Courts salute ‘duty to disobey illegal orders’

Two court decisions in the first half of February 2026 showed symptoms of weakening support for the now blatant criminal actions of the White House and its lackeys. They give some hope to anyone who hates war and dictatorship. The task of the antiwar, anti-racist and anti-imperialist movement is to assess the symptoms and prescribe the next steps.

Both court cases involve six Congressional Democrats — all of whom are veterans of the U.S. military or spy agencies. They include Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, and Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst. The six made a video last fall where they took turns explaining that members of the U.S. Armed Forces and other government agencies have not only the right but the duty to disobey illegal orders. 

At the time U.S. troops and reservists were constantly being given orders that were blatantly illegal. One example was that National Guard (Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon) and in some places federal troops (Washington, D.C.) were ordered into cities to give military backup to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol thugs who were brutalizing migrant workers and really any people they believed might be migrants. Another example was the massive death-star fleet of warships in the Caribbean Sea who were blowing up small boats and murdering their crews.

The video immediately aroused the president’s fury. On social media, he charged the six Congress members with treason and threatened to have them executed. The Department of (In)Justice got the message and prepared indictments. 

Pentagon head Pete Hegseth challenged Kelly. As a personal face off, this seemed like an unfair battle. Kelly flew jets in combat and piloted and commanded space shuttle missions plus won an election to the Senate. Hegseth is good at push-ups and at saying “yes sir” to the president’s whims. This battle between two wings of the imperialist ruling class, however, is won not by personal talent but by much larger forces in society.

The first round went to Kelly. Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote Feb. 12 that the Pentagon’s move to reduce Kelly’s retirement rank and pay ran roughshod over his freedom of speech. 

The same week a grand jury rejected the attempt by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington to indict the six members of Congress who made the video. It is normally rare for grand juries to refuse to indict. In 2016 for example, “federal prosecutors concluded more than 155,000 cases, but grand juries refused to indict in only six of them.” (New York Times, Feb. 12) Round 2, Kelly and the other five.

Pro-solidarity mood change

While the battle is far from over, it’s clear that there is a new mood that gives a federal judge backbone to confront the MAGA offensive and gives ordinary citizens the confidence to vote in a grand jury to refuse to indict enemies of the administration.

While there is no direct proof, it is reasonable to contemplate what might be behind this change in mood. Consider the events in Minneapolis. There, tens of thousands of ordinary people faced down heavily armed ICE and Border Patrol thugs and held a general strike on Jan. 23, when 100,000 marched in freezing weather.

Remember, these ICE thugs are the 21st-century descendants of 19th-century, pre-Civil War mercenary hunters of escaped, enslaved people and of 20th-century Nazi storm troopers. Workers World salutes Minneapolis’s courageous working class in all its diversity. Round 3: Solidarity. 

What to do?

The court decisions not only defend the six Congresspeople who made the video, they support any military veterans who might speak out against the criminal actions of the administration — for example, the threatened war against Iran, the economic strangling of Cubans, the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and political combatant Cilia Flores, and the ongoing murder of motorboat crews in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

The antiwar, anti-racist and anti-imperialist movement itself has the duty to reach out to the military members, who are in the most part workers in uniform, to support and encourage their right and duty to disobey the illegal orders, like those listed in the paragraph above. Some organizations of veterans have already begun to publicize this right and duty of active duty troops. And more power to them. 

Those in the movement must stay aware that the six Democrats who told the truth in their video have not themselves broken with the overall goals of U.S. imperialism. They are not now and are extremely unlikely to ever become leaders in an anti-imperialist movement. And we know this.

They have, however, broken with the tactics of the current ultrareactionary, racist and misogynist administration. And their dissidence has opened a door to an independent, working-class approach to troops that has enormous potential. 

White House press spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who hardly ever opens her mouth without lying, said something worth considering when the video was first made public in an attack on the video: “The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed. It can lead to chaos. … ”

Breaking the chain of command can also save the lives of workers and oppressed people. It can rescue the sovereignty of nations under attack. It can replace imperialist chaos with an orderly and peaceful socialist society. Especially when the original orders are given by a criminal, corrupt and oppressive regime like the one in Washington.

Catalinotto is author of “Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions,” a history of breaks in the chain of command, including in the U.S.’s aggressive war against Vietnam from 1962 to 1975.