A surprising number and variety of Americans want the military to save us from the politicians they have elected to high office. Specifically, they want the military to refuse to obey orders if deemed illegal. Six Democratic members of Congress with national security backgrounds appeared in a video posted in November exhorting the military to refuse to obey unlawful orders. Even Pete Hegseth caviled that the military must refuse to obey orders—but of course, that was before he was the secretary of defense issuing them. Now he considers it “seditious behavior” to make the same statement.

Make no mistake, illegal orders are where the Trump administration is trending. The president’s frame of reference has been clear since at least 2020, when he prodded then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley to shoot protesters. In his first term, President Donald Trump also pardoned soldiers convicted by courts martial or dismissed from service—and Hegseth has appointed some to senior positions in the current Defense Department. Hegseth’s firing of the judge advocates general of several of the military’s branches was clearly intended to set a command climate of more permissive interpretation of the laws of war, as evidenced by Hegseth’s frenetic commentary on “stupid rules of engagement,” and giving enemies “no quarter.”

A surprising number and variety of Americans want the military to save us from the politicians they have elected to high office. Specifically, they want the military to refuse to obey orders if deemed illegal. Six Democratic members of Congress with national security backgrounds appeared in a video posted in November exhorting the military to refuse to obey unlawful orders. Even Pete Hegseth caviled that the military must refuse to obey orders—but of course, that was before he was the secretary of defense issuing them. Now he considers it “seditious behavior” to make the same statement.

Make no mistake, illegal orders are where the Trump administration is trending. The president’s frame of reference has been clear since at least 2020, when he prodded then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley to shoot protesters. In his first term, President Donald Trump also pardoned soldiers convicted by courts martial or........

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