Saw this on the CNN front page as THE top story this morning, above literally everything else.
However this heavily reminds me of a famous Simpsons clip in that the headline is both wrong and completely exaggerated. Even the news article admits he’s not creating a new military force, it’s reestablishing an old military force, and it’s not even a new thing, almost HALF the states in the United States have State Defense Forces including California and New York. It’s not even that new of an idea, Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2019 proposed reactivating their own State Guard units.
This really seems like deliberate misinformation by CNN.
Why does DeSantis need brownshirts now? He’s certainly not going to be using them to get people vaccinated or enforce social distancing. I wouldn’t be surprised if come next year he deploys them to polling places in blue counties to “help” people vote for the right candidates.
Most units of this type (including those of California and New York) are integrated with regular military reserve units and are subject to both state and federal authority. DeSantis is making a point of saying that the organization he is proposing would be entirely under state authority and would be completely independent of federal control.
Don’t confuse the National Guard with so-called State Defense Forces. They are two different things, and there are no provisions for the latter to fall under federal control so far as I know. A large number of states have state defense forces (call them that, a state guard, or a militia, the terms are pretty loose) that will never fall under federal control.
It’s true it’s not, strictly speaking, a new military force, but “reactivates a force dissolved 75 years ago” would have been too long a headline. I don’t think it’s deliberate misinformation by CNN, though, nor do I think it’s a scare tactic. Just because this isn’t, strictly speaking, a new concept doesn’t mean there aren’t new and troubling implications. After all, it was formed in 1941 to replace National Guardsmen going overseas and to reassure Floridians worried about possible foreign sabotage. Its members were men too old to get drafted or serve in the Guard but who still wanted to do their bit.
I’m somewhat suspicious of DeSantis’ motives here, and you should be, too. Florida has a large National Guard, but DeSantis is implying it’s not large enough. Why not use the $3.5 million he wants for the SDF to expand the National Guard? Because DeSantis wants complete control. The Guard can be federalized and used for federal as well as state missions.
And why does he want complete control? Two main reasons: 1) He wants to look Very Presidential ahead of his 2024 presidential bid. 2) He can use the force for “civil unrest” without federal constraint. It’s #2 that’s an especially troublesome prospect.
My state has a State Defense Force. There are 80–yep, EIGHTY–of them total. They’re volunteers up to age 64 who don’t have to be especially fit, must buy their own uniforms, and only get paid if they’re activated. They may help out the National Guard in disasters. They are not used against civil unrest.
Oh, whew. I was worried about a guy who supports the violent uprising against our government conducted less than a year ago, who uses violent and revolutionary imagery for his base who are very much detached from reality creating an armed force answering only to himself was a problem, but, hey, technically there was a force with a nominally similar purpose a century ago, so there’s no reason to be worried.
The hallmark of a “state defense force” (as authorized by federal law and implemented in over 20 states) is that it is not integrated with regular military reserve units; that it is not subject to federal authority; and is subject to only state authority. In fact, a state defense force is prohibted by federal law from being activated and integrated into the federal armed forces. See generally 32 U.S.C. 109(c).
From Quora (link), here are the states and territories that already have the kind of defense force DeSantis is proposing, and the federal law that authorizes such defense forces:
22 states plus Puerto Rico have State Defense Forces (SDF):
State defense forces are authorized under Title 32 of the US Code section 109. The majority of these are ground forces though you can see there are a few naval militias. Additionally, Puerto Rico, Texas, and Vermont have Air Wings.
The State Defense Forces are usually part of the same department of the state government that houses the National Guard (e.g. the Virginia Defense Force
is part of the Virginia Department of Military Affairs while the Texas State Guard is part of the Texas Military Department alongside the National Guard.)
It’s not the existence of a state defense force that troubles me. It’s that DeSantis wants one and he wants one now, and that he’s specifically selling it as not subject to federal orders. What does he need his own private militia for? Is there some impending crisis facing the state that none of us know about? Or is the little proto-fascist flexing his muscles in preparation for a day when “volunteers” will be needed to overturn a “fraudulent” election?
Nobody here has said that state defense forces are new. The Florida state defense force would be new in the sense that Florida hasn’t had one in 74 years, and the new one won’t be the same as the old one.
What’s troubling you, the CNN headline? Not really a lie: it IS a new force in the sense that it’s not the same as the old force and that there are new concerns about it. It’s a bit like saying someone’s new wife isn’t really new because he had a wife before.
But even if the CNN headline were wrong, you must be upset about more than that to start a thread on it. I’d be interested in the answer.
The Governor can not expand the National Guard. The structure and size of the National Guard is set by the DoD through the National Guard Bureau in Washington. No Governor can change the table of organization in a unit or make new units. All they can do is activate existing Guard units to state active duty. $3.5 million is a drop in the military budget even for the National Guard.
Because of the dual state function of the National Guard there is a lot of confusion about its function. It’s main function is to be the combat arms portion of the reserve force. To be the combat soldiers called up in case of war. The Reserves for each branch are primarily support units. The National Guard is full of infantry, artillery, armor and cavalry units. The Governor doesn’t decide he wants a new tank unit in state. The Pentagon does. The state does not pay for the training or equipment. The federal government does.
It’s more complicated than that and there are overlapping areas of responsibility but in general terms the Governor has little power over the structure of the national guard in their state.
ETA: after my years on active duty I spent 20 years in the National Guard. During that time there were several restructurings due to changes in Big Army. It caused me to change my job specialty three different times to widely different areas. None of those changes were affected by the state at all.
It comes down to, the organized militia that the Feds pay/subsidize has its battle mission and composition decided by the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon. If the state wants to keep any purely state-exclusive militia not subject to that, or to being federalized and sent off to Karjakistan (or federalized and turned around to point the bayonets at the governor…), it has to pay for that out of its own pocket. So a majority of states chose to not bother, and the others keep an outfit of unpaid volunteers for support work, mostly made up of prior-service people, retirees, former members of disbanded Guard units (or who got reorganized out of a billet), with some higher officers seconded from the National Guard, plus some healthcare/legal direct-commissions. They are under the State Adjutant General for the purpose of providing support to the Guard in its state militia function during emergencies or deployments.
For what it’s worth, Beau of the Fifth Column, who lives in Florida, isn’t too worried about it. The reason he gives is that the budget is way too small. He thinks it’s far more a political move than a force to worry about too much.
My read is similar to his, but while the timing and budget are political, the likely USE is going to be . . . oh, say, having them show up and perform election security? It won’t be racially motivated, oh no, but in the large urban areas that are more likely to vote D? I can sure see little packets of these guys showing up in full gear for ‘security’.
The other thing he goes into with the budget is how he wouldn’t even have enough to pay for one person per county, even if they didn’t need to pay for equipment or anything else. I’m thus not sure it would have enough people to do what you describe. It might actually be something to Beau about, though. He does respond to questions a lot.
Way above my pay grade. Probably some of all of that. I know it seemed that southern states tended to get better toys and training opportunities. That seemed to happen because those states always seemed to have less trouble maintaining personnel strength and they also had easier access to large military bases for regular training. Some of that evened out in the years after 911.