Outrage over Democrats’ video on illegal orders defies ‘common sense and basic morality’, Ron Paul says
Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman and presidential candidate, is among those who have voiced support for he six Democrats who argued in a social media video that US soldiers and intelligence officers should refuse to obey illegal orders.
Paul, 90, wrote on social media: “Common sense and basic morality should have prevented the outrage. The uniform code of military justice claims that military personnel have a ‘legal and ethical’ duty to disregard unlawful orders. This is a worthy debate that needs to occur.”
“Our repeatedly unlawful and illegal process of going into war needs to be addressed,” the former congressperson added.
Paul’s son Rand, a Republican senator from Kentucky, suggested on Sunday that the Trump administration’s lethal air strikes on suspected drug smugglers, made without a declaration of war by Congress, could be illegal.
Administration officials, the senator told CBS News, “are pretending as if we are ‘at war’” with Venezuela to justify blowing up boats.
“We normally don’t shoot boats that we suspect” of being used for drug smuggling, Paul said. “About one in four of the vessels” that the Coast Guard normally stop and search, Paul added, don’t have drugs. “So it actually would be unlawful if the Coast Guard started blowing up boats, but for some reason they say ‘Oh we’re at war off the coast of Venezuela, and so its a different rule of engagement.’”
Key events
Democrats rally to defend Mark Kelly against Pentagon charge video to troops could lead to court martial
Fellow Democrats have rallied in support of Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a retired former Navy pilot and astronaut who was threatened with court-martial on Monday by the Pentagon over his statements in a social media video reminding serving members of the military and intelligence community that they are not obliged to follow unlawful orders.
Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served in Iraq and also took part in the video, posted her support of Kelly on social media. “This is the President’s playbook: using intimidation, harassment, and the weight of the federal government to try and silence anyone who speaks up against him,” she wrote. “That won’t stop Senator Kelly, or any of us, from standing up for what’s right.”
Kelly’s fellow senator from Arizona, Ruben Gallego, a former marine who served in Iraq, voiced his support for Kelly, and disdain for Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, in more stark language.
“Fuck you and your investigation,” Gallego wrote in response to the Pentagon’s announcement that Kelly could be recalled to active duty for court-martial proceedings.
“This is fucking insane,” the senator added in a social media video addressed to Hesgeth, a former Fox News weekend anchor who served in Iraq as a captain in the Minnesota national guard.
“Mark Kelly is a patriot,” Gallego added. “Secretary Hegseth, all these guys: fuck you guys. You’re not going to be able to scare us. We have a right to defend the constitution of the United States. We have a right to tell other service members they have a right to ignore illegal orders, and you’re not going to be able to intimidate us.”
Outrage over Democrats’ video on illegal orders defies ‘common sense and basic morality’, Ron Paul says
Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman and presidential candidate, is among those who have voiced support for he six Democrats who argued in a social media video that US soldiers and intelligence officers should refuse to obey illegal orders.
Paul, 90, wrote on social media: “Common sense and basic morality should have prevented the outrage. The uniform code of military justice claims that military personnel have a ‘legal and ethical’ duty to disregard unlawful orders. This is a worthy debate that needs to occur.”
“Our repeatedly unlawful and illegal process of going into war needs to be addressed,” the former congressperson added.
Paul’s son Rand, a Republican senator from Kentucky, suggested on Sunday that the Trump administration’s lethal air strikes on suspected drug smugglers, made without a declaration of war by Congress, could be illegal.
Administration officials, the senator told CBS News, “are pretending as if we are ‘at war’” with Venezuela to justify blowing up boats.
“We normally don’t shoot boats that we suspect” of being used for drug smuggling, Paul said. “About one in four of the vessels” that the Coast Guard normally stop and search, Paul added, don’t have drugs. “So it actually would be unlawful if the Coast Guard started blowing up boats, but for some reason they say ‘Oh we’re at war off the coast of Venezuela, and so its a different rule of engagement.’”
Trump signs executive order to designate Muslim Brotherhood chapters ‘foreign terrorist organizations’
The White House just posted the full text of a new executive order Donald Trump signed on Monday, “to begin the process of designating certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations”.
Laura Loomer, a pro-Israel, anti-Muslim extremist with unusual influence over Trump, responded to the announcement by renewing her call for the administration to designate as terrorists Muslim American elected officials she claims, without evidence, are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Writing on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Loomer was barred from for anti-Muslim racism before it was purchased by Elon Musk, the extremist podcaster called on Monday for the White House to use the new designation to arrest and jail three prominent Muslim Democrats: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Zohran Mamdani.
Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has welcomed the decision by a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against her on Monday, on the grounds that the prosecutor who brought the case, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed.
“The court’s order acknowledges what’s been clear about this case from the beginning,” Lowell said in a statement. “The President went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged. We will continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available.”
While gaggling with reporters, Karoline Leavitt said that she had spoken with secretary of state Marco Rubio “at length” following the US delegation’s meeting with Ukrainian officials in Geneva. She also mentioned that she’d spoken with the president.
“Everybody inside feels optimistic about what happened in transpired yesterday,” she said. “The whole team really worked through the points of that 28-point peace plan that the United States authored, with input from both sides, the Russians and the Ukrainians.”
Leavitt affirmed that “the vast majority” of these points had been agreed upon. “The Ukrainians have worked on language with us together,” she said. “So we feel as though we’re in a very good place.”
Leavitt insists that Lindsey Halligan was legally appointed after federal judge tosses out indictments
The White House press secretary insisted that Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia handpicked by Donald Trump, was legally appointed to her position.
This comes after a federal judge threw out the charges against James Comey and Letitia James, saying Halligan had no “legal authority” to charge two of the president’s most notable adversaries.
“The Department of Justice will be appealing very soon, and it is our position that Lindsey Halligan is extremely qualified for this position, but more importantly, was legally appointed to it,” Leavitt told reporters.
The press secretary said that Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who issued today’s rulings, was “trying to shield” the former FBI director and New York attorney general “from receiving accountability”.
White House supports Pentagon’s investigation into Mark Kelly, says press secretary
Speaking to reporters outside the West Wing today, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House supports the Pentagon’s announcement that it is investigating veteran and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.
“Today, the Democratic lawmaker accused the Department of Defense of intimidation”, Leavitt pushed back when asked about Kelly’s statement.
“I think what senator Mark Kelly was actually trying to do was intimidate the 1.3 million active-duty service members who are currently serving in our United States Armed Forces with that video that he and his Democrat colleagues put out,” the press secretary said, referencing the social media post where six Democratic members of Congress told members of the military that they should “refuse” illegal orders.
“They knew what they were doing in this video, and Senator Mark Kelly and all of them should be held accountable for that,” Leavitt added today.
My colleague, Jeremy Barr, has been combing through the tens of thousands of pages that were released on Sunday as part of voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
He notes that Fox News has strenuously denied Smartmatic’s claims and said the company has vastly overstated its value. In a statement, Smartmatic said Fox’s “attempts to delay accountability won’t work, and its day of reckoning is coming”.
You can read the top takeaways from the documents below.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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In a blow to Trump’s justice department, a federal judge has tossed out criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-installed prosecutor who secured the indictment against two of the president’s most noted adversaries, was illegally appointed to her position as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia. Currie wrote that Halligan had “no lawful authority” to present the indictments to both Comey and James (in separate cases).
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The Pentagon has said it’s investigating Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona for possible breaches of military law after Kelly joined a handful of other lawmakers in a video that called for US troops to refuse unlawful orders. The Pentagon’s statement, which was posted on social media this morning, cited a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court martial or other measures. For his part, Kelly wrote in a statement that he’s “given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution”.
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Talks continued in Geneva between US and Ukrainian representatives today. Earlier, Donald Trump said that “something good just may be happening” in a post on Truth Social. Meanwhile, Ukraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” for Ukraine, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned on Monday that no deal could be reached quickly. For his part, Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has filed a notice in the federal register to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the roughly 10,000 Myanmar nationals living in the US. This, despite the country being ruled by a military dictatorship that has a record of executing dissidents. The Trump administration has already withdrawn protected status for a number of other nationalities, including Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan and Venezuela, as part of sweeping changes to immigration policy.
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The outgoing Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, said today that “smears, lies, attacks, and name calling is childish behavior, divisive, and bad for our country”. This comes after she announced her decision to resign from Congress in January. In recent weeks, Greene has had a very public falling out with Donald Trump, which culminated in the president calling her a “traitor” after she supported a vote for the justice department to release the complete trove of Jeffrey Epstein files. Today, without naming the president or any Republican colleagues, the Georgia lawmaker pushed back on X. “Memes and red meat rants do nothing. Actions speak louder than words,” Greene wrote
Trump to visit Beijing in April, after ‘very good’ call with Xi Jinping
The president has said he will visit Beijing in April, after a “very good” call with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he “discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products”.
He also teased a “good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers”, and summarised the relationship with China as “extremely strong”. This despite a brewing trade war with the nation, following their decision to limit exports of rare earth minerals, and the US issuing retaliatory tariffs.
“President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted,” Trump added. “I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a State Visit in the U.S. later in the year. We agreed that it is important that we communicate often, which I look forward to doing.”
‘I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies,’ senator Kelly responds to secretary Hegseth
Earlier, we brought you the news that the Department of Defense is investigating veteran and sitting Democratic senator Mark Kelly.
This, after the Arizona lawmaker joined five other members of Congress in telling active duty military to “refuse illegal orders” in a social media video.
For his part, Kelly has responded in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death,” he wrote in a post on X. “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”
Kelly also gave a brief summary of his military career:
In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.
Halligan’s conduct in the Comey case came under sustained scrutiny from three different judges. A magistrate judge determined that Halligan may have committed other significant legal errors in instructing and presenting evidence to the same grand jury.
The justice department denied to Reuters that Halligan engaged in any misconduct and argued that the magistrate judge’s ruling was based on misinterpretations and assumptions.
A reminder that Comey was charged with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. Prosecutors alleged he lied to the Senate judiciary committee during a 2020 hearing when he said he stood behind prior testimony that he had not authorized FBI leaks about investigations into Trump and his 2016 presidential election rival, Hillary Clinton.
Comey has had an antagonistic relationship with Trump since his first term in 2017, when the president fired Comey while he was overseeing an investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Comey, who pleaded not guilty, mounted an array of legal challenges to the case, arguing that Halligan was unlawfully appointed as interim US attorney, that the case was an improper “vindictive” prosecution engineered by Trump, and that the substance of the false statement allegation was legally flawed.
A federal judge has tossed out criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.
District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-installed prosecutor who secured the indictment against two of the president’s most noted adversaries, was illegally appointed to her position as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia.
Currie wrote that Halligan had “no lawful authority” to present the indictments to both Comey and James (in separate cases). Lawyers for the former FBI director argued that when Halligan secured the indictment, the clock for a temporary US attorney had been run-out by her predecessor, Erik Siebert (who had already served for 120 days). They said it ultimately disqualified Halligan from holding the position at all.
