Group looks to GOP women lawmakers to help boost COVID-19 vaccinations
CBSN
Washington — An organization that aims to elect Republican women to office is launching a new campaign aimed at encouraging unvaccinated Americans to get their shots, focusing on the efforts by GOP women to push vaccinations to protect against COVID-19.
The campaign from the group Winning for Women, to be amplified by female Republican lawmakers on social media, centers around Congresswoman Julia Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana whose husband, Luke, died from complications of COVID-19 in December.
Luke Letlow was elected to Congress to represent Louisiana's 5th Congressional District, but passed away before taking office. Julia Letlow ran in the special election to fill her late husband's seat and with her win became the state's first Republican woman elected to Congress. In an interview with "CBS Mornings" in August, Letlow recalled how she and her husband had prayed for the vaccines to become available, but he died before the shots were rolled out to the broader public.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.
The knock at the door came at nighttime on Mother's Day 2008 in Oregon, where Jessica Ellis' parents lived. It was around 9:20 p.m. and his wife, Linda, was already in bed; her father Steve Ellis told CBS News, that he thought someone let their animals out — but two soldiers in Class A uniforms were standing at the door.