Author: Edward Hasbrouck

On Friday, 22 December 2023, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the Federal government’s 2024 fiscal year into law.

The signing of the annual NDAA has often been an occasion for pomp and publicity, but this year it was done with no public ceremony and the tersest possible statement from the White House, on a date chosen to minimize news coverage and public notice.

Notably, this year’s NDAA as enacted makes no mention whatsoever of the Selective Service System.

Continue reading “Annual ‘Defense’ Bill Leaves Selective Service in Limbo”

David Harris speaks to a crowd of around 20,000 people at the East Coast mobilization against the draft and draft registration on the steps of the U.S. Capital, Washington, DC, March 22, 1980. Photo from Resistance News. David Harris also participated in a resistance workshop the following day with some of the next generation of draft registration resisters.

After Muhammad Ali, David Harris (February 28, 1946-February 6, 2023) was probably the most influential figure in the resistance to the military draft during the US war in Indochina, and an important ally to a younger cohort of resisters to draft registration, including me and others, since 1980.

The most obvious assumption of military conscription is that the lives of young people in this country belong not to those young people; the lives of those young people instead are possessions of the state, to be used by the state when and where the state chooses to use them. The decisions made by those young people are not decisions made on the terms that they find in their lives. They are rather decisions that are made on the terms of the state because those people belong to the state….

Conscription does not exist without you and me…. The most elaborate bureaucracy for Selective Service in the world does not function without people such as you and me willing to sign our lives over to that system. Without you and me, it’s nothing…. American totalitarianism is participatory. Which means that if you don’t buy it, it doesn’t move. And I don’t buy it.

Continue reading “RIP: In Memory and in Honor of Draft Resister David Harris”

For the third time in the last six years, proposals to expand the current Selective Service registration requirement to include young women as well as young men were included in versions of this year’s annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, but were removed in back-room House-Senate leadership negotiations.

All mention of Selective Service has been removed from the conference proposal for the FY2023 NDAA introduced yesterday in the House Rules Committee.

As in 2016 and 2021, this year’s proposals to expand Selective Service registration to women were bundled into 2,000-page drafts of the NDAA without any hearings or floor debate in either the House or Senate, and without any consideration of the alternative bipartisan proposal – which has yet to receive a hearing or floor consideration in either the House or Senate – to repeal the Military Selective service Act and end draft registration entirely.

Continue reading “Congress Again Backs Away From Expansion of Draft Registration”

Once again in 2022, sooner than we expected, Congress is considering proposals either to finally end the widely disregarded, unenforced, and unenforceable requirement for men ages 18-26 to register and report changes of address to the Selective Service System for use in a future military draft – or to try to expand draft registration to young women as well as young men.

Expanding draft registration to women is a bad idea that won’t go away until Congress ends draft registration entirely.

It has become increasingly obvious over the decades since 1980 that requiring men but not women to register for the draft is so patently sexist as to be of dubious Constitutionality. This has created pressure on Congress to resolve a long-standing stalemate: The attempt to get young men to register and report address changes has been a failure since its resumption, after a five-year hiatus, in 1980. But there has been no face-saving way for Congress to repeal the registration requirement without admitting to an embarrassing failure in the face of popular direct action, which would empower and encourage young people to further defiance of government orders.

Continue reading “Congress Is Again Considering Proposals To End, or To Expand, Selective Service”

Congress has once again deferred making a decision as to whether to finally end draft registration or to expand it to include young women as well as young men.

What happened with Selective Service and the Fiscal Year 2022 NDAA?

The final version of this year’s this year’s annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) approved by Congress on December 14th and signed into law today by President Biden makes no change to the provisions of the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) which authorize the President to order men, but not women, to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) for a possible military draft. This leaves the current Selective Service registration and address reporting requirements (applicable to young men but not women) in effect, and the issue unresolved.

Earlier this year, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees voted, without debate or hearings on Selective Service, to recommend that the Fiscal Year 2022 NDAA include a section that would have expanded draft registration to women. A version of the NDAA including this provision was approved by the full House of Representatives (without a floor vote on any of the proposed amendments related to Selective Service), and was on the verge of approval in the Senate.

However, in the face of a deadlock in the Senate over this and other provisions of the NDAA, House and Senate leaders worked out a back-room package of compromises that included removing the section of the FY 2022 NDAA that would have expanded draft registration to women.

Continue reading “Congress Punts Decision on Draft Registration Into 2022 or 2023”

After months of delay, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Sunday that the Senate is "likely" to vote this week on an annual defense [sic] bill which includes a provision – already approved by the House of Representatives in its version of the bill – to extend the President’s authority to order men to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft to include women as well.

Last month, after the Senate Armed Services Committee, meeting in closed session, approved and sent to the Senate floor a version of the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would expand draft registration to young women as well as young men, a coalition of opponents of the draft called on the Senate to end the failed draft registration program entirely instead of trying to expand it.

An amendment (S.Amdt.4161) that would replace the portion of the Senate version of the NDAA expanding draft registration with the provisions of the Selective Service Repeal Act has been proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).

Continue reading “US Senate Prepares To Expand Selective Service to Women as Well as Men”