By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Truthout

Posted July 10, 2025

 

As the country tumbles towards fascism, some members of the U.S. military have struggled with a choice: defy illegal orders, or participate in the dismantling of American democracy.

In June, over the objections of local leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, President Donald Trump called up the National Guard and the U.S. Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids. That month, calls to the GI Rights Hotline spiked. The hotline provides information on military discharges and related issues; all calls are confidential. The hotline, which is jointly administered by a large consortium of nonprofit organizations, connects callers with both paid resource counselors and experienced volunteers.

 

The consortium includes groups like Quaker House and The Center on Conscience & War, which assists service members with applications for conscientious objector status, and has seen a similar uptick in requests for help. So far this year, the center has helped 30 service members submit applications — more than they typically submit in an entire year. A high percentage of these applications are usually successfully accepted, according to the center.

 

They are absolutely petrified of being put in a position in which they are the vehicle to advance further authoritarianism, and the proto-fascism that we’re seeing.”
U.S. Air Force Airman Juan Bettancourt

 

Steve Woolford, a counselor with the hotline, told Truthout in an email that his office, which is just one of the multiple sites that staff the hotline, received over 300 calls in June, a 94 percent increase in calls from the previous June.

 

“Overall callers have shared serious concerns that the president is moving the country away from a representative democracy altogether,” Woolford told Truthout in an email. “These callers believe that the military will determine what the United States becomes by deciding which side to follow. For them, having service members refuse to turn their backs on the constitution is the safeguard against martial law and dictatorship.”

 

U.S. Air Force airman Juan Bettancourt said his colleagues in the armed forces have expressed similar concerns. Bettancourt is expressing his own views and not speaking on behalf of the military or the Department of Defense.

 

“They are absolutely petrified of being put in a position in which they are the vehicle to advance further authoritarianism, and the proto-fascism that we’re seeing,” Bettancourt told Truthout. “There is absolutely that fear that they’re going to be the pawns in this chess game that brings about the further expansion of authoritarianism.”

 

Bettancourt said some service members fear the military will become Trump’s domestic police force, potentially in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. He says this is a particularly fraught prospect for Latino personnel, who could be deployed to carry out Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Thousands of immigrants enlist in the military each year. In fiscal year 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized more than 16,000 service members — a 34 percent increase from the previous year. Of those naturalized between fiscal years 2020 and 2024, the top five countries of origin were the Philippines, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, and Ghana.

 

“They feel they’re betraying themselves,” said Bettancourt, himself an immigrant from Colombia.

 

Bettancourt is on his way out of the military. He applied to be a conscientious objector last year, spurred by the U.S. backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. After a prolonged bureaucratic delay, he says his commander agreed to administratively separate him.

 

Richard Morgan, the executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, said after Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, several callers asked if they could wear face coverings if they were deployed to Los Angeles. He said they didn’t fear protesters knowing their identity — they feared their children would.

 

“They just didn’t want to be recognized,” he told Truthout, explaining that many expressed “the idea that ‘I don’t want anyone in my community thinking I’m betraying them.’”

 

“They were worried that their children would see them and recognize them for what they were doing,” he added.

 

Concerns about being implicated in Trump’s attempts to use the military as a police force extend to family members of active duty personnel as well, according to Sarah Streyder, whose spouse is in the military. Streyder is the executive director of Secure Families Initiative, a nonpartisan group of military families that advocates for diplomatic solutions to global conflicts.

 

Many families believe that Trump is transforming the military into a “scary domestic policing force,” she said.

 

“Those lines are being blurred between law enforcement, immigration enforcement on one side and the military on the other,” Streyder told Truthout. “We fear that that’s going to erode our relationships with civilian neighbors. That’s the kind of fear we are hearing across the board, whether you are in California or Massachusetts or Alaska or Florida. I’m stationed overseas, and I have that fear.”

 

In addition to immigration raids, some service members have also opposed Trump’s changes to internal policies, such as his ban on transgender people serving in the military and the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

 

An airman who recently separated from the Air Force told Truthout that cutting DEI programs made her feel like “they hated me as a person, as a woman and as a woman of color.”

 

“I went and talked to a chaplain about how the rollbacks in DEI were scaring me,” she said. “He goes, ‘Oh, well, did you know that DEI actually harms minorities like you?’”

 

The airman’s spouse is still in the military and asked that Truthout not publish her name to protect her spouse from retaliation.

 

She says by the time she left the Air Force, a few months into Trump’s second term, “it was very, very bad vibes.”

 

“Trump is bringing such a toxicity to the military,” she said. “The military is political, there’s no getting around that. I can’t believe whoever fell for the lie that the military is apolitical, but with Trump, it feels dangerously political, like we’re being used as pawns. We’re the saber that he’s rattling.”

 

Limited Room for Dissent Before Risk of Punishment

 

Members of the military have options, albeit limited, to avoid actions that conflict with their conscience. Service members have the right to refuse an illegal order. But in reality, those who dissent can experience loss of benefits and pay, reduction in rank, and imprisonment.

 

James M. Branum, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force, says a service member may be able to head off any potential issues by using their unit’s open-door policy, whereby a service member can meet with their commander. Army regulations direct commanders to publish an open-door policy although the specific procedures are determined by the commander. The regulations state that an open-door policy “allows members of the command to present facts, concerns, and problems of a personal or professional nature or other issues that the Soldier has been unable to resolve.”

 

Branum suggests they express their concerns preemptively, before orders come down.

 

“What I’m encouraging is, have a conversation,” he said. “Say, ‘I don’t want to be disrespectful. I don’t want to hurt morale of this organization, but I have serious concerns about this deployment. I’ve heard we may be going in, and so if you have any latitude on who goes on this deployment, please don’t send me.’”

 

However, if service members reach the point where they must refuse orders they believe are illegal, the terrain is “a little bit complicated,” Branum said. If a service member refuses an order they can be court martialed, where a military judge rules on the legality of the order — a largely subjective determination.

 

In the early 2000s, several American soldiers refused to fight in Iraq because they believed it was an immoral and illegal war. Camilo Mejia Castillo, a U.S. National Guardsman, served one tour of duty in Iraq and refused to return. He was convicted of desertion and sentenced to a year in prison, a reduction in rank, and given a bad conduct discharge, which can result in loss of veterans benefits. In another case, Abdullah Webster refused to deploy to Iraq and was convicted of failing to obey commands from his superior and missing his brigade’s movements. Shortly before he was due to retire, he was sentenced to 14 months in prison. He also lost his pension and received a bad conduct discharge.

 

Branum says the Trump administration — which planned to cut over 80,000 jobs with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — has put active duty personnel in a “terrible position.” Branum said the current crisis may lead some members of the military to reevaluate the institution as a whole.

 

“When the military starts pushing the boundaries, pushing people to do things that are really outside the scope of what it has historically done in the past, that often leads service members to start asking broader questions,” he told Truthout. “Not just about the immediate deployment or the immediate issue in front of them, but about the nature of military service itself.”

 

Military members can call the GI Hotline at 1-877-447-4487 or online at GI Rightshotline.org.

 

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a reporter based in New Jersey.

This article is republished from Truthout under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).