Mary Ellen Klas: The military is in a bind created by its commander in chief

Mary Ellen Klas, Bloomberg Opinion on Nov 25, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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When President Donald Trump claimed that members of Congress deserved the death penalty last week, he showed yet again that he doesn’t respect the rule of law.The president turned to social media Thursday morning to accuse six Democratic members of Congress of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” The commander in chief made this astonishing comment in reaction to a video these elected officials, all former members of the military or the intelligence community, had posted the day before. In it, they remind current military service members: “You can refuse illegal orders” and “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”

The Democrats’ message could have supplied better context, and perhaps spelled out what sort of “orders” they were worried about. Republican pundits are probably correct to suggest that Democrats also made the video to garner political attention.

But the video simply states the obvious: Every member of the military takes an oath to obey the Uniform Code of Military Justice — which states they must not obey an order if it “is contrary to the Constitution” or “the laws of the United States” even if it is given by a superior officer or the commander in chief.

Trump was so rattled by the video that he unleashed a stream of 19 posts or shares that included the all-caps: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” A predictable surge of threats against the lawmakers followed, prompting the House Sergeant at Arms and the U.S. Capitol Police to provide them with additional security.

When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt weighed in, saying the president would never authorize an illegal order, she inaccurately claimed the Democrats were “encouraging” members of the military “to defy the President’s lawful orders.”

The reality is that the situation is entirely of Trump’s own making. For weeks, military service personnel have been seeking outside legal counsel about orders they’ve received, especially the U.S. strikes against alleged drug boats and the military deployments to American cities. The legality of the attacks on boats in the Caribbean is disputed and federal judges have ordered the administration to halt its National Guard deployment to U.S. cities while lawsuits proceed.

The torrent of questions raised by all of this has led to a spike in inquiries to The Orders Project, a nonpartisan program independent from the federal government and run by the National Institute of Military Justice. It was created at the end of the first Trump administration to assist military personnel in understanding their options when faced with orders they believe may not be legal.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Rosenblatt, a former U.S. Army lawyer who runs the program, told the PBS NewsHour that most of the calls are coming from military officers, not lower-ranking enlisted members, and often from those not directly involved in the operations. Callers have indicated that “they’re feeling pressure from their higher-ups” to concur with the Pentagon’s decision to carry out the strikes, he said.

The impact of all these legal arguments can be challenging for the rank-and-file military, said General Randy Manner, a retired two-star Army Major General. While there are a few clearly illegal orders that every military member knows, such as firing on unarmed Americans or shooting prisoners of war, it’s a mistake to assume that individual junior members of the military can analyze every order to ensure it is legal, he told me.

Manner said he spent part of his active-duty career working with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Air Force and the Army helping them “ensure that legal reviews were done of all intent and all actions” before they were sent to the various combatant commanders.

“The average soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, does not understand the nuances of the law,” he explained. “By the time orders get to a junior enlisted person, they should have absolutely been vetted by the generals, the admirals, the senior officers with JAGs to ensure that the orders they receive are lawful.”

Trump has not only made the jobs of the military commanders more difficult, recent decisions by what is now called the Department of War may compromise the ability of new enlistees to assess the legality of their orders. Under Trump, the department has removed from basic training instructions on the Geneva Conventions.

“Without that training, our soldiers and sailors and our Marines are not going to know what right looks like,” Manner said.

With the lack of transparency about Trump’s military operations, and the legal questions around them, the president created the conditions for the Democrats’ video.

Senator Mark Kelly, a 25-year combat pilot in the U.S. Navy and a Democrat from Arizona, told CNN on Thursday that they made the video because Trump continues to talk about sending troops into more U.S. cities, invoking the Insurrection Act, and in 2020 asked his then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper about whether he could shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the legs.

“That is an example of an illegal order — if it was given,” Kelly continued. “He didn't give the order, but it's obviously rattling around in his head.”

If Trump is disturbed by the reaction to his decisions, he should be. But the best response is not to seemingly call for the execution of members of Congress, but to reconsider how he ought to use the world’s most powerful military.