Sen. James Lankford is criticizing the Biden administration for prioritizing a ‘woke’ agenda over protecting Americans’ First Amendment freedoms and is pledging to reinstate service members who were fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine due to religious objections.
Since the Biden administration enacted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine on troops in August 2021, over 8,000 service members have been fired for refusing the shot, many of whom sought religious or medical accommodations.
After outrage by Congress, the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Biden last year, terminated his own vaccine mandate, but it did not reinstate service members who were fired for not receiving the shot.
Lankford, R-Okla., told DailyMail.com during an exclusive interview Tuesday that he plans to prioritize getting fired troops back into the military and ensuring the Biden administration doesn’t further retaliate against religious service members.
The senator from Oklahoma said that he has heard from terminated service members who say they ‘want the ability to come back’ into the military’s fold.
‘Many of these folks are generational individuals – their parents served in the military, their grandparents served in the military, they planned to serve their whole career in the military and pass it on to their kids. And instead, because of their religious beliefs, they were pushed out of the military,’ Lankford told DailyMail.com.
He called it ‘obviously traumatic’ for them, and also a ‘shock’ because for generations, their families had been able to both live out their faith and serve in the military.
Now, you have a situation where ‘you’re fighting for other people to have the First Amendment, but you can’t have First Amendment protections,’ he said, which turns the Constitution on its head.
‘They want the ability to be able to rejoin the military and to be able to finish their long and distinguished career. Individuals that literally had no other mark against their entire record in the military, other than you didn’t believe what President Biden did about the vaccine.’
‘Because your belief is not consistent with the president’s you can’t stay based on a religious belief that that just doesn’t align with where we are,’ he said. . . . .
. . . . According to several active-duty service members, the amendments ‘won’t make up for the lost career opportunities’ that many troops endured, including not being able to deploy or get necessary training to rise in the military’s ranks.
In addition, service members have told DailyMail.com that the military is making it extremely difficult for fired troops to re-apply through the normal process to get back their former positions due to a two-year delay in changing their discharge status from ‘general’ to ‘honorable’ in order to begin the process.
Also, thousands of service members who sat in limbo for years waiting to get an answer on their religious accommodation requests were not promoted during that time period, did not get transferred to other bases, and weren’t able to fly – which put them at a huge disadvantage.
Lankford acknowledged that, saying Congress must make sure that the troops still within the military who were seeking accommodations won’t be retaliated against with further ‘consequences’ and can serve a long and distinguished career.
The military tried to ‘strong-arm them to give up on their religious belief,’ said Lankford.
They need ‘to be able to continue their career uninterrupted and unpunished based on their religious beliefs,’ said the senator, who plans to speak with service members who have concerns about the proposed House NDAA amendments.
Lankford said there is an ‘obsession’ in the military and within every Biden administration agency and U.S. embassies on pushing a ‘woke’ agenda to the detriment of military readiness.
‘The obsession of this administration is that they have a social cultural agenda,’ he said. ‘This administration has been absolutely obsessed with trying to be able to push transgender rights and to be able to elevate those rights over the rights of every other person.
. . . . (read more on the Daily Mail)
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