Danielle Runyan, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, provided revealing testimony to a House select subcommittee on Thursday, exposing stark differences in Covid-19 vaccine mandates between the U.S. military and other Executive Branch-level entities.
Despite the recent 2023 National Defense Authorization Act language requiring the Department of Defense to revoke the vaccine requirement, national security remains in jeopardy as military service members grapple with the aftermath of the mandates, she said.
Runyan underscored how military vaccine mandates outlasted those in other government sectors. Service members who lawfully objected to the vaccination faced illegal treatment, contributing to an ongoing threat to national security.
Following the World Health Organization’s declaration of the Covid-19 outbreak as a public health emergency in January 2020, vaccines were available by December of the same year. Initial expectations posited that herd immunity could be achieved if 75% to 80% of Americans received the vaccine.
However, by May 2021, experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president’s top Covid adviser, conceded that herd immunity was not attainable.
With a shift from the herd immunity approach, the Executive Branch began incentivizing vaccination with tax credits for employers offering vaccine-related paid leave.
By mid-2021, supply of the vaccine surpassed demand due to various factors including public skepticism. As a result, creative public health efforts emerged to increase vaccination rates.
Concerns escalated in June 2021 when a study found higher than expected rates of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, in U.S. service members following vaccination.
All participants in the study were previously healthy, physically fit males who developed the condition within four days of receiving the vaccine.
In contrast to these findings, President Joe Biden guaranteed complete protection from infection, sickness, and death from the virus for those vaccinated. This claim was later challenged, as increasing occurrences of “breakthrough” infections were reported and the implications of the delta variant remained unclear.
In July 2021, vaccination mandates were issued for federal employees, federal contractors, and military service members.
Despite growing evidence suggesting vaccinated individuals could still transmit Covid-19, these mandates continued to be enforced, significantly affecting the American workforce.
Despite eventual rescission of the mandates due to constitutional, statutory, financial, and other harms inflicted upon citizens, service members, and businesses, the military mandate remained.
An estimated 1.4 million active-duty and reserve service members were subject to the mandate, including members of the National Guard.
Runyan’s testimony offers a crucial glimpse into the sustained impacts of the military vaccine mandates, igniting concerns over national security and highlighting the need for further investigation into the management and outcomes of these mandates.
The U.S. Navy and the Department of the Air Force issued stringent Covid-19 vaccine mandates in 2021, with severe repercussions for service members who refused vaccination on religious grounds.
The Navy issued “Trident Order #12 – Mandatory Vaccination for COVID-19” on Sept. 24, 2021, declaring all SEALs and Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewmen (SWCCs) who sought a religious exemption “non-deployable.”
The Chief of Naval Operations issued NAVADMIN 225/21 on Oct. 13, 2021, stating that members refusing the vaccine, absent a pending or approved exemption, shall be processed for administrative separation.
It also threatened to recoup training costs, bonuses, and special and incentive pays from unvaccinated service members. This potentially crippling financial penalty, which was not forward-looking but targeted past expenditures, could exceed $1 million per Special Operations service member, Danielle Runyan testified.
Following these orders, the Navy issued NAVADMIN 256/21 on Nov. 15, 2021, stipulating that service members whose vaccination exemption request was denied had to receive the Covid-19 vaccine within five days. Refusal could lead to immediate separation processing, adverse performance evaluations, denial of promotion, and possible loss of Veterans Affairs benefits.
The discriminatory policies led to Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden, a lawsuit brought by First Liberty Institute and Hacker Stephens on behalf of 35 religious service members, alleging violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the First Amendment. The court found in favor of the plaintiffs on Jan. 3, 2022, concluding that the vaccine mandate substantially burdened their religious beliefs and failed strict scrutiny.
Similar circumstances led to the filing of Doster v. Kendall, a class action lawsuit citing discriminatory treatment by the Department of the Air Force against service members requesting religious exemptions from the vaccine requirements.
On Sept. 9, 2021, President Biden issued EO 14042, which impacted over 5,138 government contractors in the US. Biden required that federal contracts include a clause stating that contractors must comply with all guidance published by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force regarding Covid-19 vaccinations.
However, on Dec. 7, 2021, the U.S. District for the Southern District of Georgia issued an injunction against the order, determining that it went beyond promoting efficiency and economy in procurement and contracting and instead acted as a public health regulation. This development maintained the status quo, allowing entities to encourage vaccination without mandating it.
These controversial mandates have significantly impacted the U.S. military and federal contractors, inciting legal action and drawing scrutiny to the balance between public health needs and individual rights, Runyan told the House Committee.
“Considering a total of 19,460 service members remained unvaccinated as of October 4, 2022, this means we could lose millions in training costs, and hundreds of thousands of years of invaluable institutional knowledge,” Runyan said. “At a time when young Americans have no desire to join the military and military members are telling their children not to join the military, we should consider this a significant national security crisis.”
Runyan’s full testimony at this link.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, who is a medical doctor, told the committee of a friend in the Department of Defense who was negatively impacted by the mandate.
“Further, not only did these mandates damage Americans’ trust in public health and in vaccines and cause people to lose their jobs, they also negatively affected our military. A good friend of mine, a physician no less, battling breast cancer was unfairly harmed by the Department of Defense’s vaccine mandate. Her oncologist advised against the vaccine for medical concerns.”
The woman asked for an exemption but was denied. She still refused.
The review board voted to retain her in the Navy, they also “substantiated that she committed misconduct for refusing the vaccine,” Wenstrup said.
U.S. military branches, which are not meeting recruitment goals, can look to the vaccine mandate for one of the reasons, he said.
“Besides what may be right or wrong in this case, our military recruitment and retention has been negatively affected,” Wenstrup said.
Another witness to the committee said the public trust has been badly damaged by the Covid vaccine mandates.
“Our analysis strongly suggests that mandatory Covid-19 vaccine policies have had damaging effects on public trust, vaccine confidence, political polarization, human rights, inequities and social wellbeing. We question the effectiveness and consequences of coercive vaccination policy in pandemic response and urge the public health community and policymakers to return to non-discriminatory, trust- based public health approaches,” said Kevin Bardosh, affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington. His testimony can be seen here.
