Updated policy does not allow US troops to kill Americans | Fact check

An Oct. 23 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims to share news of chilling details found in an updated Department of Defense policy.
“BREAKING Biden/Harris have just pushed through DoD Directive 5240.01 giving the Pentagon power – for the first time in history – to USE LETHAL FORCE TO KILL AMERICANS on U.S. soil who protest government policies,” text in the post begins.
The post was shared more than 6,000 times in 12 days. A similar claim shared to X, formerly Twitter, by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was reposted tens of thousands of additional times and circulated widely as a screenshot on Instagram.
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A Department of Defense spokesperson and an expert both said the claim is false. Directive No. 5240.01 does not grant the Pentagon any additional powers or authorize it to use deadly force on Americans. It restates the current process covering how domestic authorities may receive assistance from the military, and it explains how that applies to intelligence workers in particular.
The opening line of the Facebook post matches a sentence in Kennedy’s Oct. 23 X post. It was shared in response to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ reaction to articles in The Atlantic and The New York Times about positive statements former President Donald Trump reportedly said about Hitler. Spokespeople for Trump refuted both stories.But there’s no new policy about deadly force.
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“The policies … are not new and do not authorize the DOD to use lethal force against U.S. citizens or people located inside the United States, contrary to rumors and rhetoric circulating on social media,” department spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email.
The post refers to a Sept. 27 policy document from the Pentagon that updates guidance from 2016 and lays out the process intelligence workers must follow in assisting law enforcement and other civilian authorities. The passage at the heart of the claim references a requirement for approval from the secretary of defense for “assistance in responding with assets with potential for lethality, or any situation in which it is reasonably foreseeable that providing the requested assistance may involve the use of force that is likely to result in lethal force, including death or serious bodily injury.” 
In other words, in any situation in which military troops are legally allowed to assist domestic police and the possibility exists that lethal force could be used, the defense secretary has to approve the assistance.
That is not a new regulation, either. It has been part of broader policy for years.
An umbrella directive that covers all types of defense department support for domestic authorities contains similar wording. That document was most recently updated in 2018, when Trump was president. A separate Pentagon directive outlines the procedures for using force. That was last updated in 2020.
The September document “makes no change in the existing policy when troops can be deployed domestically and what levels of force the troops can use,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Rather, it restates the policy previously outlined in the 2018 document to explain how it applies to intelligence workers, Goitein said.
“It’s not that it was inconsistent. … It just was sort of silent on this point,” Goitein said. “It reiterates guidance in the broader directive.”
The post is correct in asserting that directives are not laws and that the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act generally bars the military from acting as a domestic police force. But it leaves out a key detail, and in doing so, can be interpreted as misleading because it raises a question about whether the updated policy violates that act. The directive directly mandates that in those situations, the law must be followed.
“It must be in compliance to the Posse Comitatus Act,” Goitein said.
Similarly, Gough characterized the policy change as a safeguard “to ensure that DOD activities comply with all U.S. laws, including the Posse Comitatus Act.”
The post also misleads in asserting that Harris and President Joe Biden “pushed through” the directive, with Gough saying it “was in no way timed in relation to the election.”
Goitein described the timing as “unfortunate, but it’s not suspicious” and added that there is no credible evidence to indicate the White House was more involved with the September update than any of the Pentagon’s prior policy changes.
“The fact that this new language is basically the same as the language of an existing directive, I just don’t know that it occurred to anyone in the administration that this would create such a bizarre firestorm,” Goitein said.
USA TODAY previously debunked false claims the Department of Defense donated to Harris’ presidential campaign and awarded a contract for COVID-19 research before the virus existed.
A response USA TODAY received from the office of Kennedy’s suspended presidential campaign did not address the claim. USA TODAY contacted several social media users who shared the claim, but none who responded provided additional evidence to support it.
FactCheck.org and AFP previously debunked similar versions of the claim.
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