Featured Image Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Staff / Getty
President Donald Trump has enough on his plate right now, what with temporarily leading Venezuela, threatening to take over Greenland, and the ever-present fear that Russia will make a move against the USA.
Away from concerns that we're on the verge of World War III, he's got a political civil war to deal with, as one top Democrat has launched a lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Senator Mark Kelly is known as a retired Navy captain and former NASA astronaut, who you might remember as the guy who was once tipped to replace Joe Biden and once attempted to sneak a gorilla costume onto the ISS.
Kelly is also no friend of the Republican Party, having previously been branded a 'traitor' to America by Elon Musk, and was seemingly threatened with execution by President Donald Trump when he encouraged fellow members of the military to ‘refuse illegal orders’.
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This case comes in response to Pentagon proceedings that plan to demote Kelly from his rank and cut his pension benefits.
Hegseth sent a formal warning to Kelly over "seditious statements” he made when telling service members to defy orders. Kelly has now referred to this 'chilling' threat and taken it to court, saying his freedom of speech rights have been violated.
Filed in Washington DC, the lawsuit maintains that a video made by Kelly and five other Democratic members who are all military or intelligence veterans was protected free speech.
The 46-page filing accuses the Department of Defense, the US Navy, Hegseth, and Navy Secretary John Phelan of 'trampling' the constitutional protections of Kelly, Senator Elissa Slotkin, and House members Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan.
It maintains that Hegseth is trying to take down the “bedrock principles of our democracy."
Announcing the lawsuit, a defiant Kelly said: "His [Hegseth] unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the president or secretary of defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted.
"Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another secretary of defense doesn’t like what they’ve said.
“That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it."
Highlighting President Trump's November 2025 Truth Social post that said the Kelly video was "seditious behavior punishable by death," the lawsuit alleges that the POTUS "publicly accused…Kelly of sedition and treason and demanded punishment."
Saying that Hegseth 'echoed' these accusations, it continued: "The outcome of any subsequent ‘review’ of…Kelly’s grade, even assuming it could lawfully proceed, is foreordained."
It's true that Trump's Truth Social appeared to include reshared messages saying "HANG THEM” like “GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
Kelly says he's 'respectfully' asking the courts to find Hegseth and the Pentagon's actions unlawful and unconstitutional, adding that courts need to "preserve the status of a coequal Congress and an apolitical military."
Refusing to back down, Kelly concluded: "There are few things as important as standing up for the rights of the very Americans who fought to defend our freedoms."
At the time of writing, there has been no response from Hegseth or the White House.
