{"id":1655560,"date":"2022-09-23T18:36:32","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T22:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1655560"},"modified":"2022-09-23T18:37:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T22:37:35","slug":"admirals-demand-answers-over-coast-guard-cadets-allegedly-expelled-for-vaccine-exemption-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/admirals-demand-answers-over-coast-guard-cadets-allegedly-expelled-for-vaccine-exemption-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"Admirals Demand Answers Over Coast Guard Cadets Allegedly Expelled For Vaccine Exemption Requests"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fadmirals-demand-answers-over-coast-guard-cadets-allegedly-expelled-for-vaccine-exemption-requests%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1655560&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>When <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/joe-biden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">President Biden<\/a> declared on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d last week, \u201cThe pandemic is over,\u201d he made more of an observation than a declaration. The vast majority of Americans left <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/covid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">COVID<\/a> fear and restrictions behind long ago and have gone back to living their lives in much the same way as they did before 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Yet not everyone has been able to move on. On September 22, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, allegedly discharged seven cadets after denying their requests for religious exemptions to the military\u2019s COVID vaccine mandate. Now, two highly-decorated admirals are demanding to know why.<\/p>\n<p>All between the ages of 18 and 22, the cadets say when their religious exemption appeals were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/health\/cadets-ordered-off-coast-guard-academy-campus-for-refusing-covid-vaccination\">denied<\/a> on August 18, they were told they must leave campus in less than 24 hours or face being escorted off the grounds by guards. This forced two, who did not have homes to which they could return, to respectively live out of a car and find refuge with another cadet\u2019s family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I tried to explain that I did not have a good home life, and was in tears about having to return to my family, I was simply [asked], \u2018Why hadn\u2019t you thought before of what to do if this happened?\u2019\u201d one of the cadets, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire. \u201cThey told me I needed to patch it up with my family. I was not given any support or offered additional housing opportunities.\u201d When she later contacted the Academy to let them know her family was not, as she\u2019d expected, willing to take her in, she says it took the Academy two days to respond, and then only to tell her to \u201cbe ready to engage local law enforcement if needed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the Academy allegedly did not provide the cadets with money for travel, they were obliged to charge hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses to their credit cards, leaving them in dire financial straits while they waited for reimbursements they say they have yet to receive. They then lived in limbo for over a month after their sudden disenrollment, unclear if they could pursue jobs or other education as they waited to find out their fate with the Coast Guard.<\/p>\n<p>All of this treatment, Ret. Vice Admiral William \u201cDean\u201d Lee and Ret. Rear Admiral Pete Brown tell The Daily Wire, is unacceptable.<\/p>\n<p>Brown, himself an Academy graduate and former instructor, says it\u2019s becoming harder to be proud of the military branch he served. \u201cThe core values on which the Coast Guard ought to be operating are respect and devotion to duty,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd these are young folks [who] really have a service orientation. They\u2019re trying to do for the country, not trying to take from the country. And that opportunity is now being denied to them for reasons that truly seem arbitrary and capricious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lee, who served as director for the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Task Force East joint interagency Maritime Counter Narcotics and Alien Migration mission, says the president\u2019s recent comments make the decision even more indefensible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the commander-in-chief himself says the pandemic is over, it\u2019s time to let loose of this stuff and stop talking about it. Stop discharging trained people who want to serve, who are ready to serve. And let\u2019s stop creating these gaps because the gaps equal reduction in readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lee points out that one of the cadets, a black, Haitian immigrant, was set to be honored with an award for exemplary leadership, as voted on by his peers. He received the news in an email following his disenrollment. Now that he\u2019s been discharged, he will never receive it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat this young man was elected for that leadership award by his company is big deal,\u201d Lee says. \u201cYou get voted by your peers if you actually have leadership capability. So is the argument, \u2018While we find him to be an extraordinarily capable and suitable leader, we find him unsuitable for military service because he won\u2019t take a shot that is unnecessary and won\u2019t even prevent the disease, as we now know?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Coast Guard\u2019s actions mark a striking difference from other service academies like West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy, which have allowed officers-in-training to remain while the issue makes its way through the courts.<\/p>\n<p>Already, three federal courts have issued injunctions prohibiting the Air Force, Marines, and Navy, from penalizing their service members who have outstanding religious exemption requests. Most recently, on September 16, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the federal government\u2019s request to overturn a lower court order protecting service members from facing disciplinary action over faith-based refusals to take the vaccine. This likely led to the Marines and the Navy deciding to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/marine-corps-rescinds-penalties-service-members-seeking-vaxx-religious-accommodations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rescind<\/a> their policies of penalizing service members for claiming religious exemptions.<\/p>\n<p>Even the Department of Defense Inspector General<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When President Biden declared on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d last week, \u201cThe pandemic is over,\u201d he made more of an observation than a declaration. The vast majority of Americans left COVID fear and restrictions behind long ago and have gone back to living their lives in much the same way as they did before 2020. Yet not &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1655562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1655560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1655562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}