The demand for National Guard units is growing along with the debate over President Trump’s calling on troops to respond to what he describes as crime waves in Washington, D.C., and soon potentially other U.S. cities.

But National Guardsmen don’t just spring up out of nowhere.

Thousands of Americans must put jobs, families, school, and every other aspect of civilian life on hold to answer the call—whether they are responding to natural disasters, the Covid-19 pandemic, mass protests, or even school teacher shortages. About 2,300 National Guard troops have been deployed to the nation’s capital, and this week Trump threatened to send troops onto the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans.

The War Horse spoke with Katherine Kuzminski, director of studies at the Center for a New American Security and a widely regarded expert in military personnel policy, to learn how National Guardsmen prepare for mobilization, the chain of bureaucratic hurdles they need to clear, and the toll that frequent call-ups take on their personal and professional lives.

First, some context: There are more than 430,000 Army and Air National Guardsmen split among states, territories, and the District of Columbia. Ordinarily, Guard members train with their unit one weekend a month and two weeks a year. But they can be activated to respond to a local crisis or be deployed overseas like their active-duty counterparts.

Now, a look back at how we got here:

Our interview with Kuzminski has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: At a really basic level, how does a National Guard activation work?

The Guard is distinct from the rest of the military in that state or territory governors can command their Guard units during domestic missions, but they can also be controlled by the federal government at home or abroad.

So there are state active-duty orders, where the governor is the top of the chain of command and the state is paying for the activation. Then there are what are known as Title 32 orders, where the governor is still the head of the chain of command, but the federal government is reimbursing the state for their deployment. And then there are Title 10 orders, where the commander in chief is the president and the federal government is paying for the deployment. Title 32 orders allow Guardsmen to perform a law enforcement mission, which would be prohibited under Title 10 orders.

Q: Where does the D.C. Guard deployment fall?

This gets a bit more complicated. Since D.C. is a federal district, the president commands its National Guard even in militia status. That means he can deploy the troops there on a law enforcement mission under Title 32 orders. The deployment of the California National Guard to Los Angeles in June fell under Title 10, but a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the deployment violated U.S. law against using federalized troops for domestic law enforcement.

Q: What might be the impact of the recent court ruling that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to California was illegal?

It is unclear what it will mean for orders moving forward, as the administration will likely file an appeal.

Q: Do National Guardsmen have a choice to mobilize or not? 

That depends whether it is a voluntary deployment that the individual is signing up for, or a unit-level mobilization, where their unit has been activated and they are required to go.

I think that matters with respect to public perceptions of the Guard’s presence in D.C. right now. This was a unit-level mobilization, and so whether or not the service member agrees with the mission is immaterial.

Q: How do Guardsmen plan a career around that?

The law that governs your ability to deploy without penalty to your job is known as USERRA, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. However, it’s a lot more challenging, say, if you work for a small business, where there are carve-outs. Or if you are running your own business and you don’t have someone to hand off operations to.

Q: What protections does USERRA put in place?

It’s a legal framework under which someone could bring a complaint. It’s meant to protect prompt reemployment into their position that they would have had if they hadn’t served.

The member has to provide advance notice to their employer, and they are expected to return to their job in a quick fashion after they return from their service, so like not booking a vacation on the back end of it.

Q: How effective are those protections?

Sometimes it’s a little tricky. Like, did you get passed over for a promotion because you were gone? I’ve definitely heard anecdotal stories: “I was a Reserve JAG [judge advocate general, a military lawyer]. I deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. I came back, other people were promoted to partner, and I got pushed off the partner track altogether.”

The broader point could be that in professions where advancing through a prescribed pathway is really important—lawyers on the partner track, or teachers or professors on a tenure track—there have been challenges in still being able to have those opportunities.

And it is tough, from the employer’s perspective, to say, “Well, if someone was here working in the office for the last 18 months, and you were deployed for 15 of those, and I’m comparing the two of you for one promotion.” … It’s a tricky situation for both employee and the employer.

Q: How do Guard members go about putting their civilian lives on hold?

Guardsmen are required by Army regulation to have a family care plan in place to sort out things like, ‘Who’s doing school drop-off and pickup if I’m deployed?’ The family care plan does a good job of helping the service member structure the caregiver designation, when and where all the legal documents are, the financial arrangements, what are all the bills that need to be paid when I just disappear and don’t have access to anything.

Q: Do the family care plans work?

You have a plan on paper, but if the soldier’s mom is the family care plan, and she will come and stay at the house with the kids, but it might take a day to fly their mom out, right? So there is planning, and then there is what happens in the moment.

In that way, there is no difference between this kind of [D.C.] deployment, a wildfire fighting deployment, or deployment overseas. It is part of the profession, which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t throw a wrinkle in your family plans, or at your job. But I would say part of that professionalism is treating all of these missions with the same level of like, “Yep, that’s what I’m called to do.”

Q: Does the Guard reimburse members for child care during activation?

No, and that is based on the fact that those who serve in the Guard are based in their communities, so all of your regular community resources are also available. But it can be challenging and isolating for a Guard member living in a community where few people serve, so no one else really knows what is on their plate.

While resources such as child care fee assistance programs are available to assist soldiers on orders, they may not already have a standing child care provider when they receive orders.

Q: In June, Military.com reported that it took a while for California National Guard soldiers to receive official orders to deploy to Los Angeles. Those orders authorize pay, military health insurance, and other benefits for a period of active-duty service. Is that typically the case for National Guard mobilizations?

Calling the Guard is not like calling 911. When we call 911, we expect the police or an ambulance to show up right away. But there are administrative processes that must be spun up and paperwork has to be signed in order to deploy the National Guard. The investigation into Jan. 6 [the 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol] asked why it took four hours for the National Guard to show up, but four hours for a military activation is actually really fast.

You need that piece of paper [orders] to access benefits, but there is also a simultaneous sense of urgency to get out the door. If they are intervening in an ongoing riot or responding to a hurricane that just made landfall, you need people there as quickly as possible.

Q: Do the bureaucratic hoops or benefits change depending on the type of activation?

The practice of the mobilization is the same, but the area where there might be some distinction is in how long it takes an individual to get paid.

In state active duty, it’s pretty straightforward: The state is calling the shots, and the state is paying. Title 32 gets more complicated because often the National Guard Bureau or the state is the one carrying the cost at the moment. Sometimes there is no break in pay, or sometimes the state is out of money to front that, and they are waiting on the federal reimbursement to the state. And so there have been gaps in pay.

Guardsmen get taken care of in the long run, but that does not do you any good if you defaulted on your mortgage that month because you didn’t get paid in time.

Q: Is fatigue a concern amid National Guard units’ frequent domestic deployments?

I do think that there is a bit of fatigue. We have had increased hurricane scenarios, we have had increased wildfire scenarios in the last few years. Those are all demands on the same population of folks.

Now, I would say that disaster response is squarely within their area of expertise and the thing we would expect them to show up for. The teacher shortages, or, you know, back in 2020 the Covid vaccine delivery…on the one hand, what the Army excels at is providing logistics and administrative support. And on the other hand, that’s outside of their expected span of work.

Q: Would something like the recent D.C. deployment be atypical, or more within the Guard’s responsibilities?

D.C. is its own very special legal structure. I think back to both the response in 2020 to the George Floyd protests and in 2021, post-Jan. 6. Those both felt very similar with respect to deploying the Guard in the midst of an active situation, and that is both a Trump administration and a Biden administration decision.

While there are many who disagree with the justification, I think the president and the secretary of defense would categorize this deployment as the same as the 2020 deployment and the 2021 deployment, though I think it’s more complicated for analysts on the outside.

Q: Is it more tiring to get called up when the thing you’re responding to isn’t clear? Like, “What am I doing here?”

This is the difference between an individual volunteer mobilization and a unit-level mobilization. It doesn’t matter what the service member thinks of the actual mission itself. They’re provided with orders, with a mission, and their unit was activated.

Q: How would all of this change under “a standing National Guard quick reaction force” that President Trump could deploy nationwide, as laid out in an executive order last week?

From a policy perspective, and from both legal and funding authorities, you would have to pay these people essentially as active Guard and Reserve, like full-time individuals. And if they need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, at all times, I would imagine that they’re activated for the whole time they’re in that unit. But I haven’t seen the kind of policy and guidance there on what the price tag would be, and who is paying the price, and who the commander in chief would be.

 

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This War Horse explainer was reported by David Roza, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. David Roza wrote the headline.