Lawfare Daily: The Military Domestic Deployment Legal Framework: Are the Laws Fit for Purpose?
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Loren Voss, Public Service Fellow at Lawfare, sits down with Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Linda Singh, former Adjutant General of Maryland, and Chris Mirasola, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. They examine the legal constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act, the implications of expanding domestic deployments for civil-military relations, and key issues to watch for in future deployments.
Mirasola clarifies the legal framework and the recent usage of the National Guard in federal and hybrid statuses, and Singh identifies areas where the law appears clear, but operational realities often blur that line. They also trace the expansion of domestic military roles—from COVID response to cyber operations and infrastructure protection—and the evolving public expectations of what the military can do. Mirasola explains what is genuinely new in law, particularly regarding scale and interpretation of authorities. Singh and Mirasola discuss the system’s reliance on norms versus enforceable legal constraints and give advice to those leading troops in future domestic deployments. They conclude by identifying key factors, such as federal versus state roles and possible involvement in elections, that we should all be tracking for the future.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We can't just slide into this and just say, well, we're just going to call the military because it's the easy button. |
| 0:08.0 | There's a bunch of other things that we need to be considering first. |
| 0:11.0 | And I think we have to get out of this immediate, let's call the guard because that's easy. |
| 0:17.0 | They're going to come. We know that we have them available. And that is a very |
| 0:22.0 | dangerous position to be in long term. It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Lauren Voss, Public Service |
| 0:28.6 | Fellow at Lawfare, with Major General Retired Linda Singh, the former adjutant general of Maryland |
| 0:34.2 | and Cabinet Secretary for the Maryland Military Department, and Professor |
| 0:38.0 | Chris Mirosola, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, and former |
| 0:42.7 | attorney for the Department of Defense Office of General Counsel. |
| 0:46.7 | There has been such bipartisan consensus around taking a constrained approach to domestic deployments and a constrained approach to the very |
| 0:57.7 | many statutes that are available for deploying the military for a law enforcement function. |
| 1:03.0 | And now that we've seen those norms erode, we are confronting the swift cheese of the legal regime that we have. |
| 1:10.0 | Today we're talking about the domestic deployment legal framework. Are the laws the swift cheese of the legal regime that we have. |
| 1:15.7 | Today we're talking about the domestic deployment legal framework, are the laws fit for purpose. |
| 1:20.7 | This is the second episode in a series on domestic military power and a democracy. |
| 1:25.7 | Over the past two decades, the U.S. military has become the government's most trusted and frequently deployed institution, responding not only to wars abroad, |
| 1:29.4 | but to natural disasters, immigration enforcement, public health crises, domestic unrest, and more. |
| 1:35.6 | Lawfare is examining the consequences of that shift. Why has the military become America's default |
| 1:40.7 | problem solver? What legal frameworks enable this trend? And why are they failing? |
| 1:45.8 | And most importantly, what can be done to restore the balance between civilian governance and military |
| 1:50.7 | power? The news in the last six months is focused on domestic deployments of the military, |
| 1:55.6 | primarily the National Guard in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland, Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans. |
... |
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