The Senate has passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which ends the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for troops.
The anti-vaxxers have won the battle over the Defense Department’s requirement that all U.S. service members receive a vaccination for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
On Thursday, the Senate approved the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which would repeal the Defense Department’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The legislation now heads to the White House, where President Joe Biden has not given any indications that he intends to veto the law to uphold the Pentagon’s mandatory vaccine policy.
Biden’s expected signature will mark the culmination of an open rebellion against the vaccine mandate both within and outside of the U.S. military. Fueled by social media, conservative talk shows, and state and federal lawmakers, the opposition movement to the mandatory COVID-19 has soundly defeated the U.S. military’s top leaders, who have insisted that the vaccines were necessary for readiness.
By overturning the Pentagon’s requirement that all troops be vaccinated for COVID-19, Congress has made it more difficult for the military to maintain good order and discipline within the ranks, said Kori Schake, a defense expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.
Schake, who co-authored a book with retired Marine Gen. James Mattis on the civil-military divide, questioned whether lawmakers will now allow service members to treat other vaccines or medical prerequisites required for deployments as optional.
“Americans have begun losing trust and confidence in our military precisely because politicians are dragging the military into partisan political arguments like this,” Schake told Task & Purpose recently. “I think our national security would be better served by letting DOD determine what’s medically necessary.”
In retrospect, it is clear that the U.S. military underestimated the opposition it would face from the rank and file when the Pentagon announced in December 2020 that troops would soon have the option of getting COVID-19 vaccines, which were initially not mandatory because the vaccines had only been approved for emergency use at the time.
