Calls to the GI Right Hotline more than doubled after President Donald Trump launched strikes on Iran, as veterans stepped up protests against his administration and urged troops to refuse illegal orders, according to a new Mother Jones report.
Most callers are “not afraid of dying, but afraid of killing,” hotline counselor Lenore Yarger told the magazine in an article published on Veterans Day detailing “how more and more veterans say their duty is to resist Trump.”
“We can’t promise them that they won’t be accused of doing something illegal” if they follow military orders, Yarger says, “and we also can’t promise them that they won’t be punished if they refuse.”
“It’s a really hard time to be in the military right now,” she added.
The hotline has averaged about 320 calls a month since March, up from about 150. Yarger said calls had already spiked when Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles to support ICE operations.
The opposition is growing outside the military, too. Gulf war veteran Michael McPhearson, who leads Veterans For Peace, told Mother Jones that roughly 1,000 of the group’s 3,500 active members joined after Trump returned to office.
“We’re talking about 36 years of the U.S. being constantly at war [in the Middle East],” McPhearson says. “We’re constantly killing people.”
Iraq War veteran Matt Howard’s group helped put up billboards near military bases urging troops to refuse unlawful orders and pointing them to legal help. One sign asked, “Is this what you signed up for?”
“This is very much a moment where the Trump regime is mask off in their pursuit of raw power,” Howard told Mother Jones, “and the way that’s showing up is in their military aggression overseas, but also here at home.”