The Libertarian Party announced the formation of its Defend the Guard Committee last week. According to the party, the committee will focus on “advancing the fight to bring our troops home and keep them out of unconstitutional wars.”
“Our Defend the Guard Committee will work in close collaboration with Bring Our Troops Home, the driving force behind Defend the Guard legislation, the party said in an email on Friday. “With their guidance, the committee will recruit and organize volunteers for phone banking and other activism activities in support of Defend The Guard legislation across the country.”
The party also stated that the Defend the Guard Committee will be comprised of nine members, such as Libertarian National Committee At-Large Representative Travis Bost, Dissident Media co-founder Amy LePore, and Liam McCollum—who participated in a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump to discuss the legislation during a campaign stop in Montana. Other members include Zach Tatum, Gretchen Broucard, Tim Miller, Curt Hall, Alicia Goodnight and Sara Eisenhower.
The Libertarian Party has strongly advocated for “Defend the Guard” legislation in recent years, which seeks to prohibit a state’s National Guard units from being deployed into active combat without a formal declaration of war by Congress. In 2022, the Libertarian National Committee approved a resolution calling on state legislatures to enact pro-Defend the Guard legislation and to refuse any order from the federal government to release the National Guard into federal service unless the U.S. Congress has declared war, as stipulated by the U.S. Constitution.
“Defense of what?”
A valid question. What about the US is even still worth defending, and against whom is it worth defending?
Certainly nothing in the US is superior to – and consequently worth defending against – Russia anymore. Instead, we should be defending Russia and Israel from the rest of the evil west backing the invasion and occupation of their territories and the genocide of their people.
DHS and DOD are redundant. Defense of what? Duh..
For openers the Army and Air National Guard could be transferred to DHS to get them out of DoD.
Will this prove popular with Trump and Tom Homan, who seemingly want to use the National Guard for border security, deporting illegals, fighting invading gangs, arresting human traffickers and drug runners, etc. rather than deploying them abroad? Between the War Powers Act, Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, the president’s ability to utilize the National Guard without first going through either congress or the relevant governor(s) is already very limited – thank goodness.
On the one hand, with a GOP dominated congress and quite a few GOP governors, I can imagine Trump seeing this as good optics which don’t really encroach on his vision for the Guard, and perhaps he even recognizes that can limit future presidents with slimmer margins of support from abusing them. On the other hand, he is rapidly depleting his congressional majority and not all GOP governors are exactly of the pro-Trump variety…
Good to see this.
Defend the Guard is an honorable first step towards the complete restoration of the military to its federal-only status (to not include state national guards) and restoring the national guards to their state-only status.