COVID-19 Mandates and Rollbacks

The Department of the Navy has issued a formal letter of apology to sailors and Marines discharged solely for refusing the Biden-era COVID‑19 vaccine mandate, with Under Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao saying in a video that, "To the sailors and marines who were wrongfully discharged during COVID, we failed you." Cao, the service’s chief operating and management officer, said the Navy is "righting this wrong" by correcting discharge records and welcoming affected personnel back, in line with President Trump’s January 2025 Executive Order 14184 directing all services to review such cases. The order applies across the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force and Coast Guard, and follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s December memo calling it "unconscionable" that thousands were separated with less‑than‑honorable discharges for refusing the shots. The Department of Veterans Affairs has estimated more than 8,000 service members were separated after the 2021 mandate, which was rescinded in 2023. The Navy guidance is part of a broader Pentagon effort to contact these former troops with information on possible reinstatement and restoration of benefits, and it deepens an already contentious political fight over how COVID policies reshaped the all‑volunteer force and how far the new administration will go to reverse them.