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SOLDIERS ARE TAKING A STAND AGAINST TRUMP’S ABUSES  
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Liza Featherstone
July 4, 2025
The New Republic
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_ On the Fourth of July, members of the military are calling on
Congress to protect service members who disobey the president’s
immoral or unlawful orders. _

Brittany Ramos DeBarros speaks outside the Supreme Court Getty Images
Brittany Ramos DeBarros speaks outside the Supreme Court during a June
13 protest ahead of Trump’s Army parade, Getty Images

 

Kim, an aircraft mechanic, joined the military in 2019, at age 18. She
and her mother had struggled to survive, even living in their car at
times. She didn’t think she could afford college, so she didn’t
apply. Like so many young Americans in that situation, she enlisted
“to get a stable paycheck, a roof over my head, food in my stomach
at the end of the day.” Deployed only once, Kim spent most of her
time on base, but she enjoyed the routine: waking up early for 15-hour
workdays, staying up late to earn an associate’s degree, making
lifelong friends and “amazing mentors.” But in 2024, she began to
worry about what a new administration might ask the military to do.

As Kim read Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for
Trump’s far-right authoritarian government, she became increasingly
troubled about the prospect of unlawful orders, fearing especially
that the president would use the military against American civilians.
Though she’d been planning on staying 20 years in the Air Force, she
decided to get out; now, she’s no longer active duty, but because
she didn’t serve a full eight years, she could be redeployed. Kim is
not her real name; she spoke anonymously to TNR anonymously so as not
to jeopardize her future; a dishonorable discharge could harm her
employment prospects and imperil her hard-earned military benefits.
“I’ve done quite well for myself,” she told me.

She was right to worry about how Trump might misuse the armed forces.
Last month, the Marines were deployed against peaceful protesters in
Los Angeles. “And now we have military in our streets,” Kim said,
“and that’s not where you’re supposed to see them.” She still
fears she could be asked to be party to it.

She’s speaking out as part of a campaign launched by About Face, a
veterans’ group which today—July Fourth—is launching a “Right
to Refuse” campaign
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service members deserve the right to refuse unlawful or immoral
orders, in the hope that Congress will pass a law offering stronger
protections to service members who do so. Founded by Iraq War veterans
concerned about the immorality of that conflict, About Face has in
recent years heard from service members with objections to sending
weapons to Israel, dismantling DEI within the military, and
especially, recently, the prospect of being pawns in Trump’s
authoritarian fantasy, whether in the crackdown in Los Angeles or the
military parade in Washington, D.C.

Brittany Ramos DeBarros, organizing director of About Face, is an
Afghanistan veteran who once faced court-martial for speaking out
against that war
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while still in uniform. She acknowledges that Congress isn’t going
to pass this law quickly enough to deal with the current
constitutional crises—if at all—but she sees it as a rallying
point for military communities. Families and service members need
support in trying to navigate this moment, she says, and many are
finding each other and organizing. From her own experience, she knows
that the military can make you feel crazy if you disagree with it.

“So I think it’s profound,” she said, “that people are
organically breaking out of that enough to start talking to each other
about, ‘I’m really concerned about this. What are you thinking
you’re gonna do?’” DeBarros says many are wondering what is in
their own best interests—but also what is the most moral choice: Is
it better to resign publicly or “better to have more people within
the military when that moment comes who are willing to stand up and do
something and do the right thing? Which is a complicated question for
people to sit with.” On the one hand, service members risk losing
their benefits and going to prison if they refuse orders; but if they
don’t refuse unlawful orders, she said, many will “live with the
moral injury and consequences of carrying out something that they knew
was wrong.”

Laura Dickinson, a law professor at George Washington University with
extensive knowledge of the military, national security, and the law of
armed conflict, said “the deployment of the federalized National
Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles is quite unprecedented and has
broken norms in our constitutional tradition. In our tradition, the
United States federal government has been very cautious about using
the federal military domestically for law enforcement purposes. It’s
norm busting and very concerning to people in the military.”
Deploying the military against Americans could fracture that trust
terribly, Dickinson suggested: “We are seeing concerns about this
from within the military now.”

Dickinson points out that the deployment of the Marines and
federalized National Guard in Los Angeles—they’re still there
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“manifestly unlawful”; the state of California has been litigating
it
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DeBarros also noted that “there’s not a clear consensus amongst
lawyers around what right now constitutes technically legal orders and
what constitutes illegal orders.” But even if a service member faces
an obviously unconstitutional order, it’s not clear what she should
do. Defying the U.S. military is one of the most intimidating
prospects someone can face. Disobedient soldiers can be
court-martialed and face prison. Yet if they do carry out unlawful
orders, the fact that they were “just following orders” is no
defense in a criminal trial. All this puts military personnel in an
untenable situation.

Another fear is that Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act—which
allows the president to deploy the military if there is unrest
“against the authority of the United States”—simply to quash
protests. The Marines aren’t trained in policing, DeBarros points
out: “Especially people in the military understand that there’s
probably no less equipped branch of the federal government to do
de-escalation work than the Marines,” who are trained for warfare,
where the rules of engagement are very different. Trump fantasized
during his first term about shooting protesters in the leg—a prime
example, Dickinson notes, of what police are not allowed to do.

“I may not have joined the military out of the most patriotic of
reasons,” said Kim, the Air Force member, “but I still raised my
right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution to defend it from all
enemies foreign and domestic. But the American people are not the
Constitution’s domestic enemies.”

Liza Featherstone is a contributing editor at _The New Republic_ and
the author of _Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of
Consultation _(2018).

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