One of the weirder news stories today tells us that a guy who became a billionaire selling junk auto parts is paying South Dakota to send National Guard to the Texas border. Seriously.
Josh Kovensky managed to get on the phone with Willis Johnson, the auto-salvage billionaire who is paying for the South Dakota state national guard – yes, a state that almost borders Canada – to go to the border with Mexico to patrol the situation.
On the one hand, we don’t want GOP megadonors going full warlord and renting state militias for this kind of stuff. On the other hand I think another just as likely scenario, quite possibly more likely though no less worrisome, is this. Kristi Noem’s political advisors said, hey we need to get in on this for the 2024 primaries. All the big 2024 contenders who run a state government are sending personnel to the border for these kinds of cosplay adventures. But South Dakota is a small state – budget and personnel-wise. And that created a budgetary headache. So they called up one of her donors to make that problem go away.
One might ask, as Steve M did, is this legal? I don’t know that it’s specifically illegal. It appears there is no precedent for somebody paying a state governor for a National Guard deployment, especially a deployment in another state.
Gov. Kristi Noem is sending 50 troops to support some kind of border protection theater being run by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Abbott, working as hard as he can to use his border with Mexico as a political asset, asked for other states to send Guard to patrol the border rather than rely on the Border Patrol. Putting aside for now whether Abbott is usurping the authority of the federal government, I believe there is precedent for the governor of one state to send Guard to another state at that governor’s request. But the fact that the deployment is being underwritten by a private citizen is just … weird. It seems wrong.
And while the National Guard, when not federalized, is under the command of state governors, they are also part of the Department of Defense. And a wealthy Trump supporter is paying for them to pull some kind of political stunt. At the moment, it isn’t clear where they will be deployed or what their mission will be, which suggests they aren’t needed all that much. But is this something states should be doing at all? Where does the Border Patrol come in? Who will these troops report to?
Further, the exact amount of the donation, and exactly what’s being done with the money, or what conditions were made for its use, are being kept hidden for “security” purposes. Right.
Paul Waldman is calling this, um, thing part of the GOP’s new rebellion against federal authority.
While the details are still coming into focus, that’s essentially what is happening in South Dakota: Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who has her eye on the White House in 2024, is taking money from the foundation of Tennessee auto auction magnate Willis Johnson to deploy her Guard troops to Texas because she thinks the federal government isn’t doing its job. …
… Noem is essentially saying that she and other Republican governors can usurp the federal government’s responsibility over the border — and not only that, they can have conservative megadonors fund the operation.
Border security is definitely a federal responsibility, part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security. State law enforcement does work in cooperation with federal enforcement, but I doubt state law enforcement engages in its own border enforcement actions and policies independent of the feds. That would be chaotic.
IMO the Department of Defense ought to pull the plug on this before other states come up with creative political uses for their Guard.
South Dakota National Guard Soldiers from the 153rd Engineer Battalion of Huron greet Gov. Kristi Noem at Barnes Canyon Camp during Golden Coyote training exercise in Custer State Park, S.D., June 14, 2019. Stars & Stripes
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I don’t know if this is available to non-subscribers, but if you can watch it, please do watch this video at the New York Times showing the January 6 insurrection/riot in detail. “The Times’s Visual Investigations team spent several months reviewing thousands of videos, many filmed by the rioters themselves and since deleted from social media. We filed motions to unseal police body-camera footage, scoured law enforcement radio communications, and synchronized and mapped the visual evidence,” it says. Most of the video footage was taken by rioters. From this you can get a sense of what was happening at the same time in various parts of the building, with diagrams showing exactly what part of the building you are seeing. It’s also pretty graphically violent.
This is a sad, lib-owning stunt ginned up by another nutcase GOP 2024 primary hopeful who has, like he rest of ’em, little else actually related to governing to offer. Noem has figured out that, to have a chance at winning this primary, she's got to drape herself in guns, insult every non-white person or thing in sight, say racist stuff, and engage in dumb political theater like this. It's a challenge to Biden's authority as head of the government, since in this case Noem is taking it upon herself via the SD Guard to do the government's job at the border, and Biden should draw the line here.
If I were Biden, I'd federalize them, put them under the control of the Army, and assign them to KP or other support tasks.
Steven Beschloss: Until Trump is indicted, we have every reason to assume his elected cult will continue kowtowing and emulating, convinced they all really are above the law.
So what's next for the RepubliKKKLANS?
Tribal Warlords?
On the other hand, if I was the Democratic Governor of North Dakota, while Gov. MILF is sending her NG to the Southern, farther, border, I'd invade SD and unify the Dakota's.
We don't need 4 Senators when there are more heads of cattle in each state than humans.
As the GREAT Hunter S. Thompson used to write: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
It's embedded at https://digbysblog.net/2021/06/a-day-which-will-live-in-infamy/.
How hot is it in summer on much of the border? Even camels refuse to go and quit when ordered to go. When one is in the armed services your biggest problem is that you can't quit. At the border you will also face stinging scorpions, wild hogs, and a void of anything that looks remotely like civilization.
You could hire mercenaries but they can say no and/or demand outrageous compensation. Neither option is available for members of the national guard.
Why not order your Republican storm troopers to the border? See how loyal they really are. The proud boys and the oath keepers can hang out and wave their flags and practice their desert survival skills. But then the deal with them is they order you. You don't get to order them to do anything they don't want to do. You might have to go along and try to supervise them in person. Good luck.
One can't, they claim, ever be too thin or too rich. If your a Republican you get to add too stupid to the list lately. Idiocracy is the party's new normal.
The governors in all of this all aspire to run for POTUS if Trump doesn't run – hopefully with Trump's blessing. So all of this is a publicity stunt where they HOPE to provoke the POTUS into a conflict pitting state's rights against Biden. It's relatively expensive and totally ineffective as a stunt because (I think) they aren't allowed to perform any law enforcement activities. So if it's an expensive stunt with little publicity value if Biden doesn't take the bait, let them parade around the TX border. I'd let the National Guard know that they will be taken into custody if they interfere with the Border Patrol.
I thought "auto salvage" was just a euphemism for" junkyard". You know, as in "yeah, I got a Hurst shifter from a 67 GTO but you gotta take it out of the wreck yourself and it'll cost ya $20". This can become a billion dollar industry? Or is it just a front for coke, porn, or medicare fraud, the real billion dollar industries?
Do the Praetorian Guard, oops, I mean the national guardsmen, expect to get paid above and beyond their typical guard stipend, or is the cash exchange just between the billionaire and the governess? Hey "The Billionaire and the Governess" could be the title of the next Netflix (copyright thingy) throwaway film.
With respect to the privately-financed Guard deployment, I don't see how this is not straight-up bribery.
I don't think the capacity to recognize control by the elite when it slaps them in the face with a brick of currency is part of the TrumpubliKKKlan mentality.