…The mandate is unconstitutional, according to the lawsuit, since the states' governors are in charge of the units except for times they have been federalized. Plus, national security will be at risk, since a large number of members will simply quit rather than comply. Austin says that even though governors are in charge of guard units when they have not been federalized by the president, they are still paid by the federal government, and could lose their pay if they don't comply. But even that could be difficult. If governors don't order records kept of who has and has not been vaccinated, the Pentagon won't know whose pay to cut. Austin said superiors, whose job it is to carry out the orders, could be punished. Republican governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Tate Reeves of Mississippi and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, along with Stitt sent Austin a letter on Dec. 14 saying that the mandates are "beyond your constitutional and statutory authority." Another GOP governor, Greg Abbott of Texas, later said that Texas "will not enforce this latest COVID-19 vaccine mandate against its guardsmen."… read more: https://www.newsmax.com/politics/vaccine-mandates-national-guard-pentagon-governors/2021/12/28/id/1050248/ Im glad that GOP governors are standing up for their states national guard persons. The pentagon is trying to coerce but the resistance seems to have the upper hand. I guess that Brandon could try to nationalize all red state national guard members and then fire them if they don’t comply. There are constitutional limits there though.
The GOP States resistance to the vaccine mandates from the pentagon is growing and the Governors are going to court to protect the rights of citizens of their states.
The states are supposed to have control over the National Guard. The National Guard is the equivalent of the state "militias" mentioned in the US Constitution. It's not just like any other ordinary branch of the military. I'm against any military members being required to get this, but there is additional reason why the National Guard should not be, over the objections of their state government. And a lot of this has to do with power of the purse, where the federal government taxes things and then funds everything - including things that are typically the sort of thing funded by the state - and then has control over everything simply because they are the one in control of the funds. If I can use an analogy, it would be like if I took all your money that you were saving up to buy a car, then offered to buy the car for you, but put limitations on what the car had to have and not have.
I doubt the current law authorizes the Pentagon to deny funds specifically to an entire state who refuses to give them this type of personal information about guard members.
I think that you are right about this. If the state doesn’t inform the pentagon as to who is unvaccinated, the pentagon won’t know who to cut.
