September 17 is not a greeting-card holiday. It is the anniversary of the day the Framers bound every officer of the United States to a written Constitution and to the laws made pursuant to it. The oath does not expire when a political season ends. It does not yield to a fact sheet from a sister agency. And it does not permit a civilian official to paper over a statute that Congress wrote to protect the men and women who wear the uniform.
On this Constitution Day, Feds For Freedom released the full transcript of Dr. Terry Adirim’s August 12, 2026 deposition. Congress and the Department of War now have what they have lacked for five years: her own words, under oath, about the memorandum that implemented the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the force. Accountability is no longer a slogan. It is a duty.
Here is the record, stripped of talking points.
On August 24, 2021, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin limited compulsory COVID-19 vaccination to fully licensed products, “in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.” Three weeks later, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Terry Adirim directed military providers that they “will use” the Emergency Use Authorized Pfizer-BioNTech product interchangeably with FDA-licensed Comirnaty.
The FDA itself said the products had the same formulation and could be used interchangeably while remaining “legally distinct.” That distinction is not a footnote. It is the law. Under 10 U.S.C. § 1107a, a service member offered an EUA product must be told he may refuse. Only the President may waive that condition, in writing. Only the Secretary of Defense may request that waiver. No waiver was issued. In November 2021, the Department conceded that fact in open court. A federal judge wrote the sentence that should have ended the matter: without a waiver, “the DOD cannot mandate vaccines that only have an EUA.”
They mandated it anyway.
More than 8,500 service members were later separated for refusing the product. Tens of thousands more left early. Careers ended. Families were broken. Readiness was treated as an afterthought. The force was told it was receiving a licensed vaccine. In too many cases, it was given EUA vials.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has already said the prior administration “issued unlawful orders on mandatory vaccines on an experimental vaccine, COVID-19.” On May 7, 2025, the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness wrote that the mandate “was unlawful as implemented.” Adirim’s September 14, 2021 memorandum was that implementation. You cannot call the order unlawful as implemented and then treat the official who implemented it as a spectator.
In deposition, Dr. Adirim called the EUA and licensed products “the same exact vaccine,” while acknowledging the FDA description of them as “legally distinct.” She used an FDA fact sheet, not a statute, not a presidential waiver, and not a legal opinion,to justify the September 14 guidance. Asked whether she was qualified to determine whether the vaccine was safe for the force, she answered: “I was qualified to trust the agency, the regulatory agency, that told the nation that it was safe and effective… ”Trust in a sister agency is not compliance with Title 10. A fact sheet is not a statute. An oath is not a press release.
I spent 32 years in uniform, I know what lawful orders look like, and I know what happens to a force when leaders decide the institution matters more than the Constitution they swore to support and defend. The bedrock of our military is the principle of lawful orders. That principle is not optional. When it is treated as optional, you do not get “public health.” You get coercion dressed up as readiness, and you get a recruiting and retention wound that will take a generation to close.
This is why Feds For Freedom is right to demand two things, and why I join them.
First: House Oversight Chairman James Comer, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul, and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson should subpoena Dr. Adirim to testify under oath before Congress. A deposition in a civil case is not a substitute for the Article I power to compel answers in public. The American people, and the service members who paid the price, are entitled to hear her explain, on the record, under penalty of perjury—how an FDA web page displaced 10 U.S.C. § 1107a.Second: Secretary Hegseth, Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness HON Anthony Tata, and Department of War General Counsel Earl G. Matthews should release every official communication concerning the staffing, legal review, and issuance of the September 14, 2021 interchangeability memorandum. If the mandate was unlawful as implemented, then the paper trail of that implementation belongs to the public, not to a locked cabinet.
Stephanie Weidle put it plainly: service members were told they were receiving a licensed vaccine but instead were given EUA vials. For those who legally refused the shot, careers ended. Kevin McAfee put it better still: Constitution Day reminds every official that the Constitution and the laws of the land are not optional. Dr. Adirim should be offered an unlimited amount of accountability.
I will add only this. Reinstatement without accountability is a half-measure. Remedies without names are a press strategy. Civilian officials who issue the implementing guidance own the consequences. It is their responsibility. The same is true one level up. If an acting assistant secretary can convert a licensed-product order into an EUA mandate with a memorandum and a fact sheet, and then walk away, the next unlawful order will be easier, not harder.
The nation is calling now, not for another study, not for another round of “lessons learned,” but for the simple act the Constitution requires of every officer: tell the truth, produce the records, and stand for examination.
Constitution Day is the right day to say it out loud. Subpoena Dr. Terry Adirim. Release the Department of War records. Make the people who implemented an unlawful mandate answer for it.
The Constitution is not a suggestion. And it is not optional.
