Hegseth Repeals Vax Mandate: The Anti-Vax Playbook Comes to the Pentagon

Brad Onishi: Pete Hegseth is the worst Secretary of Defense imaginable. He's a Fox News host with no experience and no idea what he's doing. You probably heard by now that he made a huge gaffe last week when he used a prayer from Pulp Fiction at a worship service. But the most insane thing Hegseth has done lately may be something you haven't heard of. Just this week, he repealed the flu vaccine mandate for armed service members, giving in to the vaccine deniers who in the COVID era used the ideas of religious liberty to rail against COVID restrictions, lockdowns, and any mandate to get vaccinated.

Hegseth [Clip]: That era of betrayal is over. In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it. Your body, your faith, and your convictions are not negotiable.

Brad: Today, I speak with Dr. Kira Ganga Kieffer, who's an expert on religious groups who are vaccine hesitant. She explains the context of Hegseth's move, how a tradition of conservative Christians using the mantle of religious liberty to get around government mandates and policies plays into his decision, and what this has to do with the MAHA movement and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I'm joined now by Dr. Kira Ganga Kieffer from Fairfield University, somebody I just told you about, who is an expert on vaccines and vaccine hesitancy in terms of a religious — and specifically Christian — hesitancy about them. Kira, welcome to the show.

Kira Ganga Kieffer: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Brad: So we have what I think, to a lot of people, will feel a little bit like out of left field — and just one more dumb move on the part of Pete Hegseth in the context of many dumb Pulp Fiction moves — and that is to revoke the mandate for the flu vaccine in the armed forces. We're going to get into specifics here, but just in broad terms: is Pete Hegseth's religious background the way to explain this decision? Or what are the factors involved?

Kira: Good question. That is a big question. So I would actually hesitate to draw a quick and easy line between Hegseth and his religious faith and pastor and church and orientation, because I think that he's really operating right now in a much larger movement — a movement that has been focused on concerns about vaccine safety, and that we would now call vaccine hesitancy. In the past we've called it anti-vax. I don't like that phrase, although it's actually more on point than it has historically been. So I think what I would say is that Hegseth is operating right in the middle of a vaccine hesitancy movement that is at least 50 years in the making. You can definitely make longer historical arguments, but for this one I say at least 50 years in the making. Since about the 1980s — growing, changing, growing — and then right around the 2010s, closer to COVID but not actually with COVID, we start to see an alignment, or at least a coalescing, of evangelical Christians, white conservative Christians who are in the MAGA tradition, the MAGA tent, and the much smaller, not political and not overtly religious, vaccine hesitancy movement that's mostly concerned about safety. And we see them come together over issues of religious liberty because of the threat to religious exemptions. So in many ways this actually does come down to the mandatory word — and that's a really crucial word here — which is that Hegseth is taking away the mandate for flu vaccination for people in the military. It doesn't mean that they can't get it. He's very clear on that. But you don't have to get it, which is allowing people to say, "Oh great, I don't need to try and exercise any sort of exemption clause. I can just opt out if I don't want it." That coalition — I would say it happens around the efforts in California first in 2015, and then subsequent states afterwards, New York being a big one in 2019 — to remove or repeal religious exemptions to mandatory vaccines, mostly as they apply to children, but also in some ways to the military as well. And so we see those groups coming together. The MAGA folks saying, "Threats to religious liberty — that's interesting to us. We would see that as part of our tent. Come on in." The vaccine hesitancy folks have been at it a long time, kind of shoved to the sidelines a lot of the time, and they're like, "Hey, somebody wants to listen." And we see some really good political action here. So that's where I think he's coming from, in the broader tradition.

Brad: So we have a situation where, especially around COVID, there were a lot of folks who said not only that vaccines cannot be mandated because it's against my religious belief, but there was also a lot of sense of religious freedom being squashed because local governments and state governments were saying you can't meet in person for your worship service, you can't get together and sing in the same room. A lot of churches said, "Sorry to you, but we're not listening." And a lot of people got famous and rich off of that stance. Am I hearing you correctly in the sense that one of the frontiers Hegseth is fighting on here is a religious liberty frontier that's basically telling the government you can't mandate that we do things to our own body — that includes a COVID vaccine, but in this case, a flu vaccine. Is that a fair characterization?

Kira: Yes, I think that's an accurate characterization for this particular move, in particular because it is related to adults. I think children's vaccines are a whole other kind of world. But for this being optional — for every other American adult vaccine — I think that's exactly where he's coming from, which is to say this is almost like low-hanging fruit. We've got people who are really concerned about what we put into our bodies, and now we've got people concerned that the government, or Big Pharma, or any other kind of large monolithic source of power — the biomedical establishment, et cetera — is taking away our religious freedom. And I think that they frame it that way because of that religious exemption. So I think that the fact that the original laws had these religious exemptions in them at the state level actually really crafts this current opposition and current focus on concerns about public health mandates on the body in general. That's why masking fits in there. That's why quarantine fit in there. Lockdowns, mass gatherings, social distancing — all of those really fell in together, demonstrating just how little vaccines actually had to do with the COVID outcry from the right.

Brad: You're plugged in to a sense of what's going on on the ground and the kinds of religious and activist communities that are really into what Pete Hegseth is doing. Will this make a difference? Are there people out there right now who are like, "Oh, yay, he finally repealed the flu vaccine mandate in the military — this is awesome"? I think a lot of people listening are like, this just seems dumb. I understand vaccines are something to debate, but it seems smart to have a military that's vaccinated against the flu as best as it could be. But are there actually people out there right now who are like, "What a great day. He finally did it. This is our man. Love this guy. Good move, Pete"?

Kira: Oh, absolutely, yes. Thank you for asking that, because there definitely are people who are saying that and feeling like — let's say — check, in a larger agenda. I truly don't think that this particular move was groundbreaking. Like I said, it was kind of a low-hanging-fruit situation for the larger vaccine hesitancy or even anti-vaccine movement. But it's a move in the right direction — from their perspective. It's testing the boundaries of what can we do to remove mandates or lessen the effect of mandated or compulsory vaccination. And they would say that this is a move for freedom, a show of trust in people's abilities to make their own decisions, their own sacred decisions about their own bodily autonomy. And you could also say, "Hey, smart idea — we lost a lot of people in the military because of those COVID vaccine mandates, and he's probably doing it because of that. That's kind of smart too." You could also hear, "Well, the flu vaccine isn't always effective, so maybe the science isn't really supporting that mandate." So the scientific argument, the legal argument, the religious arguments — they're all going to be there together to say, "This is a good thing." It's not groundbreaking.

Brad: To me this is a little bit tricky, because I'll be very honest — I'll just put my cards on the table. I, as somebody who came out of the evangelical tradition and is very familiar with many of those arguments, I'm just not that sympathetic to the idea that we should give people a choice about the flu vaccine if they want to fight in the military. However, I say that because I think there are people listening who are like, "You know, this is tricky, because sometimes when we deal with MAGA and people like Pete Hegseth, there are clear evil intentions and decisions I'm going to condemn. But I'm somebody who's worried about what's in vaccines, or I'm worried about the government mandating that I put something in my body" — and that concern connects to other issues, whether that's reproductive rights or other fronts. Do you feel like there's a segment of people who might not be considered on the MAGA right who are also a little bit sympathetic here to what's happening? And perhaps there's a strange link-up with a wellness domain, a spirituality domain — other folks who are like, "Actually, this one doesn't bother me, and I'm kind of on board here because I didn't like that mandate anyway"?

Kira: I think there's a little bit of both there. I truly don't have a sense from my research that people had very much care about that mandate specifically. So I don't think it's top of mind for people who really do care about these issues and take them in a way that is very different from the way that, say, you do or I do — and I try to really just listen to what people say and analyze it so we can understand it better. So I don't think people are super fired up saying, "We really got to fight that one." But it's representative of a much larger suspicion about people and powers that be making decisions about our bodies, suspicion about chemicals in general. And now that is just really rocketing upwards, truly because of the MAHA movement. "Make America Healthy Again" has just been huge in getting that going in a way that it wasn't before. And so there's definitely an interest in — "Hey, we could justify this decision because if you keep your body well, if you are eating well and making the right decisions, then you're probably not going to get the flu anyway." I also want to add: you mentioned spirituality. I think that's also part of it. Spirituality is a lot about intuition and about personal expression and a kind of desire to embody not only clear beliefs but also a sort of trust in the instincts or impulses of the individual. In a lot of religious traditions, you're taught not to trust your instincts so much. But for spirituality folks and the broader wellness culture, it's a lot more about, "Let me get some information and really trust what I think. And if it doesn't feel right for my body, then I don't want to do it, regardless." So I think there are all of those components — not so much "the flu vaccine is going to kill me," but more "I think my immune system can handle this." And certainly some people do say that about other vaccines, and they say it about COVID, but not so much about the flu vaccine. For that one it's really about, "I think theirs can handle it, or I think mine can — go with God."

Brad: I think something we've brought up on the show in the past, but it's worth bringing up fresh: is this kind of vaccine hesitancy a core part of the kinds of evangelical traditions that someone like Pete Hegseth is participating in now? Pete Hegseth is a Fox News personality, pretty tapped in to the larger American right sensibility and the Fox News audience. Is this a part of their ethos for the last 50 years? Or do you see this as somewhat new — going back to COVID, or maybe a little bit before?

Kira: Yeah, so I think that this is actually quite new. In the span of history, very new — going back to that period I was talking about before, that period in the 2010s. We're starting to see — and it's not overnight — but starting to see this kind of potential where public health, and states led by Democrats in particular, are siding with public health in trying to repeal religious exemptions or personal belief exemptions from vaccines. And it's really that tie-in — again, that religion word — that fits perfectly at the time with the Tea Party, with the beginnings of MAGA and the, at that point, pretty well-established playbook of trying to fight the culture wars through religious freedom lawsuits and judicial rulings. That one is really based on that.

Brad: Is there, like, a Hobby Lobby analogue? Some folks listening are going to be old like me and remember the Hobby Lobby lawsuit — reproductive care, "we don't want to pay for your abortifacient contraceptives." Is that some of the tradition you're talking about, or am I off on that?

Kira: No, I would group it in with Hobby Lobby. I kind of group it in with Masterpiece Cakeshop — I'm old too — and a few other cases that are really key for pushing to say, "We have religious freedom as a group that feels embattled. We identify as Christian, we identify as conservative, and we feel that the liberals and progressives, the Obama era, is not representative of what we want. We feel like we're being minimized." And then MAGA rises up saying, "Hey, we're the new moral majority here." So they're saying, "Look at those past cases." And you have activist groups, even lobbyist groups, who are very tapped in on those cases — they're working actively, and they are now too, to fight the battles they think they can win in regard to vaccine laws and the preservation or addition of religious exemptions. In the case of West Virginia and Mississippi — the only two states in the union that never had religious exemptions — they were actually adding them, until just this year or last year.

Brad: You mentioned MAHA. When the average person reads a headline that Pete Hegseth has revoked the flu vaccine mandate in the military, I think there's a chance they're going to say, "Is this some sort of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thing? Is this MAHA stuff?" Are those two linked in your mind? Is there any situation in which what Hegseth is doing has context in the larger MAHA ethos and the RFK Jr. ethos? Or are they separate?

Kira: I think they're absolutely connected. Whether they were discussing it, I couldn't say, but I think this is largely a movement that has, at this point in 2026, combined multiple cultures or cultural groups and found common ground over concern about vaccines. And vaccines can kind of stand in for government overreach, suspicion of biomedicine, religious liberty, medical freedom — probably a number of other things — spiritual freedom, spiritual expression, full bodily authority. That's a big one. Name your thing and you can kind of put it right on that issue, because of how — and I don't want to give RFK as much credit as it sounds like I am — but he really brought this movement into the limelight at the right time for it to just bloom, full bloom. And I just think this is not authentically a Hegseth ideal. I think it's something like a Kennedy ideal for sure. But again, it's an overlapping of worlds, and this is an easy call for Hegseth in this moment.

Brad: It's also a nice way — and this is just me talking — to reset the news cycle and get us talking. I'm talking to you about this and we're not talking about Pulp Fiction, or what he's doing in Iran or in the Caribbean or anywhere else. So to me there's also a Trumpian move here. There's a Trumpian — you said "Hegsethian" — there's a Trumpian move of: the news cycle is terrible, Monday morning, let's announce something that will get everyone confused, enraged, and distracted. Last question here: is there a masculinity aspect to this? You talked about, "Hey, if you have the right immune system you're not going to get the flu anyway." Look at me — I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I'm at Kid Rock's house, we have no clothes on, we're working out, we're sweaty. We take steroids, we take creatine. We don't get the flu because we're healthy, much less COVID. Is there a manly thing in this — a crusader, knighthood, Hegsethian situation?

Kira: Yes, I think so. I think there is certainly this kind of performance of masculinity around the exact ideals that RFK Jr. has really leaned into in this administration. Again, kind of a new move, but it's just a rebranding of an old effort. And it jumps on the same bandwagon as the tech bros, the Silicon Valley guys who are like, "I'm gonna optimize my body. We're not gonna expose ourselves — well, we can expose ourselves all we want to pathogens, but we're not gonna get sick over it, because we're so fundamentally healthy." And I think that isn't just a masculine performance situation, but it's not without this longer background of people — Christians and non-Christians — saying, "God gave us an immune system, and if it works well, like it should work well, so we don't need these vaccines, especially ones that we don't know if they're going to work each year." So that's a huge factor. And I just want to note — I'm coming out with a book on this topic, on the religious history of vaccine hesitancy. The flu shot chapter in that book is focused mostly on Black Americans, because of the issues I mentioned before with this being more of an adult, opt-in situation than children's vaccines. We can see that there are clear racial disparities in flu vaccination rates. And even some of the concerns I've read about and written about in that community cite similar ideals — like, "God gave me this immune system, and I don't trust that the medical system is actually helping me fight off disease. It's the sick care system." So we can see this convergence of all of those ideals, whether it be small government or small medicine.

Brad: I mean, I think you're referencing historical realities that demand larger investigation. Why would Black Americans be hesitant about the government mandating a vaccine or other things? To me — and there's no time today, but I need to read your book, which is coming out soon — there are historical reasons. There are experiments, there's forced sterilization, there is a lot of historical data that says this community probably is a little wary of this. I think for me, as somebody who came out of that white evangelical tradition, I see less of those historical realities and I don't really buy the arguments as much. And so that's — somebody listening might say, "Well, why can you be sympathetic to one group and not the other?" I think that's personally where I land. But we're just going to have to invite you back to talk about the book for a lot longer than we have today, and dig into some more of that as we go. Tell us about the book — give us the title, when is it out, and how can people link up with you online or wherever in order to make sure they're up to date?

Kira: So the book is Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America, published by Princeton University Press, coming out May 19th — any day now. And you can buy it anywhere books are sold — please consider ordering. And you can go to my website, kirakiefer.com, if you want to learn more about my work.

Brad: All right, Kira, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate all your insight. Look forward to the book. Friends, we'll be back later this week with It's in the Code, the weekly roundup, and the Sunday Interview. Go to our new websites — straightwhiteamericanjesus.com and axismundi.us. Both of those have tons of information on ways you can connect with us, and if you're not a subscriber yet, please think about doing it. This is a listener-funded effort — we do this because we're able to do it because of y'all. So think about that. It's in the show notes. Thanks for being here. We'll catch you next time.