During his inaugural address on Monday, President Trump vowed to reinstate the more than 8,000 service members, many of whom were discharged because of their religious objections to the shots.
"I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay," Trump said, "and I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty."
David Hacker of First Liberty Institute, which defended about 4,000 of those dismissed service members, says his organization is "thrilled"
"We're hopeful that he's going to follow through on that and provide back pay to the service members who were kicked out of the military for simply following the dictates of their conscience or of their religious beliefs," he adds.
Biden's Pentagon leaders have said the dismissals did not hurt readiness or morale. Still, procedures allowing those individuals to reapply for military service after the vaccine mandate was lifted were implemented. Only a few dozen pursued the program, according to Defense Department statistics.
Hacker, however, says Biden's vaccine mandate had a detrimental effect on America's military, and he is hopeful that President Trump will look for ways to restore the armed forces and rectify the wrongs that were done to those brave men and women.
Trump said he would fulfill his promise sometime this week, but so far, the Trump administration and Pentagon have not provided any information on how much the back pay will cost taxpayers or where the money would come from.
