A new billboard placed outside a California military base by a veterans group is urging the servicemembers to reject illegal orders from their superiors at the behest of the Trump administration.
“Active Duty & National Guard: You have a duty to refuse illegal orders,” the sign erected outside of Naval Base San Diego reads, its text set against a snowy mountain range with a bald eagle in the foreground.
The billboard on Harbor Drive in Barrio Logan was placed by the organization San Diego Veterans for Peace, which said in a statement Wednesday that its Hugh Thompson Memorial Chapter #91 had placed the sign to remind active-duty troops it was their duty to disobey any instruction they believed to be against the law.
An Instagram post by an activist affiliated with the group said the campaign was intended “to remind our brothers and sisters, sons and daughter[s] and grandchildren who have joined the military that they have the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders, and that we will support them when they do.”
It gave as examples of illegal orders “unconstitutional” deployments to American cities “in support of racist ICE attacks or to suppress peaceful protests,” deployments to “illegal regime change wars, such as against Venezuela and Iran,” orders to ship weapons to Israel for use against Palestinians, and orders to “attack civilians or to torture and kill prisoners of war.”
The appearance of the sign follows a similar message being displayed by the nonprofits Defiance.org and WhistleblowerAid.org near MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, in December, opposing the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Since then, the removal of Nicolas Maduro from power in Caracas and the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, launching joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran, have ramped up the pressure on the military.
The signs make the same point as a group of senators and representatives in Washington with prior military experience, who appeared in a controversial video last year, and likewise appeal to members of the Armed Forces to refuse unlawful orders.
The group included Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly; Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin; Colorado Rep. Jason Crow; Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander.
Trump reacted angrily to the clip, accusing the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a post on Truth Social.
The Department of Justice unsuccessfully attempted to have the group indicted by a grand jury.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also tried to censure Kelly, a former Navy pilot, by demoting him from his retired rank of captain and cutting his retirement pay, a move that was thwarted in court.
The senator called the effort “an outrageous abuse of power” by the president “and his lackies.”
“It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime – all because of something I said that they didn’t like.
“That’s not the way things work in America.”
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