Tens of 1000’s of service members and veterans have been negatively impacted by earlier illegally mandated anthrax vaccines and COVID-19 pictures. Righting the wrongs continues to be an uphill battle regardless of the efforts of President Donald Trump and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Gateway Pundit spoke to Colonel (retired) Tom “Buzz” Rempfer, creator of Unyielding: Marathons In opposition to Unlawful Mandates. The U.S. Air Power veteran is an advocate for service members and veterans who’ve been subjected to unlawful medical experimentation whereas serving within the nation’s army.
Former Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin’s rescinded 2021 COVID-19 shot mandate additional stirred his ardour to treatment the “multi-decade try by Division of Protection (DoD) deep state bureaucrats to cowl up harms from unlawful and illegal mandates.” The duvet-up adopted the army’s unlawful use of anthrax vaccines between 1997 and 2003, solely to resurface once more via the “illegal as carried out” COVID-19 shot mandate between 2021 and 2023.
In 2018, he mentioned, President Trump tried to appropriate the wrongs associated to “errors, inequities, and injustices because of the anthrax vaccine mandate.” And in 2025, Protection Secretary Hegseth joined President Trump’s efforts to revive the army following the COVID-19 shot mandate, providing reinstatement with backpay and advantages for these unlawfully separated from service.
However in keeping with Rempfer, “President Trump was undermined with respect to the anthrax mandates in 2018 when he tried corrections, and now once more with COVID-19 mandate injustices in 2025.” In accordance with him, “In 2018, the DoD didn’t publish their corrections memo, obscured its intent by not mentioning anthrax, and supplied zero outreach. In each eras, the DoD was tasked to treatment the injustices, however as a substitute they unduly delayed the method, arbitrarily and capriciously denied purposes, and thwarted the intent of the President and Protection Secretary.”
On June 2, Stand Collectively In opposition to Racism and Radicalism within the Providers, Inc. (STARRS), the MacArthur Society of West Level Graduates, and the Calvert Activity Group despatched a letter to President Trump and Protection Secretary Hegseth. The letter calls upon President Trump to supply “unconditional pardon and amnesty” to service members affected by anthrax vaccinations and COVID-19 pictures. As well as, the letter asks the President to, “direct the Secretary of Protection and Service Secretaries to remand all beforehand denied BCMR (Board for Correction of Navy Data) instances for expedited reconsideration to promptly present full and becoming reduction.”
For Rempfer, the STARRS letter is “a seminal occasion,” explaining that “it suggests a prudent path for the President to outflank previous and present efforts to undermine him as Commander in Chief by neutering the BCMRs.” The retired colonel defined, “If President Trump unconditionally pardons all troops impacted by anthrax and COVID mandates, then the BCMRs function a requisite statutory entity to award treatments, versus a bureaucratic barrier that arbitrarily and capriciously adjudicates instances, points denials, and delays justice.” The executive physique would now not be capable of deny correcting opposed actions taken throughout the anthrax period and newer COVID-19 shot debacle.
“DoD’s violations have been 1,000 instances worse than something they falsely allege towards our troops,” Rempfer argued. Echoing the sentiment of STARRS’ Govt Vice President and Basic Counsel, Michael Rose, he mentioned, “It was the DoD that egregiously violated the legislation throughout each the anthrax vaccine and COVID shot eras.” In distinction, Rempfer maintains, “our troops that refused upheld their Oaths of Workplace.”
What’s extra, he mentioned, “It strains credulity that the BCMRs are even allowed to adjudicate instances and deny justice.” Nevertheless, as a result of it’s an compulsory statutory requirement, he defined “a Presidential Govt Order directing unconditional pardons for all troops in each eras resets the method and expedites justice by tasking BCMRs to solely mete out treatments, with out biased interpretations.”
Think about the current BCMR utility denial of Military Chief Warrant Officer 3 Brandon Budge. The Military Black Hawk helicopter pilot objected to the illegal COVID-19 shot in 2021 and has been punished for it. With out intervention, CW3 Budge shall be separated from the Military on September 1. A presidential pardon would wipe the slate clear, restore his promotion, and save his 21-year profession.
Rempfer additionally identified a current BCMR ruling on an anthrax-era case that was favorable for the service member, offering an upgraded discharge to totally honorable. Rempfer famous, “Out of 1000’s of wrongful opposed personnel actions over the unlawful anthrax vaccine mandate, which was dominated unlawful by federal courts in 2003, this was solely the third report correction in over 20 years, all underneath Trump’s management.”
He added, “two different upgrades occurred in 2018 when Trump’s White Home ordered corrections for the anthrax vaccine mandate, till Biden’s DoD halted all additional justice.”
For each anthrax vaccinations and COVID-19 pictures, he mentioned, the DoD “blatantly violated” legal guidelines for the army, notably 10 USC 1107 and 1107a, which have been “designed to make sure that troops are knowledgeable of their ‘prior consent’ rights and the ‘possibility to just accept or refuse’ administration of unapproved medical merchandise,” Rempfer defined.
He identified the most recent anthrax vaccine mandate correction case documentation affirms the Workplace of the Beneath Secretary of Protection for Personnel and Readiness, or OUSD(P&R), acknowledged in 2005 that anthrax vaccine was the first-ever Emergency Use Licensed shot, an “unapproved, experiment medical merchandise that might not be mandated.”
He asserted, “Regardless of the admissions, OUSD(P&R) continues to allow case delays and denials, leaving service members unable to rectify incorrect authorized rulings or injustices marring their army information over the mandates that the Pentagon unequivocally knew have been meant to be explicitly ‘voluntary.’”
“At a minimal,” Rempfer mentioned, “the DoD should attain out to all punished anthrax period vets and supply steerage to improve discharges, similar to it’s actively doing for COVID period vets.”
However the resolution he prefers is the STARRS-recommended “presidential pardon for all anthrax and COVID period vets, and modifications to the method to award treatments unconditionally, retroactively, and unilaterally, with out utility, which was clearly the President’s intent since 2018.”
