Trump ramps up threats to ‘traitor’ Democrats for encouraging military members to defy unlawful orders: Live updates

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized the Democratic lawmakers who published a video this week telling members of the military and intelligence community that they must “refuse illegal orders.”

“What I am confident of is that this was a display of gross, gross negligence,” Bessent said Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press. He did not answer a question about whether the Trump administration is issuing illegal orders.

“There is one commander in chief, and when you step outside of the chain of command and try to create the noise and chaos, that only helps our enemies,” he added.

“FREE TINA PETERS, WHO SITS IN A COLORADO PRISON, DYING & OLD, FOR ATTEMPTING TO EXPOSE VOTER FRAUD IN THE RIGGED 2O20 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!!!” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social.

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won.

Trump cannot pardon Peters or commute her sentence because she received a state conviction, Colorado Public Radio reports.

The Trump administration asked to transfer Peters into federal custody this week, a move opposed by state officials, according to Colorado Public Radio.

Senator Amy Klobuchar responded to criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans over a video by Democratic lawmakers — many of whom are veterans — urging members of the military and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”

“Well, it’s very clear in this code for the military, you cannot follow unlawful orders,” Klobuchar, a Democrat, told NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday.

Klobuchar later added: “But the key is, this has been a long-time tenet of the American military, and it is very clearly right there, and that is all our colleagues were saying, and they have every right to say it. They have served our country bravely, they know what they’re talking about.”

President Donald Trump claimed that Chicago residents have been chanting “bring in Trump” as a series of shootings in the Windy City this weekend prompted him to raise the prospect of sending troops into the city.

A 14-year-old boy was killed and eight other teenagers were injured in separate shootings late Friday in Chicago’s Loop, part of the city’s downtown, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Less than 24 hours after violence during a so-called “teen takeover,” Trump took to his Truth Social platform to condemn the violence and again raise the prospect of deploying federalized troops to Chicago, as he has already done in cities including Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

Six Democratic lawmakers, many of whom are veterans, published a video this week urging members of the military and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”

President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the video was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.” In another post, Trump wrote: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The lawmakers responded to Trump’s threats in a statement on Thursday, writing that what’s “most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law.” Trump later claimed he was not “threatening death,” but that “they’re in serious trouble.”

Late Saturday, Trump also called for the Democratic lawmakers to be jailed.

Senator Elissa Slotkin, who appeared in the video, told ABC News on Sunday that she thinks Trump is “trying to get us to shut up because he doesn’t want to be talking about this.”

Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who urged members of the military and intelligence community to “defy illegal orders” in a video with her colleagues this week, called President Donald Trump’s response a “tool of fear.”

On Truth Social this week, Trump labelled the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” and at one point claimed that sedition is “punishable by DEATH.”

“He’s trying to get us to shut up because he doesn’t want to be talking about this,” Slotkin said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week.

“In fact, I would argue that one of the things that he’s been doing by repeating it and talking about it is trying to distract us from the big stories of last week, which were the [Jeffrey] Epstein files and then the economy,” she added.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has addressed concerns that President Donald Trump could send the National Guard to the city on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Mamdani said he told Trump that he trusts the NYPD to deliver on public safety. But Mamdani didn’t respond to a question about whether Trump ruled out sending in the National Guard during their meeting on Friday at the White House.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. officials are in Geneva today meeting with Ukrainian officials over Washington’s 28-point plan for ending the war

Kyiv has until Thursday to decide whether to accept the plan.

Follow The Independent’s live coverage of the talks below:

Latino Republicans are warning the GOP that the 2025 elections earlier this month show that their party risks losing the gains President Donald Trump made with Hispanic voters in 2024.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric calling Mexicans rapists, drug dealers and criminals in 2016, he made significant inroads with Latino voters in his 2020 and 2024 campaigns. Those blocs helped him turn Florida from a swing state to deep red and flip states with large Mexican-American populations like Arizona and Nevada into his column.