WorldNetDaily correspondent J.M. Phelps focuses on two main things — right-wing military narratives and advancing anti-vaxxer complaints. He has merged those two interests over the past few months. He wrote in a July 6 article:
Midway through 2024, members of the U.S. Armed Forces continue to demand answers regarding the thousands of denials of religious accommodation service members requested in response to the military’s controversial 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
One of them is Lt. Chad Coppin, who retired Monday after 22 years, three months and five days in the U.S. Coast Guard. Toward the end of his career, Coppin faced an uphill battle against the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement of the now-rescinded mandate.
Like thousands of others across all branches of service, Coppin’s request for religious accommodation was initially denied. In the months to follow, his appeal of the decision was also denied. He found himself in the process of being discharged via an administrative separation board for refusing to comply with the mandate.
[…]Although he is now retired after two decades of honorable service, Coppin still questions the Coast Guard’s blanket denial of religious accommodation, particularly the “Religious Accommodations Appeal Generator” that allowed Coast Guard adjudicators to “select from a pre-populated list of two dozen possible religious objections or noted defects that applicants had raised in the initial dismissal decision.”
But the record shows that Coppin is just another garden-variety anti-vaxxer. An affidavit posted at the anti-vaxxer Children’s Health Defense showed that Coppin raised no religious objection to the vaccine; rather, he complained that the lot number of the vaccine he was to receive came from a manufacturing facility that was purportedly not approved for use in the U.S.
Phelps served up another sob story in a July 20 article:
In 2020, Samuel Sell successfully fulfilled the requirements of Wright State University’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program in Ohio to become a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force. Shortly after, he was selected to participate in an experimental pilot training group at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. But the prestigious opportunity would soon be pulled from under his feet, and he would be detained, handcuffed and facing court-martial – because of his Christian beliefs.
What happened? When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s now-rescinded 2021 COVID-19 military vaccine mandate began to roll out, the young lieutenant refused to consent to any unapproved product with only an Emergency Use Authorization, while also requesting a religious accommodation as a Christian. Only EUA products were being offered, and nearly all requests for religious accommodation were being denied across all branches of military service.
Even before the mandate, Sell shared his views with classmates that the vaccine wasn’t necessary for those who had acquired natural immunity after recovering from COVID-19 – “natural immunity” being one of the most fundamental and universally recognized realities of Immunology.
But vaccination offers equivalent defense against COVID as natural immunity, and you don’t have to catch COVID to obtain that defense. Further, immunity fades over time in both methods, meaning that annual boosters are needed as with flu shots.
Phelps made no attempt to verify any part of Sell’s story or allow a military official to offer the military’s side of the case. Instead, he let Sell rant:
“What’s happening in the military, which is a small sample of the overall culture in America, is a huge shift to anti-constitutional values being instilled in service members,” Sell warned. “And sadly, it’s eroding morale and it’s eroding our military.”
For this reason, Sell is developing an endeavor with other like-minded individuals to help educate service members and churches across America about the experiences of military personnel, the importance of adhering to the Constitution and more, while also encouraging everyone to get out and vote in every election with Christian values in mind.
Phelps glossed over the fact that soldiers and military personnel give up certain rights by being a member of the military, and all military members are generally required to take all mandated vaccines. Phelps didn’t explain the basis of the religious exemption Sell and Coppin were seeking, which makes it appear the sought exemption wasn’t genuine.
Phelps engaged in a serious breach of journalistic ethics in furtherance of his anti-vaxxer agenda in an Oct. 4 article:
In a revealing 5,400-word report dubbed “The Remdesivir Papers” just published today, a military whistleblower has come forward to offer evidence that 64% of service members and veterans whose deaths were attributed to COVID-19 were also administered remdesivir – a drug with a known lethal past.
According to the report, first published by the Gateway Pundit, “the data clearly depict the liberal usage of remdesivir in military treatment facilities (MTF) and other civilian facilities, as well as its potential contribution to, at minimum, hundreds of untimely deaths” between 2020 and 2024.
WorldNetDaily spoke to Bradley Miller, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, about the stunning news. In October 2021, Miller was relieved of his battalion command within the 101st Airborne Division for refusing the COVID “vaccine” under the unlawful direction of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s now-rescinded August 2021 shot mandate.
Who “dubbed” this report “The Remdesivir Papers”? Phelps did. He co-wrote it with someone, after all — with an anonymous “whistleblower” — and it’s the actual title he put the paper. This is not disclosed in his WND article. Such reporting without disclosing a relevant conflict of interest is frowned upon in legitimate journalism because it comes off as self-promotion. (The fact that he touted the highly unreliable Gateway Pundit as having first “published” his report doesn’t help his credibility.) Then again, this is WND, which cares nothing about how real journalists behave.
Phelps found yet another anti-vaxxer soldier to fluff in an Oct. 20 article:
Like thousands of others, Jessica Sheffield, a former United States Navy lieutenant commander, was forcibly separated from the service in 2022 for refusing the COVID jab.
When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mandated the COVID-19 shot in August 2021, Sheffield was concerned not just with the experimental vaccine’s safety, but with the legality of such an order. After careful consideration, she decided to take her oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution seriously, telling WorldNetDaily: “I was absolutely going to do the right thing no matter what, and in this situation, it meant that I was not going to follow this unlawful order.”
“I was vocal to my commander, chief of staff, and the command doc in private,” she said, “about not taking the ‘vaccine,’ because it was experimental, thereby, it was also unlawful. The command doc, in a one-on-one meeting with me, wouldn’t even put his words behind the order, claiming it was ‘coming from higher up,’ which was especially alarming,” she said.
In fact, the vaccines have received full FDA authorization, which makes Sheffield’s claim that they are “experimental” to be moot. There is also no mention of the fact that Sheffield, as a member of the military, loses certain rights, making her claim that the vaccine mandate is “unlawful” to be moot — if it was ever valid at all — especially given that she receives numerous other vaccines as required.