Obama Meets With Newly Elected Governors, Including Abbott

President Barack Obama met Friday with a handful of newly elected governors from across the country, including the Governor-Elect Greg Abbott, who has led efforts to sue the president over his immigration executive orders.

Greg Abbott said the lawsuit did not come up in his conversations with the president.

"Today was not the setting or the time to talk about legal issues," Abbott said, adding that he did raise his state's concerns about the recent influx of young people arriving at the U.S. border in his conversations with other administration officials.

Abbott, who is currently Texas' attorney general, led a coalition of 16 other states this week in filing a lawsuit seeking to block Obama's immigration moves. The executive actions Obama announced last month will allow more than 4 million people in the U.S. illegally to stay in the country.

Obama said much of the agenda for Friday's meeting focused on the economy and ways states and the federal government can work together to promote growth.

"The good news about governors is they usually don't have time to be ideological because people expect them to deliver," Obama said.

Newly elected governors from Alaska, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island also took part in Friday's meeting.
 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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