The Border Mess Gets Even Messier

“A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower,” goes the adage, and Greg Abbott is the Clown of the Week – threatening the integrity of the Constitution to advance his personal political goals

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Tuesday, February 6, 2024, 2:00 p.m.

         “A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower,” warns The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes. In last week’s newsletter, I postulated that Greg Abbott’s performative assholery on the Texas border was irresponsible and dangerous. Just a week later, we’re seeing compelling evidence of that.

         Over the weekend, the U.S.-Mexico border was attacked by two groups seeking to promote their own economic opportunity at the expense of the laws and the welfare of the longtime residents of that part of the country. Sadly, neither of those groups were migrants.

         The first was the “Take Our Border Back” convoy of 700,000 18-wheelers 50,000 high-end trucks and SUVs 300 old and busted pickups and Trump sticker-covered sedans, most of which were from Texas. After stopping off in Dripping Springs for a spirited rally featuring Yesterday’s Punchlines Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent, the convoy headed south to Quemado, about 20 miles upstream from Eagle Pass. There they listened to Christian music, baptized nubile women by full immersion and, of course, sold thousands of dollars of MAGA merchandise.

(Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin entertain at the “Take Back Our Border” rally in Dripping Springs, February 1, 2024. Photo: Michael Karlis, San Antonio Current)

         The other attack, in many ways more ominous, featured Our Only Governor Greg Abbott and 14 of his counterpart Republican governors, who proclaimed their belief that the U.S., and specifically Texas, was being “invaded,” triggering an illusory right under the Constitution to defend themselves.

(Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and 14 other GOP governors in Eagle Pass, February 3, 2024. Photo: Kaylee Greenlee Beal for The Texas Tribune)

         At the heart of this folderol is the “compact” theory of the Constitution, which holds that what binds the Union together is a web of agreements between the states and the federal government, which, if broken by the feds, permit the states to strike out on their own and do as they please.

         This may sound familiar to you. It was the political and philosophical justification for the secession of the Southern states in 1861, which precipitated the Civil War.

         Lincoln’s view, which ultimately carried the day at prodigious loss of blood and treasure, was that the Constitution was an agreement among “We, the People” and not among the states as governing units.

         Lincoln was not alone in this conviction. As Daniel Webster said in 1833 of the South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification (declaring certain federal tariffs to be null and void):

[I]n the Constitution, it is the people who speak and not the States. The people ordain the Constitution, and therein address themselves to the States, and to the legislatures of the States, in the language of injunction and prohibition. The Constitution utters its behests in the name and by the authority of the people, and it does not exact from States any plighted public faith to maintain it. On the contrary, it makes its own preservation depend on individual duty and individual obligation.  . . . [N]o State authority can dissolve the relations subsisting between the government of the United States and individuals; that nothing can dissolve these relations but revolution; and that, therefore, there can be no such thing as secession without revolution.  . . .

         Sadly, like the secession ordinances in the early 1860s, these rhetorical exercises are in service of an attack on the very idea of a pluralistic, multiracial democracy. Immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country,” says the leading candidate for the GOP nomination for President. Tucker Carlson, Texas Lite Guv Dan Patrick and other far right leaders have spoken about “Great Replacement Theory.”  

         (For a more in-depth review of Abbott’s border posturing and the grave constitutional issues it raises, I commend you to this excellent essay by Thomas Zimmer is his Substack newsletter Democracy Americana.)

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Concluding Thoughts

         It has long been my contention that the whole Operation Lone Star clown show is performative, designed to secure Greg Abbott’s place atop the Pyramid of Crazy that is the Texas G.O.P. and, perhaps, enhance his bona fides for some national role, perhaps even V.P., in a Trump restoration.

         Along the way, Operation Lone Star has drained an estimated $10 billion from the state’s coffers, money that could fund teacher pay raises or health care for low-income children. Abbott’s favorite “own the libs” stunt, busing migrants to “Democrat-infested” cities like San Francisco or New York, has so far costs Texas taxpayers an estimated $124 million. Take that, Chicago!

         Just as important, the Greg Abbott Show has contributed to poisoning the national conversation about immigration, which is a serious but solvable problem. A bipartisan compromise bill, worked out in the Senate over several months, is for now considered dead in the House (and on life support in the Senate), endangering desperately-needed financial and military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

         And on a broader scale, the U.S. has no answer to the staggering corruption and gang violence, much of it driven by the insatiable norteamericano appetite for drugs, that has crippled many Central and South American countries, leading to the mass migration of terrified citizens looking for a safe place to begin their lives anew. This may be a truly intractable problem; the sad part is that nothing Greg Abbott or the G.O.P. is doing will help make that situation better.

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In Other News …

         A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled unanimously this morning that Donald Trump cannot claim presidential immunity for his efforts to overturn the November 2020 election:

For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

         Trump will appeal the decision to the full D.C. Circuit Court and, if it fails there, to the Supreme Court. Both actions should be viewed primarily as delaying tactics. The best thing the two courts can do is promptly decline to consider the appeals, thus enshrining today’s opinion as the definitive law on the matter. But will they?