From Draft NOtices, January-March 2026
— Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft
On December 18, 2025, Donald Trump signed into law the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Buried in it was a section that now requires automatic Selective Service System (i.e., draft) registration for men 18-25. It will take effect in December 2026.
Automatic registration is intended to be carried out based on existing federal databases, but there currently is no federal database that contains all of the necessary information relevant to legally registering a person for a future draft. The new law does not mandate that states provide it, so it's uncertain how automatic registration can actually be accomplished.
Selective Service will need to publish a set of regulations that spells out a plan to implement the law. The language in the NDAA says that the regulations “may require…a person subject to registration…to provide, to the [Selective Service System] Director, information (including date of birth, address, social security account number, phone number, and email address) regarding such person.” This suggests that Selective Service may have to resort to directly reaching out to men and begging them to provide the information. But that's really what the agency has been doing all along since 1980!
It should be noted that there is no true military advantage to the current or new automatic draft registration system since much of the information that goes into the database is soon made inaccurate when young men move without notifying Selective Service. The response that is needed now is a strong push for reintroduction of the Selective Service Repeal Act that has been proposed by some members of Congress in past years. Watch for information on this in future issues of Draft NOtices.
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (https://www.comdsd.org/).
