The number of people who remember the days of draft boards dwindles with each passing month, but for about a day this week, we thought we might have a hot story about their return.

Sometimes, a tip leads to a terrific story. And sometimes, as here,  the work we do on a tip leads to a routine story.

In this case, the tip was from someone with a long affiliation with the Selective Service System. After years of almost no activity, people involved with the system were told of a mandatory multi-state training session this month on how local boards would consider exemption claims if the United States restored the military draft.

Because our tipster, who required anonymity, had never seen anything like it, he thought we should know about it, quoting the Washington Post slogan, “Democracy dies in Darkness.” He wasn’t sure what the new training might mean but thought it might be newsworthy. He was not being alarmist.

We were alarmed, however. Did the training notice mean that President Donald Trump planned to restore the draft, which would require an act of Congress? If so, why? Our heads swirled. Here we have a president who wants Canada to be the 51st state and to own Greenland. He’s also a president who appears to worship our longtime enemy, Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine in his own land grab.

Could it be that Trump planned to invade Canada in his own land grab, so he could be like his idol Putin, as ridiculous as that seems? 

You can laugh at that question or scorn it, but based on what we’ve seen these last six weeks, nothing is outside the realm of possibility. The Trump administration is making hugely consequential decisions without thought, study or consideration of consequences. I can’t count how many decisions have been announced only to be retracted because of the dire impacts that the administration recklessly failed to foresee.

The first thing we did was look for any reporting, anywhere, about the new Selective Service training for the volunteer boards. We found nothing.

We also turned to the information-loaded website of the Selective Service System, which contains all the details of how the local boards work and how they are supposed to be trained. The training happening this month is supposed to be routine, so we wondered why it has not happened all these years. These boards are supposed to be ready to operate -- smoothly -- the minute a president and Congress re-instituted the draft.

For those who are not aware, men in America are required to register with the Selective Service System upon turning 18. I’m of the age group that was the first wave to register when Jimmy Carter began requiring registrations in 1980. (I used the lookup function on the site to see I’m still in it. Indeed, I am.) If the government brought back the draft, it would draw from those registered, ages 18 to 26.

It turns out that the Biden administration, not Trump, is responsible for the new training. The Selective Service System decided last year to get the ball rolling on annual exercises. I presume someone recognized that the training had been non-existent and saw the need to formalize it. 

One of our reporters called the Selective Service to get more details and finally got a call back three days later, allowing us to publish an explainer Friday on the training. The federal government is not all that responsive to reporters these days. Our reporter put out a lot of other calls as well, with members of Congress and more, but none of those turned up anything.

That’s the frustrating part of covering the federal government. Ideally, to avoid anxiety, the government would have announced to the public that it was initiating this training --  not because anyone planned to bring back the draft but to be ready if the need arose. A simple announcement would be helpful to any parent of a teenage son, as well as those sons.

But we had no announcement, and before the Selective Service finally called back, we had to make a decision:  write a story about the new training for the board members, raising a question about the draft and alarming parents everywhere? Or wait for complete answers, to fully explain what is going on.

We opted to avoid creating anxiety and did not write the story until we got the return call.

We wish federal government leaders would consider citizen anxiety on all fronts. The Trump administration appears to be cutting jobs without thought about ramifications. Wouldn’t everyone feel better if the administration explained each step?

Say, for example, that the Trump team had explained that it had analyzed the number of calls IRS workers field each hour and determined the rate could increase, to match call centers in the private sector. If the government explained it was cutting call taker positions because it was making the system more efficient, with actual numbers, Americans would be grateful for the wise spending of their tax money. But we’re not getting anything like that. What we get is jobs being cut without apparent logic or forethought, only to see many get restored because the positions, it turns out, are vital to government operation.

Absent that kind of explanation from the executive branch, we rely on Congress to hold hearings to get answers. But our Congress is AWOL. Instead of serving the residents they purportedly represent, they fearfully sit silent, refusing to publicly seek explanations from the administration. Their job is to be a check on the executive branch. Instead, they are toadies to it.

We’re not alone in bemoaning the lack of transparency. We’ve seen growing protests about the invisibility and inaccessibility of our members of Congress. They refuse to face the voters.

What the nation needs now more than ever is a lot more journalists trying to answer the questions.

I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com

Thanks for reading.