Lauren C. Moye, FISM News
Congress members, 47 in total, have petitioned Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to “immediately revoke” the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination guidance issued to all military departments in August 2021 amid “grave concerns” of military readiness. Further, they asked Austin to reinstate those already forcibly terminated.
“During the worst recruiting year in our military’s history, over 100K servicemembers are now facing discharge over [Austin]’s vaccine mandate,” stated Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), one of the leading influences behind the letter. “If [the Department of Defense] cares to protect military readiness, they must withdraw or begin rapidly granting exemptions from this disastrous order.”
According to the representatives’ letter, the Army is particularly hard-hit by the mandate and will lose 8% of their soldiers through mandated expulsion. They wrote, “Based on the sparse data published by the Department of Army, at least 40,000 National Guardsmen, 20,000 army Reservists, and at least 15,000 Active Army Soldiers have yet to receive a Covid-vaccine and now face discharge.”
Those numbers, totaling a loss of 75,000 soldiers, tell a more concerning picture than the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff, General Randy A. George’s July testimony before a House Armed Services Committee. There he asserted that less than 20,000 would be lost through the mandate.
There are around 1 million soldiers currently in the Army.
Additionally, the Army has struggled to recruit new enlistees. In June, the Army had only met 40% of this fiscal year’s goal, prompting them to drop a high-school diploma as a required standard and offer larger sign-on bonuses. According to a recent NBC report, that number is now at 52% of the goal with time up in the fiscal year.
The representatives attributed this recruitment problem in part to the mandate, leading them to condemn Austin’s decision to leave it in place as a necessary component of military readiness. In the letter, they said that “increasing amounts of data raise legitimate questions” about the defense secretary’s assertion.
“The data is now clear. The Department of Defense’s Covid vaccine mandate is deleterious to the readiness and the military’s ability to right and win wars,” the representatives added. “We urge you to revoke your Covid-19 vaccine mandate for all servicemembers, civilian personnel, and contractors and reinstate those who have already been discharged.”
Congressmen Chip Roy (R-Tex.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) were also leaders in the orchestration of the letter, which was signed by House members. Many of them took to Twitter to voice their support for ending the mandate.
The military’s poor recruiting numbers are putting our national security at risk. The Pentagon needs to be finding ways to retain the troops we have, not finding reasons to further deplete our manpower.https://t.co/ULeLZmUX1s
— Congressman Scott Franklin (@RepFranklin) September 14, 2022
Biden forcing the COVID vaccine on anyone is wrong, but now, we see the implications of this on our national security as the military faces its worst recruiting year & 100K servicemembers face discharge. Our military deserves better & we demand answers.https://t.co/PXWQTfQUmS
— Rep. Jeff Duncan (@RepJeffDuncan) September 15, 2022
The majority of the service members who are facing discharge have said they oppose the vaccine on religious grounds, as Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson’s variations involved the use of fetal cell lines from aborted infants. The almost unilateral rejection of religious exemptions throughout all military branches on the mandate has caused additional trouble for Austin.
On Sept. 2, the defense secretary sent a memo to all military branch secretaries “concerning denials of religious accommodation requests (RARs).” In it, he forwarded a June 2 memo from Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell who found a “trend of generalized assessments” when rejecting religious exemption requests instead of the federally mandated individualized analysis that considers “a full range of facts and circumstances relevant to the particular” RAR.
More concerning, O’Donnell calculated that there was an average review period of 12 minutes per package before the rejection was issued.
Court stays AF mandate; Marines, Navy walk back enforcement
Two military branches have also had injunctions placed against the enforcement of the mandate, which would include the termination of otherwise qualified and highly-trained military members. The Air Force recently lost an appeal to overturn this stay in a decision that protects all Airmen.
Meanwhile, Fox News reports that the Marines quietly issued new guidance on Sept. 14 that they will no longer enforce the mandate, force separation of unvaccinated Marines, or retaliate against those who refused the vaccine on religious grounds.
Similarly, Fox News also recently discovered that the Navy had quietly walked back strict enforcement back in May amid an ongoing class action lawsuit that would seek to protect all sailors who sought religious accommodations from the mandate’s forced termination.