One of the Democratic senators whom Donald Trump said should be executed for sedition isn’t backing down.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of six prominent Democratic lawmakers and former service members who appeared in a video urging U.S. troops and intelligence officers to reject any unlawful commands, said on The Daily Beast Podcast that military personnel have expressed anguish to her over carrying out questionable orders since then.
“Certainly, since we made the video, people have been finding their way to us just to say, hey, we’ve been expressing this angst amongst ourselves,” the Michigan lawmaker said. “This was not coming out of nowhere.”
The lawmakers remind service members in the video that they took an oath to uphold the Constitution and can refuse to follow illegal orders under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The group includes Slotkin and Sen. Mark Kelly, as well as Reps. Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Jason Crow. “Know that we have your back, because now, more than ever, the American people need you,” the lawmakers said.
Though they didn’t specify which orders they were referring to, the video was released amid intensifying scrutiny over the president’s deployment of federal troops in American cities and the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
Following the video, Trump, 79, raged that the group should be punished by death in a Truth Social tirade: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” he wrote.
But Slotkin said she’s undeterred. “I just feel very strongly that one of the worst things that can happen from any administration, but from this one in particular, is that American citizens doubt their military,” she said.
Citizens and lawmakers aren’t the only ones raising alarms, Slotkin added. Just last week, she recounted, a young Guardsman approached her after an event in Washington, D.C.
“This young man who works here in Washington came up to me, pulled me aside…said, I just wanted to thank you,” she said.
The Guardsman told her he and other intel officers worry they may be ordered to conduct “Intel collection and exploitation inside the United States.”
“That the skills we learn to protect against foreign adversaries…we’re now maybe gonna be asked to do that inside a detention facility or inside somewhere in the United States with American citizens,” Slotkin said.
“He said everyone was talking about it. That was the conversation quietly in the corners of the training.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and the Defense Department for comment.
The worry comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is in crisis mode after a blatantly illegal strike on a boat in the Caribbean was highlighted in a Washington Post report last week.
Two people survived the initial blast on Sept. 2 and were clinging to the burning vessel when a second strike hit—an incident that, if true, potentially amounts to a war crime. The strike was reportedly carried out under direct orders from Hegseth to “kill everybody.”
“This fall, it really turned and it became a lot of people who were involved in the operations around the Caribbean asking…..’Hey, I’m not sure, I don’t know if this is legal,” Slotkin said.
This week, members of Congress raised grave concern after viewing the video of the Sept. 2 boat strikes. Slotkin, who did not see the video, stressed it’s not a partisan issue.
“All I want is basic oversight,” she said. “I’m looking for them to do oversight over something that’s fundamental to who we are as Americans.”
New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform atbeast.pub/dailybeastpodand subscribe onYouTubeto watch full episodes.
