Navy Lieutenant Still Persecuted for Refusing COVID Vaccine
Attended SOTU As Guest of Ted Cruz: The Navy threatened Lieutenant Levi Beaird with discharge, and is now torpedoing his career and demanding that he pay back over $100,000 for refusing the jab on religious grounds
On Senator Ted Cruz’s excellent Verdict podcast, the Senator told the story of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Levi Beaird, a top-rated Navy surface warfare officer, who refused to get the COVID vaccine on religious grounds. Senator Cruz invited Lieutenant Beaird to be his personal guest at the State of the Union address Tuesday night to highlight the Navy’s shabby treatment of Navy servicemembers even after President Biden signed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (2022 NDAA), which stopped the military’s practice of discharging servicemembers who refused the vaccine.
Lieutenant Beaird not only is a top-rated Navy surface warfare officer, but he also graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School with a master’s degree in national security studies. He was awarded “a $105,000 retention bonus, which is paid in installments. The education and bonus obligate him to serve three years as a department head. If he doesn’t meet the obligation, he must pay the Navy back for the cost of both.” And he expected to be assigned as the chief engineer on a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) out of Mayport, Florida.
But, Lieutenant Beaird “refused to receive the Navy’s mandated COVID-19 shot and was threatened with a discharge from the Navy. Days before he was to be involuntarily discharged, in March of 2022, a court decision in the case Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden stopped the discharge process.” The court found that the Navy’s 50-step COVID religious exemption review process, which resulted in a denial in all 4,000 cases, was “theater” and a “rubber stamp” for the automatic denials that occurred in each case.
As mentioned, the 2022 NDAA has stopped the military’s practice of discharging servicemembers who refused the vaccine, but what it didn’t do is stop the Navy from persecuting the 4,000 servicemembers who had refused the jab on religious grounds.
Although Beaird was relieved to find that he would not be involuntarily discharged from the Navy, that was not the end of the matter. That’s because a motion from DOD to partially stay the court’s ruling to allow DOD to continue to make decisions regarding “operational deployment and assignment decisions” was granted by the United States Supreme Court, in a decision noting the Court’s reluctance “to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs.”
Interestingly, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented from the grant of DOD’s motion for partial stay, calling the grant “a great injustice to the…Navy Seals and others…who have volunteered to undertake demanding and hazardous duties to defend our country. These individuals appear to have been treated shabbily by the Navy, and the Court brushes all that aside. I would not do so, and I therefore dissent.”
As things stand now, Lieutenant Beaird’s discharge is on hold, but so is his assignment as chief engineer, a post critical for advancement in his Navy career. And, adding insult to injury, the Navy is demanding that Beaird pay back his $105,000 retention bonus and the costs of his postgraduate education. The stress on Beaird “and his family has also been immense, given that he’s suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of the difficulties. Beaird’s career trajectory was completely upended, despite documented performance outpacing a number of similar officers.”
Fox News has also reported that other Navy servicemembers who refused the COVID vaccine “were transferred into deplorable living conditions and, in some cases, were unable to leave while awaiting termination from the military.”
Fortunately, litigation is still proceeding in federal court in Texas and may wind up in the Supreme Court yet again, but the litigation process is inherently uncertain. Given that uncertainty, Senator Cruz recently introduced the Americans Act, which “is designed to provide relief to those who’ve been unfairly targeted, whether by reinstating those who were fired at their previous rank, or by ensuring they receive an honorable discharge.”
Whether the Americans Act will pass and the exact effect it will have for Lieutenant Beaird are unknown, but Senator Cruz invited Lieutenant Beaird to the State of the Union address “so that politicians in D.C. could have a name and a face highlighting the ‘gross injustice‘ done to those who were affected.”
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Comments
Disgusting how we treat our finest
Makes me ill
Absolutely ill
I hate our Government
Agreed.
The totalitarians in the bureaucracy will not tolerate people who won’t go along and get along. The near two decade long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq put a pause on a good deal of insanity but as the conflicts wound down from 2014 ish on the totalitarians were able to reassert themselves.
This nation, which I once served, diminishes itself daily.
Who knew that religion got you out of vaccines. I’d deny all the requests too.
The question isn’t whether the vaccine was a good idea or not but protecting the process.
Yeah – we don’t want thinking people who stand on principle… they just need to shut up and do as they’re told.
/sarc
What principle is that? He’s in the military. All sorts of shots are required, for a good reason. This one might be a bad idea but that’s not up to him.
Military service doesn’t preclude asserting individual rights. Granted it is more complex for service members but those rights are not eliminated. They can be offset by a legitimate and compelling State interest claim.
The other ‘shots’ you refer to are traditional vaccines which confer immunity. The Covid shot does not confer immunity nor prevent transmission from ‘vaxed’ to ‘unvaxed’, ‘unvaxed’ to ‘vaxed’ or ‘vaxed’ to ‘vaxed’.
Each person has the right to decline experimental medical procedures and substances. The anthrax saga illuminates this very clearly. Service members cannot be compelled to submit. Of course the qualifier of ‘ultimately’ must be appended, b/c the DoD will use every means of pressure and all sorts of threats until that particular case winds its way to a conclusion. In the interim service members get harassed, career paused, assigned shit detail, transferred to unpleasant locations in an effort to break their will.
The vaccine keeps the whole aircraft carrier from getting infected. That’s the military reason for the shot. You’re not allowed to second-guess it unless you’re the one in charge.
It might be a wrong assumption that it’s effective, but that has nothing to do with good military order. Here’s a guy who can’t be relied on. End of story.
rhhardin,
Your assertion about the efficacy of the Covid shot is patently false. It does not confer immunity or prevent transmission. That is known now and has been known for a long time. Respiratory viruses do not have and cannot have a vaccine that provides immunity and/or prevents transmission. They mutate too quickly to get in front of them. The anthrax vaccination litigation put a halt to the DoD attempts to simply require a service member to involuntarily accept a jab.
You seem to be under the impression that service members lose their rights when they join and are to perform as mindless automatons while in service. Neither are true. Some pentagon dwelling jerk writing out a Covid policy and the real time tactical decisions of a mission commander in contact are way different. Not all orders are lawful, moral or based upon military necessities.
Actually it worked on the original virus. Vacs started in December 2020 and the virus was pretty much gone in May 2021. Delta hadn’t clicked in yet and Omega was yet to come. If aircraft carriers work anything like Ohio, whose COVID cases I was watching, the vaccine worked. 90% effective or so, enough to get Rzero down to less than 1.0 so the virus died out instead of growing.
Vacs apparently not much good for the variants.
If the guy says charge the machine gun nest, you charge the machine gun nest, or you’re not much good to them. You’re a means to an end.
Tell you what, please refer us to the test say 10,000 with placebos and 10,000 with Covid jab run from pre approval to May ’21 and let us know:
1. # contracted Covid
2. # hospitalized due to Covid
3. What other factors existed, excess weight, obesity, heart condition, age and so forth
4. #Adverse reactions from moment of injection to May 21 /type of adverse reaction
5. Mutation of Rona within test group
We will be waiting a long damn time b/c the testing was deliberately scuttled.
As for charging a machine gun nest is that based on your experience? I have given orders under fire and executed orders under fire on multiple continents so I do have some expertise. Combat conditions are in no way transferable to apply to a DoD policy memo.. Suggesting this as you do is so simplistic as to reveal your complete lack of understanding of military service.
The DoD cannot simply give an order. That order must be lawful and despite the amazing amount of undue deference given the DoD by CTs, at root based on the anthrax litigation precedents, it is not lawful. Now if the DoD shifts to the fully FDA approved version, which they have not nor have they made it available as an alternative, then the calculus changes.
However that alone doesn’t close off claims of conscience and religious objections which the DoD is required to review independently to attempt to ascertain if the claim is sincere. Instead DoD simply rejected these claims wholesale with little to no effort to meet their required burden. This alone seems to indicate a culture of bad faith on the part of DoD re those who wanted more info, asked for a waiver or asked for the fully FDA approved version of the jab.
They ran a test and then tried the vaccine which tested at 90% effective. It did what it was supposed to on an actual live large population. Ohio is what I was following, graph of number of new cases each week. The virus disappeared essentially.
That’s also a good bet to keep your aircraft carrier from being swept by COVID, hence the order. If the military didn’t live in close quarters most of the time perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary, but one case gets everyone as it stands. It’s a reasonable order. It’s military – keeps the unit ready.
It’s a perfectly fine order. Obey or you’re out as unreliable.
It’s the system that’s being protected here.
Totalitarians always want to protect the ‘system’ while they demean the individual demanding conformity above all else. The fact is whatever the efficacy of the Covid jab v Covid 1.0 by summer of ’21 it was no longer preventing transmission.
The DoD simply doesn’t have the option to order service members to take an unapproved and ineffective shot. The anthrax litigation reveals this. Nor does DoD have the option to flagrantly disregard their affirmative duty to individually evaluate each submission for waiver.
Nor does ‘everyone’ get Covid on a ship. The cruise ship examples demonstrate this. Nor does Covid have much impact on a population comprised of young, healthy people which is exactly what the military is comprised of.
There is zero reasonable basis to order the jab among that population, which many European Nations have now realized and have adjusted their jab recommendations to not jab those under 45. Not to mention the potential for jab injury which we are belatedly learning about.
Finally there was no study, not one, that maintained a control group until May ’21 nor one that has answered the questions I posed. BS statistics provided by a public health bureaucracy heavily compromised by their own foolish, partisan actions offered in an non transparent manner are not serious.
I am having trouble deciding if you are trolling or just a fool who blindly trusts govt to do the right thing. Either way your argument is deeply flawed, ill informed and frankly sophomoric.
The principle is called federal law – the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A DOD policy implements it. Even DOD isn’t denying the law applies, but as the courts have ruled, DOD is just violating it.
It’s not a religious thing, That’s just an excuse for not getting the vac.
That attitude towards those who raised objections betrays your inner totalitarian.
How quickly rhhardin went from “there’s no principle in denying the vaccine” to “ok, there’s a principle, but I don’t believe any person has that principle.” This idiocy is exactly what the federal court slapped the Navy for.
Also, the other shots that are required are real vaccines which prevent diseases.
COVID shots do not prevent you from getting COVID so they are not real vaccines.
An order to get a COVID vaccine is not a lawful order, since it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, therefore there is no military need for it and it is an order based on a lie.
FTS.
If you paid attention, you would know. It has been a religious issue from the start of the roll-out of the vaccines.
This vaxx utilizes fetal cell lines from aborted fetuses, and while using murdered babies in something you are being injected with causes no moral concerns for you, it does for many people.
Of course, compliance to the covid hysteria and vaxx tyranny is for the Greater Good; all must be forced to bend the knee., even or perhaps especially when it violates God-given Constitutional rights.
They objected to taking a vaccine that was created or tested using aborted babies’ tissue.
If you believe that abortion is murder, you certainly should not willingly benefit from it.
Another possible religious objection is that the mRNA process is a little like playing god.
first of all under the Nuremberg code
( you might remember Nuremberg it was in
all the papers)
NO ONE can be force to take experimental
vaccines, you can not lose your job in order
to force you be a lab rat.
I think that at every single court hearing from now on it should be introduced into evidence that Fauci knew the shot wouldn’t work from the gitgo.
Which anyone who knew about the history of both mRNA and previous attempts at coronavirus vaccines in animals and humans also knew.
Best breakdown of that
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=248060
I wonder what would have happened to Lt. Beaird if he declared to be transitioning to a woman and the vaccine would have interfered with the injections.
It would be a fucking admiral by now!
You guys remember the good old days when the role of the infantry was to close with and to kill the enemy where ever they could be found.
Yup. Good times indeed my friends. Good times indeed!
That’s quite a retention bonus by military standards; I guess the recruiting efforts soliciting social justice warriors with two moms isn’t quite panning out as planned.
The mask is off. A vaccine is a sterilizing treatment. A vaxxxine, a shot, a jab does not prevent infection, progression, or transmission.
In very relevant timing The Covid Gnome’s recently published peer-review take on vaccines, viruses and the ‘rona is practically Micro-Bill two weeks ago:
— You don’t stop resp virus infection with blood-born antibodies.
— You don’t stop resp virus transmission with blood-born antibodies.
— Yes, Virginia, there is immune system “memory” outside the adaptive antibody response.
— Yes, Virginia, cross-immunity is a thing.
Net, the ‘rona genetic jabs are a kind of limited pre-treatment. So says The Science(tm).
Who is “The Covid Gnome”? Got a link? Both google and duckduckgo come up empty.
Fauci. Peer-review paper in “Nature” or equivalent tier pub.
Lemmie go back through my bookmarks and history n find the link. I just spot – checked when saw the press on it.
Gimmie a day or so.
/meta
I take in several human-powered aggregators that do good, fact-based curation. If I’m interested, I follow the footnotes and links. That sourcing doesn’t stick in my brain as solid as stuff I found on my own, the hard way. Weird.
To date, I’ve not found any automated feeds or aggregators satisfactory — both dumb in the ChatBot way, and show signs of being heuristically skewed.
Fauci listed as coauthor of paper in Cell, “Rethinking next-generation vaccines…” Here:
https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(22)00572-8
… mostly an interesting study in crap-weaseling, really.
Under pressure, they’re walking back what they said in the paper. You can see spun takes from all directions, including from the Administration Press. And some holding the line from other sources. The AP piece does the “some web sites say…”, then “Rate this false…” dance.
First pointer I saw did line by line side-by-side of article summary, and quoted statements by Fauci, CDC, etc. I’d be surprised if John Campbell from the UK hasn’t done a take on this paper, but that’s not what I’m recalling. Still not turning up…
Well, there’s a lot of misrepresenting military law flying about. No, enlistment and command doesn’t create chattel with no prerogatives, and rulers with any, as much as some of the latter like to think that way. And their sponsors are worse.
The crap about “good order and disciline” is crap as I said. Lawyerly-weaseling can try to push even a fire-bombed villiage-sized camel through that particular needle’s eye, BUT that doesn’t mean “good order and discipline” authorizes abusing your own troops, for example, to meet some “readiness” standard outside of combat, during peace time. To pick just one crazy hypothetical.
That’s not what that means, nor what any of that means.
But, this nonsense is only what one would expect from our coddled-idiot political & chattering class, who thought “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.” the supreme dodge. Go, Bill!
They’re even bad sophists. Sad.