House GOP Looks to Reinstate Troops Booted After Rejecting Biden’s Covid Vaccine Mandate
A great, first step in the long walk back to sanity.
House Republicans moved Wednesday to protect former service members who were discharged over failure to comply with Biden’s needless and useless covid vaccine mandate, including clearing a path to reinstatement.
Troops who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine could be reinstated at the rank held when they were separated and without the discharge affecting future career advancement under one of a series of amendments related to the vaccine mandate approved by the House Armed Services Committee. The committee was debating its version of the annual defense policy bill.
The amendments would also require discharge review boards to take up requests to upgrade discharges for those booted solely over vaccine refusal; mandate that the Pentagon must reach out to discharged troops about how they can apply to be reinstated; exempt service academy students who weren’t commissioned because they refused the vaccine from having to pay back their taxpayer-funded tuition; and direct the Pentagon to study how much it would cost to give the discharged troops back pay and a $15,000 bonus.
“This provides a fair, equitable and honorable option for our wrongly separated service members,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said of his amendment to reinstate the discharged troops.
I would argue that the service academy cadets should be allowed to commission as well if they were poised to graduate when they were expelled. Those who were forced to leave the academies should be allowed to return. Young and healthy people should never have been compelled to take the vaccine in the first place, and it is not as if we have an excess of qualified individuals clamoring for some of the highly technical positions those former cadets had been trained to handle.
The House would force the Department of Defense to make plans for the reinstatement process.
Banks offered two more amendments that passed, including one that would require the military services’ boards of corrections to prioritize cases for troops who didn’t receive the vaccine and want to rejoin the ranks, and another that requires DOD to inform those who were separated on how to rejoin if they choose to do so.
The panel also approved an amendment from Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), which passed 32-27, that would exempt cadets and midshipmen from repaying tuition at military service academies if they were dismissed for refusing the vaccine mandate.
Another provision, brought forward by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), directs Pentagon leadership to develop a plan to present to the committee on its active reengagement and reenlistment of those who were penalized for refusing the shot.
As my Legal Insurrection colleague James Nault has reported, recruitment is down because men and women who are inclined toward military service generally do not want to be surrounded by woke policies and a racially-based merit system. New numbers show 2023 levels are not improving.
It’s been widely reported that recruitment levels across all branches of the United States military fell well short of expectations in 2022. The Army missed its target of 60,000 new troops by 15,000, or 25% . Navy and Air Force recruitment were down as well. And the outlook for 2023 looks equally dismal.
According to Military.com , Army planners estimate that “only about 23% of 17- to 24-year-olds can meet the service’s expectations, with many applicants failing the military’s SAT-style entrance exam or being too overweight to serve.”
Reinstating former members of the military who were punished for reasonable concerns about an experimental vaccine seems like a great first step in the long walk back to sanity.
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Comments
Even if the return is approved would the former member want to return. The military is so woke they it may be a big fat no.
Was thinking this too. It’s one thing being reinstated but they will still be around the intellectual pigmy’s who booted them first time around. And now these intellectual pigmy’s will be all butt hurt that the people they hated are back.
I’ve read that many families with multi-generation histories of military service are advising their next generation not to enlist.
Being a member of One such family, I can attest to this
Ditto
Same here
I’ll add another- same here.
The 3 who currently represent my extended family in the forces are out asap.
Most of those discharged have probably committed to a new career path and will not want to go back.
I’m sure they’d like to bring those people back, after all they’re the only ones that were smart enough to turn down the gene juice.
Gene juice 😂😂 Nice! Gonna be using that one from now on 😁
Regardless of current status or intent to return, they deserve back pay and benefits, not to mention discharge papers with no onerous classification.
“they deserve back pay and benefits”
…out of the Pentagon’s current budget.
If that makes Zelenskyyyy cry, too damn bad.
Hopefully they can be reinstated in time for the new mandatory monkeypox vaccine.
I’d like to add a provision to that: Fire all the people responsible for persecution of servicemen over the vaccine crap.
Hear, hear!
Court martial would be more in line with what I’m thinking.
I know a retired LT Gen and a retired CSM that recommended to my son and others NOT to go in, because of the wokeness. When you are talking top brass and NCO’s it is pretty serious.
Congress should definitely do this, although I can’t imagine any former serviceman who has been treated that way desiring to go back.
If it’s such a good idea to do administratively, it really ought to have a law.
One at a time, legilsate every p0licy, proscrption, pronouncement, and land-grab The Authoritah invoked under the ‘Rona Spasm. (We can get to junk under the other fig leafs later.)
Absolutely, move to get back as many as possible – that may help the recruiting problem that is currently in the news as well. And hopefully, this will go down in history as a lesson learned and never repeated. Of all things, these people are the age most adversely affected by bad side effects of the vaccine and very low on the danger line of actually getting the virus and having any bad side effects. If any of the multi-six figure earners had been doing their job instead of blathering on national TV, they would have had that info very early on.