Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question. Today:
“Who controls the deployment of the Vermont National Guard if orders from the federal government and the state are in conflict?”
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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A high profile mission
Josh Crane: From Vermont Public and the NPR Network, this is Brave Little State. I’m Josh Crane.
You may have heard that right at the end of 2025, members of the Vermont National Guard, along with their F-35 fighter jets, were called into active duty as part of a high-profile international mission.
Mikaela Lefrak: Last month, Vermont's Air National Guard was deployed to the Caribbean as part of the military operation targeting Venezuela…
Josh Crane: After the news broke, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch confirmed to reporters that the guard was part of the mission to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Sen. Peter Welch: They were given 11 days notice. Just as the run up to Christmas holidays were occurring. They packed up and they went there and they answered the call of the president…
Josh Crane: Details about the recent deployment are murky at best.
The Vermont National Guard says they don’t know much about this mission since guard members are under command of the federal government.
Same with members of Vermont’s congressional delegation in D.C. — like Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint, who spoke to Vermont Public in early January.
Rep. Becca Balint: We have not been briefed. We have not been given any information about scope, about goals, about duration. And this is deeply concerning to me.
Josh Crane: It’s not just elected officials who are concerned. A group of community organizers in southern Vermont have been following the escalation of federal power during Trump’s second term. Here’s one of those organizers, Tim Hayes, a retired middle school teacher in Newfane.
Tim Hayes: We have a president who's willing to use the troops in ways that we've never seen before, and could be very dangerous. And at the bottom of all of this is my concern for the troops going off into situations in danger.
Josh Crane: Tim also wants to know if it’s legal. Because the Vermont National Guard usually takes orders from the state. And in some instances, Gov. Phil Scott has actually refused to deploy troops when the president asked him to.
All of this is why we decided to take on a question that’s been sitting in the Brave Little State archives since 2020. The question is: Who controls the deployment of the Vermont National Guard if orders from the federal government and the state are in conflict?
National Guard 101
Josh Crane: I’m here with Brave Little State reporter, Sabine Poux. Hey, Sabine.
Sabine Poux: Hi, Josh.
Josh: So Sabine, you’ve become something of a military history correspondent for the show.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) That’s right.
Josh Crane: So, first off, can you enlighten us: What is the National Guard?
Sabine Poux: Yes. So, every state, plus Washington D.C., and every U.S. territory has its own National Guard made up of an Army National Guard and an Air National Guard. They’re basically reserve branches of the U.S. military — meaning members of the guard are civilians with day jobs. They’re police officers and farmers and college students.
And then for at least 39 days a year, these civilians are also in training with the guard to be ready in case they get called into action.
And the guard is always looking for new members. Here’s a pretty incredible recruitment ad from the 1990s ….
Army National Guard ad: (Singing) Adventure, helping, service. In the Army National Guard, you can.
(Spoken) Find yourself in the Army National Guard, servicing one weekend a month and two weeks a year. And you’ll find an extra paycheck, money for college and all the adventure you can handle …
Josh Crane: Wow, that is quite the jam.
Sabine Poux: (Laughter) It’s very catchy.
These days, there are about 2,700 traditional Vermont Guard members, and a full-time staff to support them.
And, here in Vermont, there’s one very conspicuous way that some of us have become acquainted with the National Guard. Of course, I’m talking about the F-35s.
Josh Crane: You mean the really, really loud planes?
Sabine Poux: Yeah, they’re so so so loud. And they fly above Chittenden County. You can even hear them from the theoretically soundproof Vermont Public studios in Colchester.
Josh Crane: So true.
Sabine Poux: They’re really advanced, $100 million fighter planes. We’ve had them here since 2019. And we have 20 of them.
More from Brave Little State: “Why is the F-35 based in Vermont?”
Sabine Poux: And members of the guard have plenty of local responsibilities that have nothing to do with these fancy jets. Members of the guard helped after historic flooding here and have partnered with the Vermont Foodbank. One fun fact I love is that a few years ago, the state of Massachusetts actually activated its National Guard to drive students to school when there was a school bus driver shortage.
Josh Crane: Oh my god. (Laughter) So you’re saying there’s a chance the Vermont National Guard can fly students to school the next time our roads get washed out?
Sabine Poux: That would be an incredible use of their powers. (Laughter)
The guard also has national missions. Vermont guardsmen were called to the Capitol after the insurrection on January 6.
And then there are the international missions. Vermont guardsmen were deployed to Iraq after 9/11 and to Afghanistan. And there have been lots of other overseas missions too — including the recent one in the Caribbean.
Josh Crane: It seems like a really big range of responsibilities for a group of people who are basically doing this on a part-time basis.
Sabine Poux: It is. And to understand how this system came to be …
Josh Crane: Wait wait, don’t tell me — do we have to go way back in time?
Sabine Poux: Yeah. We have to go way back in time.
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Birth of the citizen soldier
Steven Sodergren: Go back to the start of the United States. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, we can look back at the birth of the citizen soldier during the American Revolution. Militia is the origin of the National Guard.
Sabine Poux: This is Steven Sodergren. He’s a professor of history at Norwich University — the military college in Northfield. His office there is covered in books about wars throughout history.
Steven says way back during the American Revolution, colonists organized themselves into these regional militias, which then joined forces to fight the well-organized British army. And, obviously, they won.
Steven Sodergren: And that instilled in our society a preference to use, not necessarily standing forces, but part-time soldiers, citizen soldiers, who could go about their daily careers, yet during a time of crisis or emergency, be mobilized and serve as an effective fighting force.
Josh Crane: Honestly, it’s kind of incredible that it actually worked. Because it seems just so unlikely.
Sabine Poux: Yeah, it’s like a true underdog story. Civilians in each militia trained really differently. And they all had different reasons for fighting.
Josh Crane: So, what was the militia like in Vermont?
Sabine Poux: Well, in Vermont, we had the Green Mountain Boys, of course. A lot of them were farmers who wanted to protect their land and homes from the French up in Canada, from colonists over in New York, and from the British during the Revolution.
And even after the Revolutionary War ended and the U.S. became a country, the Green Mountain Boys and other state militias were still asked to serve the federal cause. Like in the War of 1812.
Here’s Steven, again.
Steven Sodergren: Vermont was reluctant to engage in the War of 1812. They did not really support the war. They did not believe that British actions warranted a military response. As such, the governor of Vermont was very reluctant to hand over Vermont militias to serve for federal forces.
And this created a problem, because it raised questions of who really commands these forces. Do the militias stay under the control of the governor, or, in this case, the Adjutant General of Vermont, or can the president actually activate them?
Sabine Poux: Sound familiar?
Josh Crane: I mean, this is the question!
Sabine Poux: Yes! And it would continue to be the question through much of the 19th century.
In the early 1900s, the U.S. basically decides it’s time to modernize the military. Congress passes a series of acts that strengthen its standing Army — AKA, career soldiers — and it also takes all these disparate state militias we’ve been talking about and re-brands them as the National Guard. They standardize a system of training, and pledge more funding from the federal government.
These defense acts also do something else — they formalize the guard’s dual mission to serve both states and the federal government.
Josh Crane: Right. And it’s that dual mission that makes this all so convoluted. Even for the professionals.
State vs. federal authority
Gregory Knight: I've been doing this for a long time, and it's still confusing to me.
Josh Crane: This is Gregory Knight. He’s the Adjutant General of the Vermont National Guard, meaning he’s the ranking official there.
I interviewed him last October. And he’s slated to retire in a few months.
Gregory Knight: So, hey, Josh, how old are you?
Josh Crane: I am 33.
Gregory Knight: Well, you know, you can still join the National Guard, Josh. We need public affairs specialists.
Josh Crane: (Laughter) I will keep that in mind. I did not have that on my bingo card for this interview. But, uh….
Sabine Poux: Wow, shameless plug.
Josh Crane: (Laughter) So anyways, I ask him to help me understand the guard’s command structure. And he says this question, about who controls the guard, it depends on which “status” the guard is in at any given time.
Gregory Knight: So currently, there are 27 different statuses that the Guard Reserve can be in, whether that's under state or federal control. But the big three — we'll call them that — the first one is state active duty.
Josh Crane: State active duty. Meaning, the state is in charge. The state makes the decision about deploying the guard. And the state funds the mission.
Gregory Knight: And we saw that initially with flooding or any other domestic response to civil emergency.
Sabine Poux: Or bus drivers.
Josh Crane: Exactly. Now, onto the second of the the big three statuses: Title 32.
The state is still in charge, but this time the federal government foots the bill.
Gregory Knight: Normally, that's what pertains to our inactive duty training, our drill weekends. And our annual training.
Josh Crane: Aside from training, Title 32 can also be used to call the guard to help federal agencies — including in other states. For example, the Vermont guard was dispatched to Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
And last year, President Trump asked Gov. Scott to deploy guard troops from Vermont to Washington D.C. when he ramped up police and military presence there. Around the same time, Trump asked Scott to deploy the guard to immigration detention facilities.
But because both these instances were under Title 32, and the state was still in command, Scott was able to say — no thanks, we’re good. And he did not deploy the Vermont Guard at Trump’s request.
Sabine Poux: Ok. So we've got state active duty. We've got Title 32. What’s the third status here?
Josh Crane: It’s known as Title 10.
Gregory Knight: Which is federal authority, federal command and control and federal funding.
Josh Crane: Federal command and control. And federal funding. Title 10 is what Trump used to deploy Vermont guard troops to the Caribbean last month.
Gregory Knight: Which can be done, as we've seen, absent consultation or consent with a respective state governor.
Josh Crane: Absent consultation or consent. Meaning, Trump technically didn't need Scott's permission.
Sabine Poux: Josh, we’ve been looking into some of the justifications presidents can use to invoke Title 10 — this federalizing of troops. And I think we’ve both been pretty surprised about just how broad the president’s authority seems to be here.
Josh Crane: Truly. I mean, there are several places in federal statute that outline when the President can federalize guard troops.
One section of code says that the President can use the National Guard to defend against invasion or quash rebellion. Another says he can use the guard to deal with a massive cyber attack.
And another says the president can federalize the guard if he’s declared a national emergency and is deploying troops to respond to it.
So, I asked the Vermont National Guard how the President justified this deployment in the Caribbean. And Joe Brooks, a spokesperson there, said the president invoked the last reason I mentioned. Meaning, he was sending in troops to respond to a national emergency.
The national emergency, Trump says, is drug trafficking. About a year ago, in January 2025, President Trump declared a national emergency over what he said was an influx of drugs coming from across the southern U.S. Border. And while he’s claimed that a lot of drugs are flowing into the U.S. from Venezuela, experts say that Venezuela actually plays a pretty minor role in trafficking drugs to the U.S.
Sabine Poux: Right. Well, regardless, it sounds like this is what Trump has used to justify his deployment of the Vermont National Guard.
Josh Crane: Exactly. But this official justification doesn't tell the whole story. Trump has said that seizing Venezuelan oil was a major reason for U.S. actions there. But of course that kind of thing doesn’t show up in the legal code about guard deployments.
And, by the way, we asked that guard spokesperson, Joe, if he had any more information about the mission in the Caribbean. He said no, and he directed us to officials in the United States Southern Command, or SOUTHCOM — which is an office of the federal Department of Defense. And they didn’t respond to our requests for information.
Sabine Poux: Our question today is about who has authority over the guard when the state and the feds are in conflict. When it comes to this deployment, Gov. Phil Scott has sort of sat this one out. He hasn’t challenged the president’s authority here, at least publicly — though he did say that the president should consult with Congress before escalating the military campaign in Venezuela further.
But there have been some times throughout history when state governors and presidents have really butted heads over National Guard deployments
Little Rock to Minneapolis
Josh Crane: Welcome back to Brave Little State. I’m Josh Crane.
Sabine Poux: I’m Sabine Poux.
Josh Crane: So, Sabine, you looked into some examples from history in which states and the federal government were in disagreement over deploying the National Guard. What did you learn?
Sabine Poux: Well, I want to go back to professor Steven Sodergren from Norwich University.
Steven Sodergren: The best example of this would be the Little Rock Nine in 1957 .
Sabine Poux: The governor of Arkansas wanted to stop nine Black students from integrating a high school in Little Rock. And he sent in the National Guard to block them. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw things differently and, using Title 10, he actually overrode the governor. Instead of having the guard block the students, he ordered them to escort the students into the building. And they did.
President Eisenhower: I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under federal authority to aid in the execution of federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas.
Steven Sodergren: And thus he effectively activated the National Guard, took it away from the governor and used it to get the students into the school rather than keeping them out.
Sabine Poux: Another very relevant example …
In the 1980s, the Federal Government tried to deploy the Maine National Guard to Central America. And the governor of Maine refused.
Well, Congress decided the governor didn’t have the authority to do that. And it passed what’s called the Montgomery Amendment, which basically said a state governor doesn’t have the authority to override the president if he wants to send guard troops overseas.
But when it comes to deploying troops in the US, things have played out a little differently.
Last year, President Trump federalized National Guard troops in a couple states — again, against the consent of their governors — to do what he claimed was basically enforcing the rule of law in Democratic party-led cities like Chicago. But …
NBC News: President Trump says he’s pulling National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland …
Sabine Poux: This time, the courts took the states’ side. And said that Trump couldn’t invoke Title X to deploy the guard in those instances — because they were cases of domestic law enforcement.
NBC News: The move marking what could be a turning point in the high-stakes legal fights that have been happening across the country ...
Sabine Poux: So, this is a situation that is changing all the time.
As we were finishing this episode, Trump said he might use what’s called the Insurrection Act to send in military — including national guardsmen — to Minneapolis. The Insurrection Act is this old and pretty rarely used law that would basically pave the way for the president to use the guard for local law enforcement — which, as we just said a second ago, is something that usually the president isn’t allowed to do.
Here’s Trump talking about the Insurrection Act with NewsNation.
President Donald Trump: And it does make life a lot easier. You don’t go through the court system, you know, it’s just a much easier thing to do. But I don’t think we need it at this point, and hopefully we don’t need it. But I would not have any problem invoking it if we need it.
Checks on power
Josh Crane: So, yeah. Insurrection Act or not, the president has a very broad authority to activate the National Guard under Title 10, especially overseas and also, to some extent, here at home.
Some lawmakers are trying to put more checks on that authority through legislation.
A state representative in Burlington proposed a bill that would make it so that the Vermont National Guard could not go into active duty combat without Congress weighing in or issuing a declaration of war.
And Vermont Senator Peter Welch is trying to do something similar in D.C., to increase Congress’s oversight of the president’s war powers.
Also, remember how we mentioned that the ranking official at the Vermont Guard, Gregory Knight, is retiring soon? Both possible candidates to replace him recently told lawmakers that they would sooner resign than carry out an unlawful order from the state or from the federal government.
Sabine Poux: Well, we do have a precedent for resistance here in Vermont.
Martin Chittenden, the Governor of Vermont in the early 1800s, was the one who opposed the Green Mountain Boys’ involvement in the War of 1812 and was reluctant to hand over troops to fight the British.
Steven Sodergren: There was various conflict along the Canadian border in upstate New York and in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Sabine Poux: One more time, here’s military historian Steven Sodergren.
Steven Sodergren: And the dispute was over whether or not state militias could be sent outside the United States. Could state militias invade a foreign country? And the Vermont governor said, “No, it's to protect the state, not to be deployed internationally.”
Sabine Poux: This is the conversation that’s still playing itself out today, over 200 years later.
But, back then, the tension never fully came to a head.
Steven Sodergren: Fortunately, the emergency of British forces coming out of Canada diminished before this became too much of a political issue.
Sabine Poux: Basically, the situation diffused itself.
Josh Crane: If only it were always that easy.
Thanks, Sabine.
Sabine Poux: Thanks, Josh.
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Credits
This episode was reported and produced by Sabine Poux and Josh Crane. Editing and additional production from Burgess Brown. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Michael Bosworth, Jill Lepore, Mikaela Lefrak, Jon Ehrens, Alicia Freese, April McCullum, Peter Hirschfeld, Peter Teachout, Zoe McDonald and Steve Zind.
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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.
