White House Criticizes Half of the Nation’s Governors for Backing Texas as Border Standoff Grows: Karine Jean-Pierre Accuses Greg Abbott of Holding Up Agents Doing Their Jobs and Won’t Say Whether Biden Will Raise National Guard federalize

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized the 25 Republican governors on Friday signed on a letter He said Texas Governor Greg Abbott had the right to install razor wire to defend his state from illegal immigrants crossing the border.

Jean-Pierre also blasted Abbott for preventing U.S. Customs and Border Protection from doing their work, but he would not say whether President Joe Biden would federalize the National Guard, which Abbott has deployed in the area.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, encouraged the nation’s GOP governors to send additional National Guard troops to Texas — with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt saying he “absolutely” would would do – which could raise the stakes.

“The way we deal with this is legislative,” Jean Pierre said Friday. “The way we deal with this is for Congress to act.”

She suggested that the 25 Republican governors who signed the letter “talk to members of Congress and senators in their states.”

White House Karine Jean-Pierre (left) on Friday criticized the 25 Republican governors who signed a letter saying that Texas Governor Greg Abbott (right) had the right to install razor wire to defend his state against illegal immigrants who cross the border.

Texas. Governor Greg Abbott has ordered the Texas National Guard to ignore a Supreme Court ruling that gives federal Border Patrol agents full access to where law enforcement enters the Rio Grande. The barbed wire can be seen in the background

Later during the briefing, she voiced the encouragement again.

‘That’s actually very easy to do. It doesn’t take a lot of work for them to make that request and talk to their members of Congress, who they’re probably talking to about a lot of other issues,” she said, before being interrupted by a reporter.

The journalist had asked whether Biden was considering federalizing National Guard troops after it emerged that Texas violated a federal court order and that more National Guard troops could come at the former president’s urging.

“I’m not going to speculate on any actions the president might take,” Jean-Pierre said.

She objected when the reporter, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent, suggested that her recommendation that Republican governors talk to members of Congress was a solution that was “political” in nature.

“It is not a political process for a governor in his state to talk to his members of Congress about taking legislative action. That’s not politics, that’s just the right thing to do on behalf of their constituents,” she said.

Jean-Pierre then reiterated the point that Biden has “taken this incredibly seriously, incredibly seriously,” pointing to the draft immigration legislation he released now, more than three years ago, on his Inauguration Day.

The press secretary said she believed a bipartisan deal could still be reached on Capitol Hill over the border and financing of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Senate Republicans at a closed-door meeting that the “politics have changed on this,” referring to the fact that Trump will likely wrap up the Republican Party’s primaries soon .

Since Trump’s initial announcement in 2015, one of his top talking points has been border security.

“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell reportedly said. according to Punchbowl News.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah – Trump’s biggest critic of the Republican Party in the US Senate – called Trump’s insistence that lawmakers not immediately set the border “terrible.”

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said Thursday. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congressmen that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame it on Biden is … really terrible,” the retiring senator added.