Does the Pentagon have the right to shift Air National Guard units and missions without consulting individual states? “Yes, it does,” said the Justice Department in a special Aug. 10 opinion on the matter. The opinion, however, isn’t likely to cut much ice with the Guard and the Governors, given that Justice serves as the Pentagon’s lawyer in lawsuits filed by the states on this very issue.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.