The Biden administration’s pandemic response was filled with sweeping mandates, from double-masking guidance to vaccine requirements for federal workers and large employers. Perhaps the most injurious were those imposed on America’s armed forces.
President Biden’s Department of Defense, under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, imposed a military-wide COVID vaccine mandate in August 2021. Service members faced the daunting choice of getting the vaccine or facing disciplinary action.
The Bizarre Behavior of the COVID-19 Pandemic Panic
The entire COVID-19 era in the US was marked by very strange behavior from the US Government, particularly the Department of Defense. The Daily Caller recently ran an article about a former Marine whose exercise of personal liberty landed him in hot water with his superiors. His crime? He refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19. As a result, the Marines administratively discharged him with a General Discharge (Under Honorable Conditions), one step below a full Honorable Discharge. Former Marine Cruz Marquis told the outlet his story, explaining:
“This isn’t a story about any particular individuals who defied a government order. In my mind, this is about a slice of life, a slice of what the state was able to do and what they were able to get away with during the pandemic. This story, though it may be reported, is just the tip of the iceberg of what kind of repression the state was able to reap during the COVID pandemic.”
According to the article, more than 3,700 Marines elected not to be vaccinated and were kicked out for it. Across all services, more than 8,700 troops were involuntarily separated for refusing the vaccine, according to the Defense Department. Marquis was placed in a special unit for those pending discharge from the Marines, where he was subjected to harassment and hard labor. Marquis called the unit a “penal platoon.” At one point, a fellow Marine told Marquis he should be shot for refusing the vaccine. Despite its draconian measures, the US had the highest overall infection rate.
Requests for religious exemptions from the vaccine were slowly processed and rarely granted. Again, from the Daily Caller: “By June 2022, the Marine Corps had received 3,719 religious accommodation requests and approved just seven, while 2,715 Marines had already been separated with a vaccine-refusal discharge code, according to an official Marine Corps update.”
Other Services Behaved Badly
Though the Marines had the highest number of individuals refusing the vaccine, they were by no means alone. Furthermore, the consequences for those who refused were harsh. A Fox News account observed: “On Oct. 6 [2021], the Navy issued a directive banning all official and non-official travel for non-vaccinated service members and their spouses and dependents.” Effectively, the Navy was telling its members to get the vaccine or stay at home. Stories like these fueled a congressional backlash. Lawmakers ordered the mandate’s repeal in the December 2022 defense authorization bill, and the Pentagon rescinded it in January 2023, but by then the damage had been done.
When President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, he moved to reverse his predecessor’s policy. Trump issued an executive order that aimed to redress the vaccine mandate. To that end, he ordered the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to take “all necessary action permitted by law” to reinstate all members of the armed services “discharged solely for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and who request to be reinstated.”
Additionally, those seeking reinstatement would be able to “revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments or compensation…” As of mid-July 2026, according to Military Times, “Roughly 230 troops who left the U.S. military rather than get the COVID-19 vaccine have reupped — fewer than 3% of the thousands eligible under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s policies to encourage them to return… Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force continue to work with more than 600 service members who have expressed interest.”
What happened in the Biden administration should be a cautionary tale. The Federal Government should be the adult in the room, not one of the kids. The vaccine mandate for the US Armed Forces was a knee-jerk reaction, and the military services, in many cases, took it to unnecessary extremes.
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