Oklahoma’s Gov. Kevin Stitt became the first Republican governor to come out and oppose President Donald Trump’s deployment of Texas’s National Guard to Illinois
The Trump administration deployed hundreds of National Guard troops from Texas earlier this week as part of Trump’s push to send troops to cities and blue states under the auspices of controlling crime. A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s federalization of National Guard troops to send them to Chicago.
But Stitt, the chairman of the National Governors Association, told The New York Times in an interview that he opposed the move.
“We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights,” he said. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”
Stitt said that he supported Trump’s efforts to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and to ensure “law and order” in Chicago and Portland. At the same time, Stitt warned that a future Democratic president could use it and said that Trump should have federalized troops instead.
He also expressed surprise that Texas’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott went along with Trump’s efforts after they had opposed vaccine mandates and masks during the Biden administration.
“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” he said. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.”
Stitt said he had not spoken to Abbott about the subject matter, but he feared pitting states against each other.
“As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this,” he said.
Abbott is running for a fourth term as governor, but Oklahoma’s governor is term-limited. Stitt said he would speak to Abbott this weekend during the University of Oklahoma’s football game versus the University of Texas.
“I would send troops to the southern border on his request, anytime he wanted them, and I know he would do the same for me,” he said.
The National Governors Association has existed for a century and is meant to be a nonpartisan gathering of governors to discuss ideas. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have threatened to leave if the NGA did not come out against the deployment.
Stitt said weighing in on the subject in his capacity as NGA chairman was not part of his role.
“The N.G.A. is an educational organization under IRS code,” he said. “And so we’re not going to be weighing into the politics. That’s not our lane.”
