On May 18, 2015, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Over a decade later, as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy with a J.D., I resigned my commission.
I saw the signs. I feared if I stayed any longer I’d be ordered to act against my conscience.
Few military officers outside of Judge Advocate Generals have a law degree, but I do. I also flew helicopters–MH-60Rs–and am highly trained to fight submarines and fire hellfire missiles and torpedoes. I studied law while on active duty, graduating with a 4.0 GPA, and I was already almost halfway through getting a Master of Laws in Global Business Law from Columbia University when I left the Navy. When it comes to matters of global concern and constitutional law, I think it would be safe to assume I have a more formal background and experience than most.
But in my final months, I watched in horror as overtly unconstitutional moves were made within the government. On June 2, I left the Navy. On June 9, Trump ordered 700 Marines to storm into Los Angeles. Let that sink in. An American president just deployed American troops against an American city. Remember: we are not at war. This was not a military necessity but an act of political theater, designed to intimidate dissenters and strut for supporters. And a reckless gesture driven by personal, petty politics. It undermines everything I have believed in as a service member, an American, and someone committed to the study of law.
Throughout my service, I contemplated the ethical hypothetical: what would I do if asked to carry out an order I believed to be illegal or immoral? I knew I’d refuse, even at the cost of my career. I’m a queer Jewish girl from Berkeley, California. When it comes to foreign service, I value diplomatic solutions over militaristic ones. What was I doing in the military in the first place? Well, for better or worse—and I tend to believe for worse because it is by design—the military is the single best way in this country to get healthcare and education, not to mention financial security. The enlisted ranks are filled with young people trying to get a foot in the door to a better life. Showing up for them was a mission that always motivated me, even if the idea of war did not. I told myself, if you leave, those sailors will have one fewer advocate. One fewer ally to help them navigate an often unforgiving environment. So, I hoped I would never be given an order I couldn’t follow—that I could trust my superior officers. I left the military in part because that confidence had faded. As a legal officer, I felt hypocritical prosecuting sailors for offenses far less egregious than that of our commander in chief, and as a command security manager, I struggled to explain the lack of accountability after our secretary of defense committed a security breach that I knew would get me sent to prison.
I am proud of my military service, but it may quickly become a source of shame for myself and all other veterans if the institution becomes an unaccountable political tool for an unaccountable political tool. The repeated illegal and unnecessary authorization of military force is the beginning of the end.
The United States military is supposed to be a humble institution, one entrusted with a solemn duty to defend this nation. Yet, tomorrow, Trump will order soldiers to display force at his birthday party in a vanity exercise that will cost American taxpayers $45 million.
It’s hard to support the troops when they’re marching on Washington and Los Angeles. But many of these enlisted folks joined for financial stability. When the consequences can be cut in rank or pay, a dishonorable discharge, or a court-martial, what 18-year-old kid is prepared to challenge the orders of the officers above them? And when Trump has fired all the dissenters, what’s left is blind obedience. Now is the time for insubordination. It will take an extraordinary level of bravery.
We can help them. As a country, we can show zero tolerance for this frivolous use of our armed forces. Veterans, active duty service members, and civilians alike must join together to condemn these unlawful and un-American actions. That is the call of duty now. We must all answer.
Julie Roland has deployed to the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating from the Navy in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She graduated law school from the University of San Diego, is currently pursuing a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is the director of the San Diego chapter of the Truman National Security Project.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.