In a rare display of organized dissent, 41 veterans from 21 states traveled to Capitol Hill recently to warn lawmakers about what they describe as the growing politicization of the U.S. military under President Donald Trump, questioning the legality of troop deployments in US cities and unprovoked attacks on Venezuelan boaters.
The effort, coordinated by the ACLU, Common Defense, and the Chamberlain Network, came as the president faced criticism for accusing several Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” after they released a video urging service members to refuse illegal orders.
The veterans, representing five branches of the armed forces, met with more than 40 congressional offices from both parties. They argued that the administration’s deployment of troops to American cities and its increasingly partisan rhetoric threaten the long-standing principle that the military must remain apolitical.
Their concerns echoed legal challenges filed by retired senior officers who oppose recent presidential deployments, creating what some observers describe as a constitutional confrontation.
“I’ve served in law enforcement, corrections and combat roles in the military and understand that the blurring of these lines for our troops causes tremendous problems for our democracy and our Constitution,” said Jackie Robinson, a former Army sergeant major from Mississippi who took part in the meetings. “President Trump is abusing his power.”
The controversy began when six Democratic lawmakers with military or national security backgrounds — Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Jason Crow of Colorado — released a 90-second video directed at service members.
In the message, they said the law is clear that troops must refuse illegal orders, and emphasized that no one is required to carry out commands that violate the Constitution.
Trump responded on his Truth Social platform, declaring the lawmakers’ actions “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and calling for them to be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.” In later posts, he wrote “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and reposted another user’s comment reading, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
The White House later distanced the administration from references to execution. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded “No” when asked whether the president wanted members of Congress executed.
However, she defended the broader criticism, calling the Democrats’ message “a very, very dangerous” statement that could cause “chaos” and potentially lead to violence by undermining the chain of command.
Military law experts denounced the president’s characterization of the lawmakers’ video, noting that refusing illegal orders is a foundational principle of military justice. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, service members must obey lawful orders but are required to refuse manifestly illegal orders.
The standard, rooted in the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, holds that an order must be so clearly unlawful that any reasonable person would recognize its criminal nature, such as an instruction to kill unarmed civilians.
In 1969, the U.S. Court of Military Appeals established a definitive standard for unlawful orders, ruling that a soldier who was convicted of killing a Vietnamese man is not justified in following a command if “a man of ordinary sense and understanding” would know it was illegal.
“The president is trampling on the Constitution,” said Crow, an Army veteran, in a social media post responding to Trump. “Stop politicizing our troops. Stop illegal military strikes. Stop pitting our service members against the American people.”
Veterans and national security experts argue the uproar reflects a broader pattern during Trump’s administration.
They point to his wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat while addressing West Point graduates, the sale of campaign merchandise to soldiers at Fort Bragg, remarks to senior officers at Quantico describing domestic political opponents as an “enemy within,” and his suggestion that American cities be used as training grounds for the military.
“This is not normal. This is not acceptable,” said Sen. Jack Reed, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, in a Senate speech. “Trump is attempting to transform the military from an apolitical institution that serves the Constitution into a political tool that serves him.”
A central issue in the dispute is the administration’s use of military forces for domestic law enforcement, including deployments in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Portland, often over the objections of local and state officials.
“This administration sent troops and armed federal agents into Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles,” said Jessica Apgar, a former Army captain and ACLU senior project manager. “His administration continues to threaten to send them to Chicago and Portland despite objections from city and state leaders.”
The Posse Comitatus Act generally bans federal military involvement in domestic policing, yet retired Lt. Gen. Karen Gibson and nearly a dozen other former senior officers have joined legal challenges to what they describe as the politicized deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles over state objections.
Experts warn that the political conflict is affecting military readiness and morale.
A study by Harvard’s Belfer Center cautions that the public is losing trust in the military and showing a declining propensity to serve, with significant national security implications.
Meanwhile, individual service members face the daunting risk of having to decide quickly whether an order is illegal — a decision that, one military attorney said, might take minutes to make but years to resolve in the justice system.
Slotkin said she received threats almost immediately after Trump’s posts, adding that law enforcement has been stationed outside her home. She said leadership “is set from the top.”
As the veterans return home from their Capitol Hill advocacy, they say they are sounding an alarm about what they view as an existential threat to America’s civil-military balance.
“America’s civil-military relationship took 250 years to build, but it can be destroyed in a fraction of that time,” Reed warned. “Once the military is seen as a partisan instrument serving one party, once it is deployed domestically against political opponents, the trust that sustains it will evaporate.”
For the veterans who traveled to Washington, their message is grounded in the same oath they first swore in uniform.
“I had a pocket U.S. Constitution in the lining of my helmet because I believed so deeply in the values I swore an oath to defend,” Apgar said.
The veterans argue that the oath does not expire — and compels them to speak out in defense of the democratic principles they once vowed to protect.
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