Gov. DeSantis Threatens to Quit Bipartisan Governors' Group Over the President's Troop Deployments, Citing 'State Sovereignty'

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. DeSantis threatened this week to pull his state out of the National Governors Association unless the bipartisan group condemns the President's deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, warning of 'federal and interstate overreach,' 'gubernatorial authority being trampled' and 'state sovereignty being ignored.'

The phrases are notable chiefly for their provenance. 'States' rights,' 'federal overreach' and 'sovereignty' have spent the modern era as the property of the opposite party, deployed against Washington whenever Washington was run by the governor's own side. This week they changed hands in an orderly transaction, and are now load-bearing for the argument they were built to oppose.

Supporters praised the governor for standing up to an authoritarian federal power grab. Critics accused him of grandstanding and undermining public safety. The Press notes that both groups have, within recent memory, argued the exact reverse about troops in cities, and that the only variable in the equation is the party of the commander in chief.

The governors' association, which exists to be bipartisan precisely so that no one has to mean it, declined to take a position, a posture that has kept it alive for over a century.

Asked whether he would have objected to the same deployment under a President of his own party, the governor said the question was hypothetical, offensive and, the Press adds, answered every four to eight years by the historical record.