By Granite State Report
The loudest people in American politics are currently accusing a group of veterans of sedition for… quoting military law.
That’s what’s happening to Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, who joined five other Democratic lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds in a video reminding U.S. service members of something they are already trained to know: you must obey lawful orders – and you must refuse illegal ones.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
President Donald Trump responded by calling that message “seditious behavior, punishable by death,” on social media and in public remarks, escalating the rhetoric to the level of treason accusations and capital punishment.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
Strip away the noise and you’re left with something basic: Goodlander is defending the Constitution; Trump is attacking people for telling troops to follow it.
Let’s walk through this like adults.
The law already says what Goodlander said
In the NHPR interview, the host puts it bluntly: this video “essentially restates current law about military conduct when it comes to refusing illegal orders.” Goodlander agrees, calling it a “simple restatement of a core American principle and an actual federal law… that you do not obey illegal orders.”(New Hampshire Public Radio)
That’s not spin. That’s black-letter reality.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 92 punishes failure to obey lawful orders and dereliction of duty. The word “lawful” is doing a lot of work there. Service members are not obligated to obey orders that violate U.S. law, the Constitution, or the laws of war.(The Law Office of Peter Kageleiry, Jr.)
Military law experts and even basic legal guides are crystal clear on this point: there is a “duty to disobey” unlawful orders, rooted in UCMJ and reinforced by international law after Nuremberg.(Law Offices of David P. Sheldon)
So when Goodlander says troops must obey lawful orders and refuse illegal ones, she isn’t freelancing some radical theory. She’s repeating what every JAG officer teaches and what every serious military ethics briefing explains.
If that’s “sedition,” then the law itself is seditious.
The oath is to the Constitution, not to a person
Goodlander’s whole argument hangs on something that should be carved into every civics classroom wall: service members swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to a movement.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
In the NHPR interview, she underlines this:
“We are a group of veterans and national security professionals who… swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution… Upholding that oath really means upholding the basic obligation under federal law to obey lawful orders and lawful orders only.” (New Hampshire Public Radio)
If the president’s command conflicts with the Constitution, the oath doesn’t magically shift to match the president’s preferences. The oath is the anchor; the president is a temporary officeholder.
You can’t simultaneously claim to be “pro-military” and argue that reminding troops of their constitutional obligations is treasonous. That’s worship of a man, not respect for an institution.
This isn’t hypothetical — the concern comes from an actual record
Goodlander doesn’t pretend this is happening in a vacuum. She points directly to recent behavior from Trump and his team. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, she asked the secretary of defense a simple question: Will you obey a decision of the United States Supreme Court? He refused to say yes.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
She calls that “stunning and deeply disturbing,” and she’s right. If the commander in chief and the defense secretary won’t clearly commit to following Supreme Court rulings, you are not in normal civil–military territory anymore. You’re in “stress-testing the guardrails” territory.
Add to that:
- Trump’s prior use and threatened use of troops and the National Guard in domestic political crises.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
- His public attacks on military leaders who cross him.
- His current rhetoric saying that reminding troops not to commit unlawful acts is “punishable by death.”(Reuters)
When you line those facts up, the video from Goodlander and her colleagues looks less like “provocation” and more like a preemptive reinforcement of the guardrails that are supposed to keep the armed forces out of personal and political power plays.
Obeying every order blindly is not patriotism; it’s how atrocities happen
History is full of people who said “I was just following orders.”
Nuremberg burned that excuse to the ground. One of the central lessons of World War II and its aftermath is that individuals—military and civilian—have a responsibility not to commit illegal acts, even when ordered. That principle is baked into modern military ethics and international humanitarian law.(Law Offices of David P. Sheldon)
Telling American troops they must follow every presidential command, lawful or not, is not “support for the troops.” It’s handing them the legal and moral equivalent of a live grenade with the pin half-pulled. If they carry out an illegal order, they can face criminal charges later.
Goodlander’s message does the opposite: it tells service members the truth — that their ultimate obligation is to the law and the Constitution, and that Congress will back them when they honor that oath.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
That’s not sedition. That’s risk reduction.
The “sedition punishable by death” rhetoric is the real red flag
Trump’s response is the part of this story that ought to make your neck hair stand up. He didn’t just call the video wrong; he labeled it “seditious behavior, punishable by death,” and called the lawmakers “traitors.”(New Hampshire Public Radio)
That does a few dangerous things at once:
- It normalizes talking about executing political opponents. Once you start throwing “death penalty” rhetoric at people for quoting the law, you’re playing with matches in a dry forest.
- It tries to flip the meaning of loyalty. In Trump’s framing, loyalty means loyalty to him, not to the Constitution. Anyone who reminds troops that the law comes first becomes a traitor.
- It puts a target on the backs of specific lawmakers. They’ve already reportedly been assigned 24/7 security because of threats after his posts.(New York Post)
We’ve been here before with dehumanizing, “traitor” language toward political opponents. It ended in real-world violence on January 6th. Pretending this is just rhetorical theater is delusional.
Goodlander’s calm response — that it’s “hard not to be [concerned] when the president… threatens you with violence for simply restating a basic principle of federal law,” but that she won’t “give up the ship” — is exactly the measured backbone you want from someone in her position.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
“But what about discipline and chain of command?”
Some critics argue that any message encouraging troops to disobey orders undermines discipline. That would be a fair concern if Goodlander were telling service members to improvise constitutional law on TikTok. She isn’t.
Key points that get lost in the shouting:
- The video does not name any specific order as illegal. It does not tell troops to defy Trump on X, Y, or Z policy.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
- It explicitly grounds itself in existing training and law, not partisan views. Goodlander notes that this is “part of the training and part of the preparation for serving in our military” and that it is “not a controversial principle” within the services.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
- Nothing in the message tells rank-and-file troops to freelance; the point is to remind them that they already learn how to recognize unlawful orders and that they should trust that training and the legal system backing it.(Military Law Task Force)
Chain of command remains intact. Discipline remains essential. What Goodlander is saying is: discipline ends where illegality begins. That’s not undermining the military; that’s preserving its legitimacy.
Why this matters beyond Maggie Goodlander
This story is bigger than one New Hampshire representative and a single video. It’s a stress test of what Americans actually believe about power.
- Do we believe the military is an apolitical institution loyal to the Constitution, or a personal enforcement arm of whoever happens to be president?(The Bulwark)
- Do we accept that veterans in Congress have not just the right but the responsibility to speak to current service members about their legal obligations?
- Are we going to start calling basic statements of law “sedition” whenever they inconvenience a particular politician?
Goodlander’s stance is simple: you don’t obey illegal orders, whether they come from a Democratic president or a Republican one, whether they’re aimed at protesters in American cities or at some foreign target picked for political theater.(New Hampshire Public Radio)
If that principle doesn’t hold, everything else we tell ourselves about American democracy is just branding.
The bottom line
Maggie Goodlander is not the radical one in this story.
The radical move is calling for death-penalty-level punishment for lawmakers who tell troops to follow the Constitution and military law. The radical move is suggesting that the real threat to America is not illegal orders, but those who warn against them.(Reuters)
Goodlander and the other veterans in that video are doing what we say we want leaders to do: using their experience and their platform to reinforce the guardrails before a crisis, not after. They’re telling the men and women in uniform the truth about the law and promising to have their backs when they honor their oaths.
That’s not sedition. That’s the job.
If we can’t defend that, we’ve already decided that power matters more than the Constitution — and at that point, the question of “illegal orders” won’t be theoretical anymore.
