Georgia
Georgia's Doug Collins confirmed as veterans affairs secretary
Doug Collins, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is sworn in during his Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 21, 2025, in W
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Senate has confirmed Former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins as the next secretary of veteran affairs, putting the Iraq War veteran at the helm of a department that provides crucial care to America’s veterans.
Collins, a former Air Force chaplain, was confirmed on a 77-23 vote, becoming the latest addition to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
PREVIOUS: Trump nominates former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins to head VA
Doug Collins confirmed as VA secretary
The backstory:
Collins, 58, holds a master’s degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and pastored a church for 11 years. He served as a U.S. Navy chaplain for two years in the late 1980s. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a chaplain. Collins deployed to Balad Air Force Base in Iraq for five months in 2008. He remains a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Collins became a lawyer well into adulthood.
The Georgia lawmaker served in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021. He has been an outspoken conservative since his time in the Georgia state legislature and was a close Trump ally during the president’s first term defending the president as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.
He ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020 but lost the Republican primary to Kelly Loeffler, a major GOP donor who Trump has tapped to lead the U.S. Small Business Association.
What we know:
The Department of Veterans Affairs manages a more than $350 billion budget and oversees nearly 200 medical centers and hospitals nationwide. It also manages national cemeteries and works closely with the Defense Department on personnel matters.
The challenges facing the department have evolved in recent years, with a younger generation of veterans bringing new health challenges from their service in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
What they’re saying:
“I’m an Iraq War veteran. I understand burn pits because I slept next to one for many months,” Collins said in his opening remarks during his January confirmation hearing. Collins said that he understand the challenges facing veterans today who “went time and time again, deployment after deployment” to conflict zones.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., called Collins a “friend” who has “an engaging personality that attracts people to what he’s working on.”
“It’s not that they’re better doctors or better psychiatrists or better nurses or technicians. It’s that they’re empathetic,” Cramer said. “While they appreciate access to community care, they appreciate the empathy of a fellow veteran, and Doug brings that. But, guys, he’s a chaplain. I mean, come on, how perfect is that?”
The other side:
Collins’ nomination sailed through the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee by an 18-1 vote in January. The lone dissenter, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said she was concerned that Collins would limit access to reproductive care like IVF or abortion for veterans.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said she had a productive conversation with Collins during his confirmation hearing but pressed him on whether he’d commit to working with Congress to “strengthen and refine” the department “rather than resorting to privatization.”
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who serves as a ranking member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, voted to confirm Collins as secretary.
“I congratulate Congressman Collins on his confirmation as our next VA Secretary and look forward to working with him to ensure Georgia’s veterans receive the care, support, and respect they’ve earned,” Ossoff wrote in a statement after the vote.
What’s next:
Collins has promised to cut regulations across the department and improve the quality of care for veterans.
At his hearing, he said he would be focused on addressing wait times and increasing preventative care.
With the confirmation, it is less likely that Collins will run for office in 2026, when Ossoff will be up for reelection.
The Source: Information for this story came from a release by Sen. Jon Ossoff, previous FOX 5 articles on the Doug Collins nomination and hearings, and reports from the Associated Press.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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