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Two weeks ago, six Democratic lawmakers (all with military backgrounds) released a simple, one-minute video with a straightforward message: service members can and must refuse illegal orders. It’s literally the law, codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Trump’s response was next level, declaring it seditious behavior punishable by death. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed it as Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome and opened a Pentagon investigation into Senator Mark Kelly, threatening to recall the retired Navy captain to active duty for court-martial. Now we know it was premeditated ass-covering. Time to log on.
Last Friday, WaPo revealed that on September 2, Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to kill everyone aboard a boat suspected of carrying narcotics off Trinidad’s coast. He launched a missile at the boat, killing nine of 11 people. On Hegseth’s order, a Special Operations commander then ordered a second strike to kill the two survivors clinging to debris in the water.
It is illegal to double-tap survivors.
These people were blown apart, not because they posed an imminent threat, but because a former Fox News host (who spent years railing against “jagoff” military lawyers) ordered it.
Hegseth and Trump have scrambled to manufacture legal cover for what multiple experts are now calling war crimes. Trump retroactively announced the U.S. was at war with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the Caribbean, claiming anyone involved in the strikes would be exempt from prosecution. Clock how insane that is: retroactively declare a war after the fact, claim everyone you killed was a terrorist, call it a day and walk away scot free.
The Former Judge Advocates General (JAG) Working Group wasn’t about to let that slide. These are military lawyers Hegseth fired in February BECAUSE he didn’t want them to be roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief. He wasn’t wrong about them. This JAG working group issued a statement calling his order war crimes, murder, or both. They explained that if this is an armed conflict like the administration claims, orders to give “no quarter” and double-tap survivors are war crimes under international law. If it’s not an armed conflict, these orders constitute murder of defenseless civilians. Either way, what he’s doing is massively illegal.
And fellow Republicans know it. Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined ranking Democrat Jack Reed in promising “vigorous oversight” of Hegseth over the strikes. Read that again. The GOP chair of the Armed Services Committee is investigating a Trump cabinet official for potential war crimes.
Even our closest ally is backing away slowly...The UK has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug-trafficking vessels because it doesn’t want to be complicit in strikes it believes are illegal.
Here’s what should keep every person in uniform up at night: Trump’s retroactive declaration of war doesn’t make these strikes legal, and those crimes don’t disappear when Trump loses power. Service members who followed Hegseth’s order to kill survivors clinging to wreckage could face prosecution.
We know this from the Vietnam War where Army Lt. William Calley was convicted of murder for his role in the My Lai massacre, despite arguing he was following orders. “Just following orders” has never been a defense to war crimes, a principle established at Nuremberg and reaffirmed ever since.
The Dems who made that video were right. Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, and Maggie Goodlander—all veterans or former intelligence officers—were simply restating basic military law: service members must follow legal orders, but in cases where orders are manifestly unlawful, they’re required to disobey them. This means that the Democrats in question are trying to protect service members from their commander-in-chief and from possible murder charges.
Trump’s apoplectic response wasn’t about respect for the chain of command. It was about protecting his administration’s ability to order criminal acts without internal resistance. So far, the U.S. has carried out 21 strikes killing 83 people. Trump is now threatening to close Venezuelan airspace in its entirety while planning to pardon a former Honduran president convicted of conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine. None of this is about drugs. We know this because Trump publicly stated in 2023 he would have taken control of Venezuela’s oil reserves had he won in 2020.
Every person in uniform right now needs to think seriously about how they’ll respond when the illegal order comes to them. Will they betray their oath by following illegal orders, risking future prosecution? Or will they exercise their legal obligation and show the courage to refuse. The Former JAG Working Group said it explicitly: orders like those described above are the kinds of patently illegal orders all military members have a duty to disobey.
Trump can threaten Democrats with death. Hegseth can investigate senators. But the law is clear. When this administration is gone, whether in three years or one, the laws of war will still exist. International tribunals will still function. And American courts will still prosecute murder.
The Democrats’ message was a lifeboat, NOT SEDITION. And judging by Trump’s reaction, he knew exactly who it was for: the service members being ordered to commit crimes by his administration.
Those troops would be wise to listen. Because unlike Trump’s promises of immunity, the law doesn’t expire when a president leaves office. And history shows that just following orders has never been enough to escape accountability for killing defenseless people in the water.
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