The "states" national guard can be federalized at a moment's notice. The president need only give the order and put his signature on it. At that point, they report to the President and no one else.
This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid. The president never rescinded the order.
> This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid.
It was federalized and ordered to stand down after the governor had deployed it to prevent integration of a school under a federal court order. But Eisenhower didn't rely on that order alone, he also deployed the 101st Airborne to enforce the order (both the federalization of the guard and the deployment of the 101st Airborne were based on an invocation of the Insurrection Act.)
While there is a layer of legal theory around it, when it becomes an issue, it is really a question of whether the State -- both its government and the individual members of the guard -- are willing to engage in armed conflict with the federal government for whatever the dispute is at hand, more than any other consideration.
De jure doesn't matter when the law has been tossed aside.
The loyalties of the individuals, units, officers will choose sides on their own. I'm not holding my breath on the military being willing to enmass defect against an authoritarian though.
Eh this isn't quite clear. National Guardsmen take an oath to the Constitution and to follow the orders of both the President and the Governor. Above all, their oath is to the Constitution.
Both SCOTUS and a Governor saying that their oath to the Constitution compels (or at least authorizes) a certain course of action would be convincing to some, I'm sure.
> Eh this isn't quite clear. National Guardsmen take an oath to the Constitution and to follow the orders of both the President and the Governor.
It's quite clear that the Constitution expressly gives the President command of state militia when called into federal service, and Congress the power to specify the conditions for that, and that the Congress has specified procedures for that in law which rest solely on a Presidential determination. Each of those is black and white in law and has been demonstrated in practice as well.
That's not to say that that constrains what can actually happen in a Constitutional crisis: that's what makes Constitutional crises possible -- the black and white rules are not self-enforcing and require human decisions to align with them, and humans are always free to decide to do something else.
This isn't theory, Alabama's was federalized some time when my dad was a kid. The president never rescinded the order.