Are Young Men Ready to Be Automatically Registered for the Draft?

A provision in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act will shift the United States to automatic registration for the Selective Service system, replacing decades of individual self-registration while leaving the legal framework for a military draft unchanged, according to federal law and agency materials. Under the change, millions of men who would otherwise have been required to register on their own will instead be entered into the system by the federal government.

The law, signed by Donald Trump on Dec. 18, 2025, amends the Military Selective Service Act to require that covered individuals be registered directly by the federal government. Section 535 states that male citizens of the United States and other male persons residing in the country between the ages of 18 and 26 “shall be automatically registered” by the Director of the Selective Service System, according to the statute.

The change represents a significant administrative shift in how the Selective Service system operates, transferring responsibility for registration from individuals to the government, based on the language of the law and agency planning documents. Those materials indicate that the system will rely on federal data integration rather than individual action to populate the registry.

The Selective Service System has said in official planning documents that it intends to implement automatic registration by December 2026, using information provided by federal agencies to identify eligible individuals and complete registration without requiring action by those individuals. The agency has not yet finalized the regulatory framework governing how that data integration will function in practice.

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