The House won’t get to vote on this proposal to end Selective Service.

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September 9, 2025 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - Early this morning, after overnight behind-the-scenes discussions, the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to propose a rule for House floor consideration of this year’s National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) that leaves the proposal for attempted automatic registration of young men for a possible military draft in the version of the NDAA to be debated and voted on by the full House, and prevents any debate or vote on the “automatic” registration proposal or the alternate proposal to end draft registration.

The House Rules Committee recommended “making in order” for House floor debate and vote almost 300 amendments to the NDAA, but not the bipartisan amendment to replace the provision to try to automate draft registration with a provision to repeal the Military Selective Service Act, end draft registration, and abolish the Selective Service System. (Scroll down here for the list of amendments submitted to the Rules Committee and those made in order for floor debate and votes.) There was no public discussion by the Rules Committee of any of the proposals with respect to Selective Service.

De jure segregation, the backdoor draft, and elite immunity are part of a recurring cycle of American inequality. As the U.S. threatens new war in Iran, history again points to who will bear the cost—and who will benefit.

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June 28, 2025 / Sharon Kyle / LA Progressive - From housing discrimination to military recruitment, from school segregation to foreign policy, some issues in American life may seem disconnected—mere fragments of a chaotic system. But upon closer examination, these seemingly unrelated policies and practices are bound by a common root: the deliberate consolidation of power by a wealthy, white ruling class. 

From the very inception of the United States, a privileged elite has engineered laws, institutions, and cultural narratives to preserve its dominance—initially through racialized land seizures and redistribution, the brutal system of chattel slavery, and exclusionary immigration policies; later through Jim Crow segregation; and today through more insidious mechanisms like militarized borders, discriminatory policing, mass incarceration, exploitative labor practices, and the weaponization of poverty. At the core lies structural white supremacy—an evolving, interlocking system of racial and class oppression that resists democracy, adapts with time, and refuses to cede power. 

Today, as the Trump administration escalates tensions with Iran following the bombing of that nation’s nuclear facilities, we once again stand at the precipice of war. If military conflict erupts, it will be poor and working-class Americans—especially people of color and rural whites—who will be the first to serve, fight, and die. They are overrepresented in the armed forces but not by coincidence, by design. Economic hardship, lack of opportunity, and targeted recruitment strategies ensure that the burden of war continues to fall on those already most oppressed by the system.

Summary: A new GAO report quantifies JROTC misconduct concerns, finding accusations in up to 240 schools and revealing gaps in training and oversight as expansion plans advance.

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September 28, 2025 / Survivors Rights - A government report released Friday on sexual abuse in high school Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) programs estimates that dozens and potentially hundreds of instructors have been accused of sexually abusing or harassing students in the past five years, the New York Times reported Friday.

JROTC programs operate in more than 3,400 public schools, where veterans teach teenagers topics such as military history, life skills, and marksmanship to roughly half a million students each year. The instructors have long worked with little oversight and limited training on being a teacher.

A series of New York Times articles in 2022 found that 33 instructors had been criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving students over a five year period and that many students were being automatically enrolled into what is supposed to be an elective course.

Those articles spurred several government inquiries and led to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued on Friday, which for the first time provides an official estimate of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse in the program. Over the past five years, between 2 and 7 percent of schools with JROTC programs had at least one instructor accused of sexual misconduct, a broad category that ranges from sending sexual messages to assault. That could mean as many as 240 schools.

https://nnomy.org/2025ABTSKit/

The  U.S. funding of Israel’s war in Gaza and last year's sending of 100 U.S. troops to Israel to staff anti-missile sites has given students across the country a reason to question the presence of military programs in their high schools.

Many do not want to participate in a service that they believe is tied to a government complicit in “ethnic cleansing” and that has caused the deaths of many innocents, including non-combative women and children.

Some Defense Department officials are ready to exploit Charlie Kirk’s death.

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September 18, 2025 / Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling / The New Republic -  Top U.S. military leaders are considering a new recruitment strategy that would leverage Charlie Kirk’s legacy and memory to draw more of America’s youth into the armed services.

The Pentagon would frame the drive as a “national call to service,” according to U.S. officials who spoke with NBC News. Possible slogans for the recruitment effort include “Charlie has awakened a generation of warriors.”

The enlistment strategy could potentially involve Turning Point USA, Kirk’s political organization, morphing it into recruitment centers. “That could include inviting recruiters to be present at events or advertising for the military at the chapters,” NBC reported that two defense officials explained.

There are some 900 official college chapters and around 1,200 high school chapters of Turning Point USA across the nation, but the conservative advocacy nonprofit received more than 54,000 inquiries for new campus chapters in the 48 hours after Kirk’s assassination, according to TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet.