This week, Republican governors across the country escalated their conflict with the Biden administration over the southern border by invoking the same legal theory that slave states wielded to justify secession before the Civil War.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, joined by 25 other GOP governors, now argues that the Biden administration has violated the federal government’s “compact” with the states—an abdication that justifies state usurpation of federal authority at the border.

This language embraces the Confederacy’s conception of the Constitution as a mere compact that states may exit when they feel it has been broken. It’s dangerous rhetoric that transcends partisan grandstanding. And as before, it’s being used to legitimize both nullification and dehumanization.

  • @CharlesDarwin
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    111 months ago

    They do this on the micro level all the time with that “sovereign citizen” horse manure - going on and on about their “rights”? What fucking rights? You declared yourself someone who is not a citizen of the United States?!

    So if Texas were to secede, then cry that their electoral votes don’t count, that would just be the sovereign citizen BS writ large.