Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is often portrayed in popular culture as an enigma. The rationale is clear: The tiny, remote island in the Pacific features nearly 1,000 enormous statues – the moai^[1]. The magnitude and number of these monuments

When astronomers search for planets that could host liquid water on their surface, they start by looking at a star’s habitable zone^[1]. Water is a key ingredient for life^[2], and on a planet too close to its star, water on its surface may “boil”;

As humans began to explore outer space in the latter half of the 20th century, radio waves proved a powerful tool^[1]. Scientists could send out radio waves to communicate with satellites, rockets and other spacecraft, and use radio telescopes to take in

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly^[1] over a video that urges American troops to defy “illegal orders” has raised a slew of questions, and some criticism, from legal experts.

Some say the Pentagon is misreading military law to go after Kelly^[2] as a retired Navy fighter pilot. Others say the Arizona Democrat cannot be prosecuted as a member of Congress. A group of former military prosecutors insists he did nothing wrong.

The Pentagon announced the investigation last week after President Donald Trump’s social media post^[3] accusing Kelly — and the five other Democratic lawmakers in the video — of sedition “punishable by DEATH.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Kelly was facing investigation because he is the only one in that group who formally retired from the military and is still under the Pentagon’s jurisdiction.

Kelly dismissed the inquiry as the work of “bullies” and said it would not deter him and other members of Congress “from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable.”

‘It’s not totally unheard of’ 

Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, said there has been a “significant uptick” in courts-martial of retired service members in the past decade. While courts have debated the constitutionality, the practice is currently allowed. He said there have been roughly a dozen such prosecutions across the service branches.

There are roughly 2 million people who formally retired from the military and receive retirement pay, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service. Service members are generally entitled to retirement pay after completing 20 years of active duty.

Todd Huntley, a retired Navy captain and judge advocate general, or JAG, said it is rare to prosecute retirees for something that happened after they retired.

“It’s not totally unheard of,” said Huntley, who now directs Georgetown’s national security law program. “I actually prosecuted a enlisted guy who had been retired for 16 years. He was essentially assaulting his adopted daughter. Basically no one else had jurisdiction so we prosecuted him.”

A ‘ridiculous conclusion’ 

Colby Vokey, a prominent civilian military lawyer and former military prosecutor, said Hegseth appears to be misreading the Uniform Code of Military Justice to justify the Kelly investigation.

Vokey said Hegseth has personal jurisdiction over Kelly because Kelly is entitled to retirement pay. But Vokey said Hegseth lacks subject matter jurisdiction because Kelly made his statements as a senator.

Vokey said case law has evolved to where the military can prosecute an active-duty service member for a crime committed off base, such as robbing a convenience store. But applying military law to a retired service member and “assuming that means every offense ever is kind of a ridiculous conclusion.”

“Let’s say you have a 100-year-old World War II veteran who is retired with pay and he steals a candy bar,” Vokey said. “Hegseth could bring him back and court-martial him. And that in effect is what is happening with Kelly.”

Patrick McLain, a retired Marine Corps judge and former federal prosecutor, said the cases he has seen of retirees being called back “are more like extreme examples of fraud or some of these child pornography cases.”

“I’ve not seen anything like the kind of the wackadoodle thing they’re trying to do to Sen. Kelly for essentially exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, which they don’t like,” McLain said.

‘He did it as a civilian’ 

Charles Dunlap, a Duke University law professor and retired Air Force lawyer, said in an email that military law can restrict speech for service members that is protected for civilians under the First Amendment.

But even if the video was found to have violated military law, a key issue may be whether the law can be applied to someone who is retired, Dunlap said.

A group of former military lawyers, the Former JAGs Working Group, said in a statement that Kelly did not violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“The video simply described the law as it pertains to lawful versus unlawful orders,” the group said. “It did not suborn mutiny or otherwise encourage military members to disregard or disobey lawful orders issued to them.”

Troops, especially uniformed commanders, have specific obligations to reject orders that are unlawful. Broad legal precedence also holds that just following orders — colloquially known as the “Nuremberg defense,” as it was used unsuccessfully by senior Nazi officials to justify their actions under Adolf Hitler — does not absolve troops.

Kelly and the other lawmakers did not mention specific circumstances in the video. Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned the legality of the Trump administration’s attempts to send National Guard troops into U.S. cities. Kelly has pointedly questioned the use of the military to attack alleged drug boats^[4] off South America’s coast, saying he was worried about the military officers^[5] involved with the mission and whether they were following orders that may have been illegal.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, said any case brought against Kelly likely would be thrown out or end in an acquittal.

O’Hanlon said it might not have been politically smart to “wave a red flag in front of the bull” but he does not see the legal grounds for a court martial.

“Saying that you shouldn’t break the law cannot be a crime,” O’Hanlon said. “But in addition, he did not do it as a military officer. He did it as a civilian.”

Separation of powers 

Kelly’s status as a senator could block the Pentagon’s investigation because of constitutional protections for the separation of powers in the U.S government.

The Constitution explicitly shields members of Congress from White House overreach, said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University.

“Having a United States senator subject to discipline at the behest of the secretary of defense and the president — that violates a core principle of legislative independence,” Kreis said in a telephone interview.

Kreis said such protections were a reaction to the British monarchy, which arbitrarily punished members of Parliament.

”Any way you cut it, the Constitution is fundamentally structurally designed to prevent this kind of abuse,” Kreis said.

Related Topics: Pete Hegseth^[5] Department of Defense - DoD^[6] Venezuela^[7] Drugs^[8] Navy SEALs - Sea-Air-Land^[9]

© Copyright 2025 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here^[10].

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has collapsed, abruptly ending its operations as a new U.S. led military coordination body prepares to oversee and coordinate aid distribution in the territory.

The U.S.- and Israel-backed relief effort that began operating in late May shut down permanently this week in Gaza, deepening an already severe access gap for civilians as the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) moves to coordinate aid delivery, security and movement across the war-torn strip.

On Nov. 24 the group announced it was ending its Gaza operations, calling its emergency mission complete. In the days that followed, governments, aid groups and analysts treated the move as a permanent shutdown or in effect a full collapse of the program.

“It has no impact on our operations because we never worked with them,” a United Nations spokesperson told Military.com, underscoring that the organization operated outside the U.N. led humanitarian system.

The collapse comes as Gaza faces ongoing shortages of food, water and medical supplies and as families displaced by months of fighting remain without stable shelter.

A Controversial Model Unravels

The foundation was launched as an alternative to traditional humanitarian channels and used privately operated secured distribution hubs. Supporters said that approach could limit aid diversion and accelerate delivery. Critics said it posed safety risks for civilians, threatened impartiality, and lacked transparency.

Residents and monitoring organizations described crowded, confusing conditions at distribution points, limited access for vulnerable populations and security incidents along approach routes. Experts questioned whether a model secured by private contractors could meet internationally accepted standards for neutrality and impartiality.

Despite those concerns, the foundation maintained that its model delivered food and supplies to civilians in desperate need.

CMCC Steps into New Role

The Civil Military Coordination Center tied to ceasefire implementation and backed by the United States is now expected to oversee and coordinate aid related logistics for Gaza. Key operational details remain undisclosed.

Questions remain about how access will be managed, who will control security, and whether independent humanitarian groups will be allowed to operate without military or political constraints. Aid specialists warn that perception alone of aid delivery under a military-linked structure may deter civilians from seeking help.

Military.com reached out to the U.S. State Department, the Defense Department, Israeli authorities, Palestinian officials and multiple international humanitarian organizations for comment. Some did not respond before publication while others declined to comment.

Humanitarian Conditions Remain Critical

Hospitals in Gaza remain overwhelmed. Access to clean water remains inconsistent. Malnutrition and shortages of medical supplies continue to be reported among vulnerable populations. Aid observers say any disruption in aid delivery could worsen already dire conditions for children, the elderly and the chronically ill.

In other regions of conflict, limited scope missions^[1] that began with narrow goals have expanded into long-term, open-ended operations, increasing instability and complicating humanitarian access.

In Gaza, more than 1,000 civilians have reportedly been killed^[2] since May while attempting to reach food assistance, highlighting the extreme danger faced by those seeking aid when distribution systems break down or become disorganized.

The shutdown is more than the end of one aid group and may redefine how humanitarian aid is managed in future conflict zones. A shift toward militarized coordination, private contractors and ad hoc systems continues to raise concerns among international aid communities about impartiality, transparency and long-term access.

"That's the major conclusion of this paper: There are targeted projections for targeted impact," said senior author Mriganka Sur, Paul and Lilah Newton Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Investigating Customized Prefrontal Signals

Scientists have long proposed, including Sur's colleague Earl K. Miller at MIT, that the prefrontal cortex can guide the activity of more posterior areas of the brain. While anatomical evidence has supported this idea, the goal of the new study was to determine whether the prefrontal cortex sends one broad type of signal or instead crafts distinct messages for different target regions. Lead author and Sur Lab postdoctoral researcher Sofie Ährlund-Richter also sought to identify which specific neurons receive these signals and how the communication influences downstream processing.

Different Prefrontal Regions Serve Different Roles

The team identified a number of new insights. Two areas in the prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex (ORB) and the anterior cingulate area (ACA), were found to relay information about both arousal and movement to two other regions: the primary visual cortex (VISp) and the primary motor cortex (MOp). These messages appear to have unique effects. For example, higher arousal increased ACA's tendency to help VISp sharpen its visual representations. ORB, however, became influential only when arousal was very high, and its involvement appeared to decrease the clarity of visual encoding. According to Ährlund-Richter, ACA may help the brain focus on potentially meaningful visual details as arousal rises, while ORB may act to reduce attention to distracting or overly strong stimuli.

"These two PFC subregions are kind of balancing each other," Ährlund-Richter said. "While one will enhance stimuli that might be more uncertain or more difficult to detect, the other one kind of dampens strong stimuli that might be irrelevant."

Mapping and Monitoring Brain Circuits

To better understand the involved pathways, Ährlund-Richter performed detailed anatomical tracing of the connections ACA and ORB form with VISp and MOp. In additional experiments, mice ran freely on a wheel while viewing structured images or naturalistic movies at different contrast levels. At certain moments, small air puffs increased the animals' arousal level. Throughout these tasks, researchers recorded the activity of neurons in ACA, ORB, VISp and MOp, with particular attention to the signals traveling along the axons linking prefrontal and posterior areas.

The tracing work showed that ACA and ORB each communicate with a variety of cell types in their target regions rather than a single cell class. They also connect in distinct spatial patterns. In VISp, ACA primarily targeted layer 6, while ORB communicated mainly with layer 5.

How Arousal and Movement Shift Visual Processing

When the team examined the transmitted information and neural activity, several consistent patterns emerged. ACA neurons conveyed more detailed visual information than ORB neurons and were more responsive to changes in contrast. ACA activity also tracked closely with arousal level, while ORB responded only when arousal reached a high threshold. When signaling to MOp, both regions conveyed information about running speed. When signaling to VISp, however, they only indicated whether the mouse was moving or still. The two prefrontal regions also carried information about arousal and a small amount of visual detail to MOp.

To see how this communication affects visual processing, the researchers temporarily blocked the pathways leading from ACA and ORB to VISp. This allowed them to measure how VISp neurons responded without these inputs. They found that ACA and ORB exerted specific and opposing effects on visual encoding depending on the mouse's movement and level of arousal.

A Specialized Model of Prefrontal Feedback

"Our data support a model of PFC feedback that is specialized at both the level of PFC subregions and their targets, enabling each region to selectively shape target-specific cortical activity rather than modulating it globally," the authors wrote in Neuron.

In addition to Sur and Ährlund-Richter, the research team included Yuma Osako, Kyle R. Jenks, Emma Odom, Haoyang Huang, and Don B. Arnold.

The work was supported by a Wenner-Gren foundations Postdoctoral Fellowship, the National Institutes of Health, and the Freedom Together Foundation.

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