California to deploy National Guard to support food banks, fast-track funding as Trump’s shutdown strips families of food benefits
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/22/california-to-deploy-national-guard-to-support-food-banks-fast-track-funding-as-trumps-shutdown-strips-families-of-food-benefits/Open linkView original on lemmy.world254
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Can't be put to work abducting civilians if they're busy handing out food.
Can we make "defend the civilians picking up food from abduction and harassment by masked goons claiming to be ICE" part of their remit? And tell them to follow the same tactics of "grab and ziptie them first, then confiscate ID and claim it's fake"?
Not true.
Normally the National Guard in each state is under state control, under command of the state governor.
What the federal Executive Branch can do is "federalize" it, which shifts it to being under federal control.
When Trump has been doing his political theater deployments to "fight crime", he's been federalizing National Guard units, and then sending them to cities.
California is using the California National Guard here to distribute food. That's under state control.
If a unit gets federalized, it passes to federal control. So Trump can yank them off whatever the state has them doing. Them doing state work doesn't prevent them from being federalized.
There are state militias that can only be under state control that are not subject to federalization, but they're much-less significant than the National Guard, and in that case, you wouldn't need to order them to do something else to prevent federalization, because they couldn't be federalized anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force
I didn't think that California actually had a state defense force, but apparently it does; there's an image right at the top of the the WP page of a California National Guard member being trained by a California state defense member.
Huh. Not very large, though, less than a thousand people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Guard
Compare to the California National Guard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_National_Guard
Good on California for understanding and being decent
Forget the culture wars. Exercising decency towards those of lower power is the best way to fight back.
What a fucking concept: the government we all fund actually helping its people during hard times. The federal DoA is stopping food payments next month.
Aside from the massive (further) hardship millions of families will feel, will we be told we don't have to pay our taxes? Will we be issued refunds? Fuck no.
Apparently your senators are still getting paid, and the military. So you have to pay them
Must be nice for all these republicans to have more time to vacation with their donors, gay lovers and/or mistresses.
One part of the American military working against another part of the American military.
This has been true for a few years, but welcome to civil war!
(We always knew California was going to be a breakaway state.)
I hope they wear body cameras. For their safety at the inevitable NG vs ICE clash at a food bank.
NCR for life.
Good to see someone trying to do some good in these evil times. To hell with all these evil MAGAts.
The US Federal government is at best dysfunctional and at worst actively and aggressively harmful. I think it's time for states to try and become more self sufficient and less reliant on the Federal government. Other nations are trying to divorce themselves from the US Federal government, American states might want to do the same thing.
Omg peter thiel is that you? I think we should fight for reform. Fuck those who are blatantly attempting to steal it from we the people. The government is not a monolith. Stop pretending it is.
No.
Go for it.
That is def one way to accelerate the decline of this American Empire.
Yes exactly. Is the decline of Amerikkkan Empire supposed to be a bad thing?
I guess it depends on which side of the boot you find yourself on. Also probably need to account for the folks totally unaware of the system for which they work. Off the top of my head I'd guess the economic top 20% are fairly happy with the empire continuing and toss in a large chunk of Trump supporters something like 30% of our population. Obviously there is overlap between these two groups, but I'd guess somewhere between 30% to 40ish% would be opposed to the US empire declining further.
Decline is one thing, fracturing is another.
Yugoslav wars 2: American fustercluck! LETS FUCKEN GO!
The main issue is that the federal government is still stealing a ton of our money without providing anything in return. Until we have a federal tax strike any balkanization efforts will fail.
It's a good start, but is $14.55 per hungry person really going to make a difference?
Lower down it says that the $80M is to keep food banks stocked. That money will go a lot farther with food banks negotiating bulk deals than a person trying to buy groceries on their own. Not sure which they’ll actually be doing. Still not a lot though.
I've volunteered often at food banks. The answer is absolutely yes.
State governments can’t just print money like the federal government can. It has to come from somewhere, and is not unlimited.