Snip this clip at 33:38 for future amusement:
Reporter: You said you envision the WA National Guard would be deployed, if necessary, to protect public spaces - sort of a buffer between the federal agents and maybe public protests?
Gov Ferguson: That's a fair way to put it, yeah.
Reporter: And then secondly, on the accountability question, can, in your opinion, local law enforcement and state patrol detain a federal law enforcement officer they see doing something that violates state law? In the moment?
AG Brown: It's obviously incredibly complicated when you're talking about the division of authority between state law enforcement, local and the federal government. What I would say is, as a general matter, state and local law enforcement do not have to simply watch or look away if the law is being violated. If they see somebody being assaulted unlawfully or attacked unlawfully or otherwise having their legal rights violated, we do not expect state and local law enforcement officers to simply watch or do nothing.
It is important that each of those jurisdictions talk to their lawyers and legal teams to understand where those lines are drawn, and after an incident, the lines of investigative authority or prosecutorial authority can be very challenging to navigate.
But I think the WA public expects their local sheriff or local police chief or officers that work for either to not simply watch if somebody in their community is having their rights violated. We hope we're not ever in that circumstance in WA state, but I think as a general matter that is the expectation, if not the duty, that we would anticipate our local forces having.
So the WA National Guard can be deployed to protect "public spaces" while ICE terrorizes and murders WA residents. And we can totally rely on local cops to make sure the feds aren't breaking the law.
Have these two obtuse clowns ever met a cop before?
Let me introduce y'all to Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank. Here he is, commenting before the state Law & Justice committee on the upcoming law prohibiting cops from wearing face coverings, threatening to command a mob to surround the state building in Tacoma if they ever try to remove him from office (Jan 15 2026, 12:08 PM, at 1:16:58 in the video):
https://tvw.org/video/senate-law-justice-2026011149/?eventID=2026011149
This video was from 10 days ago.
Realistically the governor has a limited number of tools available to address this problem. None of the tools are perfect for the job, and they all have their flaws.