Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) denounced the deployment of the Texas National Guard to Illinois on Thursday, breaking with national GOP leadership and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX).
Stitt, the chairman of the nonpartisan National Governors Association, said the National Guard deployment violated his idea of federalism. His denouncement comes just days after Govs. JB Pritzker (D-IL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA) each sent letters to Stitt, threatening to pull out of the NGA if the chairman did not condemn the deployment.
“We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights,” Stitt said to the New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”
Stitt made clear he still supported President Donald Trump’s efforts to restore “law and order” in American cities and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to the New York Times. He disagrees, instead, with the move to use National Guard troops from another state to fight crime against the will of the impacted state’s officials.
“I was surprised that Gov. Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt 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.”
National Guard troops arrived in Chicago on Wednesday, after Illinois and Chicago initiated a temporary restraining order lawsuit against the Trump administration to halt the National Guard troop movement.
“This is precisely the federal and interstate overreach we warned against — gubernatorial authority being trampled, state sovereignty being ignored, and the constitutional balance between states being attacked,” Pritzker said in a statement Monday. “If the President continues overriding Governors to deploy military assets into another state against another Governor’s will, we have abandoned the foundational principles that have protected our Republic for nearly 250 years.”
Stitt said he worries about what implications this could have for states’ rights, while Abbott has argued that the Texas National Guard is “putting America first” by going to Chicago.
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“The elite Texas National Guard are on the ground and ready to go. They are putting America first by ensuring that the federal government can safely enforce federal law,” Abbott wrote on X on Tuesday.
Abbott’s and Pritzker’s press teams did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
