The U.S. Department of Defense has been ordered to outline in detail how service members can apply for religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and how officials decide whether to approve or deny such requests. Pentagon officials must in detail explain how troops can apply for a religious exemption, the procedure for resolving the request, the criteria by which applications are judged, and the procedure the persons deciding on each request use to judge them, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday, a George H. W. Bush nominee, ordered on Oct. 29. The Pentagon must file the details on Nov. 12 at the latest. In addition, military officials must give “a precise statement of the number of requests in each branch for a religious exemption from injection of a COVID-19 vaccine; the number of requests granted, denied, and pending; the number of persons in the armed forces who are unvaccinated and who …