Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable

Re-onboard Coast Guard personnel dismissed over the COVID-19 vaccine

Done

156 5. Department of Homeland Security

“while also re-onboarding any USCG personnel who were dismissed from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 “vaccine,” with time in service credited”

What has happened

  1. Done

    DHS announced that a three-member panel of the Board for Correction of Military Records of the Coast Guard, acting on the Secretary's recommendation and under EO 14184, had voted to reinstate 56 Coast Guard members discharged for refusing the vaccine, with back pay. The reinstatements are retroactive to each member's discharge date so that "the service records of each member reflect a period of unbroken and continuous active service between the date of their vaccine-related discharge and their reinstatement" - which is the Quote's "with time in service credited", in the Department's own words. The named object is in the asked-for state.

  2. Attempted

    EO 14184 orders "the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security, as appropriate" - the Coast Guard's Secretary is named - to make reinstatement available to every member discharged solely for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine who asks for it, to let them revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits and bonuses, and to let those who left voluntarily rather than be vaccinated return "with no impact on their service status, rank, or pay". A directive with nobody yet reinstated; both Secretaries were to report progress within 60 days.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Done, and one of the cleanest matches among the asks researched alongside it: the Quote asks for re-onboarding with time in service credited, and DHS’s announcement delivers both halves explicitly.

The event is dated from the Department’s announcement of the Board for Correction’s decision, not from the executive order and not from any individual member’s return to duty. The Board’s decision is the action that changed the world for the 56.

The number is small because the pool is: the Coast Guard discharged far fewer members over the mandate than the armed services under DoD, and reinstatement under EO 14184 is available only to those who request it.

Action
reinstate
Object
USCG personnel dismissed for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine
ID
403