{"id":125346,"date":"2026-05-08T01:02:03","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/appeal-court-signals-blow-for-hegseth-in-fight-to-punish-mark-kelly-over-illegal-order-video\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T01:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:03:45","slug":"appeal-court-signals-blow-for-hegseth-in-fight-to-punish-mark-kelly-over-illegal-order-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/appeal-court-signals-blow-for-hegseth-in-fight-to-punish-mark-kelly-over-illegal-order-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeal court signals blow for Hegseth in fight to punish Mark Kelly over &#8216;illegal order&#8217; video"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"norender-embeds medium-insert-images fImageContainer\">\n<figure contenteditable=\"false\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>A federal appeals court appeared skeptical Thursday of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth&#8217;s effort to punish Democratic Senator Mark Kelly over comments urging U.S. troops to reject illegal orders.<\/p>\n<p>According to CNN, judges on a three-member panel in Washington questioned the Justice Department&#8217;s arguments in seeking to revive Hegseth&#8217;s proposed penalty against Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is something that is taught to every cadet at Annapolis,&#8221; Judge Nina Pillard said of Kelly&#8217;s comments in a video posted last year.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Florence Paine said: &#8220;These are people who served their country \u2013 many risked their lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kelly sued Hegseth in January after the Pentagon announced plans to downgrade his retired military rank and issue a letter of censure. <\/p>\n<p>The move follows a video in which Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers with military backgrounds urged service members not to follow unlawful orders.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Department lawyer John Bailey argued that retired military personnel could still face limits on speech if it affected discipline within the armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly&#8217;s attorney Benjamin Mizer called the proposed punishment &#8220;textbook retaliation for offensive speech.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Outside court, Kelly warned: &#8220;If you say something that the President and this administration don&#8217;t like, they will come after you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n                            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenews.com.pk\/assets\/uploads\/reporters\/8656_031619_reporter.jpg\" alt=\"The News Digital\"\/>                            <\/p>\n<div class=\"writer_detail\">\n<p>At The News Digital, our editors combine an understanding of entertainment with global reporting expertise. 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According to CNN, judges on a three-member panel in Washington questioned the Justice Department&#8217;s arguments in seeking to revive Hegseth&#8217;s proposed penalty against Kelly, a retired Navy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[474,3853,700,777,4297,3749,7289,6145,980,18293,5607,610],"class_list":{"0":"post-125346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-verse","8":"tag-appeal","9":"tag-blow","10":"tag-court","11":"tag-fight","12":"tag-hegseth","13":"tag-illegal","14":"tag-kelly","15":"tag-mark","16":"tag-order","17":"tag-punish","18":"tag-signals","19":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125349,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125346\/revisions\/125349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}