Authored by Michal Karnowski via Remix News,

As Christmas and the New Year approached, we had hoped to have the issue of Poland settling its dispute with the European Commission to obtain its EU recovery fund allocation might have been settled.

It was not to be. The issue is complex, and sovereignty really is at stake. Any course taken will be risky, and there can be no surprise that many are gravely concerned about the long-term consequences of a compromise, but a compromise is probably the best way out at this time.

First of all, there is the matter of the economy. Yes, Poland could borrow the money on the markets, but the cost of borrowing for a country bordering Ukraine and with a high rate of inflation would make that very expensive and hard to actually manage. Moreover, this is not just a question of the EU recovery fund.

The dispute could all too easily spill over to blocking Poland’s EU budget funds, which would be financially ruinous for the country. 

It is also worth admitting the political reality that despite the many successes of the conservative government in Poland, the judicial reform and the conflict with the European Union have cast a shadow over them. Like it or not, the judicial reform has been stalled, and so dying in a ditch to realize this goal makes little sense. 

What this means is that the ruling block must get out of the quagmire it finds itself in regarding the EU. The immediate goal is maintaining conservative rule, which remains Poland’s best shot at guaranteeing its sovereignty. To give power away now in defense of judicial legislation would most likely result in a government led by Donald Tusk, which would represent a government that is most likely to make Poland little more than a German vassal state. It is better to take a step back in order to avoid this scenario. 

It looks as if the pro-patriotic block is standing at a crossroads.

It can either get out of the quagmire and recover its strategic initiative, or be forced into the disadvantageous position of trying to resist the European Commission. It is also worth remembering that the ruling block has been immune to criticism of supposed “Polexit” because it has always pursued a middle way of defending sovereignty while looking for opportunities to engage with Europe. Poles value membership in the EU and do not want to hear about any Polexit. 

This is why the compromise the government negotiated is worth defending. It gives us a chance to get out of gridlock. It is a chance doubly worth taking, as the EU itself is having to reassess its ways as a result of the corruption scandal and the war in Ukraine.

The details of the agreement should not cause alarm. The European Court of Justice has ruled that judges may not question the verdicts and status of other judges, and there is no way that the Polish constitutional court would allow that. 

The alternative to this agreement is stark.

It would lead to continued gridlock and likely electoral defeat. The very critics of this compromise would be the first to wail at this outcome — an outcome that would mean Tusk giving Brussels and Berlin all they want.

It is not pleasant to have to defend this difficult deal with Brussels, but its adoption could be the difference between election victory and defeat.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of Oilprice.com

Norwegian production of crude oil and natural gas was below government forecasts in November, according to preliminary data from the local regulator published on Tuesday.  

Norway’s crude oil production averaged 1.74 million barrels per day (bpd) in November, data from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) showed today. That was 8.7% below the forecast of 1.905 million bpd and slightly below the October crude oil output of 1.749 million bpd.

Natural gas production was 1.8% below government forecasts and averaged 346.4 million cubic meters per day, also slightly down compared to the October production.  

Going forward, Norway is expected to increase both its crude oil and natural gas production in the short term.  

Last week, Equinor started pumping oil from the second development phase of the giant Johan Sverdrup oilfield, which will raise production from Western Europe’s biggest oilfield by more than 180,000 barrels per day (bpd). 

“Johan Sverdrup accounts for large and important energy deliveries, and in the current market situation, most of the volumes will go to Europe,” said Geir Tungesvik, Equinor’s executive vice president for Projects, Drilling & Procurement.    

Johan Sverdrup produces 535,000 bpd, and with Johan Sverdrup 2, the giant oilfield will produce 720,000 bpd at plateau.

At this rate of production, Johan Sverdrup alone could be capable of meeting 6-7% of the daily oil demand in Europe, Equinor says.

Increased supply from Johan Sverdrup, most of which will go to Europe, is welcome news for the EU which has to replace 500,000 bpd or possibly more of seaborne imports of Russian crude oil now that the EU embargo on imports by sea has taken effect.  

Natural gas production in Norway, which supplies around 25% of the gas consumed in the EU and the UK, is expected to rise by 8 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, government estimates showed earlier this year.

This summer, Norway’s authorities approved applications from operators to boost production from several operating gas fields, to allow higher gas production as its key partners, the EU and the UK, scrambled for gas supply ahead of the winter.

Ukraine is bracing for yet more Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, and has accused Moscow of intentionally unleashing additional suffering on the population headed into Christmas. 

“Repairs continue but the situation remains really difficult,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in a briefing before other government ministers.

“Russian terrorists will do everything to leave Ukrainians without electricity for the New Year,” he claimed.

“It is important for them for Christmas and the New Year to take place in darkness in Ukraine,” and then warned:

 “That’s why we should prepare for new attacks.”

Kyiv Governor Oleksiy Kuleba has described the power crisis as being at its worst since the war began, with some 80% of the entire capital region being without electricity for a second day in a row, after drone strikes hit power stations Monday.

“The situation with electricity supplies remains critical,” Kuleba said in a written announcement. “I want to stress that with every shelling by the enemy, the complexity and duration of the repairs increase.”

Meanwhile Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of trying to “steal” Christmas, on a day where drones continued to hit the national power grid:

Kyiv officials on Monday illuminated a Christmas tree in the city center, refusing to let Russia “steal” the festive season from Ukrainian children.

The day, which started with swarms of attacks on critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian capital, ended with the unveiling of the 12-meter (40-feet) high artificial tree decorated with white peace doves. 

A few dozen residents braved the sub-zero temperatures to admire the tree located next to the Saint Sophia Cathedral and its emblematic golden domes — and take selfies.

National energy operator Ukrenergo said it is fast working to restore services but initially this will allow power to less than half the population.

“Supplies to critical infrastructure are a priority. We expect that today we will be able to turn on equipment to enable the security of supplies to be increased, reduce the capacity deficit and connect more consumers,” it said Tuesday. There were reports that many neighborhoods saw power restored later in the day and into night hours, amid rolling emergency blackouts.

Trudging home in icy conditions during #Kyiv #blackout. Temperature -5 C, but heating still on at home. Water also unaffected. Power out for 24 hours, most of time no Internet and very little news. Listened to radio. pic.twitter.com/ENYrVhJq3l

— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) December 20, 2022

Across the border, in Russia’s Belgorod region, emergency crews are also working to restore power after a rare Sunday cross-border attack launched by the Ukrainian military left thousands in the dark. At the same time, temperatures continue to plunge headed into the colder winter months in both countries.

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

Russia is training Belarussian pilots to fly combat jets with “special warhead” capabilities, Belarusian state-controlled media announced during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the country on Monday, his first in three years.

The meeting comes amid heightened concerns that Russia is planning a new assault on Ukraine, possibly from Belarusian territory, despite the fact that Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko late last week declared his country was not a puppet of Putin’s.

Late on Monday, Belarus’ official news agency BeITA, stated that an agreement had been reached over training for Belarussian army aircraft, “which have already been refitted to carry and possibly use air-launched ammunition with special warheads”.

To sweeten the deal, Putin has appointed Belarus head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) beginning in January 2023.

“Taking into account the situation evolving along the border perimeter, we discussed some important details of cooperation in the sphere of military security. I thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] for our finding mutual understanding and support […],” Lukashenko was quoted as saying. 

What worries Ukraine and Western officials most, however, was Lukashenko’s statement that “Today we’ve commissioned an S-400 [air defense missile] complex that you have handed over to Belarus. And most importantly the Iskander complex, which you’ve also handed over to us after promising it half a year ago.”

Lukashenko continued: “You’ve just touched upon a very sensitive matter (we are not its authors) concerning the training of our crews [for the aircraft] capable of carrying special weapons and special ammunition. I have to tell you that we’ve prepared the aircraft. It turned out we’ve had such aircraft since the Soviet times. We tested them in the Russian Federation. We are now working with Russians to train the crews able to fly these aircraft that carry special ammunition.”

Lukashenko appeared to be suggesting that the training and the “special warheads” were not directed at Ukraine and were not meant to pose a threat to Ukraine. 

The Belarusian leader’s statements of thanks to Putin come after his assertions last week that his country remains completely sovereign from Russia. 

Authored by Liam Cosgrove via The Epoch Times,

Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass is predicting big economic issues for China throughout 2023, stemming from an overleveraged financial system, collapsing property market, and unsustainable birth rates.

China, a nation accustomed to greater than 7 percent real GDP growth for the past 10 years, is seeing signs of economic sluggishness. “The volume of exports could actually shrink by 6 percent on average in 2022 and 2023,” predicted the BlackRock Investment Institute in an October report.

Bass, founder of the asset management firm Hayman Capital and prominent China hawk, claimed the Chinese are in a financial conundrum of their own making. “They have architectural problems,” the fund manager said in a Dec. 17 interview on the podcast Forward Guidance.

Blaming the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) incentives and monetary policies for creating an environment of “riverboat gambling in their property sector,” Bass warned of real estate’s burgeoning share of Chinese GDP. Estimates of the property market’s share in the nation’s economy vary, but economist and Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff estimated it to be around 30 percent, as of September 2021.

The growth of the property sector has ushered in an unprecedented drop in housing affordability.

Last year, according to Bass, the median home price-to-income ratio in tier-one Chinese cities exceeded 36—meaning it would take more than three decades for the working class to accumulate the necessary income to purchase a home. The fund manager juxtaposed these figures to those of the U.S. housing bubble in 2008.

“Just to put these into perspective, in the United States, median home prices got to be just over six times median income when our subprime crisis collapsed.”

A commercial housing community is seen under construction in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, on April 15, 2022. Since March, due to weakening market demand, banks in more than 100 cities across the country have voluntarily lowered mortgage interest rates. (Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Xi’s War on Housing

Despite its lofty heights, the Chinese property is cooling off. National home prices have declined for the preceding 16 months, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics in China.

Property developers are feeling the sting. S&P Global Ratings estimated in September that the Chinese real estate market needs a bailout of almost $100 billion to ensure projects can continue.

These real estate pains are intentional, said Bass. They are part of CCP leader Xi Jinping’s mission to solve the country’s worsening demographic crisis.

“What Xi figured out is the average birth rate of the average Chinese woman has dropped from over 2.1 to now 1.2,” the fund manager explained. Bass connected birth rates to house prices by pointing out that home ownership is essential to family formation.

“They can’t marry in the basement of their parent’s house, so they don’t,” he added. “The birth rate started collapsing, and we all know the demographic curve of China looks terrible because of the one-child policy, but this supercharged the problem.”

The “one-child policy” refers to China’s population curbing initiative, implemented in 1980 by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng, which punished parents for having more than one child. The policy drastically reduced the country’s younger population, led to a stark gender imbalance, and was repealed in 2015.

According to Bass, Xi recognizes the severity of China’s demographic problem and has decided to reverse the trend at all costs.

“Xi decided to squash real estate. He knows it has to come down and stay down.”

Taiwan Invasion Risk Factor

The Texan fund manager has long been sounding the alarm about the communist regime’s plans to invade Taiwan and has warned western capital allocators to divest from China while they still can. Such an invasion is a matter of “when” not “if,” as Bass sees it.

“If you listen to Xi … He is battening down the hatches,” Bass said in the interview. “There’s no question that he moves on Taiwan.”

Bass sits on the board of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) fund, a newly launched investment fund founded by insiders from Washington, Australia, Japan, and India. The goal of Quad is to advance initiatives that give the West competitive advantages over China.

If China were to invade Taiwan, Bass believes the United States should not hold any punches, specifically advocating for their removal from the SWIFT system—a move taken against several Russian banks earlier this year. “We can collapse their economy in a matter of months or maybe even weeks,” the fund manager said.

Some economists disagree that the United States has the upper hand in an all-out trade war scenario as they believe Beijing can weaponize its U.S. Treasury bonds by dumping them. China owns just over $900 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds as of October, according to data from the Treasury Department.

However, Bass believes China cannot sell bonds all at once, since doing so would cause economic distress for Beijing.

“You need dollars running your economy … 86 percent of their settlements are in dollars, so they desperately need dollars to deal with the rest of the world,” Bass said.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had reached the million “active subscribers” milestone, up from 250,000 in March. 

“Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers — thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone,” SpaceX tweeted on Monday. 

Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone ❤️💫🌎 https://t.co/5suNxFvtEH pic.twitter.com/E1ojYarcEA

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 19, 2022

Over two years and dozens of successful launches later, SpaceX has more than 3,600 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 1 granted Starlink partial approval to operate 7,500 of the nearly 30,000 planned satellites. In a Dec. 16 regulatory filing with the FCC, SpaceX said it “anticipates that it will begin launching Gen2 satellites [second-generation Starlink satellites] before the end of December 2022.”

Starlink’s significant jump in subscribers sounds impressive, but it has come at the cost of slower speeds. A recent report via Ookla shows that Starlink download speeds have continued to slide as new users come online. 

In addition to adding Gen2 satellites to increase capacity for expanding Starlink’s customer base, the company plans direct-to-smartphone services with T-Mobile next year. 

As for now, there’s still a long waitlist to receive a Starlink in some regions, though people have opted for the RV Starlink [available almost immediately] that can be transported to different locations. With RV Starlink, customers don’t get priority on the network (meaning slower speeds). 

Be Jeremy Tanner of Nextar Media

As the country slogs through a “tripledemic” wave of COVID-19, influenza and RSV infections, CVS and Walgreens confirmed Monday that they are limiting purchases of children’s pain and fever medication. A Walgreens spokesperson told Nexstar that the decision was due to “increased demand and various supplier challenges,” and that pediatric fever reducing products are “seeing constraint across the country.”

There is currently no widespread, national shortage so supplies may vary from one community to another.

“In an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases, we put into effect an online only purchase limit of six per online transaction for all over-the-counter pediatric fever reducers,” the spokesperson added.

The company encourages customers looking to buy an item in-store to check the Walgreens website for inventory by location.

CVS spokesperson Mary Gattuso said the drugstore chain created the product limit to ensure “equitable access for all our customers.”

There is currently a two product limit on all children’s pain relief products at all CVS Pharmacy locations and cvs.com, Gattuso confirmed.

“We’re committed to meeting our customers’ needs and are working with our suppliers to ensure continued access to these items,” Gattuso said.

How did we get here?

Experts are blaming the early, widespread arrival of flu cases in the U.S., in combination with other respiratory illnesses, for the overwhelming demand for over-the-counter medication.

“There are more sick kids at this time of year than we have seen in the past couple years,” said Dr. Shannon Dillon, a pediatrician at Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson says it is not experiencing widespread shortages of Children’s Tylenol, but the product may be “less readily available” at some stores. The company said it is running its production lines around the clock.

“At this point, it’s more like toilet paper at the beginning of the (COVID-19) pandemic,” Dillon said “You just have to look in the right place at the right time.”

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday that shortages of children’s cold medicine, as well as an ongoing shortage of antibiotic drugs, are the result of unanticipated levels of demand, not a problem with the supply chain.

“Demand went up this year, they anticipated some increase in demand, but not as much as we’re seeing and not this early in the season,” Gottlieb said. “So it’s not any kind of disruption in supply. This isn’t like what we had with baby formula where manufacturers have been taken out of the market.”

Gottlieb anticipates that the pharmaceutical industry’s “sophisticated supply chain” should catch up soon.

In the meantime, parents of sick children may want to explore other options if they find bare shelves at their local pharmacy, experts say. To start with, you may want to check different locations, consider generic versions of name-brand drugs or even ask the family doctor where to find a well-stocked supply.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Roughly 20,000 illegal aliens are waiting to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, as soon as the Trump-era Title 42 program ends, Mayor Oscar Leeser said on Monday.

Leeser made the comments at a press conference just two days after declaring a state of emergency amid an influx of illegal aliens that have crossed the southern border and been released into the city. Many of them are sleeping in downtown streets while temperatures are freezing, according to officials.

“We’ve been talking to some of the partners in Mexico, and we’re talking also to the Border Patrol and those are the numbers that have been fed back to us,” said Leeser.

“The shelters in [Ciudad] Juarez are completely full today, and they believe there are about 20,000 people ready to come into El Paso.”

Leeser, a Democrat, added that his office has been working with local agencies to ensure that the city is prepared to handle the wave of illegal immigrants.

Title 42 allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal aliens back to their country immediately if they were deemed to pose a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs immigrants who had crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 19, 2022 as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (John Moore/Getty Images)

El Paso Declares State of Emergency

The policy, which was set to end on Dec. 21, has been used millions of times to expel aliens since March 2020 and has prompted fears among officials that cities and states could soon be overwhelmed with immigrants.

Preliminary Customs and Border Protection data shared with The Epoch Times shows that El Paso and Del Rio in Texas, two of the busiest sectors along the border, apprehended 70,288 illegal aliens between Dec. 1 through Dec. 19. An additional 28,913 “getaways,” or those who evaded arrest, were also reported.

According to acting Chief Patrol Agent Peter Jaquez of the El Paso Sector, border agents experienced a major surge in illegal crossings over the weekend of Dec. 10 to Dec. 11, with a three-day average of 2,460 daily encounters. This marks a 40 percent increase compared with October. More increases are expected.

In order to help deal with the increased number of illegal aliens, Leeser declared a state of emergency, granting the city more resources and authority to shelter those who have crossed the southern border.

An emergency operations center will also be opened to help manage the situation, Leeser said.

“We know that the influx on Wednesday will be incredible,” the mayor said in a news conference announcing the state of emergency.

“I said from the beginning, that I would call it when I felt that either our asylum-seekers or our community, was not safe. I really believe that today our asylum-seekers are not safe as we have hundreds and hundreds on the streets and that’s not the way we want to treat people.”

Supreme Court Puts Title 42 End on Hold

On Nov. 16, a federal judge ruled that Title 42 was unlawful and ordered the Biden administration to end it by Dec. 21. Republican states promptly filed a motion seeking to stay the order but that order was denied late on Dec. 16 by a federal appeals court.

The GOP-led states, including Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas, filed an emergency application seeking to reverse the lower court’s decision, just days before the policy was set to expire, noting that removing it would “needlessly endanger more Americans and migrants by exacerbating the catastrophe that is occurring at our southern border.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to the temporary pause to the termination of the policy but said the Biden administration must respond to the emergency appeal by 5 p.m. ET Tuesday.

On Dec. 15, the city of Denver also declared a state of emergency in an effort to prevent a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens arriving mainly from El Paso.

Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, said the increased number of illegal aliens arriving in the city, mostly from Central and South America, is placing extreme pressure on the city’s efforts to shelter them and leading to limited space. The situation is being further exacerbated by staffing issues and winter weather, according to Hancock.

“It is at a crisis point right now and cities all over this country are being forced to deal with something we’re not equipped to deal with,” Hancock said.

The US has alleged that relations between Iran and Russia have reached a “full fledged defense partnership” – based on the words of the US State Department’s Ned Price. 

Price explained that Iran has continued its shipments of drones to the Russian military, at a moment drones have continued to pound Ukrainian cities, particularly targeting energy infrastructure – plunging at least half the country into darkness, and resulting in rolling emergency blackouts.

Price went on the explain that the constant supply of drones and other munitions has in return resulted in Moscow giving back “unprecedented level of military and technical support to Iran… that should concern Iran’s neighbors.”

The US and UK have recently ramped up sanctions efforts to isolate and punish the Islamic Republic’s defense sector, and to thwart the drone transfers, but now see the closer relationship with Moscow as a ‘life-line’ keeping these manufacturers operating and thriving.

An estimated hundreds of drones, and possibly thousands throughout the course of the over 10-month long conflict, are alleged to have been transferred from Iran to the Russian military. Throughout the opening half of the war, both Russian and the Iranian government denied the drone transfers; however, more recently Tehran officials belatedly admitted to sales which they say took place before the Feb. 24 invasion.

The Ukrainian government and intelligence has countered that hundreds more are on the way: 

A Ukrainian senior intelligence official says Russia has received a new shipment of Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

According to Ukraine’s defense intelligence (GUR) spokesman Andriy Yusov, the new shipment is smaller than the previous one sometime in the summer that is estimated to have included at least 400 UAVs.

Yusov said in a Sunday statement, “This is a new batch [of Shahed drones], we do not comment on its size, but we see that Shaheds were not used during yesterday’s massive terrorist missile strikes.”

#Ukraine: Russian kamikaze drone attacks hit the Kyiv area last night, reportedly targeting critical infrastructure in the city. The drones were reportedly Shahed drones purchased from #Iran, which have been used in a number of attacks in recent weeks. pic.twitter.com/sTDpiMUrg5

— POPULAR FRONT (@PopularFront_) December 19, 2022

“All other available weapons were used, and these were all missiles and no Shaheds,” he continued. “This is a new batch, but this one, compared to the initial mass use of Shahed, is obviously smaller.”

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Monday again repeated the official government line that all Iranian-made drones were sent to Moscow “before the Ukraine war began.”

Authored by Zachary Stieber and Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden will sign the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week, even though the measure ends the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the White House said.

“He’s going to sign that later this week,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Dec. 19 in Washington.

The White House had kept open the possibility of a veto because of the budget bill’s inclusion of the forced termination of the military’s vaccine mandate, which the president opposed.

The bill “has some provisions we support and some we do not,” Jean-Pierre said. “Clearly, the president was opposed to rolling back the vaccine mandate but we saw that Republicans in Congress decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well-being of the troops than protecting them.”

She claimed that the vaccine mandate was protecting troops, even though many experts have acknowledged that the vaccines don’t stop transmission, provide little protection against infection, and have a waning effect on severe illness. Mandate critics have also noted that young, healthy people—the bulk of the military—face little risk from COVID-19.

It isn’t clear when the president will sign the bill, which was passed by bipartisan majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate in recent weeks. The NDAA for fiscal year 2023 states that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the Biden appointee who imposed the vaccine mandate in 2021, must repeal the policy within 30 days of Biden’s signature.

Pentagon officials, who have said they want to keep the mandate in place, declined to comment.

“We won’t comment on pending legislation,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. Austin was spotted entering the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) around the time that Jean-Pierre spoke.

While Republicans spearheaded the end of the mandate, many Democrats joined them in ending the requirement.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the mandate made sense when it was imposed but makes little sense now that the protection from a primary series of a vaccine serves little protection.

“Personally, I would have preferred the Department of Defense do it on their own rather than legislature telling them to but since they didn’t, I think this makes sense, and I think we ought to do it,” he said on the House floor.

Pentagon Is Urged to Reinstate Discharged Troops

Military branches have discharged more than 8,400 members over vaccine refusal. Three branches have been blocked by courts from discharging members seeking religious exemptions due to findings they likely or did violate the members’ constitutional rights with nearly word-for-word rejections.

A group of senators urged Austin on Dec. 16 to reinstate the members who have been discharged.

“All branches of our military are facing significant recruiting problems, including problems arising from the vaccine requirement,” they said in a missive (pdf). “Therefore, it is in our readiness and security interests to keep these brave men and women within our ranks.”

Read more here…