Military service members who were involuntarily discharged or coerced into retiring for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine pushed for reinstatements and back pay in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order in a meeting Wednesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials.
Arizona State Rep. Nick Kupper (R) was denied medical and religious exemptions from taking the experimental shots and was ultimately left with no choice but to retire after a 19-year U.S. Air Force career as a Master Sergeant — and was even formally reprimanded in 2022 for sharing his perspective on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Ted Macie was also pushed into early retirement from his career spanning two decades as a U.S. Navy Medical Corps Officer Lieutenant after blowing the whistle on alarming statistics showing a dramatic increase in heart issues, including myocarditis, in his patients who received the COVID-19 vaccine:
Both men described their retirements as “coerced” in interviews with Breitbart News on Thursday.
While then-Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin rescinded the August 2021 memorandum mandating that members of the Armed Forces be vaccinated against COVID-19 in January 2023 and Trump signed an order in January 2025 to “reinstate service members who were dismissed” with full “back pay and benefits,” the process to actually do so has been slow.
Trump’s order states that 43 of the more than 8,000 troops dismissed “elected to return to service under the Biden Administration and Secretary Austin” after the mandate was rescinded.
The DOD announced its plan to invite back service members who were involuntarily separated and those who voluntarily left service due to the mandate in April, but told Breitbart News in June that just 13 individuals had been reinstated. Both Kupper and Macie told Breitbart News on Thursday that they are unaware of any reinstatements under Hegseth at all.
Hegseth has publicly acknowledged that there had been hiccups impacting the timeline for reinstations, saying in April, “It hasn’t been perfect, and we know that.”
“We’re having an ongoing conversation with you to get it right,” the Pentagon leader said, as he signed a memorandum directing more clarity regarding the department’s efforts. “[We’re] working with the White House as well. We want anyone impacted by that vaccine mandate back into the military — people of conscience, warriors of conscience — back in our formations.”
Kupper, Macie, and others who were separated from the military due to the vaccine mandate attended this week’s closed-door meeting with Hegseth, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata, and Senior Advisor Stuart Scheller.
“I was invited to this listening session, and in my sense, the people that were there, that got the meeting going, were genuinely wanting to help,” Macie told Breitbart News. “They were asking questions. They were making sure that they understood things correctly — and this is coming from a very cynical person.”
He continued, “I don’t get too excited about anything, because everything has failed so far. But I truly believe they’re genuine about it, and they want to help. … But they’re up against the people that perpetuated this thing.”
A “large majority” of DOD officials “were complicit” in implementing the mandate, Macie added.
While there were 8,000-some service members who were “involuntarily separated” for not taking the vaccine according to the DOD, both Kupper and Macie estimated the total number including those who opted to retire early rather than be discharged to be in the tens of thousands.
“My rough ballpark is about 60,000 — I may be lowballing it,” said Kupper, whose mandate-driven separation from the Air Force motivated him to run for office.
Macie noted that there are people “who have it on their paperwork that they were forced out because of the shot,” but there are others, like himself, who were “separated through not promoting, but they wouldn’t put it in writing.”
“There’s a lot of nuance to it,” Kupper explained. “Let’s say someone just let their contract lapse because they knew, ‘I’m getting kicked out anyway.’ So they didn’t technically even apply for a voluntary discharge. They just let their contract finish, and then they separated as they would have normally. So it doesn’t look like anything special on paper, right? And so it gets unique.”
While he said “no concrete things” were promised by senior DOD officials in the meeting, Kupper noted that “some of the things that we told them definitely surprised them. They were unaware of certain things.”
“They didn’t live it and breathe it like we did. So it just makes sense, we’re going to have a deeper knowledge on it. Many of us were in lawsuits over this for years, for instance,” the state representative continued, before sharing a significant statement that Hegseth made.
“He said, ‘The only way we fail is when we quit,’” Kupper recalled. “And he was telling us about, you know, like, look, this is just the first step, this listening session. He’s like, we’re not quitting this. Like, yes, we will make mistakes. Nothing is perfect, right? But we’re going to continue on and keep molding and changing effectively. He’s saying we’re going to keep this process going and figure it out until we get it right and get everybody back if they want to be back.”
Tata shared that portion of Hegseth’s words on X after the meeting:
The retired service members present at the meeting want the Pentagon to form a task force to streamline the reinstatement process, which Macie is “convinced” will happen.
“What stood out to me is that [Hegseth] was already using the words ‘task force,’ which means he already had thought about it… and that — that’s something I’m convinced that’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say, this task force is going to happen.”
“It would be a huge ask on my time,” Kupper said of the proposed task force. “You know, I’ve got four kids at home still, and my wife works, and obviously I’m a legislator, so I have stuff — whether I’m in session or not — to do. But it’s one of those things where it’s so important to me, like I dropped everything that I had just to fly out to D.C. to do this.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
