Oklahoma Governor Comes This Close to Asking Troops to Rebel Against Biden

Republicans from all over the country are throwing their weight behind Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his standoff with the federal government over the border—but it doesn’t seem like they’ve entirely thought the situation through.

At least 25 Republican governors have declared their support for Abbott, including Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, and Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, the last of whom is flirting with the idea of telling Oklahoma’s National Guard to defy the federal government’s orders if it comes down to it.

Many Republican governors have sent troops down to Texas over the last few months, to help Abbott with what he’s calling his “Operation Lone Star.” But on Thursday, Stitt took things to the next level when questioned by Fox News’s Steve Doocy.

“Have you thought this through? If you send your Oklahoma National Guard down there, and a bunch of other states send them down there, all Joe Biden has to do is federalize all of them. Next thing you know, they’re doing essentially support work for the Border Patrol, who are down there right now just trying to process the invasion of migrants. Your National Guard could be working for Joe Biden,” theorized Doocy.

But Stitt didn’t waver, questioning instead the military’s ultimate allegiance.

“I’ve been on the border, I’ve talked to the border agents. Even the border agents themselves are scratching their heads, but these are good Americans, and they’re trying to obey their boss—but they don’t agree with that policy either,” Stitt began.

“Of course, the National Guard soldiers are Texans and Oklahomans and Tennessee folks. These are just Americans, and they don’t like what’s going on. So you would really be putting our soldiers in a tough, tough situation to protect their states against fentanyl deaths and illegal immigrants and terrorists, in a lot of cases, just to appease some administration that has a political agenda,” the Oklahoma governor continued, completely ignoring the fact that it would be entirely up to the states as to whether or not they put their National Guard in such a precarious situation.

“That’s the only possible explanation,” he added.

The feud between Abbott and Biden escalated on Monday, following a Supreme Court decision that sided 5–4 with Biden, ruling that Texas had overstepped its authority by erecting concertina wire fences along the Rio Grande section of the U.S.-Mexico border, which effectively prevented the U.S. border patrol from doing their job.

Since then, Abbott has declared the influx of immigrants across the border an “invasion”—a status that Abbott claimed supersedes federal mandates—and issued a statement on the state’s constitutional right to defend itself. State officials have also continued to erect the fences and claimed Texas’s legal battle over the issue isn’t over.

Senator Josh Hawley said the quiet part out loud on Friday, explicitly tying the GOP’s border security grandstanding to a coordinated effort to hurt President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

“Senator, is this deal dead, effectively?” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked Hawley Thursday evening.

“I hope so,” Hawley said. “It should be. If it’s not dead yet it should be dead. There is absolutely no reason to agree to policies that would further enable Joe Biden.”

The Senate reached a bipartisan border deal this week, which would include additional funding for border security as well as aid for Ukraine. But the minute Donald Trump criticized the deal, Senate Republicans caved and said they probably won’t pass it.

Hawley’s statement is more proof that Republicans aren’t all that interested in the so-called border crisis. They just want to use it as a political tool in the 2024 election.

Republicans have spent months quietly killing any bipartisan packages related to the border and foreign aid in favor of their own proposition. Also, on Friday the House’s highest member rejected the Senate’s bipartisan deal.

“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Friday. “If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”

“Nine months have now passed since we sent our Secure the Border Act (HR 2) to the Senate,” Johnson wrote, referring to an extreme asylum-limiting immigration bill that died in the Senate. “Since the day I became Speaker, I have assured our Senate colleagues the House would not accept any counterproposal if it would not actually solve the problems that have been created by the administration’s subversive policies.”

The wavering deals come part and parcel with a showdown along the U.S.-Mexico border between Texas and the federal government over the placement of concertina wire by Texas’s local authorities along the Rio Grande.

On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared the influx of immigrants across the border an “invasion”—a status that Abbott claimed supersedes federal mandates—and issued a statement on the state’s constitutional right to defend itself.

That was just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Joe Biden by declaring that Texas went outside its jurisdiction by erecting makeshift concertina wire fences along the Rio Grande section of the U.S.-Mexico border, effectively preventing the U.S. border patrol from doing their job. Texas has continued building new wire barriers since that ruling.

At least 25 Republican governors have issued their support for Abbott, including Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.

E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer used Donald Trump’s own words against him on Friday, urging the jury in his defamation trial to make the former president “pay dearly.”

Attorney Roberta Kaplan said during her closing arguments that the trial is not just about stopping Trump from continuing to defame Carroll, but also about showing that no one is above the law. She pointed out that Trump has continued to make false claims about Carroll, despite already owing Carroll $5 million in damages from their previous trial.

Kaplan said they were seeking at least $24 million in damages, more than double the $10 million minimum Carroll sought at the start of the trial. Carroll’s team is now asking for at least $12 million to repair Carroll’s reputation and another $12 million for emotional harm caused.

Kaplan told the jury she would let them determine how much more Trump owes in punitive damages. Kaplan reminded them, though, that Trump had said under oath he is worth billions of dollars.

“It will take an unusually high punitive damages award to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump,” she said.

“Now is the time to make him pay for it. And now is the time to make him pay for it dearly,” Kaplan concluded, borrowing a phrase Trump had previously used to threaten Carroll.

This is the second time that Trump’s own words have come back to bite him in this trial. On Thursday, Carroll’s lawyers played a clip of Trump’s video deposition that he sat for last year, ahead of his bank fraud trial in New York. In the clip, Trump brags that his Doral resort in Miami “could be worth $2.5 billion by itself.” When Kaplan said Trump claimed he was worth billions, she was referring to this testimony.

These boasts could drive up the amount he will ultimately owe Carroll in damages. Legal analyst Lisa Rubin explained on MSNBC last week that the jury “is allowed to consider how much Donald Trump is worth.”

Trump already owes Carroll $5 million in damages after a jury in May unanimously found him liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. It looks like that number is about to go up significantly—and Trump only has himself to blame.

Donald Trump stomped out of his defamation trial against E. Jean Carroll on Friday, just minutes after he entered the courtroom.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan was beginning her closing arguments before Trump’s tantrum. She said the trial was not just about getting Trump to stop defaming Carroll, but also to show that the former president isn’t above the law.

“Did [Trump] respect the jury verdict? No. Not at all. Not even for 24 hours,” Kaplan said.

Moments later, Trump got up and walked out of the courtroom. Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to Carroll’s lawyer) interrupted the arguments to note Trump’s exit for the record.

Trump was unanimously found liable in May for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. Friday’s trial was for comments that he made attacking Carroll in 2019.

Just hours after the jury issued its verdict in May, Trump launched fresh vitriol at Carroll during a disastrous CNN town hall. Carroll amended her second lawsuit to include those comments.

Trump already owes Carroll $5 million in damages from the first trial, and Carroll is seeking at least $24 million this time around. The current trial is just to set damages, because Judge Kaplan ruled in September that since Trump was already found liable for assaulting Carroll, his comments are by default defamatory.

But neither the multiple rulings against him nor the potentially steep cost of damages have deterred Trump from continuing to slam Carroll as a liar. Trump has gone on at least five long social media rants against Carroll just since the trial began last week. The first time was just before the trial began, and the second was—inexplicably—as he sat in the courtroom for the first day of the trial.

Trump set a personal record during the third, after his trial was delayed earlier this week (per his own lawyer’s request). That time, Trump made 42 posts about Carroll on Truth Social in the span of 13 minutes. And then he made another 37 posts about her Wednesday, the night before his highly anticipated (and incredibly short) testimony. He also posted about Carroll Thursday night, pretending he had no idea who she is.

Private correspondence between Florida Representative Matt Gaetz and a close friend reveals that the MAGA lawmaker’s intentions in kicking out former Speaker Kevin McCarthy weren’t quite as clean as he claimed they were.

In private communications reviewed by The Daily Beast, Gaetz makes clear that his efforts to undercut and oust the former speaker were motivated by the renewed House Ethics Committee probe into Gaetz’s alleged payments to a minor for sex. The source was so fearful of Gaetz’s retribution that the Beast could not quote or even refer to the type of communication for fear that Gaetz would identify them—but they shared information indicating that Gaetz singled out McCarthy individually for reviving the investigation, refusing to believe that McCarthy did not have singular control over its resurgence.

Gaetz initially led the crusade to oust McCarthy from the speaker’s office in October, claiming that he was caving to Democrats on a spending deal.

Since then, the truth has become clearer. Over the summer, the Floridian reportedly told a group of colleagues that his push to boot McCarthy was in direct response to the probe, while a senior GOP staffer recalled Gaetz complaining about Kevin due to the investigation, according to the outlet.

“As I’ve answered likely 100 times on the record, I led the charge to remove Kevin McCarthy from his role as House Speaker because he failed to keep his promises,” Gaetz said in a statement to the Beast. “The Daily Beast continues to lie about me, and I think it’s due for a round of layoffs.”

Meanwhile, the congressional investigation into Gaetz has entered a new phase, reportedly making contact with several new witnesses in recent weeks as it probes allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, and public corruption by the MAGA Republican.

The accusations against Gaetz arise from a DOJ sex-trafficking probe into one of Gaetz’s friends, Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector for Seminole County, who was later convicted of sex trafficking. The initial probe also named Gaetz, who Greenberg claimed had paid him via Venmo in order to have sex with an underage girl in 2017.