veterans so they could go use them at better schools and more programs. Well, those rules were where the 9010 loophole didn't. You know, we were able to prevent it from fully coming back. The Department of Education changed the rules on how they do accreditation and determine for profit status, which is now. Several entities that were deemed not accredited, not eligible for GI Bill benefits are now eligible again. And of course you see these ads, right? These ads pop up everywhere now on military times and on any of these sites. And again, this is one of the things that feels very intentional because the CEOs and the presidents of the boards of these schools now have people working in the Department of Education, right. Who are now taking sure, they want the money. And so we're putting those that are trying to get their education at a huge disadvantage from delays while also reopening veterans to predatory institutions in ways that are going to end up harming them in the long run too.

Amy McGrath (40:24)

Yeah. And here's another thing I want to read to you this is this was from a Los Angeles Times article about GI benefits and what is happening right now. And they interviewed a Navy vet. This is a 33 year old Navy vet in Colorado who said, quote, the whole process has become a mess and it's making a lot of us very anxious. And he's talking about, you know, these benefits sort of going away, can't get ahold of anyone. But here's the thing that struck me. He asked that his name not be disclosed for fear of reprisal from federal authorities. This is what you're seeing more and more and more of. I mean, I feel like if you spoke out a few years ago on something that would happen, you would put your name behind it. Now, veterans don't want to say anything bad because they're afraid that their benefits are going to be ripped away because of reprisals.

Dr. Kai Hunter (41:24)

And it's really concerning because I think exactly what you said, you put your name behind it. And I think if we look back to 2014, which was during the Obama administration, there were huge issues with the VA in terms of wait times, the way that some of the systems were rolled out and how those got fixed. Were veterans being open and transparent about it, right? That's part of our democratic system to say, hey, this is a department, a system of benefit that is supposed to work for me. It is not working. Right. And I'm going to go scream from the rooftops that it is not working and demand that our elected officials and policymakers fix it. Right. I think it's not just You Google Like VA 2014, there are tons of articles and everyone had their name behind it. Nobody said, I'm afraid of what is going to happen to me if I say this is screwed up.

Amy McGrath (42:18)

Which makes your organization IEVA so much more important. I think now because you're speaking for.

Dr. Kai Hunter (42:27)

These, for these veterans, we get a lot, a lot of outreach, right. Of inquiries of this is happening to me. Help me. But I'm not afraid to speak out. But also for federal employees who are working in these organizations and many of whom are veterans, right? So we have, we have sort of a twin, when I think of it, from our organization is a twin advocacy role, right? These are people who are serving veterans. So we need to speak out to ensure that the employees at the va, the employees at even the Department of Education and labor that are working on these veteran issues are protected. Because you're also seeing a real fear and a real concern coming from these employees, right? And lots of reports of, of talks at workplaces and the VA has said they're canceling their internal survey of employee satisfaction this year.

Amy McGrath (43:19)

That's not surprising.

Dr. Kai Hunter (43:20)

Exactly. But we all know when a commander cancels something, it's because they don't want a bad news story coming out.

Amy McGrath (43:28)

Cancels the climate survey.

Dr. Kai Hunter (43:30)

Climate survey.

Amy McGrath (43:30)

When you have a bad climate, the beatings will continue until morale improves. I also wanted to ask you about unions. The current administration is really gutting and Republicans in general have gutted, tried to get unions. That actually really affects veterans. Can you explain how?

Dr. Kai Hunter (43:52)

There's a few ways that this affects veterans. So one is again, the VA employees, the federal unions. The reason VA health care was superior was because of unions. So we've got that side. But more broadly, unions have done a ton for veteran employment and particularly when we look at being able to transfer direct skills. So if you were a heavy equipment operator or driver in the military, the ability to, during your transition program, easily get a CDL license. If you were an electrician. Right. Being able to plug in at a more senior level in an IBEW type job. Right. The unions were very, very active in getting veterans into higher paying, more senior, good, solid jobs. And I think if we want to have this conversation that we're seeing a lot in America, like we need to bring jobs back, which is it just. There's always been jobs here, but. Okay, right. But like unions are the ones who are doing that. Unions are the ones who work creating very clear pathways for veterans into higher paying, more senior managerial level jobs. And gutting those is leaving veterans in the lurch. And it leaves them either to have to pay a whole lot more money for certifications. Right. And again, use benefits. Right. For skills they already have. Right. And these are things like, these are things that they had already learned in military school. Now you're basically double taxing them right now you're saying, nope, you've got to go get these, go back on the outside. Yeah. Which ends up basically being a salary loss. Right. Because that's time that you're not in your trade doing your job that you have there. You'll see people opt out. Because who wants to go back and do the exact same school that I've already done? Some people will do something different, sort of opt out of these career fields. And it can potentially be a disincentive for recruiting in the beginning because a lot of people do join the military to get a skill that will lead to a job on the outside. That is as much as I think the narrative wants to be that everyone's a big Patriotic Captain America wanting to join. We both know people join for much more practical reasons than that.

Amy McGrath (46:14)

Some of these benefits are GI benefits is a big reason why people join. That's being undermined hard.

Dr. Kai Hunter (46:21)

Yeah. And same thing with gutting the unions. Right. If the ability to get into a solid good job is being undermined, why would you do this to begin with?

Amy McGrath (46:29)

Yeah. Well, tell us. Let's finish up. And I want you to tell everybody about iaba. What it is, what it does and how people listening can help your organization.

Dr. Kai Hunter (46:42)

Absolutely. So IABA is the premier advocacy organization for post 911 veterans. We are squarely an advocacy organization. Our mission and our focus is on changing laws and policies to make things better for veterans, which really sits along three pillars. One is research. Everything we do is very data driven based on the needs and desires of our members. This isn't what does Kai Hunter want to talk about today? What does Kai Hunter want to do? What does she care about? It really is what are those things that are impacting our members? Right. What are those things that are disproportionately impacting the post 911 generation? And what are those things that our members have unique equities and stakes in that we need to push forward because we have an important voice on. And so we have top priorities right now around protecting these earned benefits. That's a big thing that we are spending a lot of time on is ensuring that the deal that was made isn't clawed back and clawed away. Do have a good focus on women veterans and reproductive health care. Again, women are the fastest growing group of veterans. Our generation has a disproportionately large number of women veterans for the reason that we were so allowed to do things right, that more opportunities were open, which means we need care. But it's also things that we have a lot of stakes in equities in right now, like ensuring the promises are kept to our Afghan and Iraqi allies that we fought shoulder to shoulder with and that we're promised as well a pathway to a better life. Right. An opportunity to thrive in a country that is supposed to uphold the ideals that they fought for as well that we have here. And so to get involved in advocacy, there's a few things that you can do. At IAVA.org, you can join to sign up as a member. You don't have to be a veteran, but if you are a veteran, there are some verification steps to sort of unlock access to other types of information and participation and benefits that you have there. It's always free. To join us. That's there as a member. But anyone can join to be informed and to be an advocate. Because education is really that second piece of what we have to do, right? We have to inform our members and arm them with the ability to go advocate. But I think we really owe it to the American public to also educate them and everybody on why they should care about this. Right. Veterans aren't a majority of the population. And so we, we need allies, right? We need civilian allies to care about our topics and our issues because they're the majority, right? And so there is, you know, becoming a member you can learn, right? What, why should you care? Right? Why someone who never wore the uniform, why, why should they care about GI Bills? And how does this really impact society on a much broader scale? And then there's direct advocacy you can get involved with. We have programs where we will put you through and train you on how to be a. To be an advocate. That is great to use your story to be able to engage with policymakers and help promote positive and meaningful policy and law change that we have. And also if you join our events page, we actually have some great events coming up across the country. This year we're going to start doing more in on the west coast where we haven't had as many events throughout the country, both in terms of trying to get more sort of meetups, just veterans to get together to work towards advocacy. Because we believe again, that task based cohesion can actually start to break down a lot of the divides and polarizations that we're seeing right now. But also some fundraising events. That should be fun.

Amy McGrath (50:22)

Well, it's important and I encourage everybody to go to your website, iava.org this is an organization that really punches above its weight. And you know, if we say we care about veterans, we should be listening in and listening to their needs and doing everything that we can to not only support groups like yours that help veterans, but also holding our leaders accountable in the administration and in Congress to actually do what is necessary to protect veterans and make sure that they get what I feel is sort of the modest benefits that our country owes them, owes them back for their service. So I really appreciate you coming on the show, Kai. It's been great. And thank you for being a part of Truth in the Barrel.

Dr. Kai Hunter (51:23)

Thank you so much.

Amy McGrath (51:29)

Did you see the game last night? Of course you did, because you used Instacart to do your grocery restock, plus.

Dr. Kai Hunter (51:36)

You got snacks for the game, all.

Amy McGrath (51:37)

Without missing a single play.

Dr. Kai Hunter (51:39)

And that's on multitasking.

Amy McGrath (51:41)

So we're not saying that Instacart is.

Dr. Kai Hunter (51:43)

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