South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is headed to the U.S. southern border amid speculation she could be picked as former President Trump’s 2024 running mate.
“I am on my way to the warzone at the Southern Border to stand with Texas, @gregabbott_tx, and the National Guard,” Noem said Friday morning in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Biden is failing, so we will continue to do everything we can to help secure the border,” the governor added.
The Texas National Guard on Tuesday appeared to disregard a recent Supreme Court decision that allows border agents to remove razor wire erected by Texas, and continued building such barriers on the southern border.
Trump on Thursday encouraged “all willing States” to deploy National Guard members to Texas amid the feud between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the federal government.
“In the face of this National Security, Public Safety, and Public Health Catastrophe, Texas has rightly invoked the Invasion Clause of the Constitution, and must be given full support to repel the Invasion,” Trump said in a statement.
Noem and fellow Republican Govs. Kevin Stitt (Okla.), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), Glenn Youngkin (Va.) and Brian Kemp (Ga.) backed Abbott in his action.
“If the Constitution really made states powerless to defend themselves against an invasion, it wouldn’t have been ratified in the first place and Texas would have never joined the union when it did,” DeSantis said on X. “TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it.”
Youngkin said in his own X post that the Biden administration “has turned every state into a border state.”
“Virginia stands with Texas,” Youngkin’s post read. “@GregAbbott_TX is doing the job Joe Biden and his border czar refuse to do to secure our border.”
Meanwhile, some Democrats, such as Reps. Joaquin Castro (Texas) and Greg Casar (Texas), have expressed their support for the nationalization of the Texas National Guard to align it with the court decision and federal law.
Noem has said she would be Trump’s vice presidential pick “in a heartbeat.”
The governor campaigned for Trump in Iowa, and Steve Bannon, a former top adviser to Trump on his 2016 campaign and in the White House, named Noem in addition to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) among those he thought the former president should consider as his running mate.