By
Olivier Knox
National Political Correspondent and Anchor of The Daily 202
June 30, 2021 at 10:25 a.m. CDT
with Mariana Alfaro
Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that The Washington Post and the New York Times had the right to publish articles based on the Pentagon Papers, a significant First Amendment victory.
I have a lot of questions.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem may seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Immigration — specifically, across the U.S.-Mexico border — inflames the party’s base. Now, a GOP megadonor has made “a private donation” to facilitate sending up to 50 South Dakota National Guard troops to our southern doorstep.
Noem announced the deployment yesterday in a statement that blistered President Biden’s handling of illegal border crossings, as U.S. and Customs and Border Protection reported intercepting 180,034 migrants in May — a new 20-year high.
The unusual financing caught pretty much everyone’s eye, generating a lot of “can they do that?” responses to the prospect of a Republican donor greasing the way for a Republican officeholder to use her official powers in a manner that lines up neatly with her potential future political interests.
President Donald Trump appears with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) in Sioux Falls, S.D, in 2018. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Noem spokesman Ian Fury told The Daily 202 yesterday the gift in question came from the foundation run by auto-salvage billionaire Willis Johnson, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to help GOP candidates, including Donald Trump.
(In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Johnson explained his motivation: “I feel sorry for the Mexicans, but they need to come through the right channels,” Johnson added. “I love ’em, I just think they oughta follow the rules.”)
Fury also said the money went to the Emergency and Disaster Fund at the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, not directly to the National Guard.
“Governor Noem welcomes any such donations to help alleviate the cost to South Dakota taxpayers. The soldiers will be on a state active duty mission. For security reasons, we cannot answer any questions about operational specifics,” Fury said.
I should leave it up to The Lawyers, but the arrangement appears to be legal: Noem has authority over her state’s National Guard, and American citizens can donate money to government. (Again, The Lawyers will be more definitive.)
But Military Times, which had one of the finest write-ups of this whole strange episode of 2021 politics, reported:
“The federal government usually pays for National Guard deployments to other states. When troops respond to an in-state emergency, they are paid from state government funds, according to Duke Doering, a historian with the South Dakota National Guard Museum. He said he had never heard of a private donor funding a deployment.
‘This kind of floors me, when you’re talking about a private donor sending the Guard, that doesn’t even make sense to me,’ Doering said.
Each state has their own laws in terms of funding, National Guard Bureau spokesman Wayne Hall told Military Times on Tuesday, referring questions for specifics to Noem’s office.”
My colleague Alex Horton reported:
“Privately funding a military mission is an affront to civilian oversight of the armed forces, said military and oversight experts, describing the move — a Republican governor sending troops to a Republican-led state, paid for by a Republican donor — as likely unprecedented and unethical.
‘You certainly don’t want our national security priorities up to the highest bidder,’ said Mandy Smithberger, a defense accountability expert at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog.
About 3,600 service members are already on the border supporting Department of Homeland Security operations, the vast majority of whom are National Guard troops carrying out federal orders, defense officials said.”
Fury didn’t answer some of my questions.
At least one of them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, regularly appears on lists of contenders for the 2024 GOP nomination — usually a few slots above Noem’s name.
“The border is a national security crisis that requires the kind of sustained response only the National Guard can provide,” Noem said in her statement. “We should not be making our own communities less safe by sending our police or Highway Patrol to fix a long-term problem.”
Olivier Knox
National Political Correspondent and Anchor of The Daily 202
June 30, 2021 at 10:25 a.m. CDT
with Mariana Alfaro
Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that The Washington Post and the New York Times had the right to publish articles based on the Pentagon Papers, a significant First Amendment victory.
I have a lot of questions.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem may seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Immigration — specifically, across the U.S.-Mexico border — inflames the party’s base. Now, a GOP megadonor has made “a private donation” to facilitate sending up to 50 South Dakota National Guard troops to our southern doorstep.
Noem announced the deployment yesterday in a statement that blistered President Biden’s handling of illegal border crossings, as U.S. and Customs and Border Protection reported intercepting 180,034 migrants in May — a new 20-year high.
The unusual financing caught pretty much everyone’s eye, generating a lot of “can they do that?” responses to the prospect of a Republican donor greasing the way for a Republican officeholder to use her official powers in a manner that lines up neatly with her potential future political interests.
President Donald Trump appears with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) in Sioux Falls, S.D, in 2018. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Noem spokesman Ian Fury told The Daily 202 yesterday the gift in question came from the foundation run by auto-salvage billionaire Willis Johnson, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to help GOP candidates, including Donald Trump.
(In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Johnson explained his motivation: “I feel sorry for the Mexicans, but they need to come through the right channels,” Johnson added. “I love ’em, I just think they oughta follow the rules.”)
Fury also said the money went to the Emergency and Disaster Fund at the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, not directly to the National Guard.
“Governor Noem welcomes any such donations to help alleviate the cost to South Dakota taxpayers. The soldiers will be on a state active duty mission. For security reasons, we cannot answer any questions about operational specifics,” Fury said.
I should leave it up to The Lawyers, but the arrangement appears to be legal: Noem has authority over her state’s National Guard, and American citizens can donate money to government. (Again, The Lawyers will be more definitive.)
But Military Times, which had one of the finest write-ups of this whole strange episode of 2021 politics, reported:
“The federal government usually pays for National Guard deployments to other states. When troops respond to an in-state emergency, they are paid from state government funds, according to Duke Doering, a historian with the South Dakota National Guard Museum. He said he had never heard of a private donor funding a deployment.
‘This kind of floors me, when you’re talking about a private donor sending the Guard, that doesn’t even make sense to me,’ Doering said.
Each state has their own laws in terms of funding, National Guard Bureau spokesman Wayne Hall told Military Times on Tuesday, referring questions for specifics to Noem’s office.”
My colleague Alex Horton reported:
“Privately funding a military mission is an affront to civilian oversight of the armed forces, said military and oversight experts, describing the move — a Republican governor sending troops to a Republican-led state, paid for by a Republican donor — as likely unprecedented and unethical.
‘You certainly don’t want our national security priorities up to the highest bidder,’ said Mandy Smithberger, a defense accountability expert at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog.
About 3,600 service members are already on the border supporting Department of Homeland Security operations, the vast majority of whom are National Guard troops carrying out federal orders, defense officials said.”
Fury didn’t answer some of my questions.
Among other things, I asked whether the “initial deployment” of 30 to 60 days is renewable, what criteria Noem would use to decide whether to extend it, and whether her administration approached Johnson or vice versa.
How much is Johnson giving? Unclear. What exactly will the South Dakota National Guard be doing in Texas? Unclear. How are other states paying for the personnel they’re sending to Texas? Is this going to set a political precedent?So many questions.
From a purely political standpoint, one of the most interesting wrinkles is the way Noem criti — okay, trashed — fellow Republican governors from Florida, Idaho, Iowa, and Nebraska who have announced they’re sending police to Texas. (Arkansas is also sending National Guard troops to Texas.)At least one of them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, regularly appears on lists of contenders for the 2024 GOP nomination — usually a few slots above Noem’s name.
“The border is a national security crisis that requires the kind of sustained response only the National Guard can provide,” Noem said in her statement. “We should not be making our own communities less safe by sending our police or Highway Patrol to fix a long-term problem.”
