Fox News hack declares war on Senator/military veteran.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that he had issued a formal censure to Democratic senator Mark Kelly and initiated proceedings that could strip the Arizona lawmaker of his retired military rank and cut his pension, escalating a dispute that began when Kelly urged service members to resist unlawful orders.

Polite reminder: service members are required to resist unlawful orders. This is asking a lot, because service members are also required to obey orders from superiors, and unlawful orders are generally not labeled unlawful. All the same, that is the rule.

Meanwhile Pete Hegseth is a blob of cough-phlegm on everyone’s shoe.

Just days after a covert mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and strike the capital city, Hegseth announced that Kelly faces retirement grade determination proceedings, a rare administrative action that could see the former astronaut and navy captain demoted in his retired rank. Hegseth accused Kelly of making “seditious statements” that undermined military discipline.

Pete Hegseth is a tv personality. That’s it, that’s all he is.

In November, Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers, all military or intelligence veterans, released a 90-second video speaking directly to service members about the consideration of the national guard being deployed across the country, calling on troops to uphold the constitution and defy what they characterized as illegal commands.

“Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline,” Hegseth said in a statement posted on X, adding that Kelly “is still accountable to military justice” as a retired officer receiving military pay.

Unlawful orders, Punk.

After learning of the censure, Kelly called Hegseth “the most unqualified secretary of defense in our country’s history” and vowed to “fight this with everything I’ve got”.

“Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way,” Kelly said in a statement. “It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”

“If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified secretary of defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it.”

Hegseth’s statement claims Kelly’s conduct between June and December 2025 violated articles 133 and 134 of the uniform code of military justice, which the senator remains subject to as a retired officer drawing pension payments. The defense secretary argues Kelly “characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders”.

But the accusation on its face has been contested for months. Military law already requires that troops refuse unlawful orders, which is what Kelly and other members of Congress were echoing. And federal judges have ruled Donald Trump’s military deployments in Los Angeles and other cities violated the Posse Comitatus Act, suggesting the orders Kelly warned about may have actually been illegal.

But under a dictatorship the law no longer counts.