Critics of President Donald Trump are fuming at the Pentagon’s plans to automate the military draft, a change the President ushered in by signing legislation in December.
Since then, Trump has ordered US troops into Venezuela to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro and has gone to war with Iran – despite pledging on the 2024 campaign trail that he would keep the country out of ‘forever’ wars.
So when the Selective Service System, the agency that handles the draft, submitted the ‘automatic registration’ rule change to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in late March, that raised eyebrows because now there’s a war to fight.
‘Starting in December, there will now be automatic registration for the U.S. military draft,’ pointed out Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Charles Booker. ‘On one hand, Republicans want to make it harder to VOTE.’
‘On the other, they want your loved ones automatically registered to serve in an endless war overseas,’ the former state lawmaker added.
Failed Democratic congressional candidate Qasim Rashid echoed the sentiment.
‘Somehow automatic voter registration isn’t possible – but automatic registration for the draft program is both possible and now required,’ he posted to X on Wednesday. ‘MAGAs don’t want to make it easier for young people to vote – just easier for them to die in Trump’s illegal wars.’
Rashid also noted that Trump’s hardline immigration stance is reflected in the policy.
‘Any immigrant who doesn’t register within 30 days of turning 18 can be criminally charged,’ he said.
The rule itself is not new, but has attracted fresh scrutiny amid Trump’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration.
The automatic draft registration provision was included in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, passed by Congress and signed by Trump in December.
Auto-enrollment of eligible men aged 18 to 25 is expected to begin in December 2026.
That does not mean the President is reinstituting the draft – it simply changes how men would be enrolled if one were ever called.
Under existing federal law, men turning 18 are required to register with the Selective Service System against the possibility of a military draft.
Americans have not been conscripted since Vietnam; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought entirely by volunteer forces.
None of which stopped Trump from raising the spectre of the draft to frighten voters away from his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
‘Would anybody like to be drafted, in the audience?’ he asked at a Las Vegas rally in September 2024.
‘Because that’s what they’re doing. She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened,’ Trump said.
The remarks were baffling enough to prompt a PolitiFact fact-check – Harris had never raised the military draft during the campaign.
‘We have no idea what he’s talking about,’ a Harris spokesperson said at the time.
