Day: August 14, 2025

With his Aug. 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National Guard – along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, D.C. to fight crime, President Donald Trump edged U.S. troops closer to the kind of military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal lines.

Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles to quell largely peaceful protests.

When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal?

The question may already be affecting troop morale. “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”

Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey “manifestly unlawful” orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold.

We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so.

Compelled to disobey

U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only 9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”

When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were “obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously unconstitutional.”

Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that “orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.”

Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey.

The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as “torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”

One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.”

Soldiers, not lawyers

But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face: Some no longer trust U.S. law as useful guidance.

Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a standard of illegality than emphasized U.S. law.

Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law might become legal in the U.S.

“Trump will issue illegal orders,” wrote one respondent. “The new laws will allow it,” wrote another. A third wrote, “We are not required to obey such laws.”

Several emphasized the U.S. political situation directly in their remarks, stating they’d disobey “oppression or harming U.S. civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution” or an order for “use of the military to carry out deportations.”

Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in general.

This is not surprising: Troops are trained to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional pressures to do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in the laws of war or human rights law.

Political scientists have found, however, that having information on international law affects attitudes about the use of force among the general public. It can also affect decision-making by military personnel.

This finding was also borne out in our survey.

When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased 8 percentage points.

Drawing the line

As my research with another scholar showed in 2020, even thinking about law and morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes.

The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion. Troops who answered questions on “manifestly unlawful orders” before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders.

When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question first said they would obey the order.

But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order dropped 13 points to 56%.

While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large number who would not is remarkable.

Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a lawful one.

Yet between one-third to half of the U.S. troops we surveyed would be willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city.

The service members described the methods they would use. Some would confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods: asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, “becoming violently ill.”

Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do the same.

Whitehead’s research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their actions openly.

The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in calls to the GI Rights Hotline – suggest American men and women in uniform don’t want to obey unlawful orders.

Some are standing up loudly. Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from the Constitution and international law to determine where they may have to draw that line.

Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this article.

Charli Carpenter directs Human Security Lab which has received funding from University of Massachusetts College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the Lex International Fund of the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.

Geraldine Santoso and Laura K Bradshaw-Tucker do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

BORED MEETING: Mayor Eric Adams is leaving a financial predicament for his successor — who, as of now, is looking more and more like Zohran Mamdani.

A board of the state’s top fiscal authorities this morning slammed Adams’ $115.9 billion “Best Budget Ever” for rendering New York City unprepared for hard financial realities and looming federal clawbacks.

The New York State Financial Control Board, chaired by Gov. Kathy Hochul and tasked with overseeing the city’s fiscal planning, raised its concerns at a perilous moment for the city’s financial future. The Trump administration is looking to cut federal funding for expensive social services as the city is already facing its slowest jobs growth outside a recession in decades, per a New York Times report. But New York’s financial leaders, including State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and City Comptroller Brad Lander, warned the city’s financial woes predate Trump’s second term.

“Instead of planning for uncertainty, the Adams Administration has continued the opaque fiscal practice of underbudgeting of key services like shelter, special education, rental assistance, and overtime,” Lander wrote in his report. “Our estimates suggest that the June Financial Plan underestimates expenditures by $5.15 billion annually. That is not fiscal discipline — it is fiscal denial.”

The Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group that generally advocates for more conservative budgeting, also worried that Adams has left New York City ill prepared to backfill massive federal funding cuts.

“Rather than wisely save resources, control spending, and focus on efficiency, the city drove up spending by 7 percent, continued to underbudget programs, and added unaffordable spending during the budget process,” said Ana Champeny, CBC vice president for research.

Still, the FCB broadly approved of Adams’ budgeting and determined the city was in compliance with its standards — once again avoiding the stricter state oversight that was first implemented during the city’s fiscal crisis 50 years ago.

Adams acknowledged that sweeping funding cuts could produce a financial shortfall the city would struggle to bridge. Still, he appeared confident he’d be leading the legal fight against the White House, a battle that would likely outlast his first term.

“If dollars related to individual grants are clawed back, we’ll make a determination about how to proceed,” said Adams. “Along with other impacted cities and states, we will keep fighting in the courts for every dollar that has been awarded to the city.”

For Lander, who’s winding down his final months as the city’s money manager after losing in the mayoral primary, the opportunity to once again criticize Adams’ fiscal management comes as he’s viewed as a top contender to join the Mamdani administration, should the Democratic nominee maintain his lead in the polls.

The democratic socialist is not exactly running on fiscal restraint, and his plans for new spending are complicated by the $4.2 billion gap that’s been left for the next fiscal year, according to the city comptroller’s office.

Mamdani has said he would defend against likely federal cuts by raising revenue, primarily by increasing taxes on corporations and the ultra-wealthy. But Mamdani’s plans for building housing and rehabbing schools likely undercount their costs, and his tax plan is likely to face serious opposition in Albany, as POLITICO has reported. Mamdani’s campaign declined to comment.

In his response to the bevy of concerns raised by the board, Adams kept his remarks brief, thanking the members for their “informative” comments. — Amira McKee & Jeff Coltin

LOCKED OUT: Rep. Dan Goldman said today the Trump administration is once again violating the law by blocking him from visiting a federal jail in Brooklyn where ICE is detaining immigrants.

“I have a very specific statutory right under the law,” he said. “It’s a blatant violation of the law. We are in court right now suing the Department of Homeland Security for that purpose.”

Goldman was referring to his right to conduct oversight visits wherever the Department of Homeland Security is housing immigrants.

The Democrat waited outside the front gate of the Metropolitan Detention Center for 45 minutes this morning. He requested a visit last Friday, he said, but a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons told him Tuesday night they wouldn’t be able to accommodate him, without providing a specific reason. He came anyway to make a point and speak to the press.

Goldman as well as Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez were denied entry for an unannounced visit last week. DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The visit today came a day after a federal judge ordered ICE to improve conditions for detained immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan — a site where Goldman and fellow members of Congress have also been blocked from visiting. With a nod to that, Goldman said congressional oversight is now more important than ever.

“What are they hiding?” said Goldman. “Now we know.” — Jeff Coltin

HOCHUL’S GOT HIS BACK: Hochul hasn’t endorsed Mamdani even though he’s her party’s mayoral nominee, but she still found a way to show a little love.

As President Donald Trump escalates his attacks on the state lawmaker, Hochul insists she will be in Mamdani’s corner if he leads City Hall.

“He’s worked very hard with affordability front and center, something I believe in, and focusing on solutions,” the governor told NY1’s Bern Hogan. “If he becomes the next mayor, I will stand up and defend him against Donald Trump. You’re not going to come in and walk over our elected officials. So I’ll make it work. Trust us, NYPD, they know what they’re doing.”

Trump today once again lit into Mamdani, calling the 33-year-old democratic socialist “a communist.” On Monday, the president announced he would deploy the National Guard in Washington to address crime — and hinted that other big cities like New York could get the same treatment.

“I wish him well,” said Trump. “I may have to deal with him. I mean, it’s not even conceivable that could happen. Maybe he won’t win, but he won the primaries quite a bit. Shockingly, he won the primaries.”

Hochul has maintained an unusually steady working relationship with the Republican president. They have met twice in the Oval Office to discuss energy policy and the controversial congestion pricing toll program in Manhattan. — Nick Reisman

DELGADO CALLS OUT GOV: Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado took aim at Hochul today as he joined advocates at Foley Square to call for a special session in Albany to push back on the Trump administration.

“Don’t tell me that counties are acting as renegade counties, governor, when you have the ability to stop it, governor,” said Delgado. “Don’t tell me that we can’t close the loophole of making sure that ICE does not enter into agreements with the private prison industrial complex.”

In March, Hochul blasted “renegade” counties for signing agreements with ICE to detain undocumented immigrants.

Delgado appeared alongside state lawmakers, including state Sens. Julia Salazar and Jabari Brisport, at a rally organized by Citizen Action of New York, VOCAL NY and Make the Road New York. They called on Hochul to convene a special session to pass legislation to limit local law enforcement’s ability to collaborate with ICE and prohibit New York institutions from contracting with immigration detention centers.

The lieutenant governor, who’s running against Hochul in the Democratic primary, also took aim at the Democratic Party for not representing the working class.

“I’m so tired of my fellow Democrats talking about, ‘we’re worried about the rich leaving our state,’” he said. — Mona Zhang

— BROOKLYN DODGERS: New York isn’t collecting millions of dollars in penalties from a real estate firm that hasn’t built promised housing at Atlantic Yards because the company threatened to sue them if they tried. (Gothamist)

— PAY UP: Attorney General Letitia James sued the operator of Zelle, accusing the bank-owned payment platform of facilitating widespread fraud and failing to protect consumers. (POLITICO Pro)

— CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Newly released footage shows New York correctional officers beating a man in custody as the system has seen two high-profile deaths in the last year. (NBC News)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

​Politics