HOPKINTON, Mass. — A group of Massachusetts National Guard members early Monday crossed the Boston Marathon start line, launching the 129th edition of the world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon.

Race Director Dave McGillivray sent the group of about 40 people in uniform off at 6 a.m. He thanked them for their service and said it's a highlight of the day to see them out on the course each year.

It was extra special this year since Monday is the 250th anniversary of Patriots’ Day, McGillivray said. The race is held annually on the state holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War; the anniversary was marked at the start by a special logo painted on the street, and a ceremonial ride was planned at the finish.

“We appreciate their service, and just the fact that it's Patriots’ Day gives it even more meaning,” he said.

One of the military marchers, Lt. John Lee, said that all of the history “comes to the forefront on a special day like today.”

It started in 2017 with a group of friends and colleagues—the first 40 clients whom U.S. Army veterans Scott Greenblatt and Bill Taylor signed up to help.

They had come home from combat zones weary and weakened by illness and injury, with a promise of monthly disability payments from the country they served. But first, they had to navigate the lumbering bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Soon, those 40 veterans grew to 275 a month. Then 275 soared to 500. Last year, Taylor and Greenblatt’s company Veterans Guardian assisted about 30,000 veterans with benefits claims, according to Taylor. “We have your back,” the company’s website says. “Together we can uncover all the benefits you deserve.”

The one problem with their success story: Veterans Guardian’s business model runs afoul of the law, say lawmakers and attorneys general from across the country. But nobody has been able to stop them.

With no accreditation, the company is charging veterans thousands of dollars for guidance that veterans service organizations and other nonprofits advise vets on for free.

A whistleblower lawsuit from one of Veterans Guardian's former employees claims the firm’s business practices are “permeated with fraud and deceit” and cheating the federal government out of millions of dollars. A lawsuit filed by veterans alleges the company “preys on disabled veterans by unfairly and deceptively taking tens of millions of dollars of their disability benefits in violation of federal law.”

Lawmakers in nearly 40 states and Congress have moved to crack down on unaccredited companies like Veterans Guardian that are part of an industry that has only grown since the 2022 PACT Act led to the largest expansion of veterans benefits in decades. And the Department of Veterans Affairs warned the firm back in 2019 in a cease and desist letter that it “is prohibited by law from assisting Veterans in the preparation, presentation, or prosecution of their VA benefits.” A congressional oversight panel rebuked Veterans Guardian three years later for denying such a letter even existed.

But instead of backing down, the Pinehurst, North Carolina-based company is spending millions of dollars to fight back—an indication, experts say, of just how much money is at stake in the highly politicized world of veterans benefits. One of Veterans Guardian’s competitors estimated in a 2021 SEC filing that the VA claims consulting market was worth a staggering $73 billion a year.

“Numerous large companies are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars a year in veterans benefits,” Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Democrat from Kentucky, said last month during a hearing on Capitol Hill, “all to make a quick dollar on what has for decades been a free service.”

The Naval Academy canceled a speech by author and podcaster Ryan Holiday after he declined a request not to reference 381 books and literary works removed from its library as part of a review of diversity, equity and inclusion materials, according to an opinion piece he authored for The New York Times.

Holiday, who has hosted a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen for the past four years, was scheduled to speak to the sophomore class on the theme of wisdom on April 14.

About an hour before his scheduled talk, Holiday received a phone call, he recounted in the Times Opinion piece titled "The Naval Academy Canceled My Lecture on Wisdom." According to Holiday, Navy officials told Holiday they were worried about "reprisals" related to a portion of his speech that referenced the 381 books recently removed. They asked him to omit that topic from his remarks, he wrote.

"When I declined, my lecture — as well as a planned speech before the Navy football team, with whom my books on Stoicism are popular — was canceled," Holiday wrote.

Navy media officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Holliday is the author or co-author of 28 books on Stoicism and has delivered speeches to the Cleveland Browns, Nike, Google and the White House Communications Agency.

Some titles removed from the Navy's Nimitz Library include "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi, "White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America" by Anthea Butler, "Writing/teaching: Essays Toward a Rhetoric of Pedagogy" by Paul Kameen, and "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Literarian Award recipient Maya Angelou.

Other titles included themes of feminism, civil rights and racism, along with books surrounding Jewish history, including "Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory" by Janet Jacobs.

The decision to remove books came after the Naval Academy announced it would no longer consider race, ethnicity or sex as a factor for admission, a response to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, according to federal court documents.

Holiday said it was important to address the issue in his speech.