But If Texas Does Go, Make Them Take Oklahoma With Them
On Wednesday, Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama, ran this hilarious graphic from “Texas Patriots for Secession” on her substack. Her post, Texas Ignores the Constitution and the Rule of Law is an important perspective on the secessionist movement that is being championed by more and more MAGAts.
Many normal people say, “Let them go; good riddance” and I can’t say I don’t feel similarly. However, let’s keep in mind that Texas has millions of progressives who do not agree. Think about Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, the Rio Grande Valley. In 2020, there were 5,890,347 votes for Trump. But there were 5,259,126 votes for Biden. In fact the only states in the country with more 2020 anti-Trump votes were California, Florida and New York.
Remember what President Grant said about the next secessionist movement: “The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” BINGO!
Vance wrote that while Republicans, on behalf off the Trump campaign, refuse to move ahead with the prospect of new legislation to secure the border, “Texas has stepped into the breach. Texas wants to take over the border from the federal government and implement its own policies, even when they lead to migrants dying as they attempt to cross the border. And as of late last week, approximately twenty-five other (red) states, had indicated support for some or all of what Texas was doing, even those nowhere close to the border.
Texas sued the United States in federal district court. That happened after federal agents cut through Texas’s razor wire so they could do their jobs. Texas claimed federal border agents were “converting”—stealing—Texas’s razor wire installations and trespassing among them. In other words, Texas sued the United States for damaging its property—the razor wire.
Lawsuits take a long time to go from start to finish (as we all know at this point), so the state asked the court for an injunction to prevent the government from disturbing its razor wire barrier while the litigation was ongoing. The district court refused. On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, that ultra-conservative court, no surprise, held that the federal government had to keep its hands off of the wire except in cases of medical emergencies.
The Solicitor General asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision, which they did, ruling 5-4 that the United States controls the border, and can continue accessing and patrolling the border and apprehending illegal immigrants while the litigation is underway. The Solicitor General argued that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling violated the Supremacy Clause by requiring federal law to yield to Texas law and “would leave the United States at the mercy of States that could seek to force the federal government to conform the implementation of federal immigration law to varying state-law regimes.” She also pointed out that the exception for medical emergencies was meaningless since the razor wire barriers were so extensive that it would take more time than was available in a medical emergency just to cut through them. The Supreme Court undid the injunction, leaving federal agents free to do their jobs. The merits of the case haven’t been decided yet. This is just a preliminary skirmish.
…Last week, Governor Abbott said he would continue to “defend” his state’s border despite the Supreme Court order and continued to install more of the razor wire. While he’s not actually violating the order, he’s certainly not complying with the spirit of it. Texas is interfering with federal agents’ ability to continue accessing the border, which the Supreme Court has already ruled they have a right to do while the litigation moves forward.
The Department of Homeland Security had to write to Texas to demand border access. In their letter, they wrote that Texas had been denying them access since Governor Abbott seized Eagle Pass city land on January 10.
Instead of responding to the letter with assurances Texas would comply and an acknowledgment that it’s well-established under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution that states can’t implement their own immigration laws, Texas plowed ahead. On Monday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said the state was “putting up wire … everywhere we can. We will continue. We will not stop.” He told Fox News, “If they cut it, we will replace it.”
Our immigration system is broken—and will stay that way as long as Republicans promote its use as a political weapon. We need a foreign policy that helps stabilize Central American countries that are struggling and that reinforces the importance of protecting human rights, for instance, of women domestic abuse victims who flee for the United States under current conditions. We must respect international law on asylum and also build and communicate clear, readily understood rules for applying for citizenship that do not involve a decades-long wait that incentivizes illegal immigration. We need legislation that creates a rational system for permitting people who want to come to this country to get in line. Immigration is an economic engine that fuels our economy, with both workers and people buying goods and services. We need good federal policy that makes immigration work. But legally, the federal government sets policy, whether good or bad, that controls in this area. The states can’t simply decide they don’t like how the federal government is handling matters.
The fear of violence and even civil war is real in Texas. The Texas Tribune noted that “The calls for Texas to defend itself and defy the federal government have set fire to a long-simmering fight over states’ rights, emboldening right-wing figures small and large, from secessionists like [Daniel] Miller to far-right militias and a convoy of protesters from across the country that are currently en route to the border. This week, the Texas Military Department— which oversees the Texas state and national guard— also began flying the “Come and Take It” flag from the Battle of Gonzales outside its Austin Headquarters. ‘Everyone in power, from the White House, to the hedge fund managers, to the Supreme Court of the United States has decided to destroy the country by allowing it to be invaded,’ former Fox News star Tucker Carlson wrote last week to his 11.3 million followers on Twitter. ‘That leaves the population to defend itself. Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?’ The standoff comes amid a recent and growing acceptance of political violence: October polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans agree that ‘patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,’ up from 15 percent in 2021, when the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection prompted PRRI to begin asking the question. Roughly one-third of Republicans and white evangelical Protestants agreed with that sentiment, compared to 13% of independents and 7% of Democrats.”
[I]n his response to the ruling, Abbott argued that the “federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states”— language that some have argued echoes Texas’ 1861 declaration of secession over slavery…
“What is this going to turn into, a civil war?” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Lt. Gov Dan Patrick over the weekend. “You’ve got Texas rights vs. federal rights, both sides with guns.”
Patrick responded: “We believe, constitutionally, we are right. We have a right to defend our citizens. We have a right to defend this country.”
After the Supreme Court decision last week, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) said that the “feds are staging a civil war and Texas should stand their ground”— a post that was shared and celebrated widely in far-right online communities, including those that were integral to the planning of “stop the steal” protests in the lead up to the Jan. 6 riot.
And earlier this week, Rep. Keith Self, (R-McKinney) announced that he would rally in Eagle Pass with a so-called “Take Back Our Border” convoy that is traveling to the border in California, Texas and Arizona this week. The Texas leg of the caravan is also scheduled to meet at a Dripping Springs distillery owned by Phil Waldron, a retired army colonel who played a key role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The organizers of the convoy have said they plan to peacefully protest, though social media chats set up for the group have been replete with references to “1776” and discussions about arriving armed and prepared for potential violence.
“There is a point where we are going to have to get our hands dirty,” one member reportedly wrote.
They aren’t the only ones preparing for potential violence: A Tuesday report by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism found that transnational far-right groups have also used the standoff to rail against immigrants and proliferate baseless conspiracy theories about the “intentional displacement of whites.”
In Texas, the report found, overt extremists and neo-Nazis such as the Aryan Freedom Network are similarly capitalizing on the controversy, with one group calling for “white men” to “join the resistance at the border.”
shitholes can happen in several ways... sudden economic crashes, stupidity, pure evil, ineptitude, indifference... but I can't remember another one that had, if you go back to 2008, all of the above in an unbroken line of causation... since 1968.