Tennessee state Republican leaders are inserting themselves (and even the Tennessee National Guard) into other states, and one is getting blasted for his troubles.
Last week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced he was sending 100 Guard troops to Texas “to secure the U.S. Southern border amid an ongoing national security crisis and surging drug crisis being fueled by an open border.” This week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined the state’s name to a fracas in Florida over a gender identity case in a school.
Two weeks ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbot invited other states to support “Operation Lone Star” to secure the U.S./Mexico border after expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era covid policy that allowed the U.S. to quickly turn away migrants.
“America continues to face an unprecedented border crisis that threatens our nation’s security and the safety of Tennesseans,” Lee said in a statement last week. “The federal government owes Americans a plan to secure our country, and in the meantime, states continue to answer this important call to service.”
The Guard troops were to deploy at the end of May. They were slated to be patrolling the border and adding additional security there. They were to also help clear roads and routes, place barriers, and remove debris. Also, the Tennessee troops were to be helping to staff outposts on the border.
Lee sent 300 Tennessee National Guard troops to the border in July 2021, at the time calling it “the most severe border crisis we’ve seen in 20 years.” Those troops were also requested by Abbott. Lee promised more troops for border security in December 2021 to be sent in 2022, but it’s unclear if they were deployed. The July 2021 move by Lee earned him blowback from some who called it a political stunt.
Many expressed similar feelings (on Twitter anyway) about Lee’s most recent move to send Tennessee troops into another state in the name of national security.
But the move had its share of supporters (on Twitter), too.
Meanwhile, state AG Skrmetti joined a coalition of 21 other states’ AGs on a legal brief, inserting themselves and the power they wield in a family-and-school matter near Tallahassee from 2020.
A news release from the AG’s office said back in 2020 two parents told their child’s school that the child was experiencing “gender confusion.” The parents didn’t want anyone at school to change the child’s name or use “they/them pronouns.” But Skrmetti said school officials met “secretly” with the child about it all and they never told the parents.
The AGs want a court to reverse a lower court’s ruling in the matter and “reaffirm parents’ longstanding, and fundamental, right to be informed of critical information about their child’s mental health, and well-being.”
They argue that students must get parental consent to ”vote, enlist in the military without parental consent, and drink alcohol.” Further, they said school’s can’t treat a student’s depression or other mental health issues without involving parents, and that have “no duty or right to keep parents in the dark about gender-related distress either.”