Deadline has passed — and nearly 2,700 Texas Guard troops have refused COVID shots
Texas Army National Guard troops stand by as Gov. Greg Abbott and other governors hold a press conference in Mission. Abbott on Dec. 16 told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin he will not direct the guard to follow a COVID-19 vaccination order. Enough soldiers in the Texas Army National Guard to almost fill a brigade have been put on notice: Get your coronavirus shots or get out of uniform. And more than a few appear headed toward the exits.
The guard said it does not give exact numbers on personnel strength, but with around 17,300 soldiers and 3,300 airmen, that means 2,422 soldiers and 264 members of the air guard are not vaccinated, a total of 2,686. A Texas National Guard soldier keeps an eye on the Rio Grande from a hilltop on a ranch north of Eagle Pass on Jan. 11, 2022.“This is going to affect the readiness of the guard and the nation,” said Nichols, 65, who lives near Wimberley. “There’s no way around it. I’m not sure how the active duty is getting around it. When you lose a of your forces, it’s going to have an impact on your readiness because you can’t replace them tomorrow.
The looming deadline reduced the number of unvaccinated troops from just two months ago, when 72 percent of all Texas Army National Guard soldiers had followed the Pentagon’s order, and especially compared with December, when only about a third had received their shots, according to a defense source.
Soldiers assigned to Operation Lone Star, a border security mission, can continue serving because it is funded by state taxpayers. “That’s the wrinkle here. But the Guard Bureau can insist, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a scrub for whatever percentage of names that we don’t have positive evidence that they have the shots, we will just selectively pull them off and they won’t get pay or points.’ At some point, there’s going to be an impasse” because the bureau can withhold the funding, Rodriguez said.
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