California Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed Texas counterpart Greg Abbott for sending state National Guard members to other states in the country.
“Hey Greg Abbott, Texas‘ homicide rate is 39% higher than California’s. Call home your National Guard and deal with your crime epidemic,” he said in a social media publication.
Newsom was responding to a post from Abbott that depicted him along with Illinois and New York governors JB Pritzker and Kathy Hochul telling President Donald Trump to “leave our crime alone,” a reference to their reluctance to accept the deployment of National Guard members to the states they lead.
Abbott confirmed on Monday that hundreds of members of the state’s National Guard are deploying elsewhere in the country.
He did not mention a destination, but President Donald Trump has called for the deployment of troops to Illinois and Oregon after a judge temporarily blocked the administration from doing so.
Overall, 400 members are being deployed to “safeguard… federal officials,” Abbott told Fox News. “The president has the authority to call up the National Guard to assist in enforcing those laws, and that’s exactly what the president is doing,” he told Sean Hannity. “What Texas is doing, we’re assisting the president in that cause.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked the deployment of any state national guards to Oregon on Sunday. Moreover, Illinois sued on Monday to stop the deployment there. However, a federal judge declined to immediately block the deployment to Illinois and gave the Trump administration until Wednesday to respond.
The Trump administration insists on the deployment. On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday called Chicago “a war zone.” She also criticized Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has opposed the administration’s immigration raids and deployment of the National Guard. “It’s wrong,” Noem said. “There should be consequences for leaders who knowingly lie about the situation on the ground. His city is a war zone, and he’s lying so that criminals can go in there and destroy people’s lives.”
A poll from last week showed that almost half of Americans disapprove of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard.
Concretely, 49 percent of respondents in a NPR-Ipsos survey said they oppose the deployment of troops in major U.S. cities for law enforcement purposes. 38 percent said they support the move, while 12 percent said they were unsure.
Moreover, 50% of respondents said they oppose federal officials making immigration-related stops with fewer restrictions. The figure contrasts with 35 percent who support the measure and a remaining 13 percent claimed to be unsure.
Originally published on Latin Times
