A worsening flu outbreak among recruits attending basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, began earlier this month while an Air Force request to reinstate a mandatory flu shot requirement axed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wound its way through the Pentagon bureaucracy,

Hundreds of recruits at military basic training facility in Texas has been diagnosed with influenza

The defense secretary described the vaccine requirement, which he lifted in April, as an “absurd, overreaching” mandate.

Many Americans will remember standing in that line in the first few hours of Basic Training: Young people of all genders, all races, all religions, from all regions of the country--even a few foreigners sprinkled in--slowly walking down a disinfected corridor while medics use air-gun,