Unfortunately vast swaths of the justice system are in the Heritage Foundations pocket and can and will make those soldier’s lives an absolute living hell while they’re trying to fight and prove it was an illegal order.

Remember, the system was built to defer to power (like how the words of police are always considered trusted and of the highest quality by courts) and to only allow those with infinite amounts of money to be able to appeal obviously bad decisions. While waiting on justice, they may spend years inside a cell for refusing to follow a legal order.

Unless it happens en masse with the majority of the Guard doing it all at the same time, the first individuals who choose to say no will suffer greatly.

They refused to deploy to Chicago because force projections included losses on their side.

That’s about as close as you’re going to get.

What illegal orders? This is a genuine question.

I’m an Army veteran and my wife is active duty. I do not believe any of the orders that have been issued thus far are illegal. The deployment to DC is potentially on some shaky legal ground, but that rests with the president and needs to be sorted out in court. Individual troops have no reason to refuse deployment to DC and the actions they’ve performed there, as far am I’m aware, are within the bounds for legal orders.

If one state deployed NG troops to another state, without the consent of the occupied state’s governor, that would be illegal. DC is a different situation because it can be under direct federal control and they have no national guard, as they do not have statehood.