At a joint press conference, Democratic U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro, Gil Cisneros and Chrissy Houlahan introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would reinstate the mandate requiring service members to get the flu vaccine.
San Antonio’s Castro and Houlahan, who represents a district near Philadelphia, also condemned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for repealing the mandate in April, a “short-sighted” act they said triggered the current flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base.
At present, 284 troops at the San Antonio installation are infected and four are hospitalized, Castro said.
Since the 1940s, every service member has been required to get the flu vaccine, and the military has avoided major outbreaks for decades. However, it took just two months for an outbreak to occur at Lackland — the nation’s largest military base — after Hegseth’s April repeal.
“Any policy decision affecting our service members’ quality of life should be guided by science, not fringe theories,” said Cisneros, who represents California’s San Gabriel Valley.
Adherents to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda believe vaccines can cause autism and other ailments, and pushback against vaccinations requirements have become common talking points for many right-wing politicos.
When announcing that he was repealing the mandate in an April video, Hegseth cited “medical autonomy” and called earlier Pentagon requirements “absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our war fighting capabilities.”
During Lackland’s current outbreak, a trainee named Keon McDaniel died June 16 at Brooke Army Medical Center after suffering a medical emergency. At the conference, Castro demanded an investigation to determine whether McDaniel’s death was related to the outbreak.
Castro added that Hegseth put soldiers’ lives at risk and has jeopardized the USA’s military readiness in the process.
“A soldier who is sick cannot fight effectively,” Castro said.
Houlahan, who served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves, called for military decisions “based on evidence and not on ideology.”
“Readiness begins at healthiness,” she said, blasting Trump’s Defense Department for “turning aside from knowledge and evidence and science … not because the science had changed, not because military medicine had changed, but because ideology had changed.”
Only 40% of new recruits opted for the vaccine after the mandate was repealed two months prior to the outbreak, the Associated Press reports.
“When our troops volunteer to risk their lives for our country, the least we can do is not ask them to risk their lives because their leaders abandoned decades of military medicine,” Houlahan said. “The House Rules Committee’s refusal to make our amendment in order was a missed opportunity to right Secretary Hegseth’s wrong and to put military readiness ahead of politics. We owe our servicemembers better.”
Infectious disease spreads very quickly in the close quarters of military boot camps, Houlahan added. Lackland handles roughly 700 new recruits weekly, according to the Military Times.
Research has also shown that the high-stress, low-sleep conditions of bootcamp further raise the risks of disease.
In response to the Lackland outbreak, the Pentagon said boot camps for all military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits.
“In April, Secretary [Pete] Hegseth called the flu mandate irrational and absurd,” Castro said. “What’s absurd about keeping those who serve our nation safe? No president or secretary should be able to play politics and put the health of our troops at risk. Flu spreads quickly and many suffer the consequences. It took the Pentagon over a month to approve Lackland’s request to reinstate the mandate. In the meantime, many more trainees got sick.”
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