In mid-December, the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was “escalating” his crusade against Sen. Mark Kelly, launching an “official Command Investigation” into the Arizona Democrat. It was, as The Washington Post noted soon after, “an unprecedented use of the military justice system to investigate a political adversary.”

Three weeks later, the beleaguered Cabinet secretary, who presumably has more important matters on his plate, took the next step down a radical path. My MS NOW colleague Erum Salam reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he plans to demote the military rank of Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona after the retired Navy captain reminded those actively serving to disobey illegal orders. […]

Hegseth said he issued a ‘letter of censure’ to Kelly, calling it a first step toward a demotion and a decrease in pension. Censure is a formal disciplinary action, sometimes punitive, that can only be issued by someone in a service member’s chain of command. If successful, it can result in demotion of a service member’s rank and a reduction in their retirement pay.

For those who might have lost sight of the transgression that prompted the secretary’s crusade: Several Democratic military veterans appeared in a video, released in November, in which they urged service members to reject illegal orders. A week later, Hegseth announced an investigation into Kelly, a decorated Navy veteran. (The Arizona Democrat is the only member of the group who retired as a captain and served long enough to receive a military pension.)....

Kelly’s pushback: If Trump’s Pentagon expects Kelly to back down in the face of absurd bullying, that’s apparently not going to happen. “Here’s the thing, Rachel: I’m never going to back down from these guys,” the senator said Monday on MS NOW. “I’m going to continue to speak out. I’m going to continue to do my job and, as much as I can, highlight how wrong these people are and how outrageous this is and how dangerous.”......

Endgame: As part of the existing process, Kelly has 30 days to respond formally to Hegseth’s letter, but just as notably, assuming his demotion happens, the senator will have the option of taking the matter to the courts, to the Board for Correction of Naval Records or to both.

“If the executive branch were to move forward in any forum — criminal, disciplinary, or administrative — we will take all appropriate legal action on Senator Kelly’s behalf to halt the Administration’s unprecedented and dangerous overreach,” Kelly’s lawyer wrote in a letter to Secretary of the Navy John Phelan in December.