All right, I'd like to call the Senate State of,
I'm sorry, the Joint Armed Services Committee to order.
It is Wednesday, February 11th,
the time's now 1732.
We are in the senate finance committee room
in Juneau, Alaska.
And today's, sorry the timeframe, 17th area, okay, here we are.
We have members present in co-chair,
Representative Gray, we have Senator Wielikowski,
Senator Merrick, Senator Dunbar,
Senator Rauscher.
Representative Dibert, Representative Holland,
Representative Nelson,
Representative Stutz is excused in my self-chair Kawasaki.
I'd like to thank Marilyn Kawakami from Senate Records,
as well as Susan Quigley, the moderator
with the Legislative Information Office today.
We have several things on the agenda,
and I know that everybody else has
potentially some other things to be at,
so we're gonna try to speed through these
as most efficiently as we can.
We have five people who volunteered to be on the agenda
and we thank them all in advance for being here.
First, I will just go right into the presentation.
We've Dan Maurer, he's an associate professor of law
at Ohio Northern University.
He has a presentation on Civil Disturbance's procedure.
I'm sorry, that's, well,
he will be talking a little bit
about civil disturbance procedures.
Dan is, teaches at the National Security Law Criminal Law, White Color Crime, Military
Justice and Criminal Procedure at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law.
His research and scholarship focuses on the intersections of military criminal law, congressional
and presidential war powers, the law of armed conflict, and civil military relationships
with publications in the Harvard National security journal and the Journal of National
and policy, among others, he has been appeared multiple times on MSN, MSNow, CNN, and NPR and has
been quoted in the national and international media, including the LA Times, New York Times
the Atlantic, BBC, the Economist, NCBS. And he is online right now and joining us, I believe,
Professor Maurer, can you hear us?
I can't, you can hear me?
We sure can.
If you would just like to state your name
and your affiliation for the record
and then add anything you'd like
to your biography, we're just pleased to have you here.
Short, Dan Mauer, Associate Professor of Law
at Ohio Northern University.
And I would add that I am a retired
Army Lieutenant Colonel, former combat engineer officer
Great, thank you.
And you have a presentation for us.
Not exactly, I wasn't on any pressure house
to be answering questions that you all had
about the 11th century division.
Okay, we are, sorry, stumbling through this a little bit,
Professor Maurer, but we actually do have some questions
by the co-chair, House cochair Representative Andrew Gray.
Thank you, co chair Kawasaki.
Mr. Maurer, thank you so much for being here.
I'd like to start off by talking about at the end of January,
we know that all the National Guard troops on Title 10
orders that have been deployed to Los Angeles, Chicago,
and Portland had been withdrawn.
However, those on title 32 orders to Memphis and New Orleans
are still deployed.
Can you explain the difference between Title X and Title 32
orders?
Sure.
The simple distinction is under Title
troops are under the command and control of the President and Secretary of Defense.
Under Title 32, they may be performing a federal mission at the request of
the president or Secretary Defense, but they remain under
the Command and Control of State Governor. State governor is essentially the
commander-in-chief of that state guard force. So under Title
32 they are still state employees. They're still getting paid by the state
as guard members but performing perhaps a
federal emission at their request, of
Follow up.
Representative Gray, you can just continue on.
Thank you.
So I'm going to follow up on that because you just mentioned that Title 32 should be paid
for by the state.
However, in the case of Memphis and New Orleans, these Republican governors got special permission
from the White House to receive federal funds to pay for the deployment, even though they
were on Title 33 orders.
Honestly, I don't know.
I'm not an expert in National Guard deployments
to be completely frank with you.
I haven't spent my entire career on active duty.
But I can tell you that the deployment under Title 32
is generally not for the purposes
that they're currently deployed to do.
This kind of quasi-support to law enforcement
is an unusual deployment.
when it's at the request of the federal government.
Typically, National Guard, as you know,
are used for state national or natural disaster emergency
responses and often to backfill active duty
when active-duty deploys, or even to deploy overseas themselves
under Title X orders.
So keeping the troops under title 32
in this kind of strange hybrid under the direction
of governor, but also really working for a policy objective
slightly unusual.
Thank you.
And I'll follow up on that just speaking specifically of the title 10 orders that were
about Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, Randy Manner, who is the retired Army two-star
general and former acting vice chief of The National Guard, said that those deployments
were 100% ineffective in doing what Trump wanted them to do due to the fact that they
couldn't be used the way he wanted to use them.
Can you just expand a little bit on this?
Sure, it seems like, well, according to President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, these troops were
there to provide support, quote unquote, support to ICE, conducting law enforcement, i.e. immigration
law, enforcement in and around Los Angeles.
The thought was certainly in response to the civil disturbances, protests, and in some
The thought was ICE can't protect itself, the civilian presence on the ground was going
to interfere with their operations, present a security threat to ICE members and make it
harder for them to conduct their raids. Hence, let's deploy the military, in this case the
California Army National Guard, and active-duty Marines. Their purpose, ostensibly, was to provide
Now, that is a way to avoid the restrictions of the Policy
Commatatus Act, which is of federal law,
that basically prohibits the act of duty, military,
and all of this branches from performing law enforcement
domestically.
Absent a direction from Congress,
like through the Insurrection Act.
If the president moved the Interaction Act
that's a work around.
But here, by simply saying that they support
law enforcement, kind of providing an outer perimeter around the various places where
the ICE agents were going to conduct their raids or protecting federal business or federal
government facilities in and around Los Angeles, they were essentially not performing, quote
unquote, law-enforcement, not per se law, enforcement.
In reality, what they're doing is enabling law and enforcement to do their job by keeping
is, in effect, law enforcement.
And a federal district judge in California
essentially said that many of the missions
that those guard members were assigned to do
were, infact, violating the Posse Comatata Act.
And as you noted, those troops have since left
and have stopped doing those missions.
But the concern that was raised to the litigation
of The Course of Summer, both in Los Angeles and Portland,
and then in Chicago, was the danger
forces and or active duty forces, performing a law enforcement function, despite state
and local authorities, disclaiming the need for that additional law-enforcement support.
So what it looked like, in essence, was a muscular, additional show of force by the
federal government to back up ICE, knowing that ICE was engaging in very controversial
protest, let's put uniform troops out there as a kind of a screening mechanism, as
a block,
as as the protective perimeter of sorts. So that was essentially the
controversy
involving the deployment of those troops.
to LA. Does that answer your question?
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Maurer.
And I'm just going to let the co-chair and the committee know I have one more question
and then we'll open up and move on.
But I want to speak specifically about Alaska.
We had heard that one thing we haven't talked about is the 2,500 troops,
National Guard troops that are still deployed to Washington, D.C.
We learned a couple of months ago that there was 100 Alaska National
Guard Troops that were had been.
basically requested for the DC deployment this spring.
Co-chair Kawasaki and I received an email
from the liaison, the DMV liaison Angela Leflam,
letting us know that although there hasn't been
an official request and they have nothing official
to report that that's still something
that could be possible.
And so I just wondered if you could talk
about how Washington DC
is different than other states in terms of having National Guard troops there.
If you can, and if not, I could bring that question up to Ms. Stock when she's been introduced.
Yeah. Basically, the National guard in DC, well, DC is not a state, so there's no governor in
charge of that guard, instead it's the president. So, while the President is a Commander Chief of
And when they, based on how they're structured
and their legal authority granted by Congress,
they can, in effect, perform law enforcement functions in D.C.,
as if they were like the California Guard
under the command and control of Governor Newsom
order to do law and enforcement.
The governor can do that under state authority.
In the same way, the president, kind of acting like a governor,
quote unquote, can order the DC guard to perform law enforcement type functions in DC itself.
Now, in 2020, there was, during the civil unrest following the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis,
civil arrests across the country, and in particular in D.C., President Trump floated the idea.
among other things of invoking the Insurrection Act,
which he did not do, but also requesting the support
from other states have their states deploy national guard troops
to DC to augment the DC force.
That, in fact, happened.
I can't recall off top of my head how many states provided
forces or how they were on the ground,
but that was essentially the consent of those state
No state has ever been in a position where their National Guard has been forcibly taken essentially taken from the state and
deployed to a domestic civil disturbance
Against the consent of the states governor in another state
That to my knowledge has never happened
The the fact that they were used against the wishes of governor Newsom in California
Itself was not to mind knowledge that had never happen before
So, DC is a unique kind of a one-off situation.
The President's use of the DC Guard in DC to do what they're doing right now is lawful.
And until Congress says they are going to change the law.
So does that answer your back question?
Yes, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Dr. Maurer, can I, let's see.
We had Representative Nelson next.
Okay
Thank You professor mower
Mainly my question revolves around difference between title 10 and title 32
Can you speak on when the posse comma Thomas Act?
Falls into effect for soldiers under title ten and when it falls into affect for title thirty two because I know there's some
Differences of when that comes into a fact
Yeah, sure so I'll say comment how to act
18 USC, 1385, is a law that goes back to basically right after the Civil War during the Reconstruction
era and what it amounts to again is the prohibition on the use of active duty troops, so normal
federal troops under Title 10 authority to perform law enforcement or excuse me, the
actual language from the text of the statute is execution of law and that has been interpreted
courts over the years to mean things like making arrests
and providing routine regular intel sharing
with law enforcement operations.
Providing direct material support,
planning with local law enforcements,
that constitutes execution of the law.
So not just making arrest and conducting patrols,
but also this other kind of, you know, background detective work type support might constitute
law enforcement. And unlike other countries, including many of our allies and partners,
we do not use our federal military to do law enforcements. We have very robust
one federal law, enforcement, the FBI, and something like 20 or 25,000 different law
enforcement agencies around the country at the local, city, municipal, county level.
That's our first line of defense and usually the only line
of offense.
So this act is there as a basic bar.
It does not bar troops that are working under Title 32,
which is state control.
Now, Alaska or Minnesota or Maryland or Delaware or New
Hampshire, Texas, they can all enact laws if they wanted to
that would prevent the governor of those states from using
the guard to do law enforcement.
No state does that.
To my knowledge, no state has their own kind of posse
commentants.
I could be wrong about that, so I acknowledge that but for
the most part, I think most states, if not all states do
permit their guard forces to be used in a law enforcement
capacity at the direction of the governor or at
the
direction
of
the state
legislature.
So Title 32 is essentially, it's not applied,
it just doesn't work.
Has no bearing whatsoever with regard to the
Yeah, go ahead. Thank you
Professor mower that that is interesting to hear especially when it comes to title 32 just because right now
of personal experience come of the drug enforcement and riot control that Title 32
soldiers participate in. Can you talk a little bit about when say during the
global war on terror when the president and governors offered up for
deployment some National Guard soldiers to for rotation and what that kind of
Title 10, Title32 relationship look like? Yeah well essentially that's just
Title 32 National Guard soldiers on Title 10 orders, and they become part of the normal operating
federal chain of command. They fall under an active duty unit headquarters that ultimately
reports to the Secretary of Defense and the President. There are essentially just another
active-duty unit when they're put on title 10-orders for whatever duration they are.
There's still a guard unit, but being activated makes them subject to
Title 10 law to include the uniform
quoted military justice, which would not
apply to state guard forces conducting state missions,
unless the state has some kind of uniform
coded military Justice.
One more.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Professor Mauer, no, I appreciate that.
But at the end of the day, regardless
if you're under Title X or Title 32,
whoever is currently the head of executive branch
still is the commander in chief and still in charge
of their direction, correct?
Well, if troops are still under Title 32, they are not under the Command and Control
of the Chief Executive of United States.
They are under Command & Control of Chief executive of state, and that's it.
The only way they can come under command and control of president is if they're literally
put on active duty orders, either because the state volunteers them to be and offers
them up at the request of President or the President orders them, which he has the authority
It's very rare, but it happens.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
Great.
Thank You, Professor.
We now have another question from Senator Dunbar.
Thankyou, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Mauer, for being here.
This might be jumping ahead in the presentation,
but I'm interested in your perspective
on the Insurrection Act.
You know, there was a time when the President Trump was talking
about using the Insurrection Act to send forces to Minnesota.
He sends back off of that.
But can you talk a little bit about the way the
Insurrection Act sort of overrides Posse Comatatus
and the status that people are in?
And when, historically, the insurrection act has been
appropriately used.
Yeah, so you're right to say that President Trump has
Has not frequently but has from time to time threatened to use the insurrection act in various places
Minnesota being one of them Baltimore being another Memphis being in other Chicago being an other Portland Los Angeles
And that's just in this first year of his second term
He has not invoked it, and frankly that has come as a surprise to many observers given
the frequency with which he frightens it.
And if he were to do so, he is acting within the letter of the law.
Whether he should use it is a different question, that's a policy question.
Not a legal question if uses it arguably he's acting with the scope of a law, the Law is
Well, before the Policy Commentatus Act, the precursor to the Insurrection Act has its
origin really, at the time of the revolution, who is that far back.
And it essentially works as an exception to policy commentatus act, because the policy
commentatic act says, shall not be used to execute the law unless the Constitution or
another act of Congress permits it.
Well.
Now, to use the Insurrection Act, the president has to follow certain procedures.
They're pretty vague, and they're fairly easy to meet.
You can look at Title 10 U.S. code sections 251 to 255.
In order to invoke it, he has the first issue of proclamation saying he's doing it and why,
and he had to give the people that he is concerned about the threat, a chance to back down,
before he deploys anybody, or before uses military force in that way.
But once he does that, he has an extraordinary amount of discretion under the statute to
use the amount-of-force to quell the civil disturbance, quelle the riot,
quel the rebellion, or quill the insurrection as he sees fit.
Those terms, like rebellion and insurrection and domestic unrest, are not defined in the
statute, which means, in essence, the president gets to define them.
When those triggers are met when those predicates are meant allowing him to say I'm going to invoke the insurrection act now
now there is a
movement
movement is maybe too much of a war here, but there's routinely
Effort to lobby Congress to amend the Insurrection Act really since
Trump started threatening to use it in his first term. There's a very
common recognition that there are gaps in this law that may be worth filling,
maybe making it harder to invoke. Again, he hasn't invoked it. When it has been invoked,
it hasn t really been controversial in a negative way. So, for example, in 1992,
in the LA riots. So following the Rodney King beating and the acquittal of the police officers,
riots ensued, lots of property damage across LA, people hurt,
people killed, the state government and city government requested support from then President
George H.W. Bush. And we need federal troops to come here and help us put down this civil unrest.
that is allowed under the Insurrection Act.
The state can request that support,
and the president can give that
support.
He invoked the insurrection act, troops deployed,
and then troops conducted both routine and exceptional law
enforcement operations in and around LA in 1992.
Prior to that, it was used several cities in the 1960s
I want to say Detroit was one of them, but notably in 1957, President Eisenhower deployed
the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 1,000 troops from fort Campbell
to Little Rock to essentially protect the Little rock 9 trying to go to school when the Arkansas
state government refused to honor and acknowledge the desegregation order from the Supreme Court.
So, the state governor had essentially deployed his state national guard in a way that was
essentially promoting or inciting violence and protecting those who were threatening
the kids.
President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas Guard, which he's permitted to do, ordered
them to stand down and deployed the active duty troops from the 101st to provide that
law enforcement and protection to those kids going to school to enforce the desegregation
order.
So that's a laudable example of when the instruction act has been used and really unless
you were in Arkansas, you didn't have a whole lot of complaint about it.
What President Trump seems to be suggesting now with claims to or threats to use the
Claiming that, for example, there's a rebellion in Los Angeles
when even a very liberal reading of civil unrest and violence
would not meet the definition of rebellion
in any normal definition or rebellion
to quell the invasion of illegal immigrants, quote unquote.
in Portland or in Chicago, these terms were used, legal terms
were use to suggest that the conditions were
ripe for him to deploy the troops under the Instruction Act.
The problem is those terms aren't defined by the statute,
which again means the president can define them
however he wants until a court steps in and defines them
or the statue defines him.
And he's been threatened to use them
pushing back on civil unrest and civil protest
against another branch of the federal government
enforcing federal law.
That itself is very controversial
and those tactics that they're using are very
controversial.
So it's an unusual situation.
I dare say it is an unprecedented situation,
certainly given that the frequency number of times
he is threatened to use the insurrection act
and then not used it.
Great. Thank you, Mr. Maurer. We're going to move on to the next speaker. The next
speaker actually does have an experience in civil disturbance procedures, and that is
Margaret Stock. She's a retired lieutenant colonel in the military police, U.S. Army
Reserve. Margaret has extensive experience with U S military issues.
as an adjunct instructor at the University of Alaska.
Margaret has served on the board of the Federal Bar Association's Immigration
Law Section and is a former member of
the American Bar Associations Commission on Immigration.
In 2013 she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow
which is also known as the Genius Grant. We wanted to welcome Margaret if you'd
like to maybe introduce yourself.
Hi everyone. I'm Margaret Stock.
I know some of you from my long period of residence here in Alaska and at one point a little fun fact
I was in charge of law enforcement operations at Fort Richardson now known as Jay Bear and
One of my duties was to train my troops on potential civil disturbances, but luckily we didn't have very many back then
So we did not have to use the training that that we had very often
That works pretty tame, in other words.
It certainly is.
I guess I'll just start off with some questions and then open it up to the group.
I get the first question is, can you explain the purpose of Army Field Manual FM3-19.15
and the regulations within that section concerning the use of military force and civil disturbances.
since we've been just chatting about that in its application.
Sure.
So I believe I provided the link to the manual to focus on the committee.
But basically this is the doctrine that lays out how the military in particular,
the army is supposed to provide support and assist civilian law enforcement
authorities when there's a civil disturbance.
And it's a big fat manual, but it is pretty interesting.
It does have a labor, lay person's version of the Positi Comitatus Act in the back
if you look at the Appendix B about law enforcement activity.
It tells you exactly what the official doctrine is regarding the
Pasti Commitatis Act to a layperson, not to lawyer.
It's laid out pretty clearly.
And, it also has some interesting sections that earlier in
the manual that talk about what
the military's role is when there's civil disturbance of protests going on.
And I'd just like to point out a couple of the interesting pieces of doctrine in there.
One of them is that working relationships between commanders and protest group leaders
are increasingly seen as the best means for preventing bad outcomes in crowd control situations.
This is called the negotiated management model of crowd-control law enforcement activities
And the manual further talks about open dialogue between protest leaders and military commanders that that's the best way to keep things under control.
Manual talks that people have the right to protest and especially in America, we have constitutional rights and that commanders are supposed to make a concerted effort to win over demonstration leaders
and work with them and allow them to conduct their protest in an acceptable manner.
The manual further goes on to emphasize that winning in combat is completely different
from winning a civil disturbance situation.
They are not the same, and that, winning, in the environment of a Civil Disturbance
situation is about seizing and holding the moral high ground, following the law, the
manual points to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, inviting the media in to accompany
to show that they have nothing to hide.
So this is basically the top thinkers
in the American military putting together the doctrine
for how to handle civil disturbances.
And of course, it's a very thick manual,
but it is one that I was trained on
in its predecessor publications
when I as a military police officer
on active duty and in reserves.
I would comment just at the end of discussion of the manual
that it doesn't seem to be what's been happening
In some situations in our country
The doctrine that I was trained on does not seem to be the doctrine. That ice is using
they seem have a completely different approach to the problem of civil disturbances and
Again, this is what the experts say you should do and they don't seem. Have been trained necessarily on this valuable doctrine
Thank you
Thank You mr. Stock as
representative gray
Thank you, Co-Chair Kawasaki, and thank you Ms. Stock.
I want to just point out that in the email that Co Chair Kawasaki and I received.
from Angela Leflam.
She pointed, I had asked about the five Alaska Guard soldiers
that had been assigned to ICE and Anchorage.
And she corrected me that that number
has been increased to six.
The six National Guard Soldiers assigned
to ice and anchorage are only performing administrative tasks.
I am going to make a comment before I ask my question
to Ms. Stock.
My comment is that in 2016, the budget for the country for ICE
Today, they have $85 billion to spend.
And when I interviewed Senator Lisa Murkowski for my podcast, this is publicly available,
I asked her about this.
And what she said, and no one's certain terms, is ICE has more than enough money.
They don't need any help.
So I guess I'm just putting that on the record, that ICE doesn't
need National Guard help to do administrative tasks.
National Guard soldiers, and I would imagine, you know, if you were in charge of
military police at J-Bear and you had an ask for six of your folks to go help ICE,
what would be governing their behavior and what they couldn't do?
Well, again, Professor Maurer, I believe, talked about the difference between Title 10 and Title
Basically, with regard to the National Guard helping us,
I'm not sure what they're doing.
So it could be perfectly fine activities.
Maybe they are helping with computer technology
or something in the background.
I don't, I am not aware that they
are going out on the street and grabbing people.
But the issue here with the Pussy Comitatus Act
is that even if the president invokes the Insurrection Act,
the troops can't violate the Constitution.
So the 4th Amendment still applies, the 5th amendment still
applies.
The 6th amendments still apply.
All those laws still applied.
I have the sense somehow that some people in the political
sphere these days think somehow they can just violate
the Constitution if they invoke the Positcomotatus Act or
the Insurrection Act.
But that's not how it works.
You still can't violate the constitution.
So if you're going to use National Guard and active duty
troops to do any kind of law enforcement, you have to make
sure they're trained.
and they know what they're doing.
And I experienced this in the military police.
One of the problems we had in military
police was that there's two legal regimes out there
if you're in a military.
There's a law of war, which the regular troops get trained on,
fighting, who you are allowed to kill,
when you were allowed use your weapon, what the use of forces.
And then there is law enforcement law,
which is completely different.
And so as a Military Police officer,
I had to have a switch on in my head and go, wait a minute.
Am I in combat?
I'm allowed do certain things in combat.
Or am I doing law enforcement because if I'm doing
law enforcements, it's completely different.
And you have to follow different, completely
different rules.
So you've to be able to switch off the law of war in your
head and turn to the domestic law, law
enforcement law.
And that's hard to do.
And active duty troops generally don't get trained in
how to doing Law Enforcement.
National Guard, they get a lot more training in civil
disturbance, is my understanding, and my observation.
The active duty troops generally don't get a lot of this kind of training and you have to do a
lot or reorientation. You have spend a
lot time training people to think differently when they're performing law enforcement duties.
Thank you. Great. Thank You, Ms. Stock. Representative Nelson, thank you, Miss Stock, you know,
it's been a while since I've been out to Fort Leonard Wood and read the MP doctrine, but can
what happens when the protest expands past an acceptable manner,
you know, the escalation of violence that could occur
and how an MP matches that and then also how de-escalation of
violence and the MP is supposed to match that.
Right. Well, Emmanuel does talk about that
and what you're supposed do is deescalate the situation.
And in my experience, when we had a situation involving a protest,
tell the protesters it's great to protest but you got to stay in this area you can't
you know come onto the base you could protest at the front gate but
you cannot block the fronkate you and if you block
the frontier so that people can come in and out of the
the area we're not going to let you do that you
know you have to be violating the rules
but if he protests off to the side of
the funky that's okay you just can impede the traffic
and you
Generally, you don't get protests on bases because they're not prohibited, the commander
just won't let somebody come on to a base to mount a protest.
So they have to protest off the base outside the front gate, that sort of thing.
But generally speaking, we were trained to de-escalate the situation, and part of that
is what I talked about earlier.
that's part of a healthy democracy that people are out protesting. The right of
the people to tell their leadership what they think is going on and what's wrong
and to hold up signs. And we were trained that you know people
are going to call you names and they might spit on you but you got to just
take it like an MP you don't hit them back because they spit
on or they call it a dirty name or something. You don t escalate the
situation and you do not overreact and it is the right
of the American people that protest.
And I appreciate that, Ms. Stock, what I'm talking about mainly is the escalation of
violence when it comes to protesters, how the MPs are supposed to react, because at
the end of the day, they are suppose to deescalate it, but sometimes a protest turns into a mob
or unruly crowd and things start getting thrown and MPs have to re-act to that.
That's one of the reasons why I gave you the manual because the
manual addresses that and it has examples of
the equipment that the MPs use and when to use it.
You know, we had certain types of special helmets.
We had batons.
We have shields.
We were taught different formations that we could use to
prevent people from getting killed.
We're taught not to spray riot control agents in people's faces,
you know.
Use it to move a crowd back but don't harm anybody directly.
You don t spray somebody right in the eyes with a riot
control agent.
We were taught the formations necessary to move a crowd back and get them into the right
area and contain them and maybe disperse them peacefully.
And again, I know that your time is short, but the manual is really thick and it has
all kinds of cool diagrams in it and examples and pictures and shows you exactly how to
do this.
And that's one of the reasons why we train so much.
We would spend a lot of time actually putting on our gear and standing in formation and
you know, to work with, we would hire a military personnel
on the base to pretend to be a mob and behave badly
so we could decide how we're gonna handle it.
But it's a lot of training,
and you have to trust the training too.
You can't just send somebody who's not trained out
on a street, they're going to overreact.
Thank you.
And being a part of some of those exercises,
it is quite interesting to see from both sides.
You you do understand that doctrine does also call for some arrest if agitators are caught under that guys
Absolutely
But primarily what the military's role is to let the civilians step in, the civilian law enforcement authorities step
in and try to do that unless it's actually happening on a face, you know, in which case we as the
military police could arrest civilians, but we would have to apply the rule that applies to arresting
civilians to the Civilians and different rules to people who are serving in the
military and of course there's differences there. Article 31 rights versus Miranda rights, which people
getting into the weeds here on the legal stuff but you have to be really smart
and know the law in order to do it correctly or you end up with convictions
being thrown out because you violated the Constitution when you arrested
somebody and their sharp defense lawyers come in and raise the Posse Comatata
sect as a defense and say that you've violated it or violated
the constitution. So if you want to get a conviction after you arrest somebody
you got to it directly you know and I learned that as military police officer
go by the book and then the conviction would hold up in court and if I didn't go
by that book I was going to end up trouble get counseled and the
conviction will get thrown out.
Perfect. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank You. Senator Dunbar.
Thank
you, Mr Chair and thank you Lieutenant Colonel Stock for being here tonight.
It seems like we were only allowing Lieutenant
Colonel's to testify. It's good.
So the the secretary of defense at one point last year referred to the rules of
But you would allude it to the fact that it's not the rules of engagement that apply in domestic and disc operations, right?
It's the Rules of Use of Force.
And so I don't know if you are aware of, I'm not aware, of any similar statements about the
Rules Of Use Of Force, and I wonder if could speak to that difference a little bit more.
And then also, you know, if a soldier.
or a Marine or whomever, but let's assume it's a soldier, is given an unlawful order to violate the constitutional rights of a protester.
What duty, if any, do they have with regards to that unlawful border?
And are the duties different with enlisted versus officers?
Okay, so there's lot of questions in there.
I will note that the term rules of engagement, you can write rules
of engagements for civil disturbance too.
But the JAGS, generally, and I think you know this because I
think that you had some involvement in it.
Before an operation, there's supposed to be a lot of planning and
part of the planning for the operation is to write the rules of engagement for
that particular operation whatever they're going to
be and communicate them to the troops on the ground.
and sometimes even we given a little card and said we were told you know this particular
operation these are going to be the rules of engagement for this operation is completely
different from when you are in Iraq wake up you it's not what you were doing over there
this is a new different kind of operation and these the rule here so just to clarify on that but
your question about unlawful orders I've frankly been puzzled by the national
as a military officer in my basic training,
my military police basic, training that it's your duty
not to follow unlawful orders.
And that was just pounded into my head, you know,
that at some point in your career, Lieutenant Stock,
you're gonna be given an unlawful order
and you gotta disregard it.
You gotta say, sir, that order's unlawful.
And they said this over and over
and again in training.
And, they gave us examples from the Vietnam War of
You know, war crimes that were committed by U.S. forces and how the brave helicopter pilot
came in and stopped the U S forces from murdering the civilians and the military was committing
war crime over Lieutenant Callie and, you know the whole story, I think you've had the
same training that I have.
But it was repeated over and over again.
So when I heard people saying this publicly you're not supposed to obey unlawful orders,
I thought, yeah, no kidding.
That's what I've been told my whole entire career.
Enlisted soldiers are supposed to be trained the same way, however, the training is a little bit different because officers
obviously have more leadership responsibility to
you know direct troops what to do and
Enlisted soldiers can potentially face a court marshal, you now for not following lawful orders
So that sometimes they have a hard time figuring out whether it's a lawful order or whether they should just do what they're told
So officers probably bear more responsibility as a legal matter to make sure that they're giving orders that are lawful
in order to prevent the enlisted soldiers from going to jail for following unlawful orders.
And of course officers have more recourse to jags who can tell them whether an order is lawful or not.
Give them legal opinions.
It's very hard for an enlisted soldier to go find a jag officer when he's on the battlefield.
take care of the prisoners was lawful or not so I think there's a little more leeway in the sense
that enlisted soldiers aren't expected to exercise their judgment as much but definitely on the
officer court there is a lot of training on this and when I was at West Point teaching on
the faculty there for over nine years there was just a tremendous amount of
training in this lectures and people were brought in to talk about what the difference is between
Thank you, and just as a note in the Judge Advocate Legal Center in school in Charlottesville, Virginia
There is a display specifically about my lie and about exactly the case that you raise
It is the one of the paradigmatic examples. Thank You for that answer.
Thank. You mr. Chair
Thank Thank, you miss stock and before we go to co-chair grade like to I know that mister Maury you had your hand up
Yeah, I'm sorry. Can you hear me we sure can
Great, I just wanted to add on. I don't disagree with anything that Ms. Doc has said I agreed 100%. I would just add
I've done a lot of a
lot Of writing and talking about the unlawful over issue in the last three or four months with regard to the
both strikes in a Caribbean and East Pacific with regards to
potential invasions of Greenland
I'm part of the group called the former Jag working group which consists of
You guessed it, former JAGS. Many retired, many senior DOD-retired counsel. And this issue of
unlawful orders is a daily discussion point. It's challenging, notwithstanding the fact that
you're drilled on disobey and unlawful order, disobeyed unlawful ordered,
the challenge, of course, is figuring out, well, other than the MILEI incident, what is an unlawful
Right?
You know, ordering a troop to take a prisoner out back and execute them is pretty patently
obviously clearly unlawful.
Is an order to a private in Los Angeles to detain a civilian protester for 45 minutes?
Does that violate the Posse Comitabas Act, which is a criminal statute?
Is that unlawful order?
Would that private know that?
Would the company commander know that, would the division commander
know, that? Probably not. Probably
not, so it really does become a matter of
context and circumstance and what exactly is the order to do
and uh Miss Doc was correct in saying that
when when a service member whether it's an officer or enlisted obeys an order
that itself is unlawful and they end up committing a crime as a result
if they're tried for it.
If they tried to, let's say the order is to kill somebody,
and that order ends up being an unlawful order,
and the offense is murder, and
that soldier is tried from murder.
That soldier can raise a defense at trial
and say, obedience to orders.
And as long as that
order was not patently unlawful,
it's a offense.
No prosecution, no conviction.
The murder order would most likely be patting the unlawful.
right, but there are a whole swath of potential orders that don't are not that obvious, not
that obviously wrong, and expose those troops to potential criminal sanction.
So one big issue here, just in the news, right is, is it unlawful order to order a drone
at least according to most jags,
would say that's an unlawful order
because they're violating one, the laws of war,
which the administration claims it's following.
And even if it is not an armed conflict,
it certainly violates the Fourth Amendment
and basic law of C and domestic legal authority.
So it' unlawful on multiple levels.
So is that June operator committing a crime
or are they just obeying an order
that is possibly unlawful?
It gets very gray very quickly and so it's why we'd like to think it a clear cut obey unlawful or I'm sorry
obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders on
On either end it is pretty clearly obvious, but those are extreme outliers and
The majority of cases the majority cases are in the middle where it s not quite so obvious
Thank You mr. Thank you so much representative gray
Thank you. Co-chair Kawasaki. So I just want to remind everybody that in Alaska we have the highest
per capita veteran population, approximately 10, a little over 10% of our population are
military veterans. That's just under 60,000 military Veterans. Not all of them are military
retirees, but many of are. so that is the context for on November 18, 2025 there was a video released
six Democratic lawmakers, one of them was U.S. Senator Mark Kelly.
The words he said, I think it's really important to say them out loud, the words that he
said were, our laws are clear.
You can refuse illegal orders.
Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution.
Right now the threats coming to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right
here at home.
Advisor to President Trump, Stephen Miller, called the video in a tempted insurrection.
And then President Donald Trump declared that, quote, the traitors to our country should
be arrested and put on trial.
And he then reposted suggestions that they be hanged.
Secretary Pete Hexett then ordered the Navy to look into Kelly's quote potentially unlawful
comments.
Something that he was able to do with him and not any of the other veterans in that video
And so I'm just curious if, for both of our presenters,
if you could comment on how common it is
for military retirees to have their pay cut
for things that they say as retirees.
I just wanna talk about how calm that is
to go back and cut somebody's military pay
for something they said that the Presidential Administration
disagrees with.
Correct, it's never happened, especially because the statute itself that allows the administration
to reduce retired pay is predicated on the misconduct occurring while the person was
on active duty, not after they retired.
He retired 14 years ago, and the entire statement that he's been investigated for relates to
the statements that you made in November via the video.
All the misconduct, quote-unquote, misconduct, which I want to be clear, is not actually
happened after he retired. So the process, if they're even using to consider reducing him,
is flawed from the very beginning. But reiterate the point, it never happens. Even if evidence
came out, you know, this retirees said something the administration doesn't like before they retired,
chances are, once they are retired they were not going to be brought back to active duty to
be tried by Corporal, certainly, and they weren't going have their retirement rank
as a consequence of that statement they made while they were in active duty.
Thanks two quick follow-ups number one it was my understanding that he wasn't going to be court-martialed and put on any kind of trial
That it would be an administrative action to reduce his pay
So I want a clarification on that and then number two
I'm just curious if both of you could comment on how this might affect the veteran population in Alaska to see a fellow
veteran and retiree treated like this for
what we've heard today was 100% factual.
Sure, so he was initially threatened with Port Marshall.
The initial comments from from Higgs Seth were very clear
that Court Marshall was on the table.
Only after the Navy conducted its investigation,
which I think took about a month, give or take,
did Hix Seth publicly say, we're going to pursue,
I'm going give you a censure?
like a reprimand in writing, and I'm putting your file,
and i'm going to use that as the basis to initiate this administrative reduction for you.
And the reason why he's not being prosecuted via court martial is the same reason that he
and the other five were not indicted in DC District Court the
other day by a grand jury because there's no evidence of actual criminal behavior.
My initial take is that any threat by the administration
to potentially punish retirees for their speech
is incredibly dangerous.
I mean, obviously, it seems to impact in a very negative way.
One is First Amendment rights, and that's very concerning.
Now, there are statutes within the UCMJ
that do limit speech,
and they would, in fact, apply to retirees.
For example, Article 88 of the UCMJ contemptuous words very vaguely explained.
There's no like example list of words that you can't use or phrases you
can use. It's only been used twice in modern American military history and never
against a retiree and only applies to officers. But theoretically, if if Senator
Kelly retired captain and now Senator Kelly.
had used contemptuous words against the president or Secretary of Defense,
Ag Seth, in his personal capacity even. That would violate the ECMJ.
But I'll beat the dead horse here. What he said was not seditious, was
not treason, and was contemptious, not conduct of becoming an officer,
not prejudicial to go to order discipline, because again, he's re-skating the law.
Now, with regard to, is this going to chill, no pun intended, Alaskan
retirees it could certainly if you're a senior retiree perhaps more ranked than a lieutenant
colonel has I've said the same things the colonel that captain retired kelley has said on national
media the exact same words and I feel confident saying those words because I know it's not a
criminal behavior now am I putting myself at risk for being essentially targeted by the administration
The reason why he went after Captain retired Kelly was not because he was a Captain, it
was because, he's a sitting Senator, a Sitting Democratic Senator.
A sitting Democratic senator who has very vocally gone against the administration since the
beginning.
He was the target of opportunity and the fact that he retired officer gave them the perception
that they could go after him on this other route.
That's why they went to him.
I don't think the majority of, you know, former service members or certainly retired service
members in Alaska are at great risk of being investigated or prosecuted by the Federal
Administration for things that they say in public that may be divisive or maybe contrary
to the party line.
Are they at risk?
Yes.
If they violate Article 88 in particular, if they're a retired officer.
is very, very small.
Thank you, Mr. Maurer.
Did you have any comments with stock before I go to the last question here?
I just thought it backfired because Senator Kelly got so much support for fighting back,
you know, that it was almost like comical.
Like if you want to step in it, you
know threatened to prosecute a sitting senator for telling people what the law is,
you
know it just seemed to me it
Silly to do that and it completely backfired as a political
Floyd, I don't know too many people who are actually intimidated at this point because there's so many
People who were they can't go after everybody and
If they did try to go
after somebody there would be so
Many people to jump in to defend them and when they win the case and they get to file a national lawsuit that I
Think they've learned that now, so I I think there is going to be a whole lot of this
Thank you representative Nelson
Thank you Mr. Chair. I think almost everyone here has probably seen that video of the members
of Congress talking about unlawful unlawful orders. You know, no one disagrees that anyone
going through basic or any type of military training has received training in lawful unlawful
The main concern about the video was not specifying,
as was described by Ms. Stock.
You know, sometimes I listed the soldiers.
It's a little more difficult for them to know what the difference between
an unlawful and lawful order is, and that can create a lot of confusion,
especially in a wartime activity,
that some boat strikes may or may not have.
So I wanted to see just off of conversations with Professor Maurer or Ms. Stock, what the thoughts are on specifying for a lot of soldiers all the complexities that go into the difference between a lawful and unlawful order for the wide variety of Soldiers across the United States military.
And so you'd be in the field and you would be attacking an objective and all of a sudden
there's like an enemy soldier surrendering and
you have to handle that person correctly and
you will be rated on whether you complied with the law or not in handling that individual.
And this is commonly part of training.
Maybe they're eliminating this because they are not focusing on this woke stuff of law anymore.
But throughout my training, every time we did an exercise in
a JAG officer there and they had scenarios built in that you can't shoot the prisoner
after they surrendered and the boat scenario was often used as an example.
We had power point slides with scenarios, you know, this is what you're allowed to do,
this what your not allowed.
They tried to keep it pretty simple, but it was always incorporated into the training
that the people had to understand how to comply with the law, whether it's a civil
infantry training, which I had a lot of happen to have a
lot infantry trainings because I was an infantry unit.
And they would incorporate this, these principles into the
actual training as part of the exercise.
And people would get rated and graded on it and they'd give
you scenarios where you're, you know,
you are allowed to do it here and not allowed
to it do here.
So it was extremely common.
You know.
Just want to emphasize that it's not like people who were
just giving a book and told to read it.
It was part your training in the field.
that you'd get rated on whether you were complying with the law
when you are performing your activities,
whether they were combat activities
or civil disturbance training.
Yeah, in my experience,
ECHO's stocks completely,
both as a former combat engineer,
platoon leader in Iraq,
line officer doing Iraq missions
in the first year of the Iraq war.
And later as of brigade,
Judge Avick, and also in a Iraq.
And then later, as the professor of West Point,
Compliance with lawful orders is a continual point of discussion and continual
point training, and it's ultimately the commander who's got the responsibility
to ensure that their troops are complying with the law. Not the JAG. The JEG is
ultimately an advisor, a counselor.
The commander bears responsibility to
ensure their their trips are compliant. If they're not, if the
commander kind of ignores that duty, they are derelict in the performance of
their duties, which itself is crying.
So there's that, I guess, added level of protection.
The issue with the generic statement in the video,
it actually makes it less compelling of a threat.
It makes less likely to be a crime
because it didn't mention a specific order.
Didn't mentioned the boats.
Didn' mention sporting ice.
Didn',t mention riots.
Didn'.t mentioned Greenland.
It didn'nt mention Trump.
It did'n't mentions Eggset.
The context, the circumstances, I think to most observers,
are pretty clear, those were the concerns,
animating those six lawmakers.
But no specific order was mentioned as being unlawful,
and no order giver was
mentioned being an unlawful order-giver.
It might be a different case.
Very well, it could be different cases.
If Kelly or any of the others had said,
is an unlawful order and here's my reason why I personally think it is but
let's say those senators said it and said in a way that left no nothing to
the imagination that they're encouraging people to disobey that you're in
a unit that's going to deploy to the Caribbean you are in the Navy you
are the Marines you in The Air Force you your special operator and you'll be
involved in these strikes know that those are illegal strikes you should be
That might meet the definition of the federal sedition statute,
seditious conspiracy statute that they were initially investigated under.
It might constitute an article 134 conduct, I'm sorry,
conduct prejudicial to the go-to-rediscipline of a command.
It may be conduct on becoming an officer.
It, might be any number of other UC&J offenses.
So the more specific that the commentary would be the
more danger those individuals would
be in of violating those statutes.
The fact that he left it so generic
was an additional layer of protection for them.
Thank you.
Sorry to cut you a little short.
We wanted to get to the other three speakers,
but I'd like to thank Mr. Maurer and Ms. Stock once again.
And we're going to go ahead and move on.
Before I move down, though, I did want to say that Lieutenant
Colonel Banias is online.
He is one of our civilian members of the Legislative
Joint Armed Services Committee, a longtime member.
I just wanted to thank him for being here.
We'll go head next.
Our next speaker is Lisa Slava.
Lisa is a master of public policy candidate,
military spouse of 10 years.
She's currently based at Eilson Air Force Base since the fall
of 2021.
A dedicated advocate for military personnel and their families, Lisa integrates her professional
background in economic development to translate the unique demands of military life in the
Alaska Interior and to inform the policy insights for us here at the state of Alaska.
Her work focuses on the vital link between family morale and mission readiness across
the total force.
Thanks for being here, Ms. Slaba.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.
I'll go ahead and start just with a couple of questions or a question and then pass it
off to anybody who wants to ask, but you've been a military spouse.
Part of this whole discussion and the reason why we're here today was to discuss sort of
these ready to deploy orders, and although you weren't directly impacted, I'm just
wanted to have an opinion on how military families might have been impacted during that time
emotionally, logistically
Even though those orders were later rescinded
Thank You senator Kawasaki
Representative Gray and members of the joint armed services committee for the opportunity to speak with you today
As noted, my name is Lisa Slaba. I am appearing before you. Today as a private citizen and a military spouse
While the perspectives I'm sharing are deeply informed by my experience within the military community
I want to be clear for the record that these comments are my own and do not reflect the do
Not reflect official policy or position of the Department of Defense
Federal agency or office any branch of The Armed Forces or military installation
As it pertains to your question, Senator Kawasaki,
from my perspective as a spouse,
we essentially live with a baseline of uncertainty
because of who we decided to marry.
And so when my family's timeline has changed,
suddenly it has caused an immediate and intense pivot
for our entire household.
And, so in my experience,
that has created a high emotional pressure.
You are mentally and heartfully preparing
for a significant life change.
And even though...
Even though those can be rescinded or things stabilize or or what have you you can't immediately
Undo that emotional preparation it takes to find your rhythm again
And so I have seen firsthand how this change in timeline carries an immediate financial physical and mental pressure
For the family and it's a weight we carry willingly, but it is a waiting nonetheless
And maybe least could you tell me just a little bit about
You know just the sense in Fairbanks we
Of course, as a Senate office representing Fort Wainwright area got calls from family members
kind of concerned and we had to tell them we're not really the people in charge of that.
I don't know exactly what ready to deploy orders actually are but they were very concerned
and maybe you could just tell me how that situation sort of reverberated within the military community.
Yeah, in my observations, you know, even though my family wasn't connected as as you noted
Previously I am stationed at I'll send an hour
The military community goes into support mode almost immediately any time we may get an inkling or a hearing of what that could look like
So we we will notice a shift in energy whether that be at the grocery store
School drop-offs just among our neighborhoods, but it's a that collective sense touches all of us
in some way or another, regardless of our affiliation.
And so we end up, we ended quickly coordinating the logistics
of different things, whether that be at home, at work,
our childcare, schools, and we want to make sure our kids feel
safe and have the support that they need,
knowing that their parent could be leaving
for an undetermined amount of time.
And, so it just shows that as a whole,
we accept it, even though we might not like it.
We don't we can't change it. We are still going to call and we may still ask questions
I'm about it because we are sometimes we aren't usually seeking just more information across the board
Thank you, mr. Slobba senator Dunbar
Thank You mister chair. Thank him is slobber be being here. You know what?
I think there might be a perception among some folks without military service in their family
that this is just sort of par for the course you know this, is the military is always ready to go
you're ready deploy but could you perhaps contrast these kind of open-ended orders with a typical
deployment where perhaps you have more lead time and more certainty about when it's going to occur
or not occur? I wouldn't be able to speak directly on that.
What I can share is that, you know, there is a difference.
But as you mentioned at the beginning of your statement there, or your question is
that we don't always get a lot of lead time as to whether our servicemen will have to leave.
So in that respect, it is sometimes always ready to go at any time.
You know that is the conversation I've had at a dinner table with my husband that he could get
Overseas back to the office because something happened on the installation or what have you
They our families always have to be prepared for the unknown
Very good. Thank you, mr. Chair. I thank you miss slobba. Thanks. You senator Dunbar
Representative Holland, right? Thank You and just briefly and
I don't think we can go too far into this, but I'm really curious about how this has affected you and your family and other families given the, I guess, controversy around these potential deployments.
I suspect that if this was a more traditional deployment
into, you know, some sort of active military activity,
there's an understanding that you're going where you sent
to do the job you were asked to to.
In this case, the situation has gotten much more complex.
And I'm just curious if that has added a different layer
of stress and uncertainty to these plans,
or if it's still a matter of we go where we're sent
How's this affected you in this regard?
You for that question representative Paul and unfortunately I do not feel comfortable in answering that
question
Just as as a military family member like I mentioned previously we
Have to be prepared and expect sometimes the worst and hope for the best
I respect that. Thank you for your comments
Great. Thank you, Ms. Slaba. We're going to have to move on to our next testifier because there's only
20 minutes left and two more people on deck. But thank you for your testimony. Thanks for being online today, and we'll see you next week.
Absolutely.
Thank You.
Next in line, we do have Miss Britney Smart.
Brittany is going to speak to us about the Alaska Defense Forum, which some members of
this committee have been on, and I hope that we see everybody up in Fairbanks this August.
Brittany's the senior advisor for Defense Community and Research at the University of
Alaska Fairbank's Geophysical Institute, where she works at The Intersection of Civilian
Communities, Defense Missions and Applied Research. She's The Director of the
Alaska Defence Forum. Answers on the Board of Directors of The Association.
of Defence Communities. She also serves on ADC's Federal Outreach and Advisory Council and
was recognized as a great American Defence Community Champion for 2024-2025. Welcome to the committee.
Thank you so much, Senator Kawasaki, and wow, that was a mouthful, my apologies.
Thank, you, so, much for inviting me to speak about the Alaska Defense Forum.
It is an annual event, one that I am incredibly proud of,
that brings together defense community and business partners
to talk about some of those shared challenges, priorities,
and opportunities in order to move forward together.
in terms of transportation, logistics, workforce,
child care, housing.
A lot of those issues are readiness issues
for our installations and our missions,
and yet are the responsibilities of our local communities.
This is an opportunity for us to come together once a year,
highlight where we can work together,
what we need to continue working on,
and celebrate the accomplishments that we've had.
I've been very pleased to have the partnership
paid in this event. I think it's a great opportunity to network and connect with
some of our Pentagon partners that come and support this
event every year.
I happy to answer any questions, but before I move on...
The save the date is the very last week of August.
So it is 24th, 25th 26th of august,
and we look forward to having you all here.
The first, the events kicks off on Monday,
and generally we have tours that happen that day,
and then the forum itself happens on the Tuesday and Wednesday,
and follow it up with post-event activities
with things along the lines of the jask side meetings
and stuff that we've had in the past.
I hope to see you all up in Fairbanks here soon later on this summer and look forward to any questions you have
Thank you very much miss smart. We definitely will be up back home
And we definitely we'll make sure that that invitation is extended to other members
Of this joint armed services committee and actually a lot of the legislators
I think you're very interested in participating this Summer. I've got a question here from co-chair representative gray
Thank you, co-chair Kawasaki. I just wanted to say to Brittany Spart that this year's Alaska Defense Forum was
Just incredible. It was a really really amazing event.
I'm very grateful for your hard work and all of the organizers because it was just I mean for people who didn't go this
year, I made
Representative diver was there it wasn't it
Was really a world-class event with amazing speakers and I learned so much. So thank you
Thanks, maybe you could tell us just a little bit before we entertain our last speaker a
little more about what you do with the Association of Defense Communities, the federal national
group.
Yeah, absolutely. So the Alaska Defense Forum is actually modeled off of the association
of Defense Community National Events. There's two primary events that they have. One is
called the National Summit that is held in D.C. that's more policy-based. And the other
one is called Installation Innovation Forum. That is really learning about case studies
from across the country. How are installations and communities working together? And I look
to those two events in order to shape what the Alaskan Defense forum looks like. The
I'm sorry, the Association of Defense Communities
is an organization that mirrors what our goals are
for the Alaska Defense Forum,
where it brings together military business
and community partners to address challenges
from across the nation.
It's a great opportunity to learn more
about what other communities are doing
and help drive policies that support our local communities
to addressed the installation and readiness needs
of our global military partners.
Great. Thank you representative Holland. Great, thank you. It's good to see you again
I'm just curious where you feel like things are at with the relationship of the NSN and
the Mac and development that we had seen with innovation related partnerships between the
installations and the community looking at dual use and economic development opportunities.
I know we did quite a bit of work a few years ago.
Seems like thing's kind of stalled out is there a way we can understand where that's
as we look at the next defense form is there going to be an opportunity to put some energy
into that area of joint mission challenge and potential economic development.
We'll all start with your last comment there.
The purpose of the Alaska Defense Forum is to really highlight those opportunities of
economic development and looking at what those shared opportunities are.
In terms of AMAC, I have not been involved in those conversations, so I'm not able to
speak to that.
And I look forward to seeing that effort move forward and get some traction.
I'd love to highlight any of those efforts at the Defense forum.
any updates that we potentially may have there.
In terms of innovation, I think we have really gotten,
we've made quite a bit of progress.
And one of the downsides is due to tightened budgets, right?
So a lot of our partners are having to look
to our local community partners as a way to help
still meet their readiness and mission needs
with further tightening budgets.
really successful for us from the community standpoint. There's also a competitive
infrastructure program with the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation, OLDCC,
known as DESIP, the Defense community infrastructure Program, and Alaska has done very, very well
with that program. Right now we have six active projects. Three of them were awarded in this last
It's just been a phenomenal opportunity for us to address some of our local infrastructure
challenges that also meet and address the installation and mission readiness challenges
that we have.
For this last funding cycle, we got 30% of the overall awards.
There were 10 awarded projects in Alaska, about three of them, just with this lasting
funding cycles.
really positions us into an opportunity
to really take advantage of these partnership opportunities
as long as we're open to the conversations
and coming to that table as a willing
and equal partner in the conversation.
Great, thank you.
Great.
Thank you very much for joining us, Ms. Smart.
We just have 10 minutes left,
but we do have one last presentation.
That's from one of my favorites.
Tammy Perot, if Tammy would join us.
Tammy became the Northwest Region Defense State Liaison Officer 2018 in this role.
She serves as a point of contact between the Department of Defense and the state
governments working to strengthen coordination on defense policy issues
and matters affecting service members their families and host communities.
Prior to joining the DSLO, she worked in both corporate and nonprofit sectors in public policy development and advocacy.
Ms. Perot is a U.S. combat veteran, army combat veterans, who served with the 411th Civil Affairs Battalion.
And we'd like to give you the dais.
Senator Kausaki, co-chair Gray, thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
I have a few slides, but we have limited time,
so I'll just go ahead and get started.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank-you also for taking time to understand
the life-lived experience of our military families today.
It means a lot to me as a military family member
and as veteran, and it helps inform your committee
when you have the opportunity to make decisions around.
I'm just going to move another panel.
to make decisions around state legislation that can support our military families.
And that's what I'm just going to briefly talk to you about today.
here on the screen you see the state policy priorities which our office supports for
2026. So our Office as part of the Department of War identifies policies
that will support our military families. None of these policies are specific to
Alaska. We look for policies that are going to be effective in every state
where we have military members stationed.
all 50 states in our territories and I'd like to highlight on top that the state of Alaska
already has a military spouse employment preference done by Representative Nelson.
You already allow for us to provide off installation child care. You allow
for you have an excellent military community representation on state boards and councils
and in your statehood act you've maintained jurisdiction of our federal installations so we
work that is required for jurisdictional issues.
I'd like to highlight there in the yellow some areas
that we can continue to work together on.
And I am here in The Building all day tomorrow.
And i'm always available for you to call or email
or come up and spend time with you and Juneau
to talk about any of these things.
The first is helping our families
with special education needs.
Aleska has already taken the very important step in that you...
If there is a due process hearing, that does not fall to a family to have to support the costs of a Due Process hearing in the state of Alaska that falls to the district.
We oftentimes have families that just cannot be part of due, have a do process
hearing because of the financial burden.
However, we are asking states to look carefully at their IEP and
and evaluations that have been done and skits the services,
comparable services for students as they move.
Our education policy and implementation,
information enhancements priority,
this is really tightening up some things
that outside of the military child education compact.
tightening up the purple star program, improving policies that support our military children.
You have a bill introduced on this in the legislature, House Bill 256 by Representative Stapp.
I look forward to talking more about that legislation with you all in future.
That bill also addresses open enrollment flexibility.
If there's open enrollments in a state, we often find that our
military families aren't able to take advantage of those policies if they are in place.
to ensure that there are specific provisions
to support military families who oftentimes aren't here
during the open enrollment timeframe.
So please consider that when you're talking
about open enrollments.
And then finally, Solutions for Military Homeschool.
We, around the education piece,
we appreciate the broad homeschool capacity opportunities
for our military children.
Military families, homes school at about three times
the rate of traditional families outside of the military,
so much higher homes' school rates.
And just one little clarification we'd love to have made
is just clarifying that JROTC is open
for homeschoolers who may not live in a district
where JRO TC is available,
so that they can go to any district.
You have some great language about allowing for athletics,
but just that little clarity around Jro TC would be helpful.
I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics and a topic that this legislature moved forward today, and that's occupational licensure compacts.
Thank you very much to Co-Chair Gray for moving forward the social work compact out of the house today.
Occupational licensor compacks are a priority for the Department of Defense because we see them as the best way for
a military spouse to transition their license and have quality licenser portability.
Congress charged our office with working with states
to implement occupational licensure compacts.
Not all occupational licenseure complex are the same,
and this state has recently made a commitment
to support several occupational
licensured compaks in the Rural Health Initiative grant.
So we, the federal government,
we really see how these compacks can help
not only our military families,
but also our families in rural areas.
I encourage you to just continue to work on the adoption of
compacts which are supported by these occupations and continue
to adopt these for the benefit of our military families.
Here in front of you is a list of current legislation that we are supporting.
Again, House Bill 256 has lots of wonderful content and policy in it that we would like
to move forward, strengthening Purple Star, strengthen the services around for our military
children and then a list of compacts and licensure policy that are looking to support this legislative
session. We would appreciate the opportunity to talk to any of you about those and to
stand by for your questions.
Thank you very much.
Great, thank you.
Thanks a lot for being here.
And you've been a real fixture here in the capital,
providing us some great information.
I'll just say that, I mean, a lotta the legislation
that we've seen come through,
specifically helping the families at Fort Wainwright
have been, because you have driven it,
and I just wanted to thank for you being there.
Senator Dunbar.
Thank You, Mr. Chairman.
ThankYou, Ms. Perot, for bein' here,
If we go back to that previous slide there about the occupational
compacts, so there's a discussion happening now you're probably aware of the Rural Health
Transformation Fund and this is part of it, but another part
of is scope of practice and there are two, at least two pieces of scope
of, practice legislation that are currently going forward.
It seems like that would have similar support given that, you know, when folks are going from a
and take a physician's assistant, going from a state where they have broader school of practice coming to Alaska and being restricted.
That also would be maybe deleterious to their career and so.
Do you take any position on the scope of practice bills?
Through the chair to Senator Dunbar, we have not historically taken a position
on scope-of-practice bills, however,
we understand that scope practice is really, you know, how a state determines it.
And there are certain things that sometimes we can look at this and we
can say, okay, is the scopa practice in the state adequate or appropriate or
aligned to ensure that it supports this compact, right?
different in different states, and this state can still have that compact, the licensure
component of it, but sometimes states scope of practice is written in a way that it may
not align or may not be able to align.
So we don't take a position on scope or practice.
We support any enabling legislation that is necessary in order to establish a compact
in the state.
Thank you.
Thank You, Mr. Chair.
Great.
Thank.
for Tammy, and Tammy will be around.
Yes, one last thing, follow-up to Ms. Smart.
This is a picture of one of the tours
prior to the Alaska Defense Forum this past year,
and so if you want to go on wonderful tours like this,
I also encourage you to join me in Fairbanks in August.
So thank you very much for the opportunity to be here,
and thank for being so welcoming, I appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Ms. Peralt and I have not yet been to the clear new space force station
So I should definitely try to do that
Before we leave I wanted to see if there were any last questions. I believe everybody is still online
Co-chair great. Thank You so Much
Senator Kawasaki and this is a question for Dan Maurer.
I I want to just prep his question
he
was prepared to speak about the 11th Airborne's ready to deploy orders to Minneapolis.
But because, and I'm very grateful to DoD and the Pentagon for standing down those orders.
But I think a lot of us probably heard from our constituents concern about that deployment.
They were afraid that it could be redirected to Greenland.
And so one of the questions we do is prepared answer that we didn't ask him.
How would it have been feasible for those folks
to have then redirected to Greenland
if the President of the United States
had decided that's what he wanted to do?
Mr. Merr.
Thank you.
So the answer in short is yes, it would have be feasible.
If you look at the mission statement
of The 11th Airborne Division,
it's essentially committing to warfare
in places like Greenland.
Thankfully, they're not there.
The idea is that theoretically,
they could deploy to Russia or any other Arctic locale
to fight our nation's wars as a conventional army unit.
So it was concerning when they received ready-to-deploy orders
to Minnesota, because again, for the reasons
that we've discussed all night,
It's unconventional to put active duty forces in that role where they might be supporting
federal ICE agents when the Instruction Act has not been invoked, or even when it has
been in vote, very rare to do that sort of mission, for which they were not really trained
to deal.
As Ms. Stock alluded to and described in pretty fair detail, active-duty troops are not well
The Ready to Deploy Order is simply a standard order.
It basically get ready to go in case we need you.
And it generally entails a little bit different, I think,
unit by unit and perhaps with specificity from the Pentagon,
but generally it means make sure that your individuals are ready
to make their wills are updated, their powers of attorney
are straight, they've updated their insurance,
vehicles are prepped and and ensure that their mission ready in the motor pool
they might even be moved to a railhead or a shipping yard in case they have to
get pushed to foreign port of debarkation. So that's not the ready
deploy order is simply that. It would be unusual but not if not a
It may even have been a subterfuge, I don't know,
and no, anyone really knows in the public
if the Minnesota mission was really just cover
for a potential deployment to Greenland.
I know the answer to that.
But if they had been directed to go,
the president as well within his authority
as Commander-in-Chief to do that,
again, it's an active duty unit
that's literally built to combat operations
in an environment like Greenland, again.
The policy choice behind doing that is questionable and debatable, but the legality of it in terms
of simply, does he have the authority to move the unit from one kind of mission to another
is absolutely true.
The legality and actual deployment to Greenland to invade, occupy, annex, or seize any part
And the answer to that is it's unlawful under both domestic law and international law.
But that's a different question from whether the president can redirect a unit from one place to another place.
I hope that answers the question.
Thank you so much, and thank you for being here tonight, you and Ms. Doc and all of our presenters.
And I don't want to take it away from co-chair Kawasaki, but since I made you come back online and
I know you're on the east coast and it is very late at night and I appreciate you staying on.
Thank You so Much, Mr. Maurer.
Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Maurer.
I'll just say that we got inquiries from Danish journalists about this potential.
I hadn't even thought about it, but the 11th Airborne is one of the fighting forces,
a superior fighting force for especially Arctic.
in the Arctic, and we hope that they're not engaged with our allies, of course,
and I just, I didn't think about it until the people had written us and talked to us
about this potential for a threat happening,
and so...
I really do appreciate that commentary.
I appreciate you being here today, Mr. Maurer.
I wanted to also thank Margaret Stock, Lisa Slaba,
Brittany Smart, and of course, Tammy Peralt for being
here.
I want to thank the other members of the Joint
and Services Committee who are online and here in the room
for entertaining us today during this committee hearing.
The next committee hearings has not been scheduled,
but we will definitely have a committee
with the rest of the commanders of
the Alaska Command and other folks.
So without any other business before the committee,
we will go ahead and adjourn at 706.