President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday reinstating thousands of U.S. service members who were kicked out of the military for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The order covers more than 8,000 active-duty or reserve service members who were kicked out for not taking the COVID jab mandated by the Biden administration between 2021 and 2023 and restores them to their previous rank with back pay and full benefits.
“The vaccine mandate was an unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members. Further, the military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received. Federal Government redress of any wrongful dismissals is overdue,” Trump wrote in the executive order.
The order delivered on a promise Trump made on the campaign trail and reiterated during his inaugural address. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also pledged to bring back troops who were discharged with an apology, back pay, and rank they lost.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Aug. 24, 2021 mandated that all service members receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Austin later rescinded the mandate on Jan. 10, 2023 but not before it was used to purge thousands of conservatives from military branches.
The mandate had a catastrophic effect on military personnel who did get the shot. According to naval data from the Pentagon, the navy experienced a 150% increase in myocarditis, 151% increase in cardiomyopathy, and 973% increase in cardiac failure.
Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long, Brigade Surgeon for the 1st Aviation Brigade, Ft. Rucker, Alabama, U.S. Army said she had to ground numerous pilots for heart-related injuries.
Attorney Thomas Renz in January 2022 told experts during a panel discussion on COVID-19 vaccines and treatment protocols led by Sen. Ron Johnson, that data provided to him by three whistleblowers showed COVID-19 vaccines were causing catastrophic harm to members of the U.S. military while not preventing them from getting the virus.
Data from Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) provided by whistleblowers — who knew they would face perjury charges if they submitted false statements to the court in legal cases pending against the DOD — showed miscarriages increased 300% in 2021 over the previous five-year average, cancer increased by 300% and neurological disorders increased 1,000% in 2021 over the past five-year average — increasing from 82,000 to 863,000 in one year.
Other conditions that spiked over the same five-year period included:
- Hypertension: 2,181% increase.
- Diseases of the nervous system: 1,048% increase.
- Malignant neoplasms of the esophagus: 894% increase.
- Multiple sclerosis: 680% increase.
- Malignant neoplasms of digestive organs: 624% increase.
- Guillain–Barré syndrome: 551% increase.
- Breast cancer: 487% increase.
- Demyelinating: 487% increase.
- Malignant neoplasms of thyroid and other endocrine glands: 474% increase.
- Female infertility: 472% increase.
- Pulmonary embolism: 468% increase.
- Migraines: 452% increase.
- Ovarian dysfunction: 437% increase.
- Testicular cancer: 369% increase.
- Tachycardia: 302% increase.
Renz also said DMED data showing registered diagnoses of myocarditis had been removed from the database.
Renz told the panel a “trifecta of data” from the DMED and Project SALUS, the DOD’s military-civilian integrated health database, along with human intelligence in the form of doctor-whistleblowers, suggest the DOD and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld COVID-19 vaccine surveillance data since September 2021.
Following Renz’s presentation, attorney Leigh Dundas reported evidence of the DOD doctoring data in DMED to conceal cases of myocarditis in service members vaccinated for COVID-19.
