It seemed to come out of nowhere. Although service members are explicitly taught — beginning in basic training and throughout their careers — that they have a duty to refuse unlawful orders, six Democratic lawmakers nonetheless felt it was necessary to produce a video to “remind” them of this fact.
When challenged, Democrats defended the video by asking what could possibly be wrong with telling troops not to follow illegal orders.
Well, other than treating members of the military like children and insinuating that the president of the United States has issued unlawful orders, nothing I suppose.
In reality, the video’s purpose was unmistakable: to sow doubt and breed suspicion of their commanding officers among service members. It was a psyop.
One X user nailed it:
The “Seditious Six” video isn’t some neutral civics reminder; it’s built like the same regime‑change propaganda the U.S. has used overseas. It takes a legal truism everyone agrees with – “don’t follow illegal orders” – then wraps it in ominous music, military credentials, and direct emotional appeals to the troops in a way that’s designed to build distrust in the elected commander‑in‑chief rather than fix any real problem. In other countries, that style of messaging is used to soften up the security forces before a push to weaken or topple a government; recycling that template at home, on American soldiers, is what alarms people who see it as crossing from normal dissent into “color revolution” territory.
In a Wednesday op-ed on Substack, John Lucas, a veteran who has served as both an Army Ranger and a Special Forces Green Beret, called the video “rotten nonsense.”
It is an effort to create plausible deniability as a misleading subterfuge. Their slick video production is not an innocent civics lesson for ignorant troops who somehow need additional instruction in military law. It is, in fact, an effort to undermine the President, to encourage disobedience of his orders, to sow chaos in the ranks, and to promote continued lawfare and turmoil in the military, all of which is intended to hamstring this President because they disagree with his policies.
Lucas noted that, were these lawmakers genuinely concerned that service members needed to be reminded of the laws surrounding unlawful orders, they had “a viable and proper alternative.”
They could have approached the Judge Advocate Generals for each military service, and requested, in a non-partisan way, that they take appropriate steps to ensure that the subject of [unlawful orders] was being adequately addressed in both initial and ongoing training for all service members.
Obviously, they chose the more public option for a reason. In the days following the video’s release, it became clear that it was part of a broader Democratic initiative to accomplish precisely what Lucas described above.
As is often the case with Democratic propaganda campaigns, it took only a few days for the first connections to emerge.
On November 11, the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force published a FAQ sheet on refusing illegal military orders. The NLG calls itself “the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association.”
On Thursday, Powerline’s Bill Glahn reported on a billboard sign outside Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which reads, “Did you go airborne just to pull security for ICE?”
According to The Fayetteville Observer:
A new ad campaign on a Skibo Road billboard in Fayetteville encourages servicemembers to join its cause by asking, “Did you go airborne just to pull security for ICE?”Sponsored by Win Without War, a progressive advocacy group that promotes diplomatic, peaceful and human-rights-based foreign policy, the billboards were launched across the U.S. this month, according to an announcement Sept. 9.
Glahn notes that one of Win Without War’s biggest backers is George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which gave the group $1 million in 2024.
Conservatives on social media claim they have uncovered additional evidence of progressive groups trying to sow division between service members and the Trump administration. I can’t speak to the credibility of every claim, but there does seem to be enough smoke to suggest the possibility of fire.
I was reminded this morning of an often-repeated quote attributed to an anonymous member of Students for a Democratic Society, a well-known activist organization of the 1960s: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
Seen against the backdrop of that SDS maxim, the intent behind the “Seditious Six” video becomes much more clear. The supposed warning about unlawful orders — along with the nationwide billboard campaign, the NLG’s FAQ sheet, and any new connections that may come to light in the days ahead — is intended to drive a wedge between the military and the Trump administration and to create chaos.
But it is merely one piece of a far broader campaign. It’s just the latest battle in the Democrats’ decade-long war on President Donald Trump. In the end, the issue is not about unlawful orders, but rather the Democrats’ relentless, ruthless, obsessive determination to destroy the President.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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