Democrats’ ‘Unlawful Order’ Video Strikes A Nerve
A new breed of unapologetic, mercilessly on-message Democrats rise to the moment
On November 18, six Democratic members of Congress, all former U.S. military or intelligence officers, posted a video that had a simple message for members of the military:
“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders.
You must refuse illegal orders.”
While many on the right responded with performative horror at the video, the fact is, the message communicated by these six members of Congress—including Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Rep. Chrissie Houlahan (D-PA)—simply reiterates the laws that govern the oath of enlistment each member of the military takes to the Constitution.
Per The Washington Post:
The UCMJ makes clear that service members are required to obey “any lawful general order or regulation” or they could be “punished as a court-martial may direct.”
The Manual for Courts-Martial states that the requirement to “obey orders does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”
Even so, Donald Trump and the Pentagon melted down over the video, with Trump calling the six Democrats “traitors” worthy of “death” and with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth moving to potentially court-martial Senator Mark Kelly over it. But far from exhibiting strength, this response by the Trump regime displayed profound weakness. As Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) made clear on MSNBC, Trump is “absolutely telling on himself in the way that he’s reacting to this.”
The video never claimed Trump issued any illegal orders, nor did the six Democrats cite Trump by name. But his freakout was an admission that Trump is the unspoken threat here. The Democrats set the trap, and as he often does, Trump fell right into it.
And now, a week into the back and forth over the video, it sure feels like the administration’s reaction may be backfiring. By threatening Senator Mark Kelly with a literal court-martial, has Trump just elevated a potential 2028 Democratic star? And what does the rollout of the video signal about a potential new era in Democratic communications, one that’s scrappier, more disciplined, and surprisingly unapologetic? Isn’t this precisely what Democratic voters have been clamoring for?
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS”
The first sign that this video had the right-wing back on its heels came the day after it posted, when Fox News had Rep. Jason Crow on to try to call him and his fellow Democrats out for what host Martha MacCallum tried to frame as an anti-military message.
Crow wasn’t having it, turning the message around on MacCallum and accusing her of disparaging the troops by suggesting they couldn’t handle a simple reminder of the actual law of the land. By the time Crow was done, MacCallum was on defense. She even ended the interview praising Crow for his service and thanking him for coming on her show.
Trump no doubt saw this clip, or portions of it, and sensed a potential vulnerability for him in the message being driven by these six Democrats, whom the administration would later dub “the Seditious Six.”
Trump understands the power of such a message coming from members of Congress who themselves are veterans of the military and of U.S. intelligence services. And as Trump tends to do, he sought to turn the Democrats’ strength into a weakness.
So on the morning of November 20th, Trump went on the attack on Truth Social accusing the six Democrats of being “SEDITIOUS” “TRAITORS.”
And just in case his message wasn’t entirely clear…
Many of his followers on Truth Social co-signed.
Once upon a time, such accusations might have sent Democrats cowering. Not so with this group.
Within hours of Trump’s posts, Senator Slotkin posted a response video that doubled down. She portrayed Trump as a threat to the values of our country, framing herself and her fellow Democrats as patriotic truth-tellers.
“I swore an oath to the Constitution many times, most recently less than a year ago as a Senator. To the Constitution, not to any one man, not to any one president. And I abide by that oath.
For me, I believe in the power of this country and that we are better than our current politics represent. And I refuse to be intimidated out of defending the country I love.”
The Democrats also drove the news cycle by reporting Trump’s Truth Social threats to the Capitol police.
Per Axios:
In an email sent Thursday afternoon and obtained by Axios, Crow’s office told the Capitol Police they were writing to “report threats made by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, against Congressman Jason Crow.”
The email cited Trump’s Truth Social posts calling the Democratic lawmakers “TRAITORS, demanding they be “ARRESTED and PUT ON TRIAL,” and declaring, “LOCK THEM UP.”
It also pointed to Trump writing, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and reposting another post saying, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”
This put the White House on defense, as evidenced by Karoline Leavitt’s exasperated stumbling performance behind the podium the next day. When asked if the President wanted those members of Congress dead, Leavitt tried to push back with lies.
Which Crow wasted no time in fact-checking on CNN.
CNN also had Mark Kelly on to fire back at Trump, saying
“There is nothing more American than standing up for the Constitution. That’s what we were doing. The President didn’t like it. So now he calls for us to be hanged.”
By Saturday, Trump understood this was not going his way, and doubled down in a series of deranged late-night all-caps posts on Truth Social.
It was a message that, once again, Rep. Jason Crow decimated.
This was not going well for Trump, and he knew it. Truth Social posts were not cutting it. And so he did next what he does best.
Weaponizing the Pentagon Against an American Hero
As we have witnessed over the past 10 months, Trump will choose to weaponize the government he leads in order to obtain the outcome he desires.
And in his second term, surrounded by sycophants who will never question an order, lawful or not, he knew his minions would do his bidding.
And so Hegseth did, when on Monday, the so-called “Department of War” released a statement indicating that, in response to the video, it had initiated an investigation into Senator Kelly, a retired Navy Captain, threatening him with
“Recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.”
As Hegseth elaborated in his own post, Kelly is the only one of the six Democrats who is still subject to the UCMJ, and so is the only one they can leverage the weight of the Pentagon against in this way.
As so often is the case with Trump, this move smacked of desperation and massive overreach. It’s also wildly unconstitutional, as Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, who teaches constitutional law at Georgia State University, noted to The AP:
“Having a United States senator subject to discipline at the behest of the secretary of defense and the president — that violates a core principle of legislative independence,” Kreis said in a phone interview.
Kreis said such protections were a reaction to the British monarchy, which had arbitrarily punished members of Parliament.
”Any way you cut it, the Constitution is fundamentally structurally designed to prevent this kind of abuse from happening,” Kreis said.
And sure enough, Senator Kelly appears anything but intimidated. In a powerful post on X, Kelly laid out his profound and extensive service to the country:
“When I was 22 years old, I commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy and swore an oath to the Constitution. I upheld that oath through flight school, multiple deployments on the USS Midway, 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm, test pilot school, four space shuttle flights at NASA, and every day since I retired – which I did after my wife Gabby was shot in the head while serving her constituents.”
And essentially said to Hegseth and Trump: “bring it on.”
“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
He added a photo of his decorated uniform for good measure.
Anyone else feel like this reads like a presidential campaign announcement?
Kelly brought that same energy to The Rachel Maddow Show last night.
If Trump and Hegseth are trying to cut Kelly down, well…that certainly backfired.
A New Rising Class of Democratic Leaders
If the way the Democrats played this—from the rollout of the video to blanketing cable news and social media with aggressive disciplined messages amplifying their own patriotism and slamming Trump’s authoirtarianism—feels new for a Democratic Party that is typically scared of its own shadow, too often putting its finger to the wind to find its message and backtracking at the slightest hint of pushback…well, that’s because it is.
Put simply, these are not your typical Democrats. For starters, these six members of Congress stand out due to their careers. As veterans of the U.S. military or intelligence services, they are public servants who are unafraid of facing down enemy combatants in defense of the principles they believe in.
But it is no accident that these six all have something else in common as well: They all entered Congress in the aftermath of Trump’s first election to the presidency.
Senator Elissa Slotkin, Rep. Jason Crow, and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan all won election to the House with the class of 2018 in the anti-Trump blue wave. That was the first congressional class of Democrats to be elected after Trump’s first election win. Senator Mark Kelly was subsequently elected in 2020, Rep. Chris Deluzio in 2022, and Rep. Maggie Goodlander in 2024.
For too long, Democratic politics have been dominated by campaign consultants and elected leaders stuck in the pre-Trump world of political norms and guardrails. The 2024 election, and the subsequent failure of Democratic leadership to adequately respond to the unique threat posed by Trump’s second term, highlighted the failure of the pre-Trump mindset. Jill Lawrence recently wrote about this phenomenon, bemoaning the fact that “most Democrats are still practicing by-the-rule-book politics, as Sen. Tammy Duckworth said recently, while ‘Donald Trump and Republicans are shooting referees in the face.’” In her piece, Lawrence called for Democrats who pass the “SOB test” to step up and lead the way. Now we are seeing them do so in real time.
As a clear example of this contrast, consider how Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (House class of 2018) and Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani (first elected to the NY Assembly in 2020) have responded to political foes from Andrew Cuomo to Donald Trump versus how Chuck Schumer (House class of 1980) and Hakeem Jeffries (House class of 2012) do.
History may show that the 2025 elections marked the turning point, if not the final deathblow of that pre-Trump mindset. On November 4, not only was Mamdani elected Mayor of New York, but Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, both members of that same class of 2018 that saw the rise of AOC and Elissa Slotkin, were elected Governor of New Jersey and Virginia, respectively.
It’s also no accident that this video came out within mere weeks of these election victories. Now, a group of Democratic Senators has risen to challenge Schumer’s and Kirsten Gillibrand’s leadership in the party.
As The New York Times reports today:
The coalition of at least half a dozen senators, who call themselves the “Fight Club,” is unhappy with how Mr. Schumer and his fellow senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, the head of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, have chosen, recruited and, they argue, favored candidates aligned with the establishment.
The mutinous mood of the senators — who include Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — reflects the widespread doubts among the Democratic base that party leaders in Congress have a strong vision and a winning strategy for returning to power.
We are in a new period of Democratic politics, and a select few brave and savvy elected Democrats are showing the way.
And if Democrats play their cards right, the 2028 election will be the first cycle where a post-Trump Democrat, who truly understands the new rules and knows how to bring a political knife to a knife fight, will be the standard-bearer of the party on the presidential ticket.
I think the thing I admire most about Mark Kelly—and in great contrast to people like Trump and Hegseth—is that he stuck by his wife, Gabby Giffords, through everything she went through. He was even at her side to assist her at the Democratic convention last year. There is a lot of focus on his military and astronaut accomplishments, but the thing that makes him a man to admire, in my opinion, is his unwavering commitment to his wife.
This was bracing. What I'm not seeing anyone say is how particularly stupid they are, going after Kelly. Most (if not all) of the military probably already hate Hegseth for his clownish posturing and idiotic lectures. Kelly--in sharp contrast to the Commander in Chief--has an honorable record of service AND a cool history as an astronaut. Does Trump really think going after him is going to make the military respect Trump any more? Instead of hate him even more?