Hegseth vows to reinstate unvaccinated soldiers
Trump Secretary of Defense appointee Pete Hegseth pledged Tuesday to reinstate service members who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they could expect an apology from the US government.
Hegseth made the remarks during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We haven’t even talked about COVID and the tens of thousands of service members who were kicked out because of an experimental vaccine,” the 44-year-old veteran said. “In President Trump’s Defense Department, they will be apologized to [and] they will be reinstated with pay and rank.”
It is unclear if Hegseth intends to offer these service members backpay, but his statement is another indication that the Trump administration will focus on restoring the US military to a large and lethal fighting force.
The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate has been partly blamed for the US Armed Forces shrinking to its smallest size since World War II. The number of active duty service members dropped by 64,000 personnel since 2020, according to Pentagon figures. The Army, Navy, and Air Force have been failing to meet their recruitment targets despite increased signing bonuses and aggressive campaigns.
The Biden-Harris administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate resulted in the discharge of 8,000 service members. As of last year, only 43 of those service members re-enlisted. The mandate may also be why the number of service members and veterans who would recommend joining the military dropped significantly between 2019 and 2021.
Not only were unvaccinated soldiers discharged, they were forced to repay their signing bonuses. One service member had to sell 60 of his vacation days to repay most of his $7,000 signing bonus to the US Army after he was fired for refusing the COVID injections.
In June 2022, now-House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the effect of the vaccine mandate on the US military, saying:
The Biden Administration is destroying the readiness of our Armed Forces by creating an unnecessary recruiting and retention shortfall, and trying to make up the difference by lowering other crucial education and fitness standards. All of this over an illness that is very, very, very, unlikely to have any significant effect on the young men and women of our military, and a vaccine that lacks long-term data on safety and efficacy for this cohort.
There is simply no other way around it: Until [the Secretary of Defense] withdraws, delays, or modifies the vax mandate, or begins rapidly granting more exemptions, our military will have to continue lowering recruitment standards—degrading the readiness and professionalism of our Armed Forces.
Impact of wokeness
Another likely cause of the personnel crisis in the US Armed Forces is the prevalence of totalitarian woke ideologies.
A report last year revealed that US military academies have “eyes and ears programs” for training cadets to report their colleagues for criticizing DEI, even in private conversations. In the Air Force Academy, DEI enforcers wear special uniforms and report to a separate chain of command.
In 2023, US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced the Army will be making the “war against climate change” a priority.
In 2022, all Army personnel were forced to undergo mandatory gender dysphoria training.
In 2021, the Army released recruitment videos emphasizing the importance of same-sex attraction while omitting any visuals of weaponry. One ad, titled “The Calling,” featured a girl named “Emma” who said she was inspired to join the US Army by her homosexual mothers.
The US Military Academy at West Point has been known to teach courses on critical race theory, which maintains that white people are natural oppressors of black people.
In 2021, then-Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress he wanted “to understand white rage,” which he suggested was behind the January 6th rally.
