The U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 6 included a provision that terminates the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in its defense funding bill.
The new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (pdf) states that “Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall rescind the mandate that members of the Armed Forces be vaccinated against COVID-19 pursuant to the memorandum dated August 24, 2021, regarding ‘Mandatory Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination of Department of Defense Service Members.’”
The House Rules Committee released the text of the bill days after Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, revealed that lawmakers were discussing an end to the vaccine mandate.
“I was a very strong supporter of the vaccine mandate when we did it, a very strong supporter of the Covid restrictions put in place by DoD and others,” Smith told Politico. “But at this point in time, does it make sense to have that policy from August 2021? That is a discussion that I am open to and that we’re having.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in a statement Tuesday, called the end of the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate a “victory for our military and for common sense.” He noted that the mandate “has already had negative consequences for our military.”
Critics of the mandate note that it has led to the removal of thousands of service members from the armed forces, scared off prospective recruits, and does little to protect the health of many members because of factors including how the vaccines are much less effective against the Omicron strain than earlier variants.
“The Army and Navy missed their 2022 recruitment goals by thousands of service members,” McCarthy said in his statement. “And, at the discretion of the Biden administration, the Defense Department discharged 3,300 Marines, 1,800 soldiers, 1,800 sailors, and 900 airmen simply based on their personal decision to not take the COVID vaccine. This decision was detrimental to the ranks, and there is no doubt it put our national security at risk.”
Mandate ‘Isn’t Worth it’
The costs to replace each member who has been discharged due to their refusal to get vaccinated—the military has denied en masse requests for religious exemptions—and other consequences, such as the impact on morale, shows the mandate “isn’t worth it,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Lee was one of 20 GOP senators who announced in late November that they would vote against the NDAA unless it included the termination of the mandate.
McCarthy said on Sunday that Congress would “secure lifting that vaccine mandate on our military.” The NDAA would not advance without that, McCarthy added. He also suggested that he made this position clear to President Joe Biden as they met for the first time since Republicans secured a House majority in the next Congress.
On Tuesday, McCarthy said that those discharged based solely on their decision not to take the vaccine “deserve justice,” and that the Biden administration “must correct service records and not stand in the way of re-enlisting” any such service members.
“Make no mistake: this is a win for our military,” he added. “But in 28 days the real work begins—the new House Republican majority will work to finally hold the Biden administration accountable and assist the men and women in uniform who were unfairly targeted by this Administration.”
White House Opposition
A veto-proof majority may be required to axe the mandate, which was announced in August 2021 by the Biden administration in the name of “military readiness.”
The White House told news outlets that McCarthy raised the issue during the meeting but that the administration wanted to keep the mandate in place.
“Leader McCarthy raised this with the President, and the President told him he would consider it,” a White House spokesperson said. “The Secretary of Defense has recommended retaining the mandate, and the President supports his position. Discussions about the NDAA are ongoing.”
Presidents can veto bills passed by Congress.
Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
Dozens of Democrat senators and a number of Democrat House members would need to join Republicans to override a veto. Democrats have generally supported mandates during the pandemic, while Republicans have generally opposed them.
Defense Secretary
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a Biden appointee, told reporters over the weekend that he wants to keep the mandate in place, claiming it has “kept people healthy.” The Pentagon did not return a request for evidence to back the claim.
Austin said in a memorandum dated Aug. 24, 2021, to top military officials that he determined that a mandate was needed “to protect the Force and defend the American people.”
The vaccines have provided little shielding against infection since Omicron emerged in late 2021, and the protection they provide against severe illness has gone down considerably.
Boosters shots were introduced because of the waning, but research suggests boosters provide a short-lived increase in protection. Every vaccine dose also carries the risk of side effects, including heart inflammation.
The military declined to require booster shots but has kept the primary series mandate in place. The primary series of the two most widely-administered vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer, consists of two doses.
“What I would tell you is as a warfighting organization, the health and readiness of our force is paramount. And vaccination for COVID is still a requirement,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a recent briefing.
“But, in terms of discussing proposed or pending legislation, I’m not going to be able to provide a comment on that and won’t have anything further to provide.”
Discharges
The military has forced out some members who refused to get a vaccine, primarily members who have not asked for exemptions or were denied religious exemptions.
The Marine Corps has discharged 3,717 members for vaccine refusal as of Nov. 30. The branch has approved just 23 religious exemption requests out of 3,740 lodged.
The Navy has kicked out 2,064 members for vaccine refusal as of Nov. 30. The Navy has granted 51 religious accommodation requests out of more than 4,000 lodged.
The Army has separated 1,841 soldiers for vaccine refusal as of Dec. 1. The Army has approved 123 religious exemption requests and rejected more than 1,900.
The Air Force had separated 834 members for vaccine refusal as of mid-July. It has stopped giving updates on separations and did not respond to a request for comment. The Air Force, like the other branches, has granted few religious exemptions.
Judges have found proof that the branches discriminated against religious members and have paused separations of Marine, Navy, and Air Force members seeking religious exemptions.
Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.