Democratic lawmakers released a staged video last week telling America’s troops they can “refuse illegal orders,” a stunt that predictably lit a fuse across the nation and raised legitimate questions about who is trying to undermine military readiness for political theater. That message wasn’t just reckless — it was aimed at sowing doubt inside the ranks at a time our service members need unity and clear command, not vague partisan lectures.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rightly pushed back on Fox News, explaining the legal framework and warning that orders are presumed lawful so that soldiers on the battlefield don’t have to play judge and jury in the middle of a fight. Her insistence that the chain of command and discipline are nonnegotiable was not only sober but necessary — Democrats should not be moonlighting as military ethicists while politicizing sworn service.
The Department of Defense has opened a review into Senator Mark Kelly’s role in the video, and it makes sense that the Pentagon is taking this seriously given Kelly’s retired status and continued subjectivity to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If members of Congress with service backgrounds use their resumes to give the appearance of authority and tell troops to second-guess orders, the Defense Department has every right to investigate whether that conduct crosses a line.
Republicans aren’t the only ones calling out the left’s hypocrisy — even mainstream interrogators asked the obvious question: which specific illegal orders are they talking about? The Democrats’ answer has been thin on details and heavy on fearmongering, and when you point that out you’re met with shrugs and moral preening instead of concrete concerns.
Supporters of the Democrat stunt trot out law professors and pundits who insist reminding troops of the duty to refuse truly unlawful orders is “non-controversial,” but this misses the point that timing and intent matter. Rehashing neutral legal truisms while America’s military faces real-world threats is irresponsible when the practical effect is to erode confidence in leadership and give the Left’s media army another weapon to bludgeon patriotic Americans.
We should defend our troops from both foreign enemies and domestic political saboteurs, and conservative Americans must demand accountability for anyone — elected or not — who tries to turn our military into a battleground for partisan politics. Protecting the chain of command and the honor of uniformed service members isn’t partisan; it’s patriotic, and those who would toy with it for headlines should be exposed, reprimanded, and taught that America’s security is not their prop.
