Gov. Healey: No reason for Trump to federalize Mass. National Guard
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey swatted away suggestions Wednesday that President Donald Trump might federalize the state’s National Guard as he steps up efforts to consolidate control over law enforcement nationwide.
“There’s no need to federalize the Massachusetts National Guard,” the Democratic governor said during a fireside chat with Bloomberg News in its headquarters in a Boston office tower.
As she has in recent public appearances , Healey reiterated her contention that the Republican president’s decision to deploy National Guard forces to Washington, D.C. and to other American cities is an act of political theater that’s disrespectful of the people who have chosen to serve.
“To put the Guard on the streets in a way they were never intended to be used, which is domestically against our own citizens, that’s not what the Guard is supposed to be doing,” Healey told Caroline Gage, a senior Bloomberg executive who moderated the televised forum. “That is not the mission, nor do I think it is the mission that the good men and women of the Guard signed up for.”
The Democratic governor’s comments came as Trump and his top aides have stepped up their rhetoric against deep blue Massachusetts and Boston in particular, suggesting, at alternate points, a federal takeover of South Station and warning of a coming surge of immigration enforcement action in Boston.
With troops already patrolling the nation’s capital, Trump signaled Tuesday that he’s ready to deploy federal forces to the streets of Chicago and Baltimore despite staunch opposition from elected leaders and many residents in both cities, The Associated Press reported.
Asked by reporters in the Oval Office about sending National Guard soldiers to the nation’s third-largest city, Trump said, “We’re going in,” but added, “I didn’t say when.”
“I have an obligation,” the president said. ”This isn’t a political thing.”
Hours later, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s decision to deploy troops to Los Angeles earlier this year was illegal, and declared that the Pentagon could not use Guard forces and Marines to perform police functions such as arrests and crowd control.
In a 52-page ruling , U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer also warned that Trump appeared intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” Politico reported.
On Wednesday, Healey said she agreed with Breyer’s order, calling it the “right” one, adding “we’ll see what happens with that order ... it’ll get appealed, and you know, who knows what happens from there.”
Like other Bay State Democrats and those on the national stage, Healey dismissed Trump’s rhetoric on the National Guard as a distraction tactic.
“I think what’s important, though, is that people need to focus on what’s actually going on here. The emergency was not in [Los Angeles],” she said. “That’s why Trump lost that case.”
“There are emergencies,” she continued. “There are real emergencies right now, you know, in our country that need to be addressed and [they are] emergencies that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to want to talk about, particularly the economy, particularly when it comes to costs, particularly when it comes to people paying more or at least not less for groceries, for heat, for cars, you know, for health care. There are real emergencies in this country.”
Meanwhile, that immigration enforcement surge in Boston is expected as soon as this month .
Speaking to Bloomberg on Wednesday, Healey kept up her drumbeat of criticism of the White House’s hardline tactics that have seen masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents snatch people off the streets.
“I’ve said I was all in when it came to taking out violent criminals from our, our streets, our communities,” Healey said. “But that’s not what’s happening. It’s construction workers and nannies and landscapers. It’s people taking care of our kids.”
“That’s who’s getting picked up. And it doesn’t make any sense economically. It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “I mean, we are better than that, America. We’re not a country that puts little Guatemalan kids on a plane and sends them all by their lonesome to a foreign country.”
More on Politics
Read the original article on MassLive .
