If you know a service member, listen to their fears ... but send them to the GI Rights Hotline instead of giving advice

 

According to TruthOut, calls to the GI Rights Hotline spiked by 94% in June 2025 over the previous year, driven primarily by fears of a politicized military being put into action against American citizens.

From the story:

“Overall callers have shared serious concerns that the president is moving the country away from a representative democracy altogether,” [Hotline counselor Steve] Woolford told Truthout in an email. “These callers believe that the military will determine what the United States becomes by deciding which side to follow. For them, having service members refuse to turn their backs on the constitution is the safeguard against martial law and dictatorship.” …

U.S. Air Force airman Juan Bettancourt said his colleagues in the armed forces have expressed similar concerns. Bettancourt is expressing his own views and not speaking on behalf of the military or the Department of Defense.

“They are absolutely petrified of being put in a position in which they are the vehicle to advance further authoritarianism, and the proto-fascism that we’re seeing,” Bettancourt told Truthout. “There is absolutely that fear that they’re going to be the pawns in this chess game that brings about the further expansion of authoritarianism.”

Bettancourt said some service members fear the military will become Trump’s domestic police force, potentially in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. He says this is a particularly fraught prospect for Latino personnel, who could be deployed to carry out Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Thousands of immigrants enlist in the military each year. In fiscal year 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized more than 16,000 service members — a 34 percent increase from the previous year. Of those naturalized between fiscal years 2020 and 2024, the top five countries of origin were the Philippines, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, and Ghana.

“They feel they’re betraying themselves,” said Bettancourt, himself an immigrant from Colombia.

Here's the graphic with the number for the GI Rights Hotline, but you really need to visit the page for full information:

If you know someone on active duty or in the reserve components, and they are expressing reservations about the current administration's use of troops on American soil and what they should do about it if bothered by their conscience, here are three pieces of advice I feel quite confidant in giving:

ONE: Listen rather than talk, and keep your mouth shut about anything you hear. It's great that a service member trusts you enough to tell you about their doubts and fears, and possibly even actions they may be thinking about taking in acting on those doubts and fears, BUT ...

... you have know idea how talking to ANYBODY else can potentially get that service member into a whole world of hurt.

TWO: If they ask you for advice -- and my answer here is the same for you if you are a veteran or know nothing about the military at all -- here's what you do: Tell them to call 1-877-447-4487 and speak to a counselor at the GI Rights Hotline. These folks (and their attorneys) are TRAINED to know what they can and cannot say, and how to give service members legally sound advice on what to do next. DO NOT GIVE THEM ADVICE OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD, or tell them something you read on the internet. I say again: tell them to call 1-877-447-4487 and speak to a counselor at the GI Rights Hotline.

THREE: Forget you ever had this conversation unless the service member voluntarily comes back to you again. I know that in some ways this is just a restatement of Item #1, but let's be really clear here: there are dozens of ways that things you say about them, or to them, can get them into deep shit, and I don't care if you are a parent, sibling, spouse, pastor, therapist, or even a civilian attorney, you do not know enough of about those dozens of ways to get into trouble to give them advice.

Tell them to call 1-877-447-4487 and speak to a counselor at the GI Rights Hotline.

I know this is unsatisfying and you WANT to help them.

I don't care. I have worked, inside the military, with issues like this, and "My Dad told me I should ..." or "My girlfriend thinks I need to ..." or even "A veteran told me the way to do it is ..." ARE ALWAYS TROUBLE for the service member.

Tell them to call 1-877-447-4487 and speak to a counselor at the GI Rights Hotline.

Please.