A handful of protesters held signs at the Garden Valley Boulevard entrance to the Roseburg Veterans Affairs Medical Center Thursday to express their fear that politicians at the national level are moving to privatize veterans' health care. These local veterans, members of the Veterans for Peace, believe that would be a disaster for veterans.

Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, a conservative voice on veterans’ policy, has emerged as a leading candidate to replace embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who has fallen from favor with the Trump administration, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

President-elect Donald Trump should nominate soldier and veterans advocate Pete Hegseth as his secretary of Veterans Affairs. The VA has devolved into a slaughterhouse, and this energetic, telegenic, passionate reformer is exactly the man to upend this cruel, deadly bureaucracy.

U.S. Army National Guard Maj. Pete Hegseth is 36. His age would put a spring in the step of a Cabinet that, so far, has more than a touch of gray around the temples.