When the Department of Veterans Affairs quietly published a new disability rating rule on February 17, 2026, it almost certainly did not anticipate what came next. Within 48 hours, a lawsuit had been filed, members of Congress from both parties were publicly furious, and Secretary Doug Collins was on X walking it back.
It was one of the fastest and most humiliating policy reversals the department has seen in years, and veterans aren’t convinced it’s actually over. Here’s the full story of how your VA benefits almost got trimmed down.
The VA Rolled Out a Rule That Would Have Cut Veterans’ Benefits
The rule, published in the Federal Register and effective immediately upon release, changed how disability ratings are calculated for veterans receiving compensation. Under the new standard, ratings would reflect how well veterans function while on medication; not the severity of the underlying condition itself.
So a veteran managing a service-connected injury or mental health condition with prescription medication would be evaluated based on how they function with treatment, not on the nature or permanence of the damage done by their service.
The VA called it a clarification of policy dating back to 1958, insisting ratings had always been meant to capture actual functional impairment. Veterans called it something else entirely.
Over 6 Million Veterans Were Put on Alert
The most visceral objection was also the most obvious one: the rule created a direct financial incentive to avoid treatment. If a veteran with PTSD takes medication that helps them function, and that improved function translates into a lower disability rating and smaller monthly check, the math becomes brutal.
Army combat veteran and VA critic Kristofer Goldsmith said it plainly: some veterans would stop taking their medication rather than risk losing income their families depend on. That wasn’t a fringe concern. It became the central argument against the rule almost immediately, and it stuck.
What made the situation worse was how the rule came to exist in the first place. The VA issued it as a direct counter to a 2025 U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Ingram v. Collins, which the agency described as an “erroneous interpretation” of existing regulations.
An interpretation that would create processing backlogs, raise administrative costs, and drive up compensation payments for conditions veterans weren’t, in the VA’s framing, “actually experiencing.” Rather than appeal through normal legal channels, the agency moved to override the court through regulatory action, and it did so fast, with no public comment period and no input from veterans organizations.
VA’s New Disability Rule Would Make Them Stop Taking Their Medication
That last part infuriated groups like Disabled American Veterans, which condemned the process as “closed and unnecessarily expedited” — language that, coming from a traditionally measured organization, signaled just how seriously the community was taking the threat. The rule also contradicted two earlier court decisions, including a 2012 ruling that had established the VA cannot reduce disability ratings based on the effects of medication.
The lawsuit arrived before the reversal did. Two law firms representing hundreds of veterans in disability cases filed in federal appeals court the day after the rule took effect, arguing it caused direct financial harm to their clients. The VA was in active litigation over its own rule before it had been on the books for 24 hours.
Collins announced the enforcement halt Thursday evening, framing it as a response to widespread misunderstanding. The VA, he said, didn’t agree with how the rule had been characterized. But the statement left the rule itself intact — paused, not rescinded. And that distinction matters enormously to the people who fought to stop it.
The Rule Is Now Retracted: Your Benefits Are Safe
Rep. Tim Kennedy said the rule “is wrong and should be rescinded immediately.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal called the halt encouraging but insufficient, demanding permanent rescission. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a combat-wounded veteran herself, was the most direct.
Collins had backed down because veterans called him out, she said, and if he genuinely respected that, he would pull the rule entirely rather than leave it sitting in the Federal Register with a comment period running through April 20.
Where Did This Rule Came From?
Hanging over all of this is Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s federal governing blueprint that explicitly flags rising VA disability spending as a fiscal problem and calls for revising rating awards to generate cost savings.
The Trump administration has repeatedly rejected the Project 2025 label, but several of its recommendations have already been implemented across federal agencies, including inside the VA. Veterans weren’t connecting imaginary dots — they were reading the document.
More than 6 million veterans currently receive disability compensation from the VA. All of them were watching. The enforcement halt may have prevented immediate harm, but the rule is still technically on the books, the comment period is still open, and the appetite for cost-cutting that produced it hasn’t disappeared.
Veterans groups like Burn Pits 360 have said clearly that a pause is not a victory. Until the rule is formally withdrawn, they’re treating this as halftime.
