Military personnel seek legal advice on whether Trump-ordered missions are lawful
PBS News Hour - Segments
PBS NewsHour
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Military service personnel have been seeking outside legal advice about some of the missions the Trump administration has assigned them. |
| 0:09.0 | The U.S. strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats and deployments to American cities have sparked a firestorm of debate over their legality. |
| 0:17.0 | And some service members are turning to nonprofit organizations for help. |
| 0:28.1 | In grainy footage from above the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean 20 times since September, |
| 0:37.4 | the Pentagon has shown the same thing. A flash of light and a boat allegedly carrying drugs into the United States incinerated by a U.S. military strike. |
| 0:38.0 | In all, dozens of people killed on board the vessels. |
| 0:41.5 | But that is the extent of what the Trump administration has disclosed publicly. |
| 0:45.9 | No confirmation of any drugs on board or the identities of the people killed. |
| 0:51.3 | President Trump has justified the lethal strikes and the fog of war that's clouded them. |
| 0:56.4 | They killed 300,000 people last year, drugs. |
| 1:01.1 | These drugs coming in, they killed 300,000 Americans last year, and that gives you legal authority. |
| 1:07.9 | We know the boats, we know everything else. We're allowed to do it. It's in |
| 1:12.5 | international waters. If we don't do it, we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of people. |
| 1:19.0 | Today, reports that the Trump administration is covering its legal basis. According to the Washington |
| 1:24.5 | Post, Justice Department lawyers this summer crafted a classified |
| 1:28.3 | memo arguing that U.S. troops involved in the boat strikes would not be in legal jeopardy. |
| 1:34.5 | On Capitol Hill, open questions, including from Republican members about the legality of those |
| 1:39.5 | strikes. |
| 1:40.5 | People were not happy with the level of information that was provided, and certainly the level of legal justification that was provided. |
| 1:47.2 | Calls to organizations like the Orders Project, which provides free legal advice to military personnel, are on the rise from staff officers involved in planning the boat strikes. |
| 1:59.0 | As are calls to a separate hotline from National Guard personnel concerned about domestic deployments |
| 2:05.6 | to American cities. |
... |
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