The House Public Safety Committee held an informational briefing — with no legislation considered — in which Cabinet secretaries and the Adjutant General briefed members on how ongoing international conflict and events in the Middle East are affecting Virginia, covering public safety coordination, cybersecurity preparedness, National Guard deployments, repatriation of Americans through Dulles, and the stabbing death of Stephanie Mentor in Fairfax.
Dan I. Helmer pressed whether there was a specific authorization to use military force beyond Title 10 and presidential direction, asking whether the only authority guiding Virginia Guardsmen engaged in 'kinetic operations or support to kinetic operations against the Iranian regime' was the direction of President Trump. General Ring acknowledged operations are 'within US code title 10' and offered to 'provide those to the chair for the committee's awareness as to what specific federal code' governs the deployments, but did not identify a separate authorization to use military force.
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“We don't have anything that is Virginia centric in the threat space specifically. However, I would always caveat that with. Even though we might not have that, that does not mean that we should not always be in a state of preparedness from the public safety perspective.”
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Sign in to subscribeGood morning. Of House Public Safety. Clerk will open the roll. Members will note their attendance on the electronic voting board. The clerk will close the roll. And although we have nothing to vote on, we have a quorum just in case. So we're in good shape there. All right. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming this morning. We have a number of guests from the Cabinet that are here. They've agreed to come on, frankly, rather short notice. I appreciate that. But given the circumstances that are going on in the world today, we thought it would be useful to hear from the administration about how the current activity in the Middle east and overseas may be affecting Virginia and our public safety concerns. And so I think we've got with us more than folks that I have listed on the agenda. We have our Secretary of Public Safety, Stanley Meader. We've got the Adjutant General, General Ring. Looks like we've got the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Williams, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Figueroa, with us as well. You guys have brought some backup, too, I guess, in case you get any really hard…
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