Tom Nichols: The Civil-Military Crisis Is Here

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R! Tom posted about this with a gift link:

If you think I'm not alarmed, read this.

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) 2025-10-07T22:52:18.993Z

Key sentences here:

This is why America’s senior military officers, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, must approach Trump now and make clear to him that they will not obey illegal orders to act against American citizens or disrupt the American political process. (They should not bother talking to Hegseth, who has no real political agency and would most likely do whatever he is told to do by the White House.) Congress, so far, has been useless in restraining Trump: The Democrats are too timid, and the Republicans are too compromised. Only by standing together can the senior military officials warn Trump away from leading America into a full-blown civil-military confrontation.