← Videos
Automatic Draft Registration Begins December 2026 (Democracy Now!)
Congress making Selective Service registration automatic in the FY2026 NDAA, debated on camera.
U.S. to Begin Automatic Draft Registration in December · Democracy Now! · uploaded 2026-04-13 · 7:42
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=RyiEC_8fH4A · IPFS QmUnonXRQ52exci3CLxJaUni8R8YyJchrtneNkeKbaisXN
What this video is evidence for
Most Americans assume the draft ended in 1973. It did, but the machinery never went away. Men are still required to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of turning 18. Now Congress has changed how that works. Tucked into the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act is automatic draft registration, taking effect in December 2026. Young men will no longer have to sign up; the government will sign them up.
This Democracy Now! segment (April 13, 2026) lays it out. It opens with a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked on Fox News by Maria Bartiromo about mothers worried their sons (and daughters) will be drafted for the Iran war. She does not rule it out: "President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table."
Edward Hasbrouck of the Anti-Draft Coalition, who served six months in prison in the 1980s for refusing to register, explains what the new law does:
"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."
He adds that shortly after the inauguration, DOGE was given access to the Selective Service registration database. He also says the list is being turned over "for immigration enforcement and other purposes." And he warns that the registry "enables continued planning for larger, longer wars."
This is the draft, being built quietly, during a war.
Where this fits: see Forced Draft Law for the full explanation and sources.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer) of the full 00:07:42. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow.org. I 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 traffic registration.
We're tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. In early March, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt did not rule out President Trump Reinstating the draft itself. She was questioned by Fox News host, Maria Barturona. Mothers out there are worried that we're gonna have a draft that they're gonna see their sons get in, 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. It has been, and it will continue to be, and President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table. We're joined now by Edward Hasbrook, organizer with the anti draft coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic registrations calling for appeal of the Military Selective Service Act. Editor and publisher of resistors.info, he is a member of the War Resistors League and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild.
His recent peace for responsible statecraft is headlined, Even if Team Trump wanted a military draft would be a fiasco, unquote. In the 1980s, Hasbrook publicly refused to register for the draft, and spent six months in prison. Can you talk, Edward, about what hacks changed? What is this draft registry that the Trump administration? Is bringing back?
Well, since 1980? Men have been supposed to register with the selective service system within 30 days of their 18th birthday, and 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 non registrants 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 would be willing to fight them. Why do you... Right, that to activate the draft would be a fiasco.
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 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 and silence and safety in numbers.
And it's that continued a quiet, but persistent, nonviolent, non cooperation 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. 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? Well, even before putting in place this plan for automatic draft registration, 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. 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 whens up fighting U.S. wars. We have 30 seconds.
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 anti war movement after they're on. Thanks for watching democracy now on YouTube. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to make sure you never miss a video. And for more of our audience supported journalism, go to democracy now.org, where you can download our news app.
sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to the daily podcast, and so much more.
Last Updated: 2026-09-27