by WorldTribune Staff, July 22, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
On Aug. 24, 2021, the Biden-Harris regime mandated U.S. military personnel get the Covid shot. The directive was issued by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin following the full FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech injection.
The mandate remained in effect until the Republican-led Congress officially repealed it in January 2023.
A week after he returned to office, on Jan. 27, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling the military’s Covid shot mandate “an unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members.” The president directed the Pentagon to reinstate members of the military who were unfairly discharged. He also granted them back pay and benefits.
The Department of War has extended the application deadline for these individuals to rejoin until April 1, 2027.
So why, then, are thousands of those service members still being denied back pay?
Attorney Dale Saran, on behalf of 1,324 soldiers, sailors, airmen and guardsmen, has filed three class actions lawsuits seeking back pay.
Saran, a retired major in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he was a judge advocate for more than 20 years, and three other attorneys founded a firm called Military Back Pay in 2023. The lawsuits were filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeking back pay and other compensation for the plaintiffs, who’d been discharged or pushed out of the military for their refusal to get the Covid injection.
One of the suits is for Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines and Space Force; another is for the National Guard; and a third is for the Coast Guard.
“We’re three years in and no one’s gotten relief yet. No one’s gotten paid. No one’s apologized,” Saran told The MAHA Report last week.
On July 15, the Department of War issued a statement saying that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is directing an outside organization to do a thorough review of the Department of War’s actions related to the Covid shot – an After-Action Review – to go over “lessons learned to improve future policy.”
According to a report by independent journalist Margaret Menge:
The internal panel will be led by Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata, a retired Brigadier General in the U.S. Army who came back into the Pentagon last year as a Trump appointee and is now one of Hegseth’s top deputies.
Here’s the quote from Tata that was included in the statement:
“The Department is fully committed to restoring honor and rebuilding trust with the warfighters impacted by the Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we continue to prioritize reinstatement, deliver remedies, and establish permanent safeguards against future mandates.”
Saran said he has contacted attorneys at the Department of Justice, sending letters and proposals for settling the cases.
“They didn’t respond at all, and then it was ‘not interested,’ ” he said. “Nobody cares. They hate us because we’re trying to make them pay full freight for what was done.”
Saran estimated that around 100,000 members of the military were discharged or constructively discharged over their refusal to get the jab, or left voluntarily after months of extreme pressure and intimidation over their refusal to get it. This includes about 8,500 active duty troops, 22,500 Reservists on active duty and 69,000 Guardsmen.
One of the discharged service members in the class action lawsuits, Derrick Wynne, told The Maha Report: “In the beginning, none of us needed it, nobody wanted it.”
Wynne, who joined the Army in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic at the age of 29 and was an infantryman stationed at Fort Hood, in Texas, said soldiers were pressured to get the shot, and they began to comply. “They wore people down.”
Then the mandate came and things changed, he said.
“They created this crab-in-a-bucket environment. The men you expected to protect you in battle were just folding,” says Wynne.
He said the superior officers “hammered all the people below them” to get the vaccine on a daily basis.
Wynne said he continued to refuse to get the shot and did not apply for a religious exemption because it would have been tantamount to agreeing that the Army’s vaccine mandate was lawful, when he said he was sure it wasn’t.
After his general discharge – not dishonorable but not honorable – Wynne was without a home for a year, unable to get a job or enroll in school and not eligible even for government benefits, The Maha Report noted. He had to move in with his girlfriend’s parents, which he says was a “huge hit” to his pride and made him feel “like a 30-year-old bum.”
The report noted that Wynne said he called his state representative, and his Congressman, Rep. Brian Babin, and even approached Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at an event, asking for help. But no one would meet with him. He said Abbott promised someone would get in touch with him, but no one ever did.
Wynne appears in the new film “Duty to Disobey“, produced by Children’s Health Defense.
Saran says the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records and the Board for Correction of Naval Records, and also the Coast Guard counsel, have taken the position that “if you don’t reinstate, you get nothing.”
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