Chris
3.7K posts
@Chrisujwo3
Striving to embody the values of honor, courage, and resilience in every aspect! 🇺🇸 Proud to serve our great nation!
Tag your House Representatives and ask them to sign the discharge petition (H.R. 1247) to force the @MajorStarAct to the floor for a vote. This act has overwhelming Congressional support, but is being blocked in committee! Act now - signing begins this Monday, 5/18. List of House members' X handles here: pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/me…
You know what a burn pit smells like. If you were there -- if you served in Iraq or Afghanistan -- you already know. That thick, chemical, wrong smell that never fully left the back of your throat. Plastics. Chemicals. Medical waste. Ordnance. Burning. All day. Every day. Right next to where you slept, where you ate, where you ran PT in the morning. Nobody told you what it would do to your lungs. His name was Richard Star. Army combat engineer from Ohio -- right near Cleveland. He cleared IED-laden roads so other soldiers could drive on them without dying. Desert Shield. Desert Storm. Iraq. Afghanistan. Kuwait. He went back. He kept raising his hand. He breathed those burn pits for years -- the same smoke, the same chemical air, the same carcinogens that had no business being in a human lung. In 2018, that smoke caught up with him. Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. The VA rated it 100% service-connected. His own government certified in writing that the United States of America's burn pits gave Richard Star terminal cancer. He was medically retired before hitting 20 years. Not because he quit. Because there was nothing left to give. And then the Army sent him a letter. The letter showed two numbers. The first number was what Richard Star had EARNED in military retirement -- what the United States government had promised him when he raised his right hand and swore an oath and then spent decades keeping it. The second number -- what he would ACTUALLY receive -- was zero. Zero dollars. Zero cents. His 100% VA disability rating for the cancer eating his lungs wiped out his entire retirement check through the concurrent receipt offset. Dollar for dollar. Every single penny of retirement pay he had earned, gone. A man dying of cancer he got in uniform, holding a piece of paper from his own government that said his retirement was worth nothing. If you have buried someone from burn pit exposure, I need you to sit with that image. Your brother. Your battle buddy. Your soldier. Sitting at a kitchen table. Oxygen tank next to the chair. Chemo running through his veins. Holding a government letter that says zero. That is what happened to Richard Star. His wife Tonya quit her career to become his full-time caregiver. While she sat next to him through every treatment, while their household ran on whatever the VA disability check provided, while the retirement check the Army told him he'd earned sat at zero -- Tonya was also fighting. Calling. Writing. Testifying. Standing in congressional hearing rooms telling her husband's story to the people who had the power to fix it. Richard never stopped either. He traveled on oxygen tanks to advocate for this bill. He could barely stand. He fought for the 50,000 veterans behind him who were carrying the same injustice, because that is what that kind of man does -- he thinks about the ones behind him even when he is the one dying. He died February 13, 2021. He was 51 years old. Tonya kept going. She kept his name alive in every room she could reach, because she loved him and because she refused to let what happened to Richard happen to the next family. Tonya passed away on August 12, 2024. She was also 51 years old. Both of them gone at 51. Both of them fighting until they could not. The bill still not law. Right now -- today, this month, this year -- there are 50,000 veterans receiving that same letter Richard received. Two numbers. What they earned. What they actually get. And for too many of them, the second number is devastating. Some of them are already sick. Some of them already have the diagnosis. Some of them are sitting at kitchen tables with oxygen tanks next to the chair, opening mail from the government that sent them to those burn pits, wondering if this country is going to keep its promise before they run out of time. Sgt. Lyle Allen. 14 years. Multiple deployments to Iraq. His vehicle hit an IED. He does not remember much after that -- just the medics' faces above him. The VA certified his TBI as 100% permanently and totally disabling -- it will never improve. The offset wiped out his retirement. He calls himself "retired without retirement." He says the country is "turning their backs" on him. A Marine. 17 years. Three combat tours. An IED in Afghanistan took both of his legs. THREE YEARS from the 20-year mark. Three years. The government took his legs in the service of this nation and then took his retirement check on top of it because of a calendar. These are not abstractions. These are the men who were standing next to you downrange. The ones who smelled what you smelled. The ones who drove those roads. The bill to fix this is the MAJOR RICHARD STAR ACT. Current 119th Congress: H.R. 2102 in the House, sponsored by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) with Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), introduced March 14, 2025. S. 1032 in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) with bipartisan co-sponsors including Mike Crapo, Elizabeth Warren, and Rick Scott. Previous Congress: H.R. 1282 in the House and S. 344 in the Senate -- died without a floor vote. Current co-sponsors: 322+ in the House. Nearly 80 in the Senate. The Wounded Warrior Project, MOAA, VFW, IAVA -- virtually every major veterans organization in this country -- stands behind this bill. The votes exist. The will to schedule them does not. On March 3, 2026, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin blocked this bill on the Senate floor. Twice. Once on unanimous consent. Then again when a compromise was offered for a simple recorded roll call. He did not want the bill to pass. He did not want to go on record opposing it either. His reason: cost. Richard Star got a letter that said zero. Senator Johnson found that affordable. I need you to make a phone call. Right now. While this is still in your chest where it belongs. SENATE SWITCHBOARD: (202) 224-3121. Tell them: "I am calling to demand my senator support S. 1032, the Major Richard Star Act, and force a floor vote. Combat-wounded veterans are dying while this sits in committee." HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: (202) 225-3121. Tell them: "I am calling to ask my representative to co-sponsor H.R. 2102 and demand leadership schedule a floor vote." Do not know your members? Go to senate.gov or house.gov. Type your zip code. Thirty seconds. Then share this post. Every share puts Richard Star's name in front of someone who has not heard it yet. Every share might reach a veteran who does not know they are owed this money right now. Every share might reach the family member who makes the call that changes the vote. Richard Star traveled on oxygen tanks to fight for veterans he would never meet. The least we can do is make a phone call. @MajorStarAct @StarActEnemies @SenRonJohnson @SenatorWicker IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to the people who need to read it. SHARE this -- for Richard. For Tonya. For the veteran you know who is sick right now and does not know this fight exists. COMMENT below -- have you called yet? Tell me right here. Hold yourself accountable out loud. And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube. @JoJoFromJerz @TheYoungTurks @catturd2 @GuntherEagleman But what do I know -- I am only a medically retired Army combat medic who breathed that same air, who served alongside men who came home carrying things that would kill them slowly, and who has spent years watching a government that sends people to war find every possible excuse not to keep its promises when they come back broken. #MAGA #Veterans #Trump #majorrichardstaract
