FIRST ON FOX: A pair of Republicans are introducing legislation that would offer service members who were fired over the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate a chance to get their jobs back and receive back pay. 

The AMERICANS Act, put forth by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and freshman Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., bans the Pentagon from instituting any additional COVID-19 vaccine mandates without congressional approval. 

It would offer reinstatement to any service member discharged solely for their refusal of the COVID vaccine and credit them for the time of their involuntary separation for retirement pay, 

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It would also restore the rank of anyone who was demoted over the vaccine mandate, offering them back pay and benefits for any compensation they lost as a result of their demotion. 

For those who do not want to rejoin service, it would restore their discharge to "honorable" to restore their GI Bill and health care benefits. 

In August 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a requirement that troops take the COVID-19 jab for "readiness" purposes. That order was rescinded in January 2023 after lawmakers directed the Pentagon to do so in the annual defense policy bill Congress passed for that year. 

More than 8,400 troops were separated in the year and a half that the order was in effect. Thousands of others sought religious or medical exemptions. 

Austin’s repeal did not require the Pentagon to reinstate troops separated because of the mandate and stipulated that commanders would still have the authority to consider troops’ immunization status when making decisions on deployments or other assignments. He added that 96% of U.S. forces had taken the vaccine. 

"Our military is still dealing with the consequences of the Biden administration’s wrongful COVID-19 vaccine mandate," Cruz said in a statement. "The AMERICANS Act would provide remedies for servicemembers whom the Biden Department of Defense punished for standing by their convictions. It’s the right thing to do."

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"The Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate wasn’t about science or readiness—it was about control," said Harrigan. "As a Green Beret, I’ve seen the sacrifices our service members make firsthand, and I will not stand by while their honor is tarnished." 

The legislation is in line with a pledge President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, made on Tuesday to re-recruit those who parted ways with the military over the vaccine. 

"Service members who were kicked out because of the experimental vaccine," Hegseth told lawmakers, "they will be apologized to. They will be reinstituted with pay and rank."

Trump told supporters over the summer he would "rehire every patriot who was fired from the military" because of the mandate. 

Pentagon leadership considered offering back pay to troops after the vaccine mandate was rescinded in early 2023, but it never came to fruition.

Republicans have long railed against the vaccine mandate and the separations it caused, arguing it was a detriment to morale at a time of major recruitment issues. Pentagon leaders argued that their forces had been required to get vaccines for years, particularly if they deployed overseas. 

Washington, D.C.-area restaurants once again will not be free from politics as the Trump team prepares to settle into the nation's capital for a second term. 

Food workers inside the Beltway are prepared to refuse service and cause other inconveniences for members of the incoming Trump administration, but this is not the first time the administration and allies will have to deal with harassment while sitting down to dinner.

In September 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his wife were harassed at Fiola, an upscale Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C. Protesters confronted them over Cruz’s support for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings. Videos circulated online showing demonstrators shouting at the couple, chanting, "We believe survivors." Cruz and his wife eventually left the restaurant due to the altercation.

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This incident was part of a broader wave of confrontations involving Trump administration officials and allies over the summer that year.

As such, in June 2018, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was confronted by protesters at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., over the Trump administration's family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. Protesters chanted, "Shame!" and called her a "villain," forcing her to leave.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, known for his role in shaping immigration policy, recounted an incident when he went to pick up an $80 sushi order from a restaurant near his apartment that same month. As he left, the bartender followed him outside, called out his name and, when Miller turned around, gave him a double middle finger. He threw away the sushi out of fear someone in the restaurant had tampered with the food, the New York Post reported at the time.

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Also in June 2018, the owner of The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, citing opposition to the Trump administration's tough immigration policies. 

Industry veterans, bartenders and servers in the nation's capital told the Washingtonian this week that resistance to the Republican figures in the progressive city was inevitable and a matter of conscience. 

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"You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?," said Zac Hoffman, a Washington, D.C., restaurant veteran who is now a manager at the National Democratic Club.

Not every liberal hospitality sector worker in the report planned to protest the incoming administration while doing their job, however. 

A bartender named Joseph said while he was disappointed by the election results, he was looking forward to higher tips with more Republicans in Washington.

Fox News Digital's Kristine Parks contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: A controversial judicial advocacy organization funded by left-wing nonprofits continues to work with judges and experts involved in climate change litigation despite publicly downplaying the extent of those connections.

"CJP doesn’t participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule in any case," the Environmental Law Institute Climate Judiciary Project President Jordan Diamond wrote in a recent letter to The Wall Street Journal in response to criticism of the project. 

The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute (ELI) created the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) in 2018, establishing a first-of-its-kind resource to provide "reliable, up-to-date information" about climate change litigation, according to the group. The project's reach has extended to various state and federal courts, including powerful appellate courts, and comes as various cities and states pursue high-profile litigation against the oil industry.

A Fox News Digital review shows that several CJP expert lawyers and judges have close ties to the curriculum and are deeply involved in climate litigation.

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Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer contributed to the CJP curriculum and presented "Evidence of Change: Judging Climate Litigation" with CJP’s Sandra Nichols Thiam at the 2022 Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference July 20, 2022. 

Oppenheimer has a long history of filing climate-related amicus briefs from 2019-2022 in litigation across several states.

Robin Kundis Craig, a professor at the University of Utah's Law School, wrote a module for CJP in 2022 and has also filed several amicus briefs showing she is active in court cases. 

One example occurred in 2023, when Craig is listed on an order granting legal scholars' request to file amicus, which was signed by Justice Mark Recktenwald, who, Fox News Digital previously reported, quietly disclosed last year that he presented for an April course in collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute Climate Judiciary Project. 

Recktenwald co-presented at a December 2022 National Judicial College webinar sponsored by CJP, "Hurricanes in a Changing Climate and Related Litigation." In 2023, he co-presented with Professor Robert DeConto at a National Judicial College seminar, "Rising Seas and Litigation: What Judges Need to Know about Warming-Driven Sea-Level Rise."

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In October 2023, Recktenwald’s Hawaii Supreme Court denied an appeal from oil companies to toss a Honolulu climate misinformation suit.

Craig also filed an amicus in Hawaii state court in July 2022, where an order was signed by Judge Jeffrey Crabtree allowing the brief to be filed. Crabtree is a member of the National Judicial College Curriculum Development Committee, which creates curricula for "Environmental Law Essential for the Judiciary."

"Don’t underestimate the importance of the role of state court judges in environmental law," the curriculum's website states.

Ann Carlson, who joined the Biden administration in 2021, served on ELI's board of directors for years while also "providing pro bono consulting" for Sher Edling, an eco law firm representing a number of jurisdictions, on litigation against oil companies, financial disclosures showed. Sher Edling counsel Michael Burger has also participated in multiple ELI events, and former Sher Edling lawyer Meredith Wilensky was previously an ELI Public Interest Law Fellow.

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Burger is the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and an ELI presenter who has filed amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs in climate cases across the United States. 

UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment hosted a talk in October 2017 with Sher Edling’s Vic Sher, "Suing Over Climate Change Damages: The First Wave of Climate Lawsuits." Ann Carlson was the moderator for that discussion.

John Dernbach, listed as an expert on CJP’s website, filed an amicus brief in 2019 as part of a brief of legal scholars in support of plaintiffs in City of Oakland v BP. 

"Judges attending Climate Judiciary Project events are advised that they are walking into a left-wing lobbying shop," American Energy Institute President Jason Isaac told Fox News Digital. "Under the guise of ‘judicial education,’ CJP uses activist academics to give a pro-plaintiff sneak peek at climate change lawsuits. This kind of politicking underlines that the climate change lawsuits themselves are a left-wing attack on our quality of life.

"The Supreme Court will have an opportunity early next year to hear a case asking whether blue states and far-left mayors like Brandon Johnson can sue energy providers for climate change. Let us hope the court takes the case and ends Green New Deal lawfare."

Fox News Digital previously reported that since it was founded more than five years ago, the project has crafted 13 curriculum modules and hosted 42 events, and more than 1,700 judges have participated in its activities. And multiple judges serve as advisers at CJP, potentially having an impact on its curriculum and modules.

"So-called ‘climate change lawsuits,' lawsuits claiming that private companies should be monetarily liable for damage to public infrastructure allegedly caused by climate change, have exploded in the past five years," GOP Sen. Ted Cruz wrote in a letter to Environmental Law Institute earlier this year.

"In tandem with this unprecedented litigation, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) launched a ‘first-of-its-kind effort’ to provide judges with ‘education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.’ It appears that ELI’s goal in providing this ‘education,’ however, may be to influence judges to side with plaintiffs in climate change cases."

The letter went on to label Carlson as "one of the program’s architects" and requested "information to allow the Committee to evaluate the efforts of both Ms. Carlson and ELI to influence the federal judiciary in its adjudication of climate litigation."

Cruz alleged that "ELI intends to accomplish via the courts what it cannot get enacted into law: a radical environmental agenda."

"To help judges reach those ‘appropriate’ decisions, the Project developed the ‘Climate Science and Law for Judges Curriculum’ (the Curriculum). While ELI claims the Project is ‘neutral' and ‘objective,’ the Curriculum reads like a playbook for judges to find in favor of plaintiffs in artificial climate change cases against traditional energy companies: it includes courses that ‘show how climate science is built on long-established scientific disciplines' and 'explore the human-caused component of [global] warming,’ such as the ‘causal connections between emissions’ and ‘changes in the climate.’"

An American Energy Institute report earlier this year alleges CJP "hides its partnership with the plaintiffs because they know these ties create judicial ethics problems."

AEI says Sandra Nichols Thiam, an ELI vice president and director of judicial education, acknowledged as much in a 2023 press statement, saying, "If we even appeared biased or if there was a whiff of bias, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing."

"Taken together, it appears CJP made the thinnest possible disclosures to create the appearance of rectitude," AEI states. "But their admissions confirm that CJP exists to facilitate informal, ex parte contacts between judges and climate activists under the guise of judicial education. And secrecy remains essential to their operation, whose goal, as Thiam has said, is to develop ‘a body of law that supports climate action.'" 

AEI, a group self-described as "dedicated to promoting policies that ensure America’s energy security and economic prosperity," says CJP’s work is "an attack on the rule of law."

"In America, the powerful aren’t allowed to coax and manipulate judges before their cases are heard," the report states.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, an ELI spokesperson said, "CJP doesn’t participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule in any case. Our courses provide judges with access to evidence-based information about climate science and trends in the law.

"Of course, experts in the field are welcome to provide their expertise to CJP programs while separately and independently providing that same expertise in another setting that is unrelated to the CJP program. It is routine and encouraged for judges to participate in continuing education that exposes them to expertise in a wide variety of disciplines."

Fox News Digital’s Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report