Republican governors are starting to understand assignment

Mary Ellen Klas, Tribune News Service

Republican elected officials are choosing their words carefully, but many are starting to realise the federal government’s paramilitary crackdown on Minnesota has put them in political peril. Even President Donald Trump himself is showing belated signs of pulling back. But Republicans will need to go much further if they’re going to stop the administration’s unraveling of American democracy and a less-noticed feature of the immigration raids — the assault on state sovereignty. Because of that threat, Republican governors are not only uniquely positioned to push back, they have an obligation to their states to do it.

After federal immigration agents killed Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, the images of a rogue government pepper spraying, assaulting and killing civilians exercising their constitutional rights were juxtaposed with packed streets of Minnesotans withstanding subzero temperatures to chant, sing and march in protest. By late Monday, when Trump reassigned Greg Bovino from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and promised to reduce the number of immigration officials in the city, it was clear he knew he had lost control of the narrative.

It is also clear that governors across the country are right to fear that the immigration crackdown is part of a larger effort to put boots on the streets as the federal government threatens to overhaul the election system before the 2026 midterm elections. Because the White House doesn’t respect that the Constitution gives the power to run elections to the states, the administration is attempting to assemble a national voter database in a backdoor attempt to take that power away. By controlling voter rolls, the executive branch can discredit the state results it doesn’t like. By normalizing the presence of armed troops on the ground, it can suppress turnout and create the conditions to influence the outcome of the election.

How else to explain Attorney General Pam Bondi’s shocking demand that Minnesota hand over voter roll data, issued the same day as Pretti’s killing? How else to explain the $75 billion Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget or the decision to deploy 3,000 immigration agents to a city of 500,000 that is 1,300 miles from the Southern border? “The administration has really shown its hand,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, which advocates for free and fair elections. “They’re using these violent ICE operations as a weapon to try to get states to change immigration policies, [and hand over] voter data — to shrink their power. The states are standing up and they’re pushing back.”

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, the chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association, has offered the most forceful Republican pushback yet. In an appearance on CNN Sunday, the conservative Stitt suggested the president was more focused on intimidation tactics than immigration enforcement. “Americans are asking themselves, what is the end game? What is the solution?" he said. “...Nobody likes the feds coming to their states. And so what is the goal right now? Is it to deport every single non-US citizen? I don’t think that’s what Americans want.”

Stitt has figured out something that other Republican governors should recognize: He answers to the voters in his state, not to the White House. If Trump wants to control what Oklahoma does, regardless of what voters elected the governor to do, then his agenda isn’t the same as Trump’s. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia — including the Republican-controlled state of Georgia — have sued the DOJ over its demand that they turn over private voter data. Oklahoma is among the Republican-controlled states that have not agreed to the request, but also have not sued. Bondi’s letter was seen as another attempt at forcing Minnesota to relent.

There are signs that some of Stitt’s peers are starting to see risk in remaining silent. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a longtime MAGA stalwart, called on the president to “recalibrate” his immigration operation. Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott said that Trump “should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants.” If the president resists, he added, “Congress and the courts must step up to restore constitutionality.”

Congress is also beginning to get the message. Republican members of Congress who have already distinguished themselves as critics of the president — Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky — have been joined by a new crop of Republicans who say they want investigations into the ICE operations: Representatives James Comer of Kentucky, Michael McCaul of Texas, Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Curtis of Utah. And House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from New York, renewed calls for hearings focused on oversight of DHS.

The irony is that many other conservatives, including those who used to loudly proclaim the importance of “states’ rights” when Republican states limited abortion and expanded gun rights, have stayed silent as the federal government seeks to dictate how they enforce their laws and administer their elections. Others, such as Florida Republican Randy Fine, have cheered the federal incursions into local affairs. The hypocrisy and cruelty have become such liabilities for Republicans that on Monday, lawyer Chris Madel, a GOP candidate for governor of Minnesota, ended his campaign saying he “cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state.” He blamed the party for making it “nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.”