Mon Dec 19, 2022 – 6:30 pm EST
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Congressional Republicans have secured a rare victory by forcing through a repeal of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the U.S. military, but four GOP senators kept them from following through with the added step of reinstating service members who lost their careers due to the policy.
Last August, at the direction of President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the secretaries of all military branches to “immediately begin full [COVID] vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces” and “impose ambitious timelines for implementation.” The majority of service members complied, but tens of thousands remain unvaccinated, with many seeking exemptions.
The vast majority of exemption requests have been denied, and last December the military began discharging soldiers for refusing the shots, prompting legal challenges that have so far been neglected by the U.S. Supreme Court. While litigation is ongoing, such lawsuits did get the Navy and Marine Corps to start rolling back penalties for service members seeking religious accommodations in September.
As LifeSiteNews covered December 9, Republicans in the House of Representatives attached language to the latest National Defense
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