WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is being replaced, President Trump tweeted Wednesday, ending weeks of speculation and uncertainty about his fate.
Trump said he is nominating Navy Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, official physician for the president and his predecessor Barack Obama, to be the next VA secretary.
"I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin's service to our country and to our great VETERANS!" the president tweeted.
In the meantime, he said Robert Wilkie, an undersecretary at the Pentagon, will take over the agency as acting secretary.
The tweet came after a flurry of media reports relying on anonymous administration officials who said Trump planned to fire Shulkin. Earlier Wednesday, rumors continued to fly but there was no official confirmation the president planned to follow through.
Shulkin had been locked for months in a power struggle with a group of Trump political appointees among his senior staff who wanted him out. His ouster suggests they won the president over in the end, convincing Trump that the 58-year-old former hospital executive and Obama appointee was the wrong fit to lead the agency and too moderate.
Shulkin had pledged the VA would not be privatized on his watch but would provide veterans expanded opportunities to get private sector care. The political appointees want a more comprehensive overhaul and to give veterans even more access to VA-funded care in the private sector.
It was a dramatic and swift fall for a Cabinet secretary Trump had praised several weeks ago for doing such a “great” and “incredible” job leading the charge to fulfill his pledges to improve the VA.
Shulkin himself provided the critical opening that led to his downfall. After touting Trump's campaign pledges to increase accountability at the VA, he balked at the results of an investigation released last month that found he and his staff had committed ethics violations in planning and taking a European trip last year.
He first blasted the VA inspector general’s findings that he improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets and airfare for his wife during the 10-day junket. He then refused to accept the determination that his chief of staff misled ethics officials to get clearance for his wife's airfare, suggesting instead that her email had been hacked. Shulkin later expressed regret and repaid the cost of the tickets and airfare. But he also complained that the appointees were targeting and undermining him.
His response left many lawmakers, veterans groups and others who might have come to his defense in a tough spot, and they remained largely silent for days following the investigation report's release Feb. 14 . By the time they did speak out, it may have been too late.
The Trump appointees seized on the report and began agitating for his ouster. His top PR aide went so far as to call Capitol Hill and ask that lawmakers demand his resignation and tell the White House they wanted him out.
Two days after the report's release, the White House unilaterally installed a new VA chief of staff, Peter O’Rourke, who was a member of Trump’s transition team and an ally of the Trump appointees. VA Press Secretary Curt Cashour said at the time that “additional personnel accountability actions” were possible.
The White House never removed that cloud over Shulkin's future. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders repeatedly said Trump supported the work Shulkin did as secretary but also said the situation was "under review."
Shulkin made it roughly 13 months in Trump's Cabinet. He was previously appointed by Obama as undersecretary for health at the VA in July 2015.
During his tenure, he directed increased transparency efforts, including a new website revealing wait times for VA care and quality comparisons to the private sector. Shulkin upped accountability efforts, swiftly removing hospital directors when problems with care were revealed, including in Manchester, N.H., and Washington. He set up a data-tracking center at headquarters in an effort to intervene before problems became crises.
He also fulfilled some of Trump's key campaign promises on veterans' issues, overseeing the creation of a 24-hour White House hotline for veteran complaints and a new Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Office, which drew praise for its early efforts.
Shulkin ordered the rewriting of decades old policies on hiring and reporting poor medical care providers to authorities after USA TODAY revealed massive lapses in hiring guidelines and in reporting substandard practitioners to state licensing boards and a national database created to stop them from crossing state lines to escape their pasts and potentially harm other patients.
Shulkin had been working with Congress to pass landmark legislation to expand — if moderately — veterans' access to private sector care, and the measure appeared poised to pass the Senate before the power struggle between Shulkin and Trump appointees erupted into public view.
He also ordered up plans for the largest restructuring of the VA in more than 20 years after the VA inspector general uncovered failures at the Washington, D.C., VA medical center had festered for years and VA officials at local, regional and national levels knew about them but were either unwilling or unable to fix them.
The fate of the legislation and reorganization given Shulkin’s departure is uncertain.
