(Edward Hasbrouck, Antiwar.com) For the second successive year, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has included an ill-considered and unworkable proposal by the Selective Service System (SSS) to try to automatically construct a database of potential draftees from other government records collected for other purposes in the House version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The proposal to try to register young men “automatically” on the basis of aggregation and (mis)matching of other poorly-suited databases collected and intended for other purposes may fit perfectly with the standard operating procedures of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has already obtained access to the Selective Service registration database for unknown purposes. But if DOGE were really concerned with ending wasteful and inefficient government programs and agencies, it would have recommended abolishing the SSS, not making an attempt to salvage it.
Ongoing passive but pervasive noncompliance makes registration or a draft unenforceable. Compliance has fallen dramatically since the start of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and there’s been even more concern among potential draftees about activation of either a general draft or a draft of health care workers since the U.S. bombing of Iran. Deployment of soldiers for immigration enforcement, transportation of deportees to overseas death camps, and policing of domestic political protests in L.A. and elsewhere has prompted another surge of concern about a possible draft and what sorts of illegal orders might be given to both draftees and enlistees.
Automatic draft registration won’t magically make the registration database accurate or complete. But it has been proposed by SSS staff — otherwise threatened with losing their jobs if the agency is shut down as a useless failure — because it would enable the agency to pretend to be ready to implement a draft on demand. And it’s supported by both Republican and Democratic hawks because it would enable them to continue to pretend that the draft is available as a fallback option, so they can plan, prepare, and commit the U.S. to endless, unlimited war(s) without having to think about whether the people are willing to fight those wars, even if they escalate.
Whether warmongers like it or not, “automatic” draft registration can’t solve the compliance problem because no other government databases have all the information needed to identify all potential draftees or determine who is and who isn’t subject to the draft or required to register.
Even if the Selective Service System were able to magically construct a complete and accurate list of potential draftees, the agency is ever more unready to actually carry out a draft. A decades-overdue revision and “modernization” of the SSS contingency plans for a draft was scheduled for publication in the Federal Register earlier this year as a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking”, but that update to Selective Service regulations has been held back indefinitely by President Trump’s freeze on promulgation of new Federal regulations. In 2021, Congress directed the SSS and the Department of Defense to conduct and report back to Congress on a comprehensive mobilization exercise including “the processes of the Selective Service System in preparation for induction of personnel into the armed forces under the Military Selective Service Act”, but that years-overdue Congressionally-mandated exercise hasn’t even been scheduled yet. Draft boards exist on paper, but they are almost entirely unprepared for the work they would have to do in the event of a draft.
President Trump has neither taken any public position with respect to Selective Service nor appointed a permanent Director of the SSS, leaving the agency in charge of a carry-over Acting Director.
Last year, the proposal for automatic draft registration was put forward on behalf of the SSS by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA). This year, it was proposed as an amendment to the first draft of the NDAA by Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI), although Rep. Houlahan again claimed credit for helping get it approved by the HASC. It was included in a package of unrelated amendments adopted “en bloc” (as a package, without separate debate or vote) by voice vote.
Support for ongoing planning and preparation for a draft remains sadly bipartisan — although support for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act has been equally bipartisan.
The proposal for automatic draft registration now goes to the full House for consideration as part of the NDAA for fiscal year 2026.
Last year, the proposal for automatic draft registration was removed from the NDAA for FY 2025 during the final closed-door negotiations of a package of compromises on the NDAA between House and Senate leaders. No similar provision is included in the version of the NDAA for FY 2026 that was adopted by the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now under consideration in the Senate. If no change is made during floor debate in either the House or Senate, “automatic” draft registration will be among the differences between the House and Senate versions referred to the House-Senate conference committee for this year’s NDAA.
This article originally appeared at Antiwar.com.
