This week, the Supreme Court sided with federal agents to remove razor wire put in place by Texas along the Rio Grande. The state is using wire and state agents to block Border Patrol from accessing a section of the border in Eagle Pass. Homeland Security is demanding access to the area by Friday, but Gov. Greg Abbott is doubling down. Laura Barrón-López discussed the dispute with Stephen Vladeck.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    9110 months ago

    It sure would be nice if Democrats were as committed to doing good as Republicans are to doing evil.

    • themeatbridge
      link
      4410 months ago

      But that’s the problem. Democrats aren’t heroes. They’re just regular politicians trying to climb the ladder and maybe do a good thing for people they care about personally. They stand in opposition to evil, sometimes, but that’s not the same as actively trying to make things better for everyone. You could count on one hand the number of leaders we have actively working towards a better world, and most of them would be considered crackpots.

      • Kbin_space_program
        link
        fedilink
        37
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        A lot of the democrats aren’t even good politicians, they’re just less corrupt than the GOP so they have to do.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          410 months ago

          They’re literally only less corrupt enough (and not an ounce more) such that they don’t get laughed at when they say you should vote for the lesser of two evils.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -3910 months ago

      Can you explain how managing legal immigration is evil? I’m sure Texas would be happy to bus them all to your house. I trust you have the resources to take care of them.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2310 months ago

        Are you proposing that the average citizen should have the capacity to house immigrants and refugees, equal to, or surpassing that of one of the largest states in the country?

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -3010 months ago

          No but I’m shocked by how many people want to just throw open the border doors. Have you seen the numbers flowing in? It’s only going to get worse as the world economy crumbles. The money used to support it comes from our taxes. Do we need infrastructure? To take care of our own disenfranchised and needy? Provide services to tax paying citizens? The states have limited resources as well. Unmanaged immigration is not good. Immigration laws exist for a reason. I should know, I went through the entire US immigration process legally myself and even sponsored an immigrant while providing support for them. Open borders are no bueno.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            24
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            You realize e have money for all of that yes? Some FEMA style camps to house folks safely until they are deported or processed is a nothing. A speck. A crumb.

            The reason the roads are bad in your town, your locals are unhoused or needy is because of local mismanagement, and federal logjamming.

            Lastly, we claim to be the best on the planet. Time to act like it

          • @Brainsploosh
            link
            2210 months ago

            Have you seen the numbers? Could you link them?

            The only thing I’ve been able to find is 2,2 million “encounters” in a high year, over the whole country.

            Germany takes in a million immigrants per year by itself, and has at least a handful of encounters per immigrant to process them. Also has a bunch of encounters with illegal immigrants.

            Germany is smaller than Texas.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              610 months ago

              This is what gets me. People like the person above have a sense of grievance blown all out of proportion in comparison to the reality of the situation. Yes, I’ve seen the numbers but i don’t think the people panicking about immigration in the US have.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            1410 months ago

            There’s a lot to unpack here.

            Have you seen the numbers flowing in?

            No, and neither have you.

            The money used to support it comes from our taxes.

            It is a design choice - a Republican one - that we make legal immigration so difficult and time consuming that immigrants can’t quickly get through the legal process and then pay for the process with their taxes. This argument lets the GOP design their own problem and then complain it isn’t solved.

            Unmanaged immigration is not good.

            Straw man. No-one is arguing for unmanaged immigration; they are arguing for more immigration that is managed.

            Immigration laws exist for a reason.

            Yes, but you are talking like you don’t know what that reason is, so I’ll tell you. Per the Constitution, the number of House members a state gets depends on its human population, regardless of status. That means immigrants of all sorts, even illegal ones, count for it while standing in the state. The GOP and DNC both assume that districts with high immigrant populations will vote for the DNC, so the DNC always fights for making immigration easier and the GOP always gights for making it easier. Immigration laws are about preserving political power, not protecting your tax dollars.

            I should know, I went through the entire US immigration process legally myself and even sponsored an immigrant while providing support for them.

            Then how is it you seem to labor under the misapprehension that legal immigration is implemented in a practically functional way? Its backlog is quite infamous.

  • DontMakeMoreBabies
    link
    fedilink
    86
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Send in the fucking troops. When racist fucks like these tried to stop kids from going to school, that’s what worked.

    Fucking inbreds.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    40
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    I really wish Texans would take a page out of French protestors and just start setting things on fire, spewing trucks full of animal waste all over the unecessarily fancy government buildings, and finally put Abbot and his entire wealthy billionaire grifting affluent family under the guillotine, done all in Minecraft.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      1210 months ago

      Wouldn’t go over well in the end. “Antifa has started burning cities down, and is using biological weapons against the government. We are taking action against them.”

      We’ve already seen black vans grabbing people in Portland during protests, what do you think will happen when their claims are only mostly baseless, and not completely baseless?

      • @MotoAsh
        link
        1110 months ago

        What do you think is going to happen doing nothing?

      • Shalakushka
        link
        fedilink
        310 months ago

        By that logic, I guess we should all live our lives in fear of the potential backlash of fascists to any social action. Wait, doesn’t that just result in them deciding how we live our lives anyway?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        210 months ago

        In Minneapolis they burned a police precinct to the ground and that thing still hasn’t been rebuilt to this day. Resistance is possible.

  • Dem Bosain
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3410 months ago

    Texas: defies Supreme Court

    rest of the country: wait, we can do that?

  • @gedaliyahM
    link
    2310 months ago

    I hope this ends with Abbot in handcuffs.

  • rice_nine
    link
    810 months ago

    Does the Texas National Guard fall under the regular Military Chain of Command? Could, say an Army General, order the guard to stand down/withdraw or face court martial?

  • @Jordan117
    link
    English
    7
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Abbott’s a bigoted demogogue asshole, but this entire thing feels way overblown, thanks largely to poor reporting.

    The Supreme Court ruling in question was one of those zero-commentary “shadow docket” things that simply struck down a lower court injunction holding that the federal Border Patrol was not allowed to cut razor wire laid by the Texas state guard. The clear implication is that the feds have ultimate jurisdiction and the state needs to stay in their fucking lane. But because of the ruling’s terseness, there’s wiggle room for Abbott to say that they didn’t explicitly order Texas to stop placing wire or to obstruct Border Patrol operations, only that the feds were permitted to remove it if they wanted. So he takes that legal loophole and uses it to give a big middle finger to the administration and the Court using the same hysterical rhetoric he always has.

    Problem is all the reporting on the Court ruling glossed over the mechanics and interpreted it as saying more than it actually did, which in turn makes Texas’s obstinacy look less like legal trolling and more like a full-blown constitutional crisis. But Abbott has not (yet) directly disobeyed a Supreme Court order, and I expect the administration will petition the Court for an expedited slapdown of his semantic bullshit. If he ignores that, or right-wing threats pressure the Court into reversing their prior decision, then we’re really into nullification crisis territory. But the freakout roiling progressives is, at this point, premature.