ATLANTA (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would appoint Doug Collins to head the Department of Veterans Affairs in his new administration.
Here are five things to know about the former Republican congressman from Georgia who would lead the agency charged with providing health care to former members of the U.S. armed forces:
Collins is a Baptist minister who served in the Navy and Air Force Reserves
Collins, 58, earned a master’s degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and served as a church pastor for 11 years. In the late 1980s, he served as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy for two years. After the September 11 attacks, he joined the US 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.
Collins’ political career took shape as a representative of one of Georgia’s most conservative regions
Collins was elected to the Georgia State House in 2007 and served three two-year terms. For one of those terms, he served as leader for Governor Nathan Deal, a fellow Northeast Georgian, and helped engineer a budget cut that kept Georgia’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship program afloat at a time when leaders feared that it would go bankrupt and not. be able to pay the promised tuition fees for all beneficiaries.
Collins won a seat in Congress in 2012 representing Northeast Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, one of the most Republican districts in the country. Former incumbent President Tom Graves was drawn to a new district in northwest Georgia when the state added a 14th congressional seat due to population growth.
Despite his right-wing views, Collins faced serious primary challenges in 2016 from other Republicans who claimed he was not conservative enough. While in Congress, Collins rose to become vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, the fifth-highest post in the Republican leadership.
Collins rose to national prominence by defending Trump in the Mueller investigation
Collins gained a national reputation when he defended Trump as a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Russia improperly influenced Trump’s 2016 election victory.
Collins wrote a book about Trump’s first impeachment following allegations that he wrongly withheld military aid from Ukraine to push Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, who Trump would defeat in 2020. argued that Democrats impeached Trump to avenge the 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton and prevent him from being re-elected in 2020.
“From the moment the majority party won in this House, the inevitability of us being here today was just a matter of when they would schedule it. Nothing else,” Collins said in the House of Representatives in 2019 as representatives debated before voting to impeach Trump.
Trump wanted Collins appointed to the US Senate
Trump was displeased when Collins was not appointed to the US Senate in 2019 when incumbent Republican Johnny Isakson resigned due to health concerns. Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, decided to appoint Kelly Loeffler instead, but not before a frantic last-minute push from anti-abortion groups and people close to Trump to undermine Loeffler’s nomination.
Collins ran for Senate anyway and finished third in an all-party special election in November 2020, in which he was disgraced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock advanced to a January runoff in which Warnock defeated Loeffler. Warnock won a full term in 2022 by defeating another Trump favorite, soccer great Herschel Walker.
Collins still has a possible political future in Georgia
Collins declined to challenge Kemp or run for Senate in 2022, but said, “This is a farewell for now, but probably not forever.” Collins helped represent Trump in challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and became the Georgia chair of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. He spoke repeatedly at Trump rallies in Georgia during the 2024 campaign. But if Collins becomes Secretary of Veterans Affairs, he is less likely to run in 2026, when Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, is up for re-election .
