Veterans Meeting the Moment

Paul Rieckhoff opens on the contagious energy in New York — a city celebrating, ten blocks from where it was attacked nearly 25 years ago — and makes the case that the same spirit can carry the country through a turbulent summer and America’s 250th. His through-line: veterans don’t wear a party jersey, and most want to serve country over party. IVA exists to put that leadership into office.

Author Max Brooks — senior nonresident fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute — argues that American idealism isn’t a luxury but a survival necessity: a nation of many tribes held together only by shared ideals, now strained by partisans on both extremes who have closed the parties to anyone running on issues. Independents, he says, are the way out.

Two of IVA’s candidates tell their stories on camera: Todd Achilles, an Army veteran running for U.S. Senate in Idaho — where recent polling found 75% of Idahoans want a leader who works across the aisle — and Travis Endicott, a Navy veteran who had never run for office before and won the mayoralty of Ridgecrest, California, on a budget under $1,000. Proof that with a little fuel, these races are winnable.

Paul also lays out why this fight matters now: across the country, closed primaries shut independents out of the only elections that count — including in his own New York City. It’s the same problem our latest Field Dispatch, The Locked City, maps in detail.

“Hope is a form of resistance. Hope is the oxygen of democracy.”

— Paul Rieckhoff, Founder & President, Independent Veterans of America