The Brookings Institution hosted a conversation with the bureau chief of the National Guard, topics included the guards role during the birx pandemic and protests following the death of george floyd. The chief of the National Guard bureau which means a member of the joint chiefs of staff and officer for overseeing the army and air force National Guard combined the total strength of half 1 million airmen and soldiers under his supervision and command and he is the distinguished airmen and fighter pilot, texan, formerly of activeduty air force in the 1990s and did a number of students in various positions, sometimes in more of a guard capacity, sometimes full time and for the last eight years have been at the leadership of the National Park bureau in washington, now as its top officer, we are privileged to have him today as he prepares for imminent in the rotc entry, the graduation from the rotc program was 1981. He has been serving his country long and very well despite his youthful appearance he has been at it for quite a while and we wish him well. Before we do that we look forward to a rich conversation at the end of which we will handle some of your questions if you wish to email events brookings. Edu. Some opening thoughts on the state of the guard and health and responding to the birx crisis in the United States. That is not our only topic, we will also think more broadly about the guard and its role in the tell aforesaid a difficult moment in history with the return of Great Power Competition around the globe. Thank you for joining us and without further a do over to you. Thank you for having me to talk about the National Guard. I experienced a complete transformation of what the National Guard brings in terms of combat capability from Strategic Reserve to Operational Force to the roles we play across every day. Go back to the beginning of the year in january of 2020 we couldnt have predicted what happened in the next 6 months. Early in january, there was potential kinetic operations, tensions running high. Two month later, california National Guard dropped coronavirus test kit onto a cruise ship anchored off the coast of San Francisco and that was before the coronavirus became a National Pandemic and a National Emergency and two months later yet again george floyd was killed, widespread nationwide unrest the likes of which we have not seen. In the midst of these headline grabbing events the National Guard, National Disasters whether it is floods in michigan, wildfires in kansas, tornadoes in tennessee to name a few and it has been a crazy year and it is early july. If you look at the totality of the effort of the National Guard including federal missions more than 120,000 members of the National Guard were mobilized, 45,000 more doing birx operations in every district in territory in the district of columbia, 40,000 more were doing operations in support of civil disturbance operations in 33 states. All across the country the National Guard was delivering personal protective equipment and in some cases manufacturing personal protective equipment. Food banks and test centers protect protesters First Amendment rights that protest peacefully. Sharing best practices as we learn how to do these things and did this difficult time it is a time of great flexibility and innovation and showcasing capabilities of the National Guard. We are doing these while we sustain federal commitments to combatant command around the world as part of the army and air force. Not a title x or federal missions were interrupted or disturbed. Thankfully Similar Service operation seem to be receding. There is no sign of operational tempo as we look to the relatively nearterm, the events of the past six months the role of the reserve component, the National Guard, 20 of all the department of defense, National Guard has proven an indispensable force that america needs. My thoughts on some things to share with the group we learned about what the Operational Force is and how to use it and i will make four main points. One is we have become an Operational Force with continuous sustained rotation. Part of the army and air force and that is a good thing, from the fullspectrum operation, fullspectrum in between we have become an indispensable part of the army and air force to do their title x and federal missions and that needs to continue. Some other things i will get to in a bit, some questions. The second thing, what we have learned is the strength of our force is experienced the cost structure when not being used. The posture reserve component in the future against known requirements, something we should continue to do and leverage. It is a good thing and builds readiness for us. When you do that it allows us to be predictable for our Business Model which must get into people with other careers and other employers to let them know and train the appropriate level of readiness as we do now so that is number 2. Average us more against known requirements and in some cases we do that but there is opportunity to do more of that. The third thing is in the old model Strategic Reserve model when we take new equipment and put it in the component, shake out the other stuff and campaign that into the reserve components that model does not work, you must be deployable, sustainable and interoperable or you are irrelevant in any battle scenario. The concurrent and balanced recapitalization and modernization of our force is something i worked hard for as we move forward with this Operational Reserve model. The last thing, a historic time as we stand up another service, space force, there are advantages to taking the model of the National Guard and leveraging that and creating a space National Guard component of the space force. We have been in it for 25 years and make sure one of the most important things we do is the culture, the training, professional development and Army Officers in the interNational Guard as parent services, as part of the space force. Adopting it, could actually free up active structures to make it ready, it is the most lexical piece of the force. It could go anywhere and be anywhere and do things we are not built to do in a reserve component. By using a known deployment to put requirements against the reserve components, that frees up may be a more efficient active component to be used. I would share that always ready and always there, that is our motto and people think of us as a slower version of the army and air force. In the air force we train the same level of readiness and we are not as fast but pretty close as an air force squadron. I would say on the army sided is slower, less readiness built intentionally. Readiness is expensive to build and as you build it you dont buy tomatoes and they will rock. You want to build it just in time. Using us as a force that determines assigned Mission Readiness is something we should leverage. You might want to see the 80 second airborne, to train reserve components. So that is important. We provide strategic depth to the army and air force and someday to the space force. That will happen eventually but through combat capability at a lower cost it allows us to sustain combat capability in capacity terms for the potential of a major war and allows us to save money on an active component that is expansive and ready. To allow us to modernize that, needed weapons we need in the future. Using us for readiness capabilities in the future as we look at rotational models in europe or korea, using the reserve components to do that. Modernization, the ability to modernize the force, is important. The National Guard units, vermont with the second unit air force to get the f 35, recognizes that and on the army side the same thing will be true, new helicopters, vertical lift or other capabilities the army has. What we have learned over time, the component no longer has a piece of equipment, begins to die, less sustained and dont intend to cut back on the money or enough to maintain it, hard decisions over time, it becomes in deplorable and not sustainable in a combat environment. The space National Guard if ive been too so in my support of that. Weve been in that part of it for 25 years. One thing the National Guard brings is unit equipped force structure. If you need to grow the capacity in the army and air force and space force, you cant do that with argument tees and single people, you need unit structure that will be mobilized, that is what we bring. We bring the obvious attributes for the last six months, from the title x responsibilities can be tasked to do any number of things, running food banks, that was not anything they were trained to and they can be test organized at every level and do any task the nation needs to do with a myriad of different tests throughout the birx operations. The last 6 months have shown if you really want to get into it, the continuous deployment, more than 1 million members of the National Guard in the combat zone, many of them multiple times. Since i have been chief we had sustained continuously 30,000 men and women in the title x things and another 10,000, done things in the homeland, what you had done in new york, folks sitting in there, counterterrorism opportunities, our ability to do things in the homeland have been enormous. Lately, the covid19 the birx operations, these operations are beginning to reseed to respond in support, of Law Enforcement turning sideways. The guard has proven we are always ready, always there and i am proud of this, in a recent article, Swiss Army Knife of the United States a letter, we are tasked to do various things from pandemics, the joy of my life has been the chief of the National Guard so i will pause and say thanks and turn it over to you for questions. I want to ask a couple different questions Going Forward but i want to ask you to build on what we touched on in the ways we thought about it and how it has evolved over your career because you are soon to retire and you have seen so much and it helps dramatize the choices for the nation Going Forward. After covid19, this is not a particularly partisan issue, people on both sides of the aisle understand there may be severe pressure on the Defense Budget on the years ahead even if it doesnt transpire in the next four months of the Political Campaign this year and i should have noted brookings this is not a partisan question, this is an awareness the country is looking for ways to build a more economical military in the years ahead so i want to ask you in a minute about ways in which the guard could contribute to that becoming a larger overall faction of the Nations Armed forces but to set that up we should spend more time on the history you live to because coming out of vietnam, there was the concept of the total force which was a decision the Garden Reserve should be integral to any military deployment so we would never again have a division between an active force that was not known, not understood, not integrated with communities back home and the rest of society. We have a concept of a total force with the reserve more than the guard playing a role at providing capability, the active force simply doesnt have so if they need to be mobilized going into a major conflict that is one concept. Then you alluded to a second concept which is the idea of a Strategic Reserve, in the cold war. As you alluded to, it wasnt necessarily anywhere near as good, the second wave, the third or fourth ways of a multiyear conflict. We saw as you say, the guard becomes an operational part of the military, nearly the same capabilities as the active force, they could spell it, do things more economically. That is the overall lay of the land. If you want to comment any further, how good has the guard become as being as capable or as capable as the active force, you mentioned desert storm, going from the active to the National Guard, there is still a debate especially in the army of how the National Guard brigades in desert storm, there was a big internal fight about how they should have used the National Guard more in that conflict. There are still debates whether the National Guard brigades in iraq and afghanistan performed as well in the tougher sectors. What do we know especially about the army side where as you say it is harder to maintain unit readiness if these are big for mason, what about the ability of the National Guard on the use brigades to be just as good as an active army brigade with the historical perspective, sorry for the long question but i wanted to frame this and pick up your points allegory vault on your career, reflect a little more on that and speak to how good the guard has become today. Imus in the morning we are completely Different Force than the one i joined almost 40 years ago. We are more ready, more disciplined. We have become, mikes parents predominantly until the last eight years or so has been predominantly air force but we have become what the air force demanded that we become. Part of that was a reduction in the size of the air force coupled with continuous deployment cycles to the middle east sincerely 90s following the gulf war. They needed the National Guard to become part of the deployable cadre that could go and we had to deploy with their own kids, our own commanders who had the work. The air force really, i would like to think coupled with 1991, the changed the air force many of the active components of which i was one, migrated in the inter National Guard and we brought with us a sense of a more disciplined air force, more tactically oriented air force more connected to the active components than we were before when we had separate components and i would like to think sometimes i think it was just the National Guard that got better but i live out here on fort mcnair and there used to be a golf course on this particular base. There is no time for golf courses, people are focused on strategy, developing officers and there is less time for those kinds of things but i can tell you out of the active component i thought i would make the best Fighter Squadron in the world and i got to my place and set a bunch of great Fighter Pilots here but six fulltime people in the units, the rest were all parttime. The maintainers were very experienced but they had been stationed for a long time and we are not going to do this. I had doctors and bankers, fulltime work for those to the degree the air force needs them. More fulltime people in the air National Guard than there used to be and it is a better equipped, more equipped and it is better and it is a more disciplined and combat capable force than the one i joined. I talk with less credibility but to train an Army Brigade Combat Team it is the monster undertaking of logistics, to maneuver 3500 people to get all integrated together to work and practice it. It is a platform based system, you get six of them, you can do your mission from your home base, the army not so much. To do the collective training required for big Army Formations is hard to do and expensive and takes time. Time is a big limitation as members of the Garden Reserve. I watch these folks in brigades the go to National Training centers, the commander, the company commander, the battalion commander, they have lives as accountants or salesmen or doctors or whatever they do in civilian lives but then they dedicate 90 or 100 days to get to that, needing readiness event to get that team ready to go to war or deployment. There is no similar mechanism to watching our brigade combat team. That said, all the same things apply, the army demand the same standards, the same fitness, the same rigorous application of Training Resources toward individual training status, we are better more disciplined force and we may not be able to get out the door as fast as an activeduty army brigade can. We take 80 days or 100 days and when you talk about this the movement to a war zone of the government in brigades that have to shift, the process takes a long time and one of the things i like most about this rotational Operational Force on the army and air side is mobilization of the force, it is a National Strategic capability we need to exercise and use. If you cant pick up your force and move it someplace, and if we dont practice those things when you need to do it to fight in china or russia it will be impossible to do so those things need to be practiced and that is another reason to continue to do it that you are right. As we watched late last year, some folks who were pulling forces out of syria into the eastern part of syria the National Guard just got into kuwait and they were the first ones in syria at the brigade combat team, the National Guard in syria on the southwest border. What really came to defend that was all the other comments, the guard is ready, trained, Different Force than people think of in the vietnam and preair a, they are ready to do it and they are still doing a great job so we are without a doubt a Different Force altogether. We have limitations. When i read the reports to deploy capability in the war zone and most of the ones i read the National Guard formations performed great, dude a great job, no difference between what they were doing, it is not apples to apples comparison. They had different areas but still we have proven ourselves as viable combat capability that can enable investment in the National Defense strategy that you can use that, credible combat forces such that you can invest money in things. I hope that answers your question. I want to follow up on the money and resources question. If you have a simple rule of thumb in your own mind for how much a National Guard formation costs relative to active formation it will vary on the equipment but you told us today, this is a good thing there is no longer any real savings, designed to be just as good, has to be interoperable, the pentagon budget devoting to acquisition and weaponry. It goes to people where you can leverage, from more than half, 2 3 to 3 4 of the people side in the operating and maintenance side. Im guessing the guard unit would be half as expensive. When you put them in the same picture and average across different units, National Guard unit, half as expensive when it is not deployed, is that a rough figure you used as well . Im always trying to be careful and fair when i talk about numbers, the air National Guard, 7000 of them are fulltime. The savings come from all the parttime folks which cost a third of what it costs to have a fulltime employee. On the army side, just over 340,000 are in there and of that, 16 is time. I can tell you a brigade, from the yearly training cycle, the infantry brigade, is not deployed, the savings and people. Longterm as much as they think 3 pay raise will be great next to that, new technology and equipment. I want to ask about the resourcing of the guard, eight or ten years the guard officer was part of the joint chiefs. That is right, nine years ago. Do you think im not trying to revisit this issue or this question. Based on your experience as vice chief and chief of the National Guard bureau, making sure the guard or the services themselves started to get it and get religion on this question, they figured out, what they are resourcing the National Guard. Number 2 is the truth. Most chief of the army air force, general mcconnell, have all seen the reserve components, and integral part of their force, they want to keep it ready and operational because they use it, back to the Operational Force, the value and investing in you, they free up money to give you training and buys equipment and keeps it ready because they see Operational Utility and that is fundamentally changed in the department of defense particularly since 9 11. I told you that story, im going to make this we could have gone to war and supported the effort and credibly done what the air force asked us to do but might not have wanted us to be in the lead unit of the package, the Downtown Package or anywhere else but i will tell you that tonight, today, you have a National Guard unit over there or Something Like that, i say with some certainty would be comfortable with any role, it could be the quarterback going anywhere. They invested and used us and stepped up to the plate. You have begun to explain and answer my next question but let me put it before you. The state of people inside the National Guard, you have been next all in their virtues, obviously very good and they are doing a lot. And you say they could do more, they have lives back on, 70 of the air National Guard and 90 , how hard they can push them, to retain. In terms of off tempo in recruiting, many particular problems or concerns. We are doing well. Before the coronavirus and the economic turn down, i would have said it is more difficult for us to retain our Airline Pilots, go into the air guard and do that and a lot of folks were choosing not to do that and we are seeing a little bit harder time to keep our forces in the aviation business, 90 to 100 days, the problem with our forces, highspeed National Guardsmen happened to be highspeed civilians too, they translate. As we go to the top and get to the command level, we get to that point and want them to be the vision commanders they have to make a choice, been fabulously successful in both careers and now they want me to be president and i cant do all of this at once. We are seeing that competition continue to happen because we got the best people to do our hardest job and those people are usually lighting it up in civilian careers. That will continue to be a challenge. The way we manage talent and recruit talent and create that talent when it is with us, it is hugely important the discussion we are having with diverse city, getting everybody equal opportunity to be there. And find opportunity such that across our force, ice since we are in a different spot where we will make fundamental shifts and changes that allow us to get the best talent, all of them dont look like me as white men. Something i think is a good thing. Recruiting, when you look at what the military does. All the Services Every year, population of 350,000 people that we all try to get, they are fit, their High School Graduates compete for that and i have to get 45 of them in the air National Guard, 15,000 of them in the air National Guard and the army tries to get 70,000 any air force tries to get 50 and go through the competition for talent pretty quick. That is the key. I tell a story about an Ohio Food Bank being run by a lieutenant who was an infantry officer and in civilian life was an accountant so here he is doing an accountant job charged with running a food bank. You get those people, superhighspeed. The ability to find those people has never been more important than it is now and you ask them and their families and employers we have to incentivize the ability of employers to let their people go and i will use mine. Ive been an employer for a major airline, for 17 consecutive years, 17 years. Im the only 4star Airline Pilot in the business and they talk about me but to treat them right it is in their interest to support military members, very important to us. That leads to my last question. A number came in from the audience which i will get to next but i wanted to ask about the future. Im not asking you to advocate for certain policies, too early to do that in a new president ial term whether it is donald trump or joe biden or whatever new defense team is assembled by either one in whatever the fiscal or other priorities are as we come out of birx next year. There is the possibility of a defense debate where people are asking fundamental questions. Is there a way to maintain the National Defense strategy and cope with the rise of china and russia as well as ongoing concerns of north korea and iran. Is there a way to do that less expensively in the context of a broader government effort to reduce the deficit and put a cap on the debt . That question will be raised next year and without asking you to advocate for a specific answer the simple question i have on my mind as we brainstorm about the future active reserve mix in the military, imagine we keep the size of the Overall Force roughly constant at around 2. 1 million total personnel, 1. 3 million activeduty, 800,000 reserve component, 350,000 Services Just to review the basic facts and figures. If we imagine the kind of changes we might make is it plausible the reserve component could the half the total force, as much as 1 million or even a little over out of the total force of 2. 1 million as we brainstorm, options we should be considering, not what we advocate or implement, clearly going high estimate half of our military the reserve component. I would say always depends. The National Guard and reserves have proven themselves a credible combat force properly trained and properly equipped we could go anywhere and we are doing it right now. Could we ask you to be bigger, it is all a risk equation. What the pentagon sees through their lenses, are we responsive enough, they talk about access to the reserve component, what we talk about routinely inside the pentagon, the way that you get the reserve component, you have to be normalized and those mobilization authorization, is there friction or perceived risk that i wont get access to them fast enough or soon enough, it is intentionally built into the system. Going to war without mobilizing the component. To keep civilian control over what the military does. Using the reserve component in many states and counties where the only uniforms they ever see our men and women of the National Guard as folks to pack up and deployed to war in afghanistan and they do missions in europe, they prepare for what they need to do to keep america connected to what they are doing now. We are absolutely a tool at the department of defense, in the event we go to war with china or russia we keep capacity in the component at a lower cost. Then you have to ask the rest of the subject the question of what else you are going to do. If you have military force in africa and europe and asia and the rest we can help on a rotational basis but we cant go live there. That is not how it works. I think when they go to look at decisions and only so much money to spend and you need x number of brigades on combat teams, can this force be in the reserve component and if the answer is we think the timelines being what they are we can only move x number of brigades this fast anyway and by the time you get to these other brigades you have the forces ready, if youre in that business of finding resources, whether they are nukes or Hypersonic Weapons or whatever they may be the you may choose to take risks. I got slightly less responsive force, and have money to buy new weapons and technology for it. The department of defense wrestles with every day. We clearly in my view, and mitigate the risk and save money. I wouldnt advocate shrinking the reserve component, buying a bigger active component, watching what we do, we are efforts at helping the army and air force do what they need. Let me Say Something obvious to you but any part of the audience that may not be familiar with the terms for organizations. There are six different organizations, in the us military, each service has its reserve and in charge of the National Guard for the army and air force, they encompass 800,000 uniformed personnel. My question, we have a total force of 2. 1 million and we have 800,000 reserve cops on it of which 450,000 in reserve. Could that number grow up to 1 million and we have close to half of the military and the reserve components, close to have any active force, i will be intrigued if the question gets asked next year. A question for the audience, starting from very specific but important advantage point about birx birx wondering if social distancing and nutrition had bad effect on your maintenance, your ability to keep aviation units in good shape or are you able to maintain readiness despite restrictions from the birx partial shutdown . Weve not had a large reduction in readiness as a result of birx. I would offer we made some changes to how we did business to prevent a fool up infection of any given unit, maintaining smaller groups that come in at night minimizing interaction and wouldnt get everybody sick if you did and in some cases we found we are more efficient at getting more maintenance done because we started doing business differently. Just under 2000 cases in the National Guard of birx infections. Overall we made all the same changes the active components had. All the impacts our collective training events but we found ways to do things on telework and distancing and broadly speaking birx has changed things with the department and our operations. We always said we could telework but until we had to do it we found we didnt have enough, the software wasnt good enough, we couldnt do things like we are doing now simply and easily without technical difficulties. We can now and i suspect Going Forward we will save money and things we just learned how to do it differently. Birx has had an impact. We follow the cdc guidelines, impacts on deployments into host nations and doing all those things but i am ready for that vaccine to come from project warp speed. Lets get that going. I dont know if i want to do with the chinese have done but we should get that out and get it done as quick as we can. A question from one of your incoming congressional fellows who wonders if there is a specific set of priorities for the upcoming or ongoing budget season especially next year. As we were discussing there is a potential big budget debate next year but beyond that if there are specific priorities on your mind. Considerations have always been readiness, that is my entire tenure. Build a more you leave full force. We asked for additional fulltime support, it changes our Business Model every time we talk about it. We look at our Business Model, it comes down to we have value to the department of defense. I make the assessment the value is determined by how good are you and how big are you and how easy is it to use you and the cost, there is a number that comes out of that. That is the way we practice to train and make ourselves ready, Congress Gets to decide and how easy can they access that is our streamlined process of using the mobilization of authorities we have. What changes is people. Anytime we ask, we need more fulltime people to do it i have to work hard, look at that and say that is what we do because you change the value and every time we do it. People training, making sure they are the right thing that has been out there and innovation, not a legislative priority for us but us in a priority for us to look at new things like 3d printing and manufacturing, do we take that stuff and deploy with it, operating in new and different ways, the id things we learned going through this birx operation have been important. That is what we are looking for. I wanted the space force in this thing, theres a lot of concern. The creation of the Space Force Component we will keep doing that in the hill will decide what they want it to look like. Maintaining those facilities are standard priorities we always had. Another question, how do you balance the need, protecting the civilian jobs and rise of your guardsmen with the desire to be operationally relevant. The basic rule established after the surgeons in iraq and afghanistan, a 12 time, with when youre deployed at a minimum. A rule of thumb to avoid that rule of thumb as quantitative metric. The deploy rates, our job becoming this Operational Force has been to push the limits of those. I wanted, if we dont feel any pain in the system we are probably not training enough and not being used enough. Feeling some pain is a good thing, if we were never being used and employers never had to deal with us being gone you have to question the investment in the National Guard, why are you doing it . Going as far as those deployments that make us a more usable force, regular deployments of our is able to integrate, plug in, modernize and when you get to the mobilization scenario we havent used, at the end of the war plus 6 months, what can be used, if we never use it that is a fallacy. It sucks up too much of your resources. Civilian jobs in higher demand, they have to be careful. A lot of Police Officers came on duty when civil unrest happened. You deploy a unit of mps in vermont, you take a lot of Police Officers in vermont, deployed from towns and they go, you have to watch that and it is key for us. Weve known deployments, whether it is in sinai or the multinational force, coso flow or kuwait, we dont care where they are but we have to know about them so our employers can plan for them and that is key. It comes down to the tricky thing, employers understood and supported going into combat in afghanistan or iraq or syria but what they dont understand are the International Engagements that build alliances and partnerships, people are deployed to thailand, they are on facebook with a picture of them on the beach and you are doing this, we have to make them understand the communication leadership program, make them understand the Strategic Engagement value of our presence in these places and build partnerships and build our ability to engage when we need it. It is a new leadership challenge for men and women in these towns to convey why we are doing it. Once you explain it to them they understand. Weve got one question on the sensitive matter of june 3rd washington dc protest and response, nicholas chevron of the pbs news hour, asking about the status of the investigation and whether there are pulmonary lessons learned. It is a tough topic, i wonder if you share it today. The rc 26 investigation going on that he wants to know about. He doesnt mention that specifically. Investigations are still ongoing and we want to get to the bottom of them and when we do, make sure, in minneapolis to georgia and around the nations broadly speaking, so many bad things happening during the engagement. I think i can say this. In dc as we did in the district of columbia, National Guard never touched the protesters. There were cases in the Lincoln Memorial and the like. In general we provided a presence before Law Enforcement that was there to make sure people can peacefully protest and commit crimes, those ongoing investigations are happening. Running up on 3 00 pretty quickly, there are two pandemic related questions. One of them is asking what you learned in the last 6 months, learning lessons from the response to birx and the way they changed something, how we train people, the pool is the Police Department to deploy a unit. Any insights you gained . It talks about a different kind of pandemic that could be even worse and we learned lessons from this response, it could help if the next one is even further out of control and more dangerous than birx has been. This over to you. I think we have lessons learned, nobody anticipated we would have to do simultaneous civil unrest activities in the same 3, 5 day period like we did most recently. We will put more effort on training and other ways to deescalate some airman in the situation, as ready as you need for the situation. The domestic portfolio, what we do in the homeland, what is hard to do, there are members of one family on one side of the line on the other side. It is a difficult difficult thing to be in. We train better, we are ready, do what we can to make sure we are at or prepared, uniforms, dont care what color they are, National Guard, uniforms being out there in Law Enforcement situations is not optimum. We should do as little as we can and it should be predominantly Law Enforcement operation and when they need us, to avoid that. We look at what the pandemic means for us across our deployment portfolio. How do we do hurricanes . We have cops already. What does the pandemic hot zone mean as we go to evacuate Nursing Homes or high risk people and how do we do things that create shelters where social distancing is not possible but this pandemic could happen again, no question. As important to the nation as having a hypersonic weapon and a new satellite is our nation needs to develop and use vaccines and create these things at faster speed and deploy them in a faster sense. To the degree that we can help our nation do that, a lessexpensive force that contribute to the National Defense, that is a good thing. What have i learned . A few initial programs, go to cairo and between texas and egypt, it will be a great partnership, our nation was paralyzed. We were put in a head lock to deal with the impacts of covid19 and we wont be done until a vaccine changes things. Very proud of the garden the contribution not just in the Derek Chauvin place birx place but title x as part of the department of defense. That is all ive got, thanks for having me. No better way to end than what you just said. Let me join you in thanking the guardsmen around the world and across the country who have helped us through the crisis and continue to do so and thank you for your service, your friendship, your collegiality and what you have done for the country and best wishes Going Forward, thank you. And we talked with republican senators Martha Mcsally of verizon and joni ernst of iowa about the new memoirs. Find the complete holidays we can schedule online at booktv. Org or check your program guide. Now we kick off this Holiday Weekend with cnn political analyst Bakari Sellers who examines the socioeconomic challenges americans in the rural south face through the lens of his hometown denmark, South Carolina. Burke on the coordinator for left bank books. I especially think them for support on this event. When j. D. Vance did hillbilly elegy, cnn analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the role south in this important book that eliminates the lives of americans forgotten black workingclass men or women part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis. My vanishing country is an eyeopening journey to the south, has present and future