by WorldTribune Staff, July 4, 2025 Real World News
In August 2021, Joshua Zermeno, an officer in the U.S. Space Force, questioned the “efficacy and legality” of then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s military Covid shot mandate.
Soon after, Zermeno said he received two Letters of Reprimand (LORs) and a “Do Not Promote” recommendation that blocked his promotion to major. He was also banned from government buildings and required to work from home.
Most of the American public likely never heard Zermeno’s story. Like so many others who objected to Covid mandates, he was essentially blocked from telling it by the Covid overlords in the Biden era military and Big Tech censors and their compliant legacy media partners.
The former Space Force officer told World Net Daily in an article published on Friday that stories like his are among “the most censored topics globally.”
“Many service members and veterans have turned to social media to share their experiences, but censorship limits reach, and account deletions risk erasing these stories,” Zermeno said.
Even his own X account has been “targeted and tagged with ‘Visibility limited: this Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct,’ despite its professional content.”
To counter the censorship, Zermeno last month published “DISOBEYING AN UNLAWFUL ORDER: A SPACE FORCE OFFICER’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM“.
Zermeno said he wrote the book “to preserve history of the military’s Covid-19 shot mandate permanently,” adding that his desire is for the book to reach current and future military leaders to “study, learn from, and prevent such mistakes from ever happening again.”
After his objections to the Covid injection mandate essentially derailed his military career, Zermeno attempted to voluntarily separate from the military in October 2021, but was told his separation was “not in the best interest of the Air Force and Space Force,” the World Net Daily report noted.
Zermeno said base leadership initiated Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) action against him. Despite the rescission of the Covid shot mandate in January 2023, he was passed over for promotion a second time. Seven months later, he was forced to separate from the military entirely.
Zermeno said he would consider returning to Space Force, but has been offered “zero guidance” from the Department of Defense and the Air Force’s Total Force Service Center, which manages Space Force matters.
“The Covid-19 mandate ranks among the gravest errors in military history and must not be forgotten,” Zermeno said. “Service members, force readiness and national security continue to feel its negative impacts. The mandate negatively affected tens of thousands of service members – hundreds of thousands including spouses and children.”
In the book, Zermeno writes:
This memoir is my raw, unfiltered reckoning: an exposé that dismantles the military’s false narratives, revealing a mandate that crushed free thinkers who dared to question right from wrong. Its brutal side effect was a purge of some of the military’s sharpest minds, leaving shattered lives across every branch through coercion, public shaming and ruthless career destruction. I was one of tens of thousands of individuals purged from service – skilled professionals whose training, experience and institutional knowledge can’t be replaced by new recruits, a loss that weakened our military’s readiness at a time when global threats demand strength.
On June 2, 2025, I published a memoir detailing my experience with the DoD’s COVID mandate. On June 12, 2025, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) contacted my employer to initiate a supplemental information request regarding my Top Secret clearance… https://t.co/mymLedcWKo pic.twitter.com/XRri6NJ1Oh
— Joshua (@JoshuaZermeno) June 17, 2025
Space Force officer ruined by Covid mandate says stories like his are ‘most censored’ added by Editor Two on July 4, 2025
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