Category: News

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he censured Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over the former Navy pilot’s participation in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders.

Hegseth said the censure — by itself simply a formal letter with little practical consequence — was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from Kelly’s retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.

Investigating and now punishing a sitting U.S. senator is an extraordinary move for the Pentagon, which until President Donald Trump’s second term had usually gone out of its way to act and appear apolitical. A legal expert says the choice to go after a lawmaker will complicate an already unique case.

In a lengthy post on social media, Kelly said he “never expected” what he called an “attack” from Trump and Hegseth, recounting his 25 years of Navy service as well as combat and space missions.

Calling Hegseth’s move “outrageous” and “un-American,” Kelly said he would fight the censure “with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”

Hegseth’s action follows video about illegal orders

The censure comes after Kelly participated in a video in November with five other Democratic lawmakers — all veterans of the armed services and intelligence community — in which they called on troops to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders.”

Trump, a Republican, accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post days later.

The 90-second video was first posted from Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s X account. In it, the six lawmakers — Slotkin, Kelly ,and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan — speak directly to U.S. service members, whom Slotkin acknowledges are “under enormous stress and pressure right now.”

The lawmakers didn’t mention specific circumstances. But their message was released amid a series of military attacks on boats accused of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean and Trump’s attempts to deploy National Guard troops to American cities.

The Pentagon announced that it began an investigation of Kelly in late November, citing a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court-martial or other measures.

While all six lawmakers served in the military or the intelligence community, Hegseth previously said Kelly was the only one facing investigation because he is the only one of the lawmakers who formally retired from the military and is still under the Pentagon’s jurisdiction.

Kelly said last month that the investigation was part of an effort to silence dissent: “This is just about sending a message to retired service members, active duty service members, government employees — do not speak out against this president or there will be consequences.”

Kelly, along with some of the other Democrats in the initial video, have sent out fundraising messages based on Trump’s reaction to their comments, efforts that have gone toward filling their own campaign coffers and further elevating their national-level profiles.

What accusations Hegseth is leveling against Kelly

In his post Monday, Hegseth charged that Kelly’s remarks in the video and afterward violated Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions against conduct unbecoming an officer and violating good order and discipline.

“Captain Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action,” Hegseth said.

Todd Huntley, a retired Navy captain and judge advocate general, called this is a “novel” situation that raises legal questions.

One issue, Huntley said, is whether Kelly’s comments fall under the constitutional protections of the speech or debate clause, which is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.

A 1968 Supreme Court decision said the provision’s intent was “to prevent legislative intimidation by and accountability to the other branches of government.”

Huntley said that while the type of process Hegseth is using — known as a retirement grade determination — is fairly routine, “as far as I know, they’ve always been based on conduct during the individual’s active duty service, even if it only came to light after retirement.”

“So, I don’t know if conduct totally after retirement would fit the requirement for such a determination,” he added.

According to Hegseth, Kelly now has 30 days to submit a response to the proceedings that will decide if he is demoted. The decision will be made within 45 days, Hegseth’s post added.

Huntley noted that Kelly will also have options to appeal the finding both within the military and in federal court.

WASHINGTON — On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day is nowhere to be found.

It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.

Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Jan. 6 void in the Capitol

In Washington, a capital city lined with monuments to the nation’s history, the plaque was intended to become a simple but permanent marker, situated near the Capitol’s west front, where some of the most violent fighting took place as rioters breached the building.

But in its absence, the missing plaque makes way for something else entirely — a culture of forgetting.

Visitors can pass through the Capitol without any formal reminder of what happened that day, when a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building trying to overturn the Republican’s 2020 reelection defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. With memory left unchecked, it allows new narratives to swirl and revised histories to take hold.

Five years ago, the jarring scene watched the world over was declared an “insurrection” by the then-GOP leader of the Senate, while the House GOP leader at the time called it his “saddest day” in Congress. But those condemnations have faded.

Trump calls it a “day of love.” And Johnson, who was among those lawmakers challenging the 2020 election results, is now the House speaker.

“The question of January 6 remains — democracy was on the guillotine — how important is that event in the overall sweep of 21st century U.S. history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and noted scholar.

“Will January 6 be seen as the seminal moment when democracy was in peril?” he asked. Or will it be remembered as “kind of a weird one-off?”

“There’s not as much consensus on that as one would have thought on the fifth anniversary,” he said.

Memories shift, but violent legacy lingers

At least five people died in the riot and its aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by police while trying to climb through a window toward the House chamber. More than 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, some gravely, and several died later, some by suicide.

All told, some 1,500 people were charged in the Capitol attack, among the largest federal prosecutions in the nation’s history. When Trump returned to power in January 2025, he pardoned all of them within hours of taking office.

Unlike the twin light beams that commemorated the Sept. 11, 2001, attack or the stand-alone chairs at the Oklahoma City bombing site memorial, the failure to recognize Jan. 6 has left a gap not only in memory but in helping to stitch the country back together.

“That’s why you put up a plaque,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D., Pa.). “You respect the memory and the service of the people involved.”

Police sue over plaque, DOJ seeks to dismiss

The speaker’s office over the years has suggested it was working on installing the plaque, but it declined to respond to a request for further comment.

Lawmakers approved the plaque in March 2022 as part of a broader government funding package. The resolution said the U.S. “owes its deepest gratitude to those officers,” and it set out instructions for an honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation at the Capitol.

This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay.

“By refusing to follow the law and honor officers as it is required to do, Congress encourages this rewriting of history,” said the claim by officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges. “It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them.”

The Justice Department is seeking to have the case dismissed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others argued Congress “already has publicly recognized the service of law enforcement personnel” by approving the plaque and displaying it wouldn’t alleviate the problems they claim to face from their work.

“It is implausible,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote, to suggest installation of the plaque “would stop the alleged death threats they claim to have been receiving.”

The department also said the plaque is required to include the names of “all law enforcement officers” involved in the response that day — some 3,600 people.

Makeshift memorials emerge

Lawmakers who have installed replicas of the plaque outside their offices said it’s important for the public to know what happened.

“There are new generations of people who are just growing up now who don’t understand how close we came to losing our democracy on Jan 6, 2021,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, which was opposed by GOP leadership but nevertheless issued a nearly 1,000-page report investigating the run-up to the attack and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Raskin envisions the Capitol one day holding tours around what happened. “People need to study that as an essential part of American history,” he said.

“Think about the dates in American history that we know only by the dates: There’s the 4th of July. There’s December 7th. There’s 9/11. And there’s January 6th,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), who also served on the committee and has a plaque outside her office.

“They really saved my life, and they saved the democracy, and they deserve to be thanked for it,” she said.

But as time passes, there are no longer bipartisan memorial services for Jan. 6. On Tuesday, the Democrats will reconvene members from the Jan. 6 committee for a hearing to “examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York announced. It’s unlikely Republicans will participate.

The Republicans under Johnson have tapped Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia to stand up their own special committee to uncover what the speaker calls the “full truth” of what happened. They’re planning a hearing this month.

“We should stop this silliness of trying to whitewash history — it’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Joe Morelle (D., N.Y.), who helped lead the effort to display the replica plaques.

“I was here that day so I’ll never forget,” he said. “I think that Americans will not forget what happened.”

The number of makeshift plaques that fill the halls is a testimony to that remembrance, he said.

Instead of one plaque, he said, they’ve “now got 100.”