[Webstral]

I will try to shed some light on this event, to whatever limited degree I can, without rationalizing anyone’s decisions.

The Texas State Guard is the truncated form of the states’ militia that existed in the state constitutions of the original 13 states and in a number of the states that have come into existence more recently. I can’t guarantee that every state is entitled to a militia because I haven’t gotten to that point in my research. In any event, the National Guard is a federal reserve that the states get to use when the federal government doesn’t need the National Guard. The states and the federal government split the bill down the middle, but the federal government is very much the senior partner.

The Militia Act of 1903 finalized the transition of the National Guard from something that was sort of, kind of, like a states’ militia into the system we know today. In reality, the states’ militia as the Framers of the Constitution knew it in 1787 had been undergoing a slow transformation from a collection of state forces into a federal force since 1792 or 1793. The reality of this situation dawned on the states in WW2, when the National Guard was federalized and deployed overseas, leaving the states with no military forces of their own, state constitutions notwithstanding. The State Guard movement was born at this time. For the most part, the State Guards died of malnutrition once the National Guard came home.

Texas has the country’s most well-developed State Guard by far. This force is organized more-or-less like its federal counterparts but answers solely to the Governor of Texas.

There has been a reasonably large scale exercise happening in the Southwest lately. The exercise is billed as being practice for managing large scale civil unrest overseas. Not everyone believes this version of the story. States’ rights types are inclined to believe that this exercise is a practice run at martial law in the United States. In keeping with the character of Texas, the Governor of Texas is ordering forces loyal to the government in Austin to keep an eye on forces loyal to Washington D.C. while they operate in Texas. Provided one accepts the premise that the federal government is preparing to impose martial law, then having forces loyal to the State of Texas keep an eye on federal forces has a certain logic. If one does not accept the premise, then the logic fails.