GOP congressman floats using the military to blockade tribal reservation that resisted Trump's border wall

On Tuesday, writing for The Informant, reporter Nick Martin flagged an interview days before the election in which Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a far-right Republican with ties to white supremacists, suggested that if Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is elected governor of Arizona, one of her first acts could be to create a military blockade of a tribal reservation on the border with Mexico that resisted former President Donald Trump's attempts to construct a border wall there.

"In a little-noticed interview on the October 28 edition of the Rumble show 'In The Trenches with Teddy Daniels,' Gosar said Lake could order the state's National Guard to surround and blockade the Tohono O'odham Nation, a Native American reservation that borders Mexico, ensuring that 'no one passes,'" wrote Martin. "Gosar also floated the possibility that Lake would go to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask for some kind of authority over the reservation, though he was vague on the details."

"The tribe’s reservation hasa population of 9,561, about 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line,and is situated on a large tract of land almost twice the size of Delaware that reaches from central Arizona down to a 74-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border," wrote Martin. "Tribal law enforcement works closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies in the area, but the tribe has long opposed building a border wall on its land because its ancestral territory includes part of Mexico and many residents still have family on both sides of the international boundary."

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"What if, just what if, somebody like Kari Lake wins the governorship, which she should, and she follows through on her promise like Donald Trump did, and says, 'OK, I'm calling a state of emergency across the state of Arizona. I'm militia-izing the National Guard. I am putting them on the border. And let's do this: Let's outline the Tohono O'odham Nation'," said Gosar. "We outline them, all — with all our National Guard. And we say no one passes. Well, that tells the Tohono O'odham, you're either America and Arizona first. Or you're Mexico first. And Mexico doesn't recognize you. Oh, that's a good one."

Teddy Daniels, a conspiracy theorist who founded "Bikers for Trump," previously ran for lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania, but his campaign was derailed by allegations of domestic abuse, in which he was accused of "pushing, hitting, and kicking" his wife, as well as threatening to kill the family dog in front of her and her children, as well as a separate woman who accused him of being delinquent on child support. Daniels was eventually evicted from his home by an order of protection.

During her campaign, Lake has become highly controversial for campaigning alongside QAnon proponents and Nazi sympathizers. She faces current Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in this year's gubernatorial race.