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This commentary was originally published by Big Pivots. The Sand Creek Massacre comes to mind in reading about U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a decorated combat veteran who declared that members of the U.S. military must refuse illegal orders.“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” said Crow and five other members of Congress, all of them veterans of our armed forces or intelligence services, in a video posted last week.President Donald Trump went ballistic, branding them as traitors. “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” said a social media post that Trump shared. He later backtracked, saying he didn’t actually call for their deaths. Not sure what hanging short of death looks like. Crow and other legislators did report death threats.Denver7 talked with a former U.S. Army officer, Joseph Jordan. His law firm specializes in defending service members under investigation. He cited the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says service members must obey orders, unless they are “patently illegal,” such as one that “directs the commission of a crime.”But the code says those who disobey orders risk facing a court martial. A military judge decides if an order was lawful.Writing in the New York Times, David French, an attorney who served in Iraq, as did Crow, parsed details of the relevant federal law. Shooting a prisoner is unambiguously illegal, said French. Bombing a home that is thought to contain insurgents is not.Looming large is the legality of Trump’s orders to kill those on boats in the Caribbean who may — or may not — be carrying narcotics. Trump, said French, “has put the military in an impossible situation. He’s making its most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts, and he’s burdening the consciences of soldiers who serve under his command.”Captain refuses to killAt Sand Creek, on Nov. 29, 1864, Captain Silas Soule and Lieutenant Joseph Cramer refused to allow their men to participate in killing about 200 Cheyenne and Arapahoe natives, most of them women and children.The Great Plains in 1864 were contested territory. Colorado had become a U.S. territory in 1861, but the Cheyenne and other tribes who had migrated over the previous 150 years to build lives around the plentiful buffalo herds were not consulted. Friction was growing. Murders had occurred.Desperate to figure out a co-existence, a delegation of Arapahoe and Cheyenne leaders had traveled to Denver that September. Colorado’s territorial governor, John Evans, was present but remained largely silent. The natives left, believing they had been assured safety if they remained in place in southeastern Colorado. About 350 of them and various other individuals were camped along the dry creek bed that November.Colonel John Chivington had other ideas. He was a hero from an 1864 Civil War battle in New Mexico. He had been at the peace negotiations that September. But perhaps hoping to embellish his reputation and win a seat in Congress, Chivington set out from Denver for Fort Lyons, near today’s Las Animas. There, he detained anybody who he thought would interfere with his plans.Marching overnight, Chivington and his men arrived at the Sand Creek encampment at dawn. The natives had hoisted the American flag amid their teepees, but it did them no good. A triumphant Chivington and his men returned to Denver hoisting scalps. They were welcomed as heroes.Some saw them otherwise. Soule and Cramer, horrified by what they had seen, wrote impassioned letters to their commanding officer, Major Edward Wynkoop. The Army held hearings several months later. Soule did not live long enough to be fully vindicated. He was assassinated in Denver the next April. Both Soule and Evans are buried at Riverside Cemetery, north of downtown Denver.Among many accomplishments, Evans helped found both Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of Denver. In 2014, both universities commissioned reports examining the culpability of Evans in the massacre. The Northwestern report was slightly more restrained, but both found Evans bore responsibility for helping create the circumstances. More than any other political official in Colorado Territory, said the DU report, Evans “created the conditions in which the massacre was highly likely.”Soule’s grave is marked by a simple white tombstone along with other veterans. The grave of Evans is large and imposing. Last Memorial Day, I found flowers, a flag and a testimonial at the grave of Silas Soule. Others had visited, too. As for the tombstone of Evans, I saw nothing. He had remained silent in 1864, when leadership was needed.Allen Best is a Colorado-based journalist who publishes an e-magazine called Big Pivots. Reach him at [email protected].

Newsmax host T.W. Shannon exploded at his guest Saturday after they rebuked his condemnation of those criticizing the Trump administration’s potentially illegal military orders, calling his guest’s remarks "outrageous."“We're seeing the left now comparing our troops to Nazis!” Shannon proclaimed, pointing to remarks from Glenn Kirschner, an attorney and former U.S. Army prosecutor. Appearing recently on MS NOW, Kirschner spoke in support of the Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to defy unlawful orders.“If you're committing offenses, and your defense is going to be 'I was just following orders,' you know, that didn't work out so well at Nuremberg,” Kirschner said, referring to the military tribunals held after World War II to prosecute high-ranking Nazi officials.Following the clip, Shannon tried to get a consensus among his two guests – Joe Conason, editor-in-chief at National Memo, and Jeffrey Lord, columnist for The American Spectator – but failed to convince both of them.“Now Joe, surely we're at a point where we can all agree that comparing United States service members to Nazis is over and beyond the pale?” Shannon asked.“I don't think that's what he did, he clearly didn't do that if you listen to the clip,” Conason said. “The point is that if you follow illegal orders, you're imitating some of the worst figures in history, and we have a record with [President] Donald Trump of issuing illegal orders.”Conason went on to argue that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – who’s carried out a number of strikes in the Caribbean at the direction of Trump targeting suspected drug traffickers, strikes that have been called illegal “extrajudicial killings” – had already violated the law with his remarks condemning the Democratic lawmakers – specifically Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) – who urged service members to defy illegal orders.“What's funny is that Hegseth clearly has no idea of what the legality of anything is!” Conason said. “He, by basically publicly convicting Mark Kelly in his remarks, violated the Uniform Code of Military Conduct himself!”Shannon went on to call Conason’s remarks “outrageous,” and encouraged his other guest to rebuke them. Lord was happy to oblige, declaring there to be “nothing illegal” about the Trump administration’s strikes on suspected drug traffickers at sea.Conason wasn’t done yet, however, and tore into Hegseth and the Trump administration for what he called their “real touch of evil.”“The question is how do you stop illegal drug smuggling? Do you murder people in advance of any showing that they were doing anything like that, or would you arrest them on the high seas as we've done in the past?” Conason said. “Or, do you just blow up boats and kill the survivors? I mean, that was the real touch of evil here. Apparently, Secretary Hegseth was informed that there were survivors of a strike and then told somebody to 'kill them all.'

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly delivered an order in the first attack on a suspected drug boat that lawmakers have blasted as excessive and "blatantly illegal."President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief ordered a missile attack on the boat Sept. 2 off the Trinidad coast, but intelligence analysts and military leaders watching drone footage of the strike realized after the smoke cleared there were two survivors clinging to the wreckage – and the Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave another verbal directive.“The order was to kill everybody,” said a source with direct knowledge of the situation.The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered another strike at Hegseth's instruction, and the two men were blown apart in the water – which a former military lawyer said "amounts to murder."An order to strike the defenseless men "would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Todd Huntley, who advised Special Operations forces during U.S. counterterrorism campaign is now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.The elite SEAL Team 6 led the attack, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter, and the operations commander, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told others on the secure conference call that the survivors were legitimate targets because they might have been able to call other traffickers to come get them and their cargo.The Pentagon has since struck at least 22 more boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing another 71 alleged drug smugglers.Later the same day, Trump released a redacted 29-second video of the Sept. 2 attack, which didn't show the follow-up strike, but one person who saw the live feed said people would be horrified if the entire video was made public.Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, reported to the White House that the “double-tap,” or follow-on strike, was intended to sink the boat and remove a possible hazard to other ships, and not to kill survivors, and a similar explanation was given to lawmakers in closed-door briefings.“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a Marine Corps veteran and Trump critic who was briefed on the strikes with other members of the House Armed Services Committee. “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”

The Trump administration was dog piled by critics after a Lebanese news outlet claimed that the United States is demanding the return of an advanced bomb it had recently dropped on the country but failed to detonate.A local Lebanese news outlet, Al-Markaziya, reported that a recent Israeli strike on central Lebanon near Beirut that killed five people and injured 25 saw at least one bomb – an American-made GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, a precision-guided glide bomb that costs around $39,000 to manufacturer – land without detonating.And, according to the outlet as reported by India Times on Friday, Trump administration officials are now asking for the bomb to be returned, and out of fear that it could be reverse engineered and allow Trump administration adversaries like China or Iran develop similar weapons.With more than 4,000 Lebanese having been killed from Israeli strikes since late 2023, a significant share of which was done with American-made weapons given Israel is the single-largest recipient of American foreign aid, the alleged request was largely met with mockery and scorn among critics.“Is this a meme?” asked X user “tweeterbird,” who’s shared content critical of the Trump administration for its focus on artificial intelligence, as well as content critical of the Israeli government. “This is so stupid it feels like a joke.”“What can be more ridiculous than this?” asked another X user, “ManofGod,” whose profile says they specialize in AI and robotics.Israel has launched an extensive campaign against Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent siege on Gaza. Among Israel’s most notable operations in Lebanon was its 2024 pager attack, an operation that saw Israeli intellegence remotely detonate thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies simultaneously across the country, killing and injuring thousands of civilians and Hezbollah members alike.Is this a meme? This is so stupid it feels like a joke.— tweeterbird (@loki8588) November 27, 2025

The Trump State Department officially added a German antifascist group and three other European far-left groups to its list of foreign terrorist organizations last week. But the action, which freezes U.S. assets and imposes penalties on anyone who offers support to the groups, ignored a transnational neo-Nazi group that has committed acts of violence of its own and is linked to the murder of two men in Florida.The State Department announcement about plans to apply the terror designation to Antifa Ost accused the group of conducting “numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists,’” specifically citing “a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.”What the announcement leaves out is that the attacks allegedly committed by Antifa Ost took place during an annual gathering, the “Day of Honor,” organized by neo-Nazis to commemorate a battle fought by the German army and local collaborators against the Soviet Union in Hungary during World War II. By the State Department’s own admission, “extreme right sympathizers … attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators” during the event.The first “Day of Honor” march in 1997 was organized by the Hungarian chapter of Blood and Honour. Members of the international Blood and Honour group and its armed wing Combat 18 continue to attend the event, according to a report financed by the German Foreign Ministry. Canada added Blood and Honour and Combat 18 to its list of proscribed terrorist entities in 2019, alongside the UK and Germany. A Spanish court ordered the dissolution of the group in that country. The Canadian government describes Blood and Honour as “an international neo-Nazi network whose ideology is derived from the neo-Nazi doctrine of Nazi Germany,” while saying Combat 18 “has carried out violent actions, including murders and bombings.” As noted by the Canadian government, Blood and Honour members pleaded guilty to murdering two unhoused men in Tampa, Fla. in 1998, reportedly “because they considered them inferior.”“It sure shows the game here that’s afoot,” Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security, recently told a podcast, adding that the Trump administration is “going after what they claim is this international terrorist menace in antifa” by sanctioning Antifa Ost. “But they’re not going after the neo-Nazi group, which is by far larger and has also committed acts of violence in this context. I think it puts everything in stark relief.”‘Greatly inflating the threat’Joscelyn has written extensively about al-Qaida and was a principal author of the final report of the House January 6th Committee.“There is a threat from antifa adherents inside the U.S., and no one will be surprised if there’s a successful antifa-style attack in the future,” Joscelyn told Raw Story. “However, the administration is greatly inflating the threat for their own political purposes while ignoring well-established threats from far-right and neo-Nazi groups.”In order to designate a group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department is required to demonstrate that a group’s activities “threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States.”Thomas Brzozowski, formerly domestic terrorist counsel for the Department of Justice, said the State Department announcement cited “no attacks or alleged attacks on Americans” and “no plots against Americans” by members of Antifa Ost or the three other left-wing groups.“We do not discuss deliberations or the potential deliberations of our designations process,” an unidentified State Department spokesperson said in a statement to Raw Story.The German government has said the threat posed by Antifa Ost has “decreased significantly” thanks to the successful prosecution of several prominent members, according to Reuters. The outlet reported that the German government said it was not consulted by the U.S. before plans to designate Antifa Ost as a foreign terrorist organization were announced.Brzozowski said he thinks “even the folks at State know” there’s no way to show Antifa Ost as a legitimate national security threat. “And they’re doing their best, I’m sure,” he said. “But come on! They’re put in a bind. They’ve got to deliver, or else they’re going to get fired.“The sequencing is all backwards at this point. And that’s dangerous. Because this is really political theater, is what it is. This is giving effect to a presidential directive.”Brawling with neo-NazisThe violence at the “Day of Honor” event in Budapest has been politicized in Hungary.Légió Hungária, a neo-Nazi group that assumed responsibility for organizing the event from Blood and Honour, receives support from the ruling Fidesz party, led by Trump ally Viktor Orbán, according to the 2023 report by B’nai B’rith and Amadeo Antonio Foundation, underwritten by the German Foreign Ministry. In 2019, members of Légió Hungária vandalized a Jewish community center in Budapest during a nationalist gathering commemorating the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union, as reported by the State Department during Trump’s first term.This September, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization, in alignment with Trump’s agenda. But the Trump administration has remained silent on the 2019 attack carried out by Légió Hungária, as well as reports cited by B’nai B’rith that participants in the 2020 “Day of Honor” chanted, “Jews out!” The report also cited “Holocaust denial and distortion, historical revisionism of World War II, and worship of the Waffen-SS as core ideological elements of the event.”Shortly after taking office this year, President Trump announced the launch of a Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which accused U.S. universities of turning a blind eye to the issue, amidst an administration campaign to deport pro-Palestine activists.“Anti-semitism in any environment is repugnant to this nation’s ideals,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and leader of the task force, when the effort was launched. “The [Justice] Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found.”The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from Terrell for this story.Despite Légió Hungária receiving state backing, Hungary’s Supreme Court reportedly upheld a police ban on the 2023 “Day of Honor,” finding: “Extreme groups are expected to appear at this event. The holding of the event in their presence may be accompanied by considerable attack on public order and peace.”But, as a 2023 State Department report noted, neo-Nazis sidestepped the ban.“Media outlets reported that despite the police ban, several hundred extreme-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers gathered in the Buda Castle to commemorate ‘Day of Honor.’ Police successfully prevented them from clashing with a group of 100-200 Hungarian and international counter-protesters in the area,” the report reads.“According to statements by police, antifascist demonstrators elsewhere in the city assaulted several individuals they assumed to be affiliated with the extreme right,” the report continues. “Similarly, extreme right sympathizers reportedly attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators.”The circumstances of violence allegedly committed by antifascists in Budapest is telling, Joscelyn told Raw Story.“The U.S. went from designating al-Qaida for the 9/11 hijacking to designating overseas antifa adherents for brawling with neo-Nazis,” he said.The State Department’s selective sanctions against antifascists while turning a blind eye to neo-Nazi violence reveals the Trump administration’s actual objectives, Joscelyn added. “You saw even during the No Kings protests there were very prominent MAGA Republicans that said this was an extremist effort and warning of violence and warning of events that didn’t happen. “That shows how desperate the administration and its supporters are to portray its opposition as extremists. The concept of antifa is the cudgel they’re using to bash their opposition.”

Donald Trump on Sunday uncorked a massive attack on certain allies amid a brewing new scandal, leading to condemnation from experts and political observers alike.Trump took to Truth Social during what some have called "one of the biggest foreign policy scandals in history" involving disputed reports that Marco Rubio disseminated Russia-written documents to Ukrainian officials and passed them off as a U.S. peace deal.In his weekend blow up, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for the war and said in all caps, "I INHERITED A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, A WAR THAT IS A LOSER FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE SO NEEDLESSLY DIED. UKRAINE 'LEADERSHIP' HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA."The responses came quickly.MSNBC journalist Sam Stein reported on Sunday:"Trump with a lengthy statement that says not too much but accuses Ukraine leader of not expressing gratitude for the help the US given which is just factually not true (Zelensky has gone out of his way to express gratitude after the Oval blow up)."CNN journalist Jim Sciutto wrote, "Three European countries account for the bulk of those Russian oil purchases: Hungary, Slovakia and Turkey. Trump himself [g]ave Hungary a one-year exemption to buy Russian oil earlier this month."Ex-federal prosecutor Joyce Vance added, "This war is not about Donald Trump. It’s about Russian aggression, which he now seeks to reward, contrary to Ukrainian, European, and American interests."Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican congressman, chimed in with, "The President continues to ignore that it is Russia who invaded Ukraine & bombing cities every night. Putin ordered this invasion. Why the moral confusion? The war started before Trump’s first term. I’ve heard President Zelenskyy thank America many times for our military aid."Michael MacKay, who says he has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, also weighed in:"Fascist Russia is at war with Western civilization and invaded Ukraine in 2014. The Russian Federation is the aggressor and the sole reason for the state of war. Trump is a Russian asset and traitor to the United States."

Donald Trump on Sunday morning unleashed a massive rant aimed in part at U.S. allies amid what some have called "one of the biggest foreign policy scandals in history."The president over the weekend took to his own social media site, Truth Social, to release the rant totaling more than 200 words. The massive meltdown comes amid disputed reports that Marco Rubio disseminated Russia-written documents to Ukrainian officials and passed them off as a U.S. peace deal.Trump began by pointing the finger at former President Joe Biden."The War between Russia and Ukraine is a violent and terrible one that, with strong and proper U.S. and Ukrainian LEADERSHIP, would have NEVER HAPPENED. It began long before I took office for a Second Term, during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, and has only gotten worse," the president wrote before making unsupported claims about the 2020 election. "If the 2020 Presidential Election was not RIGGED & STOLEN, the only thing the Radical Left Democrats are good at doing, there would be no Ukraine/Russia War, as there wasn’t, not even a mention, during my first Term in Office. Putin would never have attacked!"Trump then continued:"It was only when he saw Sleepy Joe in action that he said, 'Now is my chance!' The rest is history, and so it continues. I INHERITED A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, A WAR THAT IS A LOSER FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE SO NEEDLESSLY DIED. UKRAINE 'LEADERSHIP' HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA."Going even further, Trump concluded his rant by saying, "THE USA CONTINUES TO SELL MASSIVE $AMOUNTS OF WEAPONS TO NATO, FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UKRAINE (CROOKED JOE GAVE EVERYTHING, FREE, FREE, FREE, INCLUDING 'BIG' MONEY!).""GOD BLESS ALL THE LIVES THAT HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE HUMAN CATASTROPHE! President DJT" he then added.

A MAGA lawmaker is in hot water as her latest comments are causing some to accuse her of being a Russian asset.Rep. Anna Paulina Luna turned some heads when she embraced a controversial plan many have said was written by Russians and disseminated to Ukrainian officials by the State Department. Luna said of the deal, "A strong deal is on the table for Ukrainians — and we need to get it done. This war must end. Russia has signaled it’s ready to come to the table, and the U.S. supports a path to peace."To that, former marine sergeant Harrison Lansing replied with, "It's a Russia-written surrender document not a deal."Luna added an additional statement on the topic, saying, "The U.S. is leading the charge on peace negotiations and building the framework for a real deal.""Don’t listen to the fake news or the pro-war psychos claiming otherwise. [Marco Rubio] and [Trump] have it under control. Thank you for your attention to this matter," she added.That also sparked responses.Popular legal analyst emptywheel chimed in, "Luna is right: You should listen to someone fronting for Dmitriev."Jonathan Eyal, associate director of Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said, "Tell us a bit more about your dealings with Russia's favourite oligarch. Thank you for your attention to this matter."Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor, said, "She doesn’t even try to hide that she’s a spokesperson for Putin serving in the US Congress.""Post after post, day after day, echoing Russian propaganda," he added. "Truly sad that people in Pinellas County have chosen this as their representation."She doesn’t even try to hide that she’s a spokesperson for Putin serving in the US Congress. Post after post, day after day, echoing Russian propaganda. Truly sad that people in Pinellas County have chosen this as their representation. pic.twitter.com/Kp3wwr0dQD— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 23, 2025