A group of 19 Democratic governors on Thursday condemned President Trump’s threat to send National Guard troops into major cities like Chicago, Baltimore and New York as an “alarming abuse of power.”
It is rare for such a large group of governors to collaborate on a joint statement, but Mr. Trump’s extraordinary push to override their authority and militarize cities in Democratic-run states has prompted an unusually united response.
“Instead of actually addressing crime, President Trump cut federal funding for law enforcement that states rely on and continues to politicize our military by trying to undermine the executive authority of governors as commanders in chief of their state’s National Guard,” the governors wrote.
“Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland and New York or another state tomorrow, the president’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members,” they added. “This chaotic federal interference in our states’ National Guard must come to an end.”
Governors JB Pritzker of Illinois, Wes Moore of Maryland and Kathy Hochul of New York signed the statement, along with all but four of the nation’s Democratic governors — those in Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii and Minnesota. Their statement came a day after Mr. Trump said he has “the right to do anything I want to do” with the National Guard.
Blue state governors have been vocally pushing back on the idea that Mr. Trump could deploy troops into other cities as easily as he has done Washington, where he has cited a number of false or misleading crime statistics to justify taking over policing in the nation’s capital.
Earlier this week, Mr. Pritzker warned Mr. Trump to keep the military out of Chicago, pointedly noting during a news conference that of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates, eight are led by Republican governors. And over the weekend Mr. Trump and Mr. Moore got into a social media spat that began about crime in Baltimore.
And Earlier Thursday, Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts called a veiled Trump administration threat to take control of Boston’s South Station — as it said it would with Union Station in Washington — “outrageous.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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