Can Trump’s Cabinet Help Pass the Defend the Guard Act?

With each new cabinet nomination, Donald Trump signaled that his second term will be a constant struggle between maximalist hawks in the mode of his Republican predecessor and restrainers seeking to hoist the new (and old) banner of America First. If confirmed, his staffing choices will be a consequential victory for a growing push towards non-interventionism in America’s state capitals.

Not least valuable is the momentum they can give to current legislative efforts to bring the war machine to heel. The Defend the Guard Act would prohibit the deployment of a state’s National Guard into overseas combat unless Congress has first voted to declare war. In the past five years, dozens of states have introduced this legislation to pressure Congress into reasserting its constitutional war powers under Article I, Section 8.

Up until now, support on the federal level has been isolated to the most conservative, principled Republican members of Congress, including Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona. Incoming Montana Senator Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and a Purple Heart recipient, rounds out the quartet.

But with his selection of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence—among a group whom The Wall Street Journal labeled “angry Iraq vets who want to upend U.S. foreign policy”—Donald Trump has put together a national security tag-team who are enthusiastic supporters of Defend the Guard legislation.

A graduate of Princeton and Harvard, Hegseth enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard and spent time stationed at Guantanamo Bay before deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Since leaving active duty he’s worked extensively in the non-profit sector and media; his nomination to head the Pentagon shocked insiders, who hadn’t considered him a contender.

In January 2024, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed the Defend the Guard Act by a vote of 187–182. The weekend edition of Fox & Friends covered the story, with panelist Hegseth giving an exuberant endorsement for the bill:

New Hampshire is simply pointing out that it’s supposed to be Congress that declares war. It has become an executive branch function, and as a result unless the Congress declares war, New Hampshire doesn’t have to send troops for foreign wars. To me it makes a lot of sense. I spent most of my career as a National Guardsman, deployed multiple times with the National Guard to foreign wars. We got used to the idea that state National Guard are part of expeditionary forces, which is not traditionally the use of a National Guard. And so this is New Hampshire saying we don’t trust how the federal government is going to use our troops, so we’re willing to commit them when the American people, through their elected branch in Congress, commits those troops to a foreign war, then you can. I love this idea. I’m sure the National Guard Bureau is [grumbles]. I love states exerting their influence through a system of federalism, and the idea of protecting the prerogative of—why are we sending some young guy from New Hampshire to the eastern province of Afghanistan when you have a northern border problem, or floods that happen in New Hampshire and they’re not there to provide support for that? It’s an interesting development, it’ll be interesting to see if other legislatures do this and how the military reacts to it.

In addition to victory in the Granite State, the Defend the Guard Act passed the Arizona Senate in February (a vote of 16–12) and the Idaho Senate in March (a vote of 27–8). All three states are set to refile in 2025, among more than a dozen others.

Often, state adjutant generals will appear at committee hearings (in full dress uniform) and instruct legislators not to pass this bill. They defend the legal gray area of U.S. foreign policy—“I’d ask you, what is a war in today’s world?”—and claim, without foundation, that the Department of Defense would rather defund the National Guard and seize its bases and equipment than cede authority to Congress. In Hegseth’s words, they will indeed grumble when they’re countered with the explicit endorsement of the defense secretary himself, who clearly will not enact retribution. (Except, perhaps, on officers who attempt to intimidate elected officials.)

A former four-term congresswoman from Hawaii who’s still an active lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve (previously the Hawaii Army National Guard, with whom she deployed to Iraq), Tulsi Gabbard attempted her own campaign for president in 2020 as a Democrat before joining the Republican Party and endorsing Trump’s reelection this year.

During an appearance at the Liberty Forum in New Hampshire in March, Gabbard was asked for her thoughts on Defend the Guard legislation. “I think that the power of this legislation is it serves as a forcing function for Congress to do its job, really. That’s really what it comes down to. The fact that Congress has abdicated its responsibility in being held to account, on the record, for actually having to cast a vote to declare war, to authorize the use of military force,” she explained, before going into detail about her own service and why Congress isn’t currently incentivized to take political accountability for U.S. foreign policy.

“This legislation would be a way to force them to do their job. I think getting more people who understand first-hand—and the numbers are becoming less and less now, than they were during the post-9/11 twenty years of a high level of deployments—but getting those who have been and are impacted directly by this to go and help advocate for it state by state will absolutely have an impact,” Gabbard concluded, agreeing that the legislation would be effective and encouraging more veterans to join the movement for the bill’s passage.

If Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard are confirmed by the U.S. Senate, they will become the most high-profile supporters of Defend the Guard in the country, and a strong indication of friendliness to the movement in the incoming Trump administration. 

And they’re not alone. Although their positions are not overtly related to foreign policy, designated Co-Commissioner of Government Efficiency Vivek Ramaswamy and Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have also endorsed the bill, rounding out a cabinet that disproportionately agrees that the National Guard should not be fighting undeclared wars.

In most instances, the legislation has been spearheaded and supported by conservative Republicans. The GOP in Texas, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, and Montana have all incorporated Defend the Guard into their state party platform. By the next Republican National Convention in 2028, will we see the national Republican platform adopt Defend the Guard language as well?

So while Capitol Hill continues to sit on its hands, refusing to even address something as milquetoast as “AUMF reform,” America’s state legislatures, spurred by the official endorsement of the leaders of the Pentagon and intelligence community, will take the radical but necessary step of reasserting our Constitution’s checks and balances and starving Washington of military manpower unless the people’s elected representatives do their job and vote.

The post Can Trump’s Cabinet Help Pass the Defend the Guard Act? appeared first on The American Conservative.