What happened
The Pentagon said yesterday it might recall Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) to active duty to court-martial or otherwise punish him for telling military service members they “can refuse illegal orders.” Kelly (pictured above), a retired Navy combat veteran and astronaut, was one of six lawmakers who reminded service members of their legal obligations in a video last week, but he was the only one still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of “sedition.”

Who said what
The Pentagon said it launched a “thorough review” after purportedly receiving “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly. Hegseth said on social media that “the ‘Seditious Six’” had encouraged “our warriors to ignore the orders of their commanders,” and Kelly’s “conduct” will “be addressed appropriately.”  

“Experts on military law said the inquiry was almost unprecedented,” The Washington Post said. Setting aside the legal and constitutional issues of the Pentagon trying to discipline a sitting senator at the behest of the defense secretary and president, Kelly’s remarks were “a 100% accurate representation of what the law says,” Yale Law School military justice expert Eugene Fidell told The Wall Street Journal. “No American citizen should have to deal with this type of preposterous investigation.”

What next?
“If this is meant to intimidate me” and other lawmakers, “it won’t work,” Kelly said on social media. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.” The targeting of Kelly, Reuters said, “could be seen as a message” to top military officers recently purged by Hegseth, “who have stayed silent following their removals.”

What happened
The Trump administration plans to reinterview and review the files of all roughly 233,000 refugees admitted into the U.S. under former President Joe Biden, several news organizations reported last night, citing a Nov. 21 memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joe Edlow. The memo also ordered an immediate halt to all green card approvals for those refugees and said they have “no right to appeal” if the review determined they were wrongfully admitted. 

Who said what
The review, CNN said, marks another “unprecedented step in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown,” this time targeting people who fled war and persecution and underwent “rigorous vetting prior to entering the United States in what is generally a yearslong process.” The “comprehensive review” was “warranted,” Edlow wrote, because the Biden administration had prioritized “expediency” and “quantity” of refugees over “detailed screening and vetting.”

The policy shift is “likely to sow confusion and fear” among the affected refugees, and “likely to face legal challenges from advocates,” The Associated Press said. Trump halted all refugee resettlement before opening up a record-low 7,500 slots, most of them reserved for white Afrikaner South Africans. “To threaten refugees with taking away their status” is “unspeakably cruel and ”a vicious misuse of taxpayer money,” said Mark Hetfield, president of the refugee resettlement program HIAS. 

What next?
The USCIS memo “indicated that there will be a list of people to reinterview within three months,” the AP said. “Besides the enormous cruelty of this undertaking,” said International Refugee Assistance Project president Sharif Aly, “it would also be a tremendous waste of government resources to review and reinterview 200,000 people who have been living peacefully in our communities for years.”