Texas Republicans Divert Nearly $500 Million For Political Theater At Southern Border

The state of Texas has been rapidly running out of money to continue their ridiculous political stunt at the southern border featuring the National Guard, but crafty Republicans in the state have been able to take money away from other state agencies - including law enforcement and prisons. They are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it is all to maintain the illusion that there is a massive crisis taking place at the US-Mexico border. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Last week, we talked about the new survey among National Guard members that are stationed down at our Southern border in the state of Texas and how much they hate being there because there's no crisis at the US Mexico border. According again, to the people who have been pulled from their civilian lives to go sit down there on the border and monitor the crisis. There isn't one. Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped the state of Texas from diverting nearly half a billion dollars, $480 million towards this effort to keep the National Guard down there along our Southern border. Now shift of the money actually took place in January. You had several departments, including by the way, let's see who are they, the, the agencies, the state run agencies that run prisons, the state police, and that of course regulate bars in the state of Texas. So they're literally taking money away from all the cops in the state of Texas and giving it to this little political theater, starring our National Guard down on the Southern border.

Almost half a billion dollars. And of course we wouldn't have known about this if media outlets in the state of Texas hadn't filed a freedom of information act request that revealed to them that this happened last month. That's why it's just now being reported, because they didn't want anybody to know. And of course, now that it has been revealed, you've got Republican governor Greg Abbott coming out and saying, oh no, no, no. These agencies have totally assured us that taking tens of millions, actually hundreds of millions of dollars from them, totally isn't gonna hurt them. In fact, it's gonna make 'em better, he says. He says, it's gonna make 'em better because now we've also got the National Guard and they're gonna bolster our, our law enforcement efforts, which isn't what the National Guard is supposed to do. Like you can't have National Guard on the streets investigating homicides.

You, you, you can't have them making routine traffic stops because somebody ran a stop sign. They're down there, they hate it and they understand that you are using them as political props because there's no actual crisis along the Southern border. And again, I've been talking about this in stories going back all the way since last summer, when these Republicans, most of them of course from Texas, telling us there's an invasion. Biden has this open border policy and the people who live in those border towns were saying, this isn't true. Like literally I live here, I see the border it's right there. Nobody's coming across. You're telling us hundreds of people are coming across all day. I'm telling you as somebody who looks at it all day, it ain't happening. But Texas is content to spend half a billion dollars every quarter, because this roughly $500 million they just got, they say it's gonna last through the end of spring. So, you know, three and a half months I guess, and then it's gonna run out.

And then, actually they're saying, it's probably gonna run out before the end of Spring, then they're gonna need another half a billion dollars. They say all in all, it's gonna cost them about $2 billion per year to keep the National Guard down there. And there's no end in sight folks. There is no end in sight. Actually, you know what, I take that back.