Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is joining Democratic state officials in a legal action against President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in U.S. cities and calling on Republican governors to also speak out against what Beshear called “political stunts.”
“I wish I could say it’s silly, but it’s scary and it’s dangerous,” Beshear said Thursday. “You don’t just get to order the National Guard into some place because you think the crime is too high or to pick a fight with a blue mayor or a blue governor.
“This is something that no other president has ever done. And there’s a reason. It’s unlawful and it’s wrong. And I’m going to do everything I can to stand up to it.”
Beshear is part of a coalition of Democratic governors and attorneys general from 23 states and the District of Columbia who on Wednesday filed an amicus brief supporting Oregon’s court challenge to Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Portland.
Beshear also said he’s disappointed in the bipartisan National Governors Association for its official silence on Trump’s deployment of troops into places where the governors and mayors don’t want them. “If this organization is meant to stand up for governors, it needs to,” Beshear said Thursday during his regular media briefing.
Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois earlier this week threatened to leave the National Governors Association unless it takes a stand against what Newsom called an “unprecedented assault” on states’ rights.
Beshear also said he is “really disappointed in my fellow Republican governors that know how wrong this is. … It is un-American and every governor should be standing up against it.”
Beshear, who will be said the Trump administration is falsely claiming troops are needed to quell insurrections and that National Guard members are endangered when they are ordered into situations for which they are not trained.
“It’s one of the hallmarks of our country that we don’t have military running around on our streets. You don’t get off an airplane and see military standing there with a machine gun. This is not who we are. We don’t militarize our communities. It’s one of the tenets of our very founding.”
Over the summer, Trump ordered National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests. A federal judge in September ruled that deployment violated a federal law against military members conducting domestic law enforcement.
Since then, Trump has also sent National Guard troops to Chicago, Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon, in what he says is an effort to combat crime. However, elected officials in Illinois and Oregon have argued against this move and have filed legal challenges over it. Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee has welcomed the deployment.
The Pennsylvania Capital-Star contributed to this report.
This article was originally published by the Kentucky Lantern.
