Unprecedented: How a Right-Wing Billionaire Is Privately Funding a National Guard Deployment
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Johnson’s donation is offsetting the cost to deploy 50 South Dakota National Guardsmen to the southern border. Photo: Bumble Dee/shutterstock
Exactly how much leeway do philanthropists have to support basically whatever they want? The answer: More than most people assume. The limits around 501(c)(3) support for political campaigns and lobbying are well-known, but beyond that lies a vast grey area that is becoming the frequent haunt of funders with an appetite to push civil society’s boundaries. With seemingly increasing regularity, we’re seeing new kinds of gifts with little or no precedent at all.
One such saga is unfolding as we speak. It began when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced that the state would send 50 National Guard troops to the aid of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “to respond to ongoing violations of state and federal law by illegal aliens crossing the unsecured border.” Nothing too unusual there, apart from the move’s obvious right-wing overtones.
The kicker came in a statement near the end of the memo, which noted drily that “the deployment will be paid for by a private donation.” Over the next few days, the source of that private donation became clear. So did the reality that this was, in fact, philanthropy, albeit of a very peculiar kind.
In a situation without modern precedent, a right-wing billionaire is bankrolling a domestic military deployment, and doing so through channels that appear fully legal.
It would be an understatement to say that this gift strains philanthropic norms. But with so much private money sloshing around these days, combined with a powder-keg political climate, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see this kind of thing arising more frequently. The possible implications for the military, and for philanthropy, are troubling.
An unprecedented gift
The man behind the donation is Willis Johnson, a businessman with a net worth of $2.3 billion in Forbes’ latest reckoning. After founding Copart in 1982, Johnson built the vehicle salvage and auctioning company into the clear leader in its segment, catering to auto buyers around the world via brands like CashForCars.com, CrashedToys and National Powersport Auctions.
Johnson is, no surprise, a Trump-supporting conservative, and frequently backs Republican political campaigns. But he’s based in Tennessee, not South Dakota, and it’s unclear exactly how he developed the unconventional funding arrangement with Noem. Also unclear are the particulars of the guardsmen’s mission at the border, though they’ll be joining several thousand service members already stationed there to support the Department of Homeland Security, most of whom are carrying out federal orders.
Noem’s decision to draw on private funding to offset the costs of a guard deployment drew sharp criticism in South Dakota and elsewhere, some of which characterized the deployment as a clear political stunt. Noem was elected to office in 2018 as a staunch supporter of then-president Trump, and subsequently backed Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. She’s been floated as a potential 2024 Republican presidential contender.
Other observers remarked on the deeply unprecedented nature of the arrangement. “This kind of floors me, when you’re talking about a private donor sending the Guard, that doesn’t even make sense to me,” historian Duke Doering told the Military Times. Doering, who works at the South Dakota National Guard Museum, also pointed out that the federal government typically funds National Guard deployments out of state, with the state government paying for in-state missions.
In this case, the guardsmen are deploying to the border not as part of the wider federal mission for which most of the National Guard troops are present, but for a separate mission initiated by the governor of Texas. That started after Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey sent a letter to all U.S. governors calling for law enforcement support along the border. Multiple other governors have sent guardsmen in response, but South Dakota’s contingent is the only one relying on a private donation.
“The right channels”
So far, an exact number for Johnson’s donation hasn’t been publicized, although the Associated Press pegs the total at $1 million. What is known is that this is 501(c)(3) money coming from the auto salvage billionaire’s philanthropic vehicle, Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation (sic).
A spokesperson for Gov. Noem told the Washington Post that the gift went to the Emergency and Disaster Fund at the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, not directly to the guard. But it was, in effect, earmarked for the mission at hand. In comments to the Post, Johnson said the money was “100%” meant to fund a guard deployment to the border.
“I fought in Vietnam and a lot of my buddies died over there,” Johnson said in another interview with Talking Points Memo. “And now, we’ve got people saying we can’t even protect our own borders.” Johnson says he reached out to Noem following the letter from Abbott and Ducey, in hearty agreement with the governors’ position that the Biden administration wasn’t properly defending the nation. Referring to border crossings, Johnson said, “They should make them go through the right channels, not let every nation walk across our borders when men died to protect America.”
Despite Johnson’s substantial wealth and pointed opinions, his philanthropy has been quite low-key—this gift excepted. In 2018, Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation reported total assets of around $29 million and made around $1.8 million in grants. The biggest recipient of the couple’s largesse in recent years has been the Brentwood Baptist Church in Tennessee, with smaller amounts going to other Christian-oriented causes like the Museum of the Bible and the Salvation Army.
Johnson is no longtime policy giver through his foundation—only a $25,000 grant to the NRA Foundation in 2018 fits that bill, and not much else. (Though it’s always possible Johnson backs right-wing policy groups via opaque channels like a DAF or C4 contributions). The Johnsons are the only officers listed at the foundation.
Johnson’s political giving has been extensive, but doesn’t quite elevate him into the top ranks of GOP donors. Some highlights include a $200,000 donation to the Trump Victory PAC in September 2020 and $21,200 to a PAC associated with the Kelly Loeffler Senate campaign in Georgia that November. Johnson also regularly gives four- and five-figure sums to Republican campaigns and PACs in states spanning the country, including a flurry of such donations prior to last year’s election.
Where does civil society end?
When you think about it, the Willis Johnsons of the world may be the most common donors behind this kind of philanthropic boundary-pushing going forward—that is, people with vast wealth and pointed politics whose charitable giving, when it does occur, is highly personal and lacks the sophistication of a big staffed enterprise. It’s also notable that such donors are operating without literal boundaries either, jumping into political strife far from home.
Whatever their ideology, big donors with less experience or taste for the philanthrosphere may be more willing to disregard its norms. “I didn’t know it would build into a bonfire,” Johnson told the Associated Press, referring to coverage of his South Dakota gift. “It’s getting out there a lot more than I thought.”
Then again, boundary-pushing isn’t limited to donors like Johnson. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan also strained giving norms and sectoral boundaries last fall when they devoted hundreds of millions to election infrastructure ahead of the November contests.
Those gifts—which came in the form of massive tranches of cash to a handful of nonprofit intermediaries, which then distributed the funds across the country—had little precedent and quickly drew fire from commentators on the right, who alleged that the project structurally favored left-leaning voting blocs. Notably, the money came from the couple themselves, not from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
There is, of course, a world of difference between these two cases. But the point is that philanthropists of all stripes are pushing boundaries in ways that may be more desirable in some quarters and less so in others. And these are just some of the edgier cases. What about the cornucopia of “public-private partnerships” involving philanthropy on the municipal level, including to supplement faltering local budgets and even hire staff? Or more direct alignment between mainstream funders and the White House? Or the explosion of unaccountable policy funding through DAFs and 501(c)(4)s?
In the end, the practical effect of Johnson’s gift to South Dakota will likely be minimal—just 50 more service members in support roles along the southern border. Though Noem denies it, the move is plainly political theater. But it does set quite a disturbing precedent.
“This subverts that the military is the instrument of the people,” military policy expert Katherine L. Kuzminski told the Washington Post. “This puts a marker on individual soldiers as mercenaries [that] they may not be comfortable with.”
In a nation where so many aspects of government are decentralized, it’ll be all too easy going forward for ideological donors to find receptive public officials and work up arrangements like this one. What we’re left with is the potential for the ongoing philanthropy-backed ideological arms race to erupt into an actual arms race. And it all may be fully legal.
