The federal government is preparing to begin automatically registering eligible U.S. men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft pool. The U.S. hasn’t had a military draft since 1973, but it still maintains a registry of eligible men in case the draft is restored. New rules around automatic military draft registration were tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

We are joined by Edward Hasbrouck, an organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic draft registration and is calling for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act. “The important thing is to take the draft off the table, remove it from the arsenal of war planning. Forcing the government to confront the question, before they make wars, of whether enough people will fight them actually constrains wars before they happen,” says Hasbrouck.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

The federal government is preparing to begin automatically registering eligible U.S. men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft pool. The U.S. hasn’t had a draft since 1973, but it still maintains a registry of eligible men in case the draft is restored. The new rules around automatic military draft registration were tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

In early March, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not rule out President Trump reinstating the draft itself. She was questioned by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Mothers out there are worried that we’re going to have a draft, that they’re going to see their sons get and daughters get involved in this. What do you want to say about the president’s plans for troops on the ground? As we know, it’s been largely an air campaign up until now.

PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: Mm-hmm, it has been, and it will continue to be. And President Trump, wisely, does not remove options off of the table.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Edward Hasbrouck, organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic registrations, calling for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act, editor and publisher of Resisters.info. He is a member of the War Resisters League and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild. His recent piece for Responsible Statecraft is headlined “Even if team Trump wanted it, a military draft would be a fiasco,” unquote. In the 1980s, Hasbrouck publicly refused to register for the draft and spent six months in prison.

Can you talk, Edward, about what has changed? What is this draft registry that the Trump administration is bringing back?

EDWARD HASBROUCK: Well, since 1980, men have been supposed to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday and to tell Selective Service within 10 days every time they move, until they reach age 26. Very few people do. The efforts to enforce that against a handful of public nonregistrants whose public statements could be used to convict us collapsed in the early 1980s. Nobody has been prosecuted in decades.

But in the face of growing pressure to recognize the failure of Selective Service and the unavailability of a draft, instead, to save their jobs, the Selective Service System came up with a plan, which they managed to sneak through Congress last year, to give Selective Service a second chance to try to register potential draftees automatically. Now, that won’t work, because the federal government doesn’t have the data they need. But it will produce a database that’s highly vulnerable to misuse and weaponization. And even more importantly, it will continue to prop up the myth that the draft is available as a fallback, which in turn enables continued planning for larger, longer wars without war planners having to think about whether enough people be willing to fight them.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you write that to activate the draft would be a fiasco?

EDWARD HASBROUCK: Well, in order — well, in order to figure out who’s supposed to register, the government would need to know current addresses, which they don’t have. You don’t have to report to the government when you move. They would have to figure out sex as assigned at birth, which is the criteria for eligibility for the draft, which isn’t reflected in current records in many cases that show current gender. They’d need to know the names and mailing addresses of every immigrant, including undocumented immigrants, who clearly aren’t included in current federal databases. So they wouldn’t have a database that’s either accurate or complete.

And in addition, they would have the same problems enforcing an actual draft that they had when they tried to enforce registration back in the 1980s, which are that they could only prosecute people if they could prove that their refusal was knowing and willful, which meant they first had to track them down and provably notify them, which they could do in a handful of cases for show trials, but it didn’t really scale.

And the reason they abandoned the enforcement of draft registration back in the 1980s was that the prosecutions backfired, and young people got the message that there was safety in silence and safety in numbers. And it’s that continued, quiet but persistent, nonviolent noncooperation by young people, that has been one of the most greatest successes of the peace movement and of nonviolent direct action in past decades, that has prevented a draft. We should thank young people for their service in reining in military expansionism.

AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, DOGE was sent in and given access to the current Selective Service registration database. What’s the relationship between the Selective Service System and immigration enforcement?

EDWARD HASBROUCK: Well, even before putting in place this plan for automatic draft registration, which will take — which will take effect in December unless, in the meantime, in this crucial year, we can get the Selective Service Repeal Act, which will be reintroduced probably quite shortly in Congress. If we can’t get that enacted, the change will take effect in December. But what that will do is it will give Selective Service unprecedented power to obtain from any other federal agency any information they think might help them identify or locate potential draftees.

Now, even before that took effect, at the end of last year, the Selective Service did give notice that they will be turning over their existing registration list for immigration enforcement and other purposes. And once it goes to DOGE, we don’t know what those other purposes are, but given the information in the database, it’s particularly likely to be weaponized for other purposes against vulnerable trans and immigrant youth.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, if you don’t have a draft, how does it end up? It’s poor people who go into the military because they need the financial support, and that’s who ends up fighting U.S. wars. We have 30 seconds.

EDWARD HASBROUCK: I think the important thing is to take the draft off the table, remove it from the arsenal of war planning, which, by forcing the government to confront the question before they make wars of whether enough people will fight them, actually constrains wars before they happen, as opposed to fighting an antiwar movement after they’re on.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Edward Hasbrouck, organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition. We’ll link to your new piece, “Even if team Trump wanted it, a military draft would be a fiasco.”

That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking tonight at the Independent Film Center, IFC, at West Fourth and Sixth Avenue. Steal This Story, Please!, the film about Democracy Now!, continues at the IFC in its first week here in New York City. I’ll be doing Q&A with the director, Carl Deal, and tomorrow, as well, at 1:30, then headed to the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York, for the screening of the film there. Check our website, democracynow.org. Then we head to Los Angeles, the Laemmle Theaters, and the Roxie in San Francisco and beyond. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!