Two newly sworn-in Democratic governors are refusing to play along with Donald Trump’s border stunt, announcing that in the weeks to come they’ll be withdrawing hundreds of National Guard troops from their states’ border with Mexico.
In this week’s State of the State address, California Gov. Gavin Newsom will announce that he will withdraw more than 300 troops from the region. Troops will instead be reassigned to assist with fire preparation and drug task force efforts. “The border ‘emergency’ is a manufactured crisis,” he will reportedly say during the speech, “and California will not be part of this political theater.”
Last week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that she’d be pulling most of the 118 New Mexico Army National Guard members from the state’s border, and redirecting a smaller number to instead assist with humanitarian efforts. “We will support our neighbors where the need for assistance is great, and we will offer a helping hand when we can to those vulnerable people who arrive at our border, but New Mexico will not take part in the president’s charade of border fear-mongering by misusing our diligent National Guard troops,” she said in a statement.
The troop withdrawals come as Trump is still threatening to declare an emergency in order to build his stupid, expensive, and useless border wall. Clearly, nothing says “emergency” like going back and forth on whether to declare one. But the facts are that not only are border cities safe, but the American public opposes an emergency declaration by a 2:1 margin, according to immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice.
“The 2018 midterms and the outcome of the government shutdown speak volumes: Americans are against Trump’s wall, his tactics and his rhetoric,” said America’s Voice leader Frank Sharry. “He and his Republican enablers did not make his stupid border wall a priority when they controlled both congressional chambers … the true national emergency is not at the border, it’s at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”