A clash between Texas and the Biden administration over who controls the Texas-Mexico border continues to escalate this week as federal officials once again demanded the state give Border Patrol agents access to a park that is a popular corridor for migrants to enter the United States illegally.
This comes in response to a recent Supreme Court decision, where the court allowed federal officials to dismantle a wire barrier along the border, prompting a legal battle initiated by Texas. Texas argued that this action, aimed at aiding migrants, infringes on state sovereignty and damages Texas security measures.
In response to this decision, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a letter arguing that Texas has a right to control the border and that it supersedes federal government control. Abbott’s accusation that the federal government has breached the Constitution by having “broken the compact between the United States and the States” is almost identical to South Carolina’s 1860 declaration of secession.
Furthermore, Abbott’s letter espouses the fringe theory of constitutional law known as “compact theory,” popularized by Confederate states during the Civil War era and supported by Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
If this goes on for a week or even a month, maybe even a few months, ignoring him would probably be fine. The issue is if this continues indefinitely. If states can ignore orders from the executive branch and supreme court rulings as long as they want, from now all the way to election day for example, then they have achieved an effective secession.
We can’t have 25 states all ignoring the federal government and, out of those 25, ten plus states sending members of their national guards to illegally block the US border patrol for the next 10 months and claim we having a functionally united country. At that point that block of states is for all intents and purposes is a separate country. I don’t see why if they can get away with this indefinitely, which they have yet to do, why they wouldn’t ignore the federal government on all issues.
People are saying they do something like this every year. I remember people talking about civil war and sedition for years now. I cannot on the top of my head remember an example where this kind of incident happened in my life time. I do remember studying the Little Rock Nine in school however.
People are saying it’s an election year, of course they are doing this stunt. Are half the states in the US going to get to be their own country every two years then? Election years don’t mean politicians get to do whatever they want as long as it’s to help their party win an election. Biden doesn’t have to act reflexively every time Abbott or some other Republican does something like this. But it’s going to be pretty strange if 4th of July roles around this year and this is still going on.
OTOH, if Republicans manage to pass something like a nationwide abortion ban, I will be all for states defying the federal government and blocking federal agents from doing their jobs.
Yeah, but the Republicans are controlled by fascists. They will not hesitate to immediately federalize the national guards of blue states because they won’t have to worry about elections in a christofascist dictatorship. What the Republicans are doing benefits them now in a liberal democracy. It won’t benefit Democrats in an authoritarian dictatorship.
States not complying with a Republican federal government won’t be an issue to the fascists, because they will almost certainly add a bounty hunter provision to laws that they can’t expect blue states to uphold. Armed conservatives can try to arrest their neighbors they suspect of getting an abortion. The cruelty is the point. Not one person in a blue state might even get sent to prison over a nationwide abortion ban, but women suspected of getting an abortion may find themselves placed under citizen’s arrest by bounty hunters with guns. edit: typo