(WASHINGTON) — Intelligence dispatches, memoranda, and cables between U.S. government agencies in the years leading up to and after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination nearly 60 years ago have been released by the National Archives.
Fifty-eight years ago in Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, but since Oswald himself was killed shortly after the assassination, questions lingered about whether anyone else was involved, feeding conspiracy theories.
President Joe Biden ordered the release of the documents in October but it’s being done in stages, with thousands remaining secret amid intelligence agency concerns about what they could reveal.
While there appeared to be no explosive revelations, among the documents released on Wednesday were CIA memos discussing Lee Harvey Oswald’s previously disclosed trips to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City months before President Kennedy was killed.
One of those CIA memos — written the day after the assassination — says Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet embassy that September.
“According to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Lee Oswald was in the Soviet Embassy there on 23 September and spoke with Consul Valeriy Vladimirovich,” the document said.
“Oswald called the Soviet Embassy in 1 October, identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating the above and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was ‘anything concerning the telegram to Washington,'” read the memo from a high-ranking CIA official.
Oswald — who was married to a Russian woman — was trying to get visas to move to the Soviet Union, according to the documents.
Another newly released document shows a tip from a U.S. official in Australia two days after the assassination — an anonymous call to the embassy from a man claiming to be a chauffeur for Soviet diplomats who said the Soviets had “probably” financed the assassination.
That, U.S. officials asserted, was a crank call.
Biden has ordered the review of the remaining 14,000 documents and the National Archives is required to release those by December 2022 — unless intelligence agencies raise issues.
The National Archives says the vast majority of documents related to the assassination have been made publicly available.
ABC News’ Jack Date, Quinn Owen and Lucien Bruggeman contributed to this report.
(MAYFIELD, Ky.) — Workers at the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory where eight people were killed by tornadoes last weekend filed a class-action lawsuit against their employer late Wednesday night.
The factory was destroyed when tornadoes tore through nine states, leaving 89 people dead.
The lawsuit, filed in the Graves Circuit Court in Kentucky by Elijah Johnson and 109 other “similarly situated employees,” alleges that the candle factory required them to continue working, even with the threat of an expected dangerous tornado.
One employee claimed she was threatened with disciplinary action if she went home early on the night tornadoes were expected.
The candle factory allegedly threatened to fire any employees that left because of the expected tornado, just hours before it destroyed the factory, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit claims the factory showed “flagrant indifference to the rights of Plaintiff Johnson and to the other similarly situated Plaintiffs with a subjective awareness that such conduct will result in human death and/or bodily injuries.”
Workers were allegedly not informed of the danger of the incoming tornado nor did supervisors tell them what was “really going on,” according to the court filing.
Mayfield Consumer Products CEO Troy Propes said the company is establishing an emergency fund to assist employees and their families.
The employees are seeking a jury trial, compensation, punitive damages and legal fees, all with interest.
“Management at that factory caused, oversaw, and facilitated a shirking of decency with regard to duties of care, and faithful employees are now injured or dead, two weekends before Christmas,” Attorney William Davis said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Propes told ABC News that the company is conducting an independent review of procedures separate from an investigation by the governor’s office and will review methods and procedures to see that they were properly followed.
In previous news reports, the factory denied that workers were threatened.
“It’s absolutely untrue,” Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for Mayfield Consumer Products told NBC News. “We’ve had a policy in place since COVID began. Employees can leave any time they want to leave and they can come back the next day.”
Ferguson told NBC News that managers and team leaders undergo a series of emergency drills that follow guidelines of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
“Those protocols are in place and were followed,” he said.
He denied that managers told employees that leaving their shifts meant risking their jobs, according to NBC News.
A spokesperson for Mayfield Consumer Products did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — The remaining 12 hostages from a U.S.-based missionary group have been released by the Haitian gang that had held them for two months, Haitian authorities and the missionary group confirmed Thursday.
Their release was secured two months to the day after they were first detained by the notoriously violent group that had demanded $1 million for each of the 16 Americans and one Canadian, including five children.
“We glorify God for answered prayer—the remaining twelve hostages are FREE! Join us in praising God that all seventeen of our loved ones are now safe. Thank you for your fervent prayers throughout the past two months. We hope to provide more information as we are able,” Christian Aid Ministries said in a statement.
Haitian police confirmed to ABC News that the hostages were released Thursday morning in a suburb of the country’s capital Port-au-Prince, and a Haitian National Police patrol picked them up.
It’s unclear if that ransom was paid for their release.
The gang, known as 400 Mawozo, released two of the hostages — a couple — in late November as a humanitarian gesture because one of them was sick. Last week, three more missionaries were released, but Christian Aid Ministries declined to provide more information on their identities or how their release was secured.
All 17 missionaries were taken on Oct. 16 as they were returning from a visit to an orphanage in an area dominated by 400 Mawozo, one of the powerful criminal gangs that have operated with impunity in Haiti.
Haiti was devastated by a powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake this August that killed over 2,200 people — and is still reeling from the assassination of its president in July, the constitutional crisis he had created, and the political chaos that has followed his killing.
President Joe Biden has said he was regularly updated on U.S. efforts to free the missionary group, which involved the FBI, the State Department, the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, and other government agencies. It’s unclear if they played a role in their release Thursday.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Defense attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, began to present their case on Thursday after a judge denied their request to allow three of their anticipated witnesses to testify under a pseudonym or using only their first names.
In her decision, Judge Alison Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote that the court, “after significant independent research,” could not identify a single case in which a court has previously granted the use of pseudonyms to defense witnesses, leading her to believe that the request was unprecedented.
Nathan ruled that, unlike the government’s witnesses who were granted anonymity, the defense’s witnesses are expected to deny any sexual misconduct by Epstein and Maxwell, so they would not qualify as victims entitled to such protection.
The defense’s claims regarding the high-profile nature of the case failed to sway the judge.
“The Defense argues that anonymity is necessary to protect its witnesses from scrutiny and harassment because of the significant publicity this case has garnered,” Nathan wrote. “But these generalized concerns are present in every high-profile criminal case. They do not present the rare circumstances that prior courts have found justify the use of pseudonyms.”
The defense appears to be centered on downplaying Maxwell’s role in Epstein’s life and highlighting the fallibility of human memory following two weeks of testimony from multiple women who say Maxwell frequently facilitated, and sometimes participated in, their sexual abuse by Epstein when they were underage.
Thursday’s first witness, Maxwell’s former personal assistant Cimberly Espinosa, described Maxwell as Epstein’s “estate manager,” and said that while Maxwell and Epstein “behaved like a couple,” they never lived together, and that their relationship changed when they both began to date other people.
Espinosa described Epstein as “a giver” and “a kind person,” and testified that during her six years of employment, she never saw either Epstein or Maxwell behave inappropriately with underage girls.
During cross-examination, however, she acknowledged that she worked in Epstein’s office and never at his homes, where Maxwell’s accusers allege their abuse took place.
A subsequent witness, University of California-Irvine psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus, testified that sometimes people “remember things differently than they actually were.” Loftus, an expert on human memory, is not permitted to testify directly about any of Maxwell’s accusers, many of whom provided gut-wrenching tales of abuse — but she said that “emotion is no guarantee you’re dealing with an authentic memory.”
Human memory “doesn’t work like a recording device,” Loftus said, and people can “fall sway to misinformation and their memory becomes inaccurate.”
Maxwell faces a six-count indictment for allegedly conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls between 1994 and 2004. She has been held without bail since her arrest in July 2020 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
It’s unclear whether Maxwell will take the stand during her trial. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has dealt another blow to Texas abortion providers waging war against SB8 in order to restore a constitutional right for millions across the state.
After a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled last week that a very narrow challenge to the law, which is a near-total ban on abortion, could proceed, the providers asked the justices to expeditiously return the case to a lower court so the litigation could get underway.
Normally, there’s a 25-day delay between when the Court issues a decision and it’s formally registered.
Gorsuch, who authored the majority opinion in the case, granted the request on Thursday. But instead of directing the matter to a U.S. District Court where the proceedings began, he returned the case to the highly conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — a move that could both slow things down and make it even more difficult for providers to prevail.
Texas has said it will ask the Appeals Court to seek clarification on SB8 from the Texas Supreme Court before moving the case forward. The abortion providers opposed that move as an unnecessary delay.
The Gorsuch decision is also striking in that it breaks with what appears to be Chief Justice John Roberts’ expectation that the case would have returned to the U.S. District Court for immediate relief. Roberts, in his opinion in the case, said that “the District Court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay.”
The federal judge who would have picked up the case was Robert Pittman, the same judge who ruled against SB8 in a sweeping opinion earlier this year.
Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a comment, “The Supreme Court left only a small sliver of our case intact, and it’s clear that this part of the case will not block vigilante lawsuits from being filed. It’s also clear that Texas is determined to stop the plaintiffs from getting any relief in even the sliver of the case that is left.”
“Meanwhile,” he continued, “Texans have been without abortion access for more than 100 days, and there is no end in sight. The Supreme Court has let Texas nullify constitutional rights and upend our system of justice.”
The Texas law, which was allowed to go into effect this fall, bans physicians from providing abortions “if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat,” including embryonic cardiac activity, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
While this has reportedly banned a majority of abortions that would’ve previously been performed, doctors in Texas are still providing abortions in accordance with the law.
Whole Woman’s Health, the independent provider organization with several locations in Texas that is fighting SB8, is now providing abortion care — in accordance with the law — for free. The clinic is able to do so because of grant funding, Whole Woman’s Health confirmed to ABC News.
ABC News’ Alexandra Svokos contributed to this report.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday permanently lifted its restriction on the abortion pill mifepristone that required providers to dispense the drug in person, allowing it to be delivered by mail.
The decision is subject to state laws that can criminalize the practice. But the FDA move could still have significant consequences for women, particularly in rural areas where it might be harder for women to find a clinic or doctor that will administer the drug in person.
In its updated guidance online, the FDA cited the need to “reduce burden on patient access and the health care delivery system.”
Abortion rights groups cheered the move but said more needs to be done to ease access.
“While the action today will go a long way for people seeking care, other barriers remain and must be lifted once and for all,” said Destiny Lopez, co-president of All* Above All.
Mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone needed to support a pregnancy, is given to women within the first 10 weeks. The pill is taken with another drug called misoprostol, which causes cramping and bleeding to empty the uterus.
The FDA had stopped enforcing the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone last spring, citing the risks of COVID and noting the drug’s strong safety record since it hit the market more than two decades ago.
Women still must obtain the pill through a certified health care provider.
While abortion-rights advocates say the decision protects a woman’s right to privacy in obtaining a legal abortion, opponents insist the practice is dangerous and puts women’s lives at risk.
“The Biden administration’s reckless move puts countless women and unborn children in danger. Abortion activists’ longtime wish has been to turn every post office and pharmacy into an abortion center,” said Sue Liebel, state policy director for the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List.
Thursday’s decision doesn’t mean that every woman will be able to get the pill through the mail.
According to The Guttmacher Institute, which tracks state policies on the abortion pill, 19 states already require a provider to be physically present when administering the pill and prohibit telemedicine when prescribing it.
ABC News’ Alexandra Svokos contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A storm system that spawned possibly multiple tornadoes across America’s heartland on Wednesday night — rare for December — has left a trail of destruction and hundreds of thousands without power.
At least five people were killed in the storms, according to The Associated Press, including three in Kansas killed in car crashes caused by blinding dirt kicked up by the strong winds.
At least 23 tornadoes were reported across four states — Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin — between Wednesday and Thursday, with at least six so far confirmed by the National Weather Service.
As of 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, more than 332,000 customers were without power across the Midwest, with Michigan and Wisconsin accounting for the highest volume of outages, according to data collected by PowerOutage.US.
A twister touched down in Plainview, Minnesota, just outside Rochester, on Wednesday evening, after tornado threats were issued for Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the National Weather Service. It was the first time Minnesota recorded a tornado in December, and the first-ever tornado watch and tornado warning to be issued for the state in December.
Wisconsin saw its first December tornado since 1970, with two so far confirmed, including an EF-2 in Neillsville.
The nearby Rochester Fire Department said in a statement on Facebook that its officers had a “busy night” responding to 35 calls for help during the “record storm and wind gusts.” Incidents included multiple small fires, gas leaks, downed power lines and other hazards caused by falling trees. The most significant event was a burning transformer on a power pole that spread to a nearby detached garage, setting the structure ablaze. There were no injuries and the nearby home was not impacted by the fire, Rochester police said.
A tornado was confirmed in Hartland, Minnesota, about 65 miles southwest of Rochester. About 35 to 40 houses in the surrounding Freeborn County were damaged, mostly minor, with Hartland being the worst-hit city. Commercial buildings in the area suffered “substantial damage” and several power lines were knocked down, according to the Freeborn County Emergency Management. There were no storm-related injuries.
Meanwhile, extensive storm damage was reported in Stanley, Wisconsin, where a tornado was confirmed. The Stanley Police Department said in a statement on Facebook that the storm resulted in property damage throughout the city but no injuries.
“Daybreak will reveal the true extent of damages within the city,” Stanley police said, “but we are certain this storm will bring out the true definition of community as we begin to recover and move forward.”
The storm system, along with a cold front, will stall over the Mid-South and Ohio Valley regions over the next few days, bringing heavy rain to some states in the Midwest and South that were hit hard by deadly tornadoes last weekend, according to the latest forecast from the National Weather Service.
Multiple tornadoes are unusual for December in the United States. While twisters can happen any time of year, the greatest threat is typically in spring and summer with the peak season on the earlier side for more southern states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul, Max Golembo, Will Gretsky and Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration has blacklisted and sanctioned dozens of Chinese government research institutes and private-sector tech firms, accusing them of weaponizing technology for use at home and abroad, the U.S. departments of Commerce and Treasury announced Thursday.
In particular, the U.S. warned that these entities were working as part of a broader Chinese government strategy to develop and deploy biotechnology, including “brain-control weaponry,” for possible offensive use and as part of its crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities — a campaign that the U.S. has determined constitutes genocide.
The penalties seek to bar U.S. technology from being exported to these projects or block their access to the U.S. financial system.
“The scientific pursuit of biotechnology and medical innovation can save lives. Unfortunately, the PRC is choosing to use these technologies to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, using an acronym for China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China.
“We cannot allow U.S. commodities, technologies, and software that support medical science and biotechnical innovation to be diverted toward uses contrary to U.S. national security,” she added in a statement.
In total, 12 Chinese research institutes and 22 Chinese tech firms have been blacklisted by her agency and barred from any exports or transfers of U.S. technology, except in limited cases with a license. Chief among them is China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its 11 research institutes.
Taken together, they “use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry,” the Commerce Department said in its public notice Thursday.
It’s unclear what kind of weaponry might already exist, but Chinese military leaders have talked for years about biotechnology as creating new “offensive capability,” including “brain control” weapons and “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”
“China’s research focus on these technologies is not unique. What is unique is their declared intent to weaponize their inventions,” said retired Lt. Col. Stephen Ganyard, the former top U.S. diplomat for military affairs.
These inventions could include “the stuff of science fiction, such as brain-controlled weaponry” that would allow “a Chinese commando to discharge a weapon with just a thought, not a trigger finger,” according to Craig Singleton, a former U.S. diplomat who is now an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
That could give China military and intelligence advances over the U.S., per Singleton, although it’s unclear if the Pentagon is developing similar weapons programs.
“Some of these technologies may not be easily contained and could have disastrous second- and third-order consequences on civilian populations. China’s seeking to weaponize advanced technologies is putting the whole world at risk of unforeseen and uncontainable consequences,” added Ganyard, an ABC News contributor.
For now, it seems China has focused their alleged use against domestic targets, including the Uighurs in the country’s westernmost province, known formally as Xinjiang.
“Private firms in China’s defense and surveillance technology sectors are actively cooperating with the government’s efforts to repress members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Brian Nelson, the senior Treasury Department official for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The Treasury Department designated eight more private firms, cutting them off from the U.S. financial system and threatening sanctions on those that do business with them, for reportedly working with Xinjiang authorities.
That includes developing facial recognition software, cloud computing, drones, and GPS technology, among other artificial intelligence tools.
“One such AI software could recognize persons as being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority and send automated alarms to government authorities,” according to the Treasury, while another firm helped “develop a transcription and translation tool for the Uyghur language to enable authorities to scan electronic devices.”
It’s estimated between one and nearly two million Uighurs and other minorities, like Kazakhs, have been detained in mass “re-education” camps where they are used as forced labor and are taught Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
In addition, independent researchers, Uighur activists, and the U.S. government have accused China of a mass sterilization campaign to sink Uighur birth rates, which have declined precipitously in recent years.
While the majority of the blacklisted firms were designated because of their ties to China’s so-called “civilian-military fusion strategy,” where civilian fields like medicine and biotechnology are allegedly weaponized to support the military, a handful were also designated for exporting sensitive technology to Iran.
That strategy has alarmed U.S. officials in recent years, starting with the Trump administration, which launched a robust all-of-government effort to stymie it. That included deploying this Commerce Department blacklist repeatedly to ban U.S. exports to Chinese firms that the People’s Liberation Army could then access.
The Biden administration has carried that policy on and expanded it — announcing last week during Biden’s Summit for Democracy a small group of countries committed to blocking similar technology exports to China, including the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.
(ATLANTA) — The CDC’s advisory committee recommended Thursday that people who have a choice should get an mRNA vaccine, either Pfizer or Moderna, over the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a review of new CDC data on rare blood clots linked to J&J.
The rare blood clots are not a new safety concern, and the J&J vaccine has already become far less common in the U.S. after it was given an FDA warning label about the clotting condition. But more data that confirmed a slightly higher rate of clotting cases and deaths than was previously reported caused the CDC and FDA to take another look at the data this week.
The CDC has now confirmed a total of at least 54 cases and nine deaths from the severe clotting event, which is called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia or TSS, out of the 17 million people who have gotten the J&J vaccine in the US.
Though it’s very rare, the data led CDC experts to favor mRNA vaccines by comparison, particularly because there are so many mRNA vaccines available in the US and people are less likely to be limited.
There could also be more cases and deaths, because TSS is under-diagnosed and could be underreported, the CDC said.
The clotting is more common among women in their 30s and 40s but has also been seen in adult men and women of all ages.
The experts were very clear, however, that the J&J vaccine should not be taken off the shelves and is still far more beneficial than not getting any vaccine at all.
In certain parts of the U.S., particularly among prison populations, people dealing with homelessness, or rural parts of the country, the J&J vaccine is most common. And outside of the U.S., J&J has played a huge role in vaccinating populations in low-income countries — a growing priority as it becomes clear that variants will continue to emerge until vaccination is widespread around the globe.
“In the setting where there are no alternative COVID-19 vaccines, the benefits of the J&J vaccine outweigh the risk. This is important in global situations where there may not be other COVID vaccines available,” CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver said in a presentation to the committee on the cost-benefit analysis of J&J vaccines.
With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, though, the protection against COVID was considered better and the side effects less severe, the CDC analysis found.
“Due to both higher vaccine effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines and the severity of safety issues seen with J&J vaccines, in the setting of widely available mRNA vaccines in the U.S., the benefit-risk balance of the mRNA vaccines is more favorable than for the Janssen vaccine,” she said.
There was also discussion about the recovery from TSS, which often leads to brain bleeding and can be a harder recovery than myocarditis, the heart inflammation condition linked to the mRNA vaccines that is also a rare safety concern.
“It’s important to note that there are differences in the severity of these vaccine associated events. In myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines … at a three-month follow up, over half reported no symptoms and over 90% were fully recovered by cardiologist or health care provider, and there have been no confirmed deaths,” Oliver said.
“For TTS after the Janssen COVID vaccines, there’s around a 15% mortality rate and 17% required discharge to a post-acute care rehabilitation facility,” she said.
The experts on the committee were largely in agreement with the recommendation, supporting a push toward Pfizer or Moderna over J&J when available but continuing to offer J&J as opposed to no vaccination.
“I recognize the drawbacks of the Janssen vaccine. However, I look at this as an issue of the trolley problem in ethics, where you’re driving the trolley and you have to decide whether you’re going to go down one track and have one person die or go down a different track and have 10 people die,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, a doctor in Ithaca, New York.
“If we take away the Jansen vaccine, and people … cannot get the mRNA vaccine, we have all these complications from getting COVID disease. And so even though there are significant risks to the vaccine, if it’s the only one that is an option, I want it to be available,” he said.
Dr. Beth Bell, a professor of public health at the University of Washington, said she thought the “preferential recommendation” would make it very clear that experts were concerned about the side effects but wanted to maintain individual choice.
“I would not recommend the Janssen to my family members. On the other hand, I think we do have to recognize that different people make different choices and if they are appropriately informed, I don’t think we should remove that option,” she said.
Some were more determined to avoid it, however.
“I just have a real problem with a recommendation for anyone to give a vaccine that 1 per 100,000 women ages 30-49 years old will have a condition with a case fatality rate of 15%,” said Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a pediatrician at The Ohio State University Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
“And so I really have a problem. I’m not recommending it to any of my patients’ parents and I tell them to stay away from it,” Sanchez told the committee.
For its part, J&J said it remained very confident in the positive impact of its vaccine, particularly in low-income countries.
“Let me just state at the outset that based on the data we are confident in the positive benefit-risk profile of our vaccine. It is saving lives here in the U.S. today and on every continent around the globe,” Dr. Penny Heaton, global head of vaccines for J&J, said at the meeting.
“Our vaccine is different, it’s long lasting, it offers high levels of protection and it provides breadth of protection. Our vaccine has flexible dosing, it’s easy to store and transport. In many low- and middle-income countries, our vaccine is the most important and sometimes the only option, even in the U.S.,” Heaton said.
(WASHINGTON) — One hundred three Marines have been discharged for refusing to take the COVID vaccine, the Marine Corps said Thursday, as the military services have begun to discharge a pool of possibly as many as 30,000 active duty service members who still refuse to be vaccinated — even after multiple opportunities to do so past vaccination deadlines.
In late August, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered mandatory COVID vaccines for all U.S. military personnel.
Shortly after Austin made the COVID vaccine mandatory, the military services quickly set up its own deadline dates and warned service members that they could face discharge unless they were vaccinated, which is in line with the Pentagon’s stance that choosing to remain unvaccinated is a violation of a lawful order from Austin.
While the percentage of vaccinated active duty personnel in each service is at 95% or higher, the number of unvaccinated personnel is close to 30,000.
Earlier this week, the Air Force became the first to make public that it had followed through on the warning, announcing that 27 airmen had received administrative discharges.
According to the latest numbers provided by the Air Force and the Navy, 7,365 airmen and 5,472 sailors are unvaccinated, either refusing the vaccine outright or awaiting the processing of requests for administrative, medical, or religious exemptions.
The Marine Corps said Thursday that 95% of its active-duty force of 182,500 Marines had received at least one COVID vaccine shot, the lowest percentage among the military services. The Marine Corps has approved 1,007 medical and administrative exemptions and is still processing 2,863 of the 3,144 requests made for a religious exemption.
Military personnel serving in the United States had already been required to receive 12 vaccines, including those for measles, polio, anthrax, chickenpox and flu, in order to serve. Service members assigned overseas were required to receive up to five others, like those for yellow fever or encephalitis, depending on which global region they are assigned to.
While the Army announced Thursday that nearly 98% of its 478,000 active-duty soldiers had been vaccinated, that means close to 10,000 soldiers are not.
The Army said 3,864 soldiers have refused the vaccine outright while an additional 6,263 are awaiting the processing of their requests for an exemption.
The majority of service members who remain unvaccinated have sought religious exemptions, but none of the services has yet to approve an exemption on religious grounds.
The defense authorization bill passed by Congress this week guarantees that service members who are kicked out of the military for refusing the vaccine will receive either an honorable discharge or a “general discharge under honorable conditions.”
Unlike the other services, the Army has decided that it will not discharge soldiers who refuse to be vaccinated. Instead, they will be “flagged,” cannot be promoted and will have to leave the Army when their enlistment contracts expire.
Flagged soldiers who have refused to get the vaccine will have to submit to regular COVID testing, Lt. Col. Terence Kelley, an Army spokesman told ABC News.
A soldier reporting daily to the same job location will be tested weekly, while those who are teleworking and have to visit their job location will be tested within 72 hours of the meeting or job activity, Kelley said.
