Oklahoma-Pentagon Vax Standoff
A dispute between Oklahoma’s governor and the Pentagon over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate is setting up the first critical test of the military’s authority to require National Guard troops to get the shot, and laying the groundwork for potential protests from other states.
Acting on an order from Gov. Kevin Stitt, Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the state’s adjutant general, advised troops that they aren’t required to get the shot and “no negative administrative or legal action” would be taken against them if they refuse.
Stitt has asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to consider suspending the mandate for members of the Oklahoma Guard.
David sends us an update.
Standoff Over Vaccines Between Oklahoma Governor and Pentagon Intensifies
Jennifer Steinhauer
WASHINGTON — A standoff between the governor of Oklahoma and the Pentagon over a coronavirus vaccine mandate for troops has turned into a stormy test of federal power, as President Joe Biden moves to require vaccinations for a broad swath of the American workforce.
Oklahoma’s newly appointed adjutant general for the National Guard, Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Mancino, announced last week on behalf of Gov. Kevin Stitt that guardsmen in the state would not be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The policy defies a Pentagon directive issued in August that makes vaccination mandatory for all troops, including the National Guard, by deadlines set by each service branch.
“The order I issued came directly from the governor. That is the lawful order to the men and women of the Oklahoma National Guard,” Mancino said in an interview, adding that he had been vaccinated.
Pentagon officials said Wednesday that failure to follow “valid medical readiness requirements” could “jeopardize” the status of service members, who could face dismissal or other punishment.
The legalities get murky in a hurry, and other red states are watching closely. Thanks, David.
Category: Big Pentagon, Guest Link
The Unreconstructed Rebel in me the stands shoulder to shoulder with the Oklahoma Troops. Do I need to join under their Flag, with my musket and my bag (and 3 days cooked rations)?
The Historian in me remembers that the whole issue of States Rights was settled back in 1865.
If these issues can’t be fixed with the ballot box, it may be getting close to getting settled with the cartridge box.
Lots of things out in Oklahoma that can go all ‘splodey. Just saying.
Let me know if you need a camp cook, Big Guy.
I don’t think it will come to much of anything. We have a history of rebellion against tyranny in this country, y’know.
OK, ok, KoB Damn, Bro 😀 …Let’s try to keep a kids day care out of it *this time*, K?
(◔_◔)
Chippy you sound like them ATF Boys that visited me back in ’95, right after I had just received a shipment of of 300# of Goex. Were’nt me, I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there. Shorely did have to account for every pound that we used during that Historical Program. They weren’t amused one bit when I told them they should know where it was used, they were walking around the site all weekend in the cowboy boots, hats and Dot.gov issued shades. Got a little sporting when my records of issue came up short the 25 #s that we used for the pyro-technic charges. I finally found one (1) charge that didn’t go off due to a bad igniter. They made a measurement of the amount of powder in that tube and compared it to the number of cannon shots for each pyro boom. Thank God I had a Lady Gun Bunny posted behind each gun making a tic mark when the piece fired.
Nopper, I was referring to the 12 Military Bases we got there, the ordnance stored, and the missile silos, along with the fighters and bombers. All 5 branches are represented in OK. Plus we got the Warriors of the 5 “Civilized Tribes” and the Comanche, Kiowa, Pawnee Troops. I think them Boys would raise up a Stand Watie Troop right quickly. Think any of them have much love for the Federal Pony Soldiers and their Long Knives?
https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-bases-in-oklahoma/
You missed one, Redleg…Camp Gruber, which as a cannon-cocker you should know because of whom it’s named for.
“The base is named after Brigadier General Edmund L. Gruber, a noted artillery officer and the original composer of the U.S. Field Artillery March, the source for the Army’s official song, “The Army Goes Rolling Along”.
Ol Poe’s been there in his business travels and there’s not much there but lots of boonies, but in the event of a major blowup between states and feds it would be an important training site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Gruber#:~:text=Camp%20Gruber%20is%20an%20Oklahoma%20Army%20National%20Guard,song%2C%20%22%20The%20Army%20Goes%20Rolling%20Along%20%22.
There’s also a good-sized OKNG Joint Force post and a separate training post on the NE side of OKC.
Right as rain Ol’ Poe. That linky that I grabbed FIRST (ht 2 NDHoosier) was lacking in some other spots too. Then the inherwennyz thingie went tits up for a few hours. Guess my main point is Govs, and We, The People need to be getting more fed up with the usurpers of our Rights as Citizens. The local militias formed the nucleus for the original Continental and US Army and was one reason why the Johnny Rebs were able to put a well trained fighting force in the field well before the Federals. Local militias were outlawed during the bayonet rule of Reconstruction and only later did these former Militias become part and parcel of the Federal Forces.
As pointed out in other places on this thread, the OK situation could get very interesting. Possibly Fort Sumter 2.0…or at the least, The Star of the West 2.0. Imagine the America that our grandchildren may be living in when they are our age.
I predicted this….
[The officials insist that Stitt has no legal standing,
although experts on the obscure laws governing the National Guard disagree.
They note that unless National Guard members are federally deployed,
they are under the jurisdiction of the governor of their state and therefore not subject to federal mandates.
“Guard members can only serve one boss at a time,” said John Goheen,
a spokesperson for the National Guard Association of the United States.]
Meaning…
Gov. Stitt may have overstepped his bounds here,
because he is making the Oklahoma National Guard NON-DEPLOYABLE.
AG Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino passed the buck back upstairs, to the Governor.
Good call… since this is apparently the very reason
WHY the Governor replaced the previous AG early.
National Guard Bureau, and the Joint Chiefs, will be on this
like the brain bug on a planet of Starship Troopers.
(Sorry everyone, unisex nude showering scene not included in this trailer.)
Made me look.
Some cocktease Tube of You channel put up pretty much the same trailer,
using the shower screen screenshot as a video thumbprint,
although it is NOT in this trailer (either).
MD61, I think it is the law of the land at Planet TAH, that ANY linky referencing Starship Troopers, is REQUIRED to include the shower scene.
Amen!
Hee Hee. I agree!
(slithers back under rock)
I would like to know more!
Here ya go Mj…We aim to please…you aim too, please. 😛
Age-restricted?
Am I too old?
Pretty much. May not be suitable for adults.
They wanted me to identify myself! No way!
Back to
“sitting on a park bench
eying little girls,
with bad intent…”
Plus (no shower scene though):
As dorky as that movie was (didn’t follow Heinlein’s political thread in the novel), I still love it.
They should have sprayed a lot of Fantastik on the bugs during the bug hunts. It makes bugs melt!!! Try it.
Would being non-deployable nowadays be a bad thing? The last time I remember our country being “at peace” was when I was in grade school and during a time when shit made sense. I hear some talk from Congress about going back to Afghanistan, but I think, since we pulled out, we should stay out. I am very weary of our government sacrificing American blood for vague, little gains (especially after seeing that sorry excuse for a pullout).
Non-deployable is always a bad thing. If you can’t deploy, you’re just a warm body filling a slot that someone else will have to do on a deployment. Not every service member has to deploy. Every service member has to be able to deploy.
I know. I’m just bitching about how things are.
It is my understanding that the national guard is not under federal control unless they are federalized, and thus are basically state militia? As to standing, he commands the Oklahoma Guard, so he tells them what to do, not the DOD.
My understanding too. However… and there’s always a however… my non-legal advice is to get a comfy spot on the couch, stock up on snacks and beer, because this is gonna be an interesting court case to watch.
Might as well stock up, anyway, SFC D. We may face another idjit lockdown mandate or some other such stupid thing.
Nothing will surprise me in this decade – not no mo’!
Except that AFAIK the National Guard is PAID by the Federal Government. Not by the state. All their equipment is also paid for by the Federal, not state, governments. And all those dual-status employees of the guard (i.e. civil service jobs that require membership in the Guard as a condition of employment) are FEDERAL jobs.
So, I could potentially see the Federal government saying “OK we won’t kick you to the curb if you don’t get the shot, but we won’t pay you, either.”
You think the State of Oklahoma wants to take on the duty of paying all those Guardsmen out of the state budget? 😉
There’s an old saying that goes “if you take the King’s coin, you take the King’s chance.” All those OK National Guardsmen are taking federal $$.
And there’s no such thing as money with no strings attached.
“if you take the King’s coin, you take the King’s chance.”
Pretty much what I think this will come down to.
The military version of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Clarification: the intent was that my quote was the civilian version of the military version given above.
The laws are clear. All DOD needs to do is Federalize the States’ Guards and keep them on the payroll for the duration of the shot series and expected 72 hours of side effects from the last shot. My guess, however, is that it would be expensive, and might require Congressional authorization to activate that many Guardsmen at once.
LMFAO, this *almost* makes me want to reenlist.
Can I bring my own weapons??
I bet they’d take my broke down, disabled, fat ass too.
While the law appears to be on the federal government’s side in this dispute, it is highly unlikely that the governor picked this fight without first consulting his state attorney general and perhaps other Republican governors.
It is conceivable, what with Biden’s horrendous favorability ratings (36% the latest and that from a friendly poll, Quinnipiac) and all the other disasters his administration is neck-deep in, that this is a Republican ploy to make the Democrats look even more heavy-handed and oppressive, further alienating the Dems from greater numbers of voters.
That and the fact that there is already established court precedent regarding mandating experimental vaccines back to when Rumsfeld was attempting to force anthrax on troops, which could easily be construed as it being an illegal order and thus not liable to be obeyed.
“Stitt has asked….”
Presumably for forgiveness after, rather then permission first.
Yup. I say we handle COVID-19 the same way George Washington handled smallpox in the Continental Army.
Oh, wait…
Straw man, line one.
Not your best effort. Try again.
Same as it ever was. Buck the system, take your chances, pay the price.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/06/17/troops-who-refused-anthrax-vaccine-paid-a-high-price/
NG units are a sizeable fraction of our deployable combat power.
If they get all snarled up because of DC bungling, who elsewhere might decide it was safe to get frisky?
Makes you wonder who is pulling strings in DC, eh?
It is my understanding that there is not one single combat arms unit in the Army Reserve, but just about all of the National Guard units are combat arms. Is that true?
With the Reserve, it varies based on how you define Combat Arms – either way, there are very few.
National Guard has a high proportion of Combat Arms units (again, dependent on your definition of such), but not “almost all.”
I see this as a non-issue, as anyone who went to basic training already got jabbed with who-knows-what multiple times in a row, without the medics asking nicely if we conscientiously objected to it. Didn’t like it? A Drill SGT was quick to remind you of that blank check you wrote to Uncle Sam. At least they’re not injecting us with syphilis this time around (as far as we know).