Gov. Kevin Stitt condemned President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops across state lines, the first Republican governor to speak out against the practice.
Over the last two weeks, Trump has attempted to dispatch National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago and Portland, Oregon. When those dispatches were temporarily paused by federal judges, the administration tried to send federalized troops from Texas and California across state lines.
“We believe in the federalist system; that’s states’ rights,” Stitt, who chairs the National Governors Association, told The New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”
“As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this,” Stitt said.
Stitt’s comments come just days after Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker threatened to withdraw from the National Governors Association if it failed to speak out against Trump’s federalization of National Guard troops against the wishes of state officials.
Stitt told the Times his comments represented his personal opinion, not an official statement from the organization, because its nonprofit status exempts it from being required to weigh in on political matters.
National Guard troops were deployed to Chicago and Portland last week by the Trump administration in response to urban crime and protests against immigration enforcement.
Despite the ongoing legal challenges against the use of troops in Chicago, members of the Texas National Guard arrived in the city this week after Gov. Greg Abbott offered to turn over control of them to the administration.
On Thursday, however, an Illinois federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in the state for 14 days.
“I find that allowing the National Guard to deploy will only add fuel to the fire that the defendants have started,” U.S. District Judge April Perry said.
“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt told the Times. “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 believes more Republican governors share his views.
“Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.
