Thousands of veterans discharged under the Biden administration for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine may become eligible to receive GI Bill education benefits.
The move aligns with President Trump’s executive order, Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate.
“The vaccine mandate was an unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members,” the order says. “Further, the military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received. Federal Government redress of any wrongful dismissals is overdue.”
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Biden administration removed 8,000 service members from the military due to the COVID vaccine. Many of these individuals received a discharge “that was characterized as less than fully honorable, which may have made them ineligible for GI Bill education benefits,” the department explained.
“Following Department of War reviews, 899 of these Veterans are now eligible for GI Bill education benefits, and thousands more could also regain GI Bill eligibility thanks to the executive order,” the VA noted.
“One of the most atrocious attacks on our military by the previous administration was the discharging and targeting of perfectly healthy warfighters who refused to take an experimental vaccine implemented by an illegal mandate,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement. “We must never let that happen again, and we must also right the wrongs of the past in order to restore trust. We at the Department of War and the VA are grateful for President Trump’s Executive Order reinstating GI Bill benefits for those veterans who were targeted for refusing the illegal COVID-19 vaccine mandate.”
VA Secretary Doug Collins said the previous administration’s “authoritarian COVID mandates upended the lives and livelihoods of thousands of service members and Veterans.”
Hegseth previously provided an update on the process to reinstate those who refused to comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Hegseth explained that the DOD is doing what it can to “reinstate those who were affected by that policy. It hasn’t been perfect, and we know that. We’re having an ongoing conversation with you to get it right, working with the White House as well.” He further asserted that the Department wants “anyone impacted by that vaccine mandate back into the military—people of conscience, warriors of conscience—back in our formations.”
