WASHINGTON – As South Dakota governor in February 2024, Kristi Noem threatened then-President Joe Biden when Democrats said he should federalize the National Guard in Texas to disrupt that state governor’s anti-immigration efforts.
If he did, Noem warned, Biden would be mounting a “direct attack on states’ rights,” and sparking a “war” between Washington and Republican-led state governments, she said in a Feb. 6, 2024 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
On June 8, Noem − now President Donald Trump‘s Homeland Security secretary − cheered Trump for doing the same thing to the Democratic governor of the state of California.
Over the weekend, Trump deployed riot gear-clad National Guard troops to Los Angeles to shut down anti-immigration protests over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
If Newsom “was doing his job,” Noem said, “our ICE agents would not be injured and attacked while doing their jobs and carrying out immigration enforcement.”
“Under the leadership of @POTUS,” Noem added in a post on X, “Trump we will put the safety of American citizens FIRST not these criminal illegal aliens that sanctuary city politicians are defending.”
Trump said late Sunday that he sent the National Guard to California to restore order amid mounting violent clashes between police and rock-throwing protesters angry at his aggressive efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants in the U.S. illegally. “We’re not going to let this happen to our country.”
Traditionally, it is up to the governor of a particular state to deploy the National Guard. Trump’s National Guard deployment of 2,000 troops in Los Angeles is expected to last 60 days, according to a directive from California’s adjutant general.
Trump’s memo June 7 invoked a section of federal code authorizing the president to call the guard into service to “repel an invasion of the United States by a foreign nation” or to “suppress a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” or to “execute the laws of the United States when the President is unable to do so with regular forces.”
Newsom has vocally opposed Trump’s intervention, and on Sunday formally asked the President to rescind the “unlawful” deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.
“This is a serious breach of state sovereignty,” he said, “Rescind the order. Return control to California.”
Former acting vice chief of the National Guard bureau (Ret) Maj Gen Randy Manner criticized Trump for sending the National Guard to Los Angeles against Newsom’s wishes.
“The President’s federal deployment of the National Guard over the official wishes of a governor is bad for all Americans concerned about freedom of speech and states rights,” Manner said in a statement to Fox News.
Manner said that while Trump’s order was technically legal, Newsom has “the authority and ability to respond to the civil disturbances with law enforcement capabilities within his state,” augmented as needed by requesting law enforcement assistance from other governors. Trump’s order, he said, “tramples the governor’s rights and obligations to protect his people. This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.”
On CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday, Noem explained her reversal by saying, “Governor Newsom has proven that he makes bad decisions.”
“The president knows that he makes bad decisions, and that’s why the President chose the safety of this community over waiting for Governor Newsom to get some sanity,” Noem said. “And that’s one of the reasons why these National Guard soldiers are being federalized so they can use their special skill set to keep peace.”
Noem was against deploying the National Guard when the governor in question was a Republican
Last year, Noem’s tune was much different.
At the time, Democratic lawmakers and immigration-rights activists were lobbying heavily for Biden to federalize the National Guard in Texas to defuse a brewing crisis there over the state’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
More: National Guard on the ground in LA as immigration tensions escalate: Live updates
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security was complaining that razor wire that Texas had installed at the border with Mexico was preventing DHS agents from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement from doing their jobs.
Activists said the wire was endangering the lives of those trying to cross into the United States, especially via rivers at the border where the wire was installed.
The Supreme Court had ruled that the federal government could cut through the razor wire. But the Republican governor in Texas, Greg Abbott, was refusing to take it down.
The dispute led to a prolonged standoff between Abbott and the Biden administration, with the Texas National Guard at times blocking Border Patrol agents from accessing certain areas of the border.
To resolve the standoff, Democrats and others demanded that Biden federalize National Guard soldiers in Texas and order them to stand down and get out of the way of federal immigration agents.
In response, Noem not only sent National Guard soldiers from South Dakota to the border to support Abbott’s efforts. She also went there personally, she said at the time, to stand with him in case Biden decided to intervene against Abbott’s wishes.
For his part, Biden never said he was even considering the move, which would have been unprecedented in recent history.
The last time a President deployed the National Guard over the home state governor’s objections was during the Civil Rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s, when Southern governors refused to comply with orders to desegregate schools and other public institutions.
“That would be a boneheaded move on his part, total disaster,” Abbott told conservative host Tucker Carlson on his show “Uncensored.”
In her interview with Hannity, the Fox News host told Noem that she and other Republican governors who “stood by Gov. Abbott’s side” and opposed federal intervention likely caused Biden to back down from doing something that likely would “have precipitated a real, real crisis down there.”
That’s why she personally went down to Texas, Noem said, because she recognized “the real threat that was to states’ rights.”
“We will defend our Constitution. We will defend our rights because the last several years, we’ve seen Democrats take away our freedom of religion, our freedom of assembly, our freedom of speech,” Noem told Hannity. “We can’t let them take away our state’s rights too, especially our rights protect ourselves.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DHS Sec. Noem opposed Biden, but praises Trump, on National Guard
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