12/30/2025
A Mighty Girl's 2025 Profile in Courage: Senator Elissa Slotkin has faced an FBI counterterrorism inquiry, a bomb threat at her family farm, and hundreds of death threats after releasing a video reminding American service members of their constitutional duty to refuse illegal orders -- and she refuses to be silenced. Her response to those who expected her to back down? "I refuse to believe that this is the new normal. I'm not going to be forced away from speaking up on behalf of my country."
Senator Slotkin, along with five other Democratic lawmakers who served in the military or intelligence community, released a 90-second video in November directly addressing U.S. service members and intelligence professionals. In the video, they reminded troops that they have both the right and the obligation to refuse orders that violate the law or the Constitution. What the lawmakers said is entirely uncontroversial: it was simply a restatement of existing law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which requires service members to follow lawful orders but holds them accountable for carrying out unlawful ones.
In an interview, Slotkin explained why the lawmakers felt compelled to act: "It's a secret list of groups that we're now in armed conflict with. And it's based on a legal explanation that's classified and not available to the operators who are carrying out these strikes. So they started coming to us and saying 'Hey, I'm not sure what to do. Do you have any thoughts? Do you have any advice?' And that's where the video came from."
The lawmakers' video was not created in a vacuum -- it was a direct response to what experts, human rights officials, and even close American allies consider an illegal military operation. Since September, the Trump administration has conducted at least 29 strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing over 105 people. For decades, U.S. drug interdiction in the Caribbean meant intercepting vessels, arresting crews, seizing cargo, and gathering intelligence. What's happening now is fundamentally different.
"The U.S. has had a lot of interdiction in the Caribbean across many decades, and that interdiction has focused on arresting people, manning the boats and seizing cargo. This has generated intelligence," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The thing that's different now is not that there is interdiction, but that the interdiction seeks to kill people, not arrest them."
The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to SEAL Team Six to leave no survivors. In the very first strike on September 2, after the initial attack did not kill everyone on board, the military assessed there were survivors -- and carried out a second strike to kill the remaining crew clinging to the burning wreckage. "It's not a question of a war crime because there's no war, there's no armed conflict, so it can't be a war crime. It is literally murder," said Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has condemned the strikes as "extrajudicial killings" that violate international law. The United Kingdom -- America's closest intelligence partner for nearly 80 years through the Five Eyes alliance -- is so alarmed that it has stopped sharing intelligence on suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. British officials believe the strikes violate international law and do not want to be complicit.
How does the Trump administration justify this unprecedented use of lethal military force against civilians? By invoking America's tragic opioid epidemic and falsely claiming Venezuela is flooding the U.S. with fentanyl. But this justification collapses under scrutiny. The State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released last March, stated that Mexico is "the only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States."
"Fentanyl is not coming out of Venezuela. Fentanyl comes from Mexico," said Christopher Hernandez-Roy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The United States has been suffering an enormous overdose crisis driven by opioids and fentanyl," said John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America. "I would say it has zero to do with anything in South America or the Caribbean." The Trump administration has not publicized any evidence for its allegations about the boats' cargo or the identities of those killed.
If these strikes aren't about drugs, what are they actually about? The Trump administration has made its true aims increasingly clear. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump "wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries 'uncle.'" Trump himself declared on Truth Social that the military buildup would continue "until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us." He told reporters: "We want it back. They took our oil rights -- we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back."
His deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, was even more explicit, writing that "American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela" and calling its nationalization "the largest recorded theft of American wealth." Venezuela nationalized its oil sector in 1976 -- nearly 50 years ago -- and holds the world's largest proven oil reserves. "This is not an oil grab. It is a power grab -- one that uses Venezuela as a pawn while setting precedents that will outlast any single administration," observed one analyst.
This is precisely what the six Democratic lawmakers recognized when they released their video: the Trump administration is weaponizing America's genuine opioid tragedy to justify dragging service members into an illegal campaign aimed at regime change. Their message was a restatement of existing military law meant to protect service members from being made complicit in what experts across the political spectrum increasingly view as extrajudicial murder in pursuit of oil, regime change, and geopolitical control.
Trump's response to the video was shockingly extreme. He posted on Truth Social calling their message "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!!!" and demanded that "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL." He also reposted a message reading "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"
The consequences for Slotkin were immediate and severe. "We saw an immediate and massive uptick in the number of death threats that we got," she told reporters. "We had a bomb threat at my family farm where I live. My family has been harassed. It's been an immediate change to our life." The U.S. Capitol Police assigned her around-the-clock protection. Days later, the FBI's Counterterrorism Division opened an investigation into Slotkin and the five other lawmakers, requesting interviews through the House and Senate sergeants at arms.
Slotkin called the FBI inquiry a "scare tactic" and pointed to its broader implications: "The president's reaction and the use of the FBI against us is exactly why we made the video. If he's going to use the FBI against members of Congress, what would he do to average citizens who don't have that elected cover?"
The Senator has been clear-eyed about Trump's strategy. "Leadership climate is set from the top, and if the President is saying you should be hanged, then we shouldn't be surprised when folks on the ground are going to follow suit and say even worse," she declared. "He is trying to use fear as a weapon. He is trying to distract us from whatever he doesn't want to talk about. But he's also trying to intimidate people out of criticizing him. That's the entire game here."
Her message to Americans has remained consistent: "This is about who we are as Americans and how we're going to engage with people who we disagree with. I would hope that people of all backgrounds -- Democrat, Republican, Independent -- would agree that threatening death for people you disagree with is beyond the pale of who we are as Americans."
Slotkin's message to service members was not sedition -- it was a reminder that they swore an oath not to any president but to the Constitution, and that they have both the right and the duty to refuse unlawful orders. As she put it: "I believe in the power of this country and that we are better than our current politics represent, and I refuse to be intimidated out of defending the country I love."
Kudos to Senator Elissa Slotkin for her courage in continuing to speak truth to power -- and for reminding us that defending the Constitution means standing firm against those who would subvert it!
To watch the legislators' powerful video to the members of the military, visit https://www.facebook.com/reel/2558895077819811
For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
For powerful books for tweens and teens about girls living in real-life oppressive societies throughout history where leaders failed to respect the rule of law, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426
For more books for young readers that honor the service of women in the military, visit our blog post "The Price of Peace: A Mighty Girl Recognizes Veterans" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12356
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To read more about Trump's threats toward lawmakers, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/us/politics/trump-democrats-sedition-death-punishment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.208.vFQp.ynXycdgqvEb2&smid=url-share
To read a detailed analysis of Hegseth's order to kill survivors of a boat attack, visit https://wapo.st/4jnkTCC
For an analysis of Trump's baseless claim that Venezuela "stole" oil and land from the U.S. fifty years, visit https://wapo.st/4qAIu5i
To read more about Trump's shifting justifications for the boat attacks, visit https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/18/politics/venezuela-boat-strikes-trump
Thanks to My UP Now for sharing this image!
