Reports of food shortages on naval ships deployed to the Middle East.
Video footage of disabled military veterans—some in wheelchairs, others leaning on canes—being zip-tied and dragged out of the Capitol Rotunda for staging a peaceful, anti-war protest. Sixty-six veterans were arrested while conducting a flag-folding ceremony in recognition of the 13 military servicemembers who have died so far in Trump’s war with Iran.
A growing number of active-duty military service members asking how to end their service, become conscientious objectors, and refuse unlawful orders.
And a president openly threatening to commit war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran—and floating preemptive strikes against Cuba.
This is where we are now.
Almost two months into Donald Trump’s disastrous, unauthorized war with Iran, the United States is in freefall.
The economy is struggling. Inflation and fuel prices are rising. America’s standing in the world is eroding by the day.
The war itself is spiraling—threats one day, concessions the next—as the Trump administration scrambles to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that had remained stable until Trump recklessly pushed us into this disastrous war.
Meanwhile, at home, the government is unraveling. Corruption is flourishing.
The constitutional guardrails are gone.
Leadership inside the White House is in disarray.
Congress—rather than acting as a constitutional check—has chosen blind devotion, competing to outdo itself in displays of loyalty.
And at the center of it all is a man who avoided military service during Vietnam through a series of deferments—four as a student, one for a conveniently diagnosed bone spur—now posturing as a wartime commander, strategist and dealmaker.
The reality tells a far different story about the man steering the nation into war.
Trump—fixated on securing his legacy with a ballroom and a triumphal arch—appears increasingly erratic, unfocused, and unfit for the job assigned to him.
This is a man woefully unprepared to deal with the many catastrophes he brings about.
Concerns about Trump’s ability to carry out his duties have grown so voluble that there are now competing efforts to either invoke the 25th amendment or compel him to resign in a last-ditch effort to contain the damage.
Against this messy backdrop of ineptitude, arrogance, greed, corruption and a Constitution in crisis, consider this: the government is making it easier to send our nation’s young people to war—and harder for the citizenry to have a say in it.
At the same time that the Trump administration is expanding its war machine abroad, it is moving to automate military draft registration at home—making it easier than ever to conscript young men to fight and die in wars they did not choose.
Under a provision tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, all men between the ages of 18 and 25 will be automatically registered for the draft within 30 days of turning 18.
There was never anything voluntary about the draft.
Established in 1917 during World War I, suspended in 1975, and reinstated in 1980, the draft requires men—citizens and immigrants alike—to register under penalty of $250,000 and jail time of up to five years.
Register—or face the consequences.
Now even the illusion of choice is being stripped away—and the system itself is about to become far more powerful.
Although 46 states and territories already implement some form of automatic registration, how the federal government plans to automate the process is unclear. But it will almost certainly rely on the integration and cross-referencing of vast amounts of personal data across government agencies.
In other words, a database.
A potentially powerful one.
And in the wrong hands, a weaponized one.
Enter Palantir Technologies—one of the government’s largest defense contractors, with billions in military contracts and a long track record of data-driven surveillance.
Already linked to AI-assisted military targeting systems and the “kill lists” used by the Israeli military in Gaza, Palantir has been a driving force behind the push to automate the draft.
This is the future of modern warfare they are building.
Not just smarter wars but more efficient ones.
More expansive. More detached. More deadly.
And built with an army of people the government views as fully expendable.
Consider the hypocrisy at work.
The Trump administration has spent months demonizing immigrants—detaining them, deporting them, tearing apart families, and casting them as threats to national security.
And yet, when it comes time to fill the ranks of its endless wars, those same individuals—green card holders, refugees, asylum seekers, even undocumented men—suddenly become expendable assets.
Too dangerous to belong. Not too dangerous to die.
Increasingly, the same could be said of all of us.
We are all being viewed as potential threats by the government.
A government that views its people as expendable will always find ways to use them—whether as labor, as data points, or as cannon fodder.
And it will just as quickly look for ways to silence them.
While the government is making it easier for Americans to be conscripted and killed in war, it is simultaneously working to make it harder for us to have any say in the decisions that send our young men and women to war in the first place.
Rather than ensuring all American citizens access to the ballot box, the Trump administration has moved to restrict it—pushing measures that would tighten voter eligibility, limit mail-in voting, and centralize control over election systems.
Why not automate voter registration?
If efficiency were truly the goal, that would be the logical place to start.
But this is not about efficiency.
It is about power.
The American police state is making it easier to send you to war.
They’re making it harder for you to vote.
They are automating what kills us but complicating what empowers us: building databases to track us, systems to conscript us, and laws to silence us.
This is not about efficiency. This is not about national security.
This is about control.
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and The Erik Blair Diaries are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute.