As you know, Governor Abbott of Texas placed the Texas National Guard in control of the international border which is the Rio Grande River, where immigrants have been wading or swimming across. The Texas Guard refused to allow the U.S. Border Patrol to enter the section they control near Eagle Pass, Texas. Recently a woman and her two small children drowned in the section patrolled by the state.
The Biden administration sued the state to recognize the supremacy of federal law. The federal district court agreed with the feds. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the state. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the federal government.
Now Governor Abbott says he will ignore the Supreme Court because the state is facing an “invasion.”
The PBS Newshour invited a notable constitutional lawyer, Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas, to discuss the issues.
I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that the issue of states’ rights was settled in 1865.
Meanwhile, Governor Abbott is scoring lots of points for defying the federal government and the Supreme Court. Texas has a small but loud minority that wants to secede from the U.S.
Abbott wants a confrontation with the federal government. Biden will have to stand up to Abbott’s grandstanding while taking a strong position on securing the border.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think we’ll just let ’em secede this time —
It really hasn’t been worth the headache …
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Right??
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We could give Texas back to Mexico and make Puerto Rico the 50th state. We wouldn’t have to change the flag that way!
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🙂
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excelent idea
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excellent
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Interesting to note….Gov Abbott himself has not even been present during this so-called “emergency” – he is traveling in India trying to drum up business for Texas. So obviously all immigrants are NOT created equal in his eyes??
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Somewhere deep in their unwoke unconscious minds these xenophobes know Texas was born of immigrants graciously and generously invited to colonize a hard-scrabble land, who promptly thanked their hosts by revolting against their laws and customs and turning their immigration into an invasion. Their biggest fear is always that others will do unto them as they have done unto others.
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It takes a historian – Heather Cox Richarsdon’s Letter from an American yesterday placed Abbott, Texas and the 25 GOP governors who claim the federal government can’t tell them what to do in the appropriate context.
The trouble Lincoln perceived stemmed from the growing lawlessness in the country as men ignored the rule of law and acted on their passions, imposing their will on their neighbors through violence. He pointed specifically to two recent events: the 1836 lynching of free Black man Francis McIntosh in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 1837 murder of white abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois.
But the problem of lawlessness was not limited to individual instances, he said. A public practice of ignoring the law eventually broke down all the guardrails designed to protect individuals, while lawbreakers, going unpunished, became convinced they were entitled to act without restraint. “Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane,” Lincoln said, “they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-27-2024?publication_id=20533&post_id=141114806&isFreemail=true&r=1cllq
Go, read it.
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Christine,
I loved Heather Cox Richardson’s piece and the line she implicitly draws between Lincoln’s speech and the present. But I seldom post on the same day because her work is copyrighted and I’m a paid subscriber. I try to be careful not to create a problem.
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Thanks, Diane. Copyright is something I know very little about.
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As I recall, there is a 300-word limit on what you can reproduce without permission.
I have exceeded that sometimes, hoping that the newspaper or writer won’t care.
So far, I have been called only by a newspaper in Providence. And I immediately slashed what I quoted.
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Actually, the “issue” of “states’ rights” was resolved with the Constitution.
Of course, states don’t have rights anyway. People have rights.
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Texas isn’t alone with a small minority wanting to split from the US.
This site lists 10 separatist movements (some still active) in the United States.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-separatist-movements-in-the-united-states.html
Abusive Abbott is pandering to Traitor Trump’s fascist MAGARINO racist cult. If he doesn’t, he may lose in the primaries the next time he runs for governor or another elected political position.
I think he is planning to stay the governor-dictator of Texas for the rest of his life.
“The Reconstruction-era constitution of 1869 removed the limit on terms, Texas remains one of 16 states, territory or jurisdiction (including the U.S. Territory Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) with no gubernatorial term limits.”
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A-BUTT…that’s all I can say.
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When our Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution in 1797, they threw “states’ rights” in the wastebasket along with the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation — the United States’ first constitution — was a wholly states’ rights document. In Article II it declared: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
That states’ right constitution had nearly lost the Revolutionary War for us and had nearly sent our Founding Fathers to the hangman because in the absence of an overriding federal authority the states, for internal political reasons, refused to raise taxes on their citizens to sufficiently fund George Washington’s army and left it starving and out of ammunition at Valley Forge. Only the supplies from the French and Spanish governments made it minimally possible for the army to survive.
So, when the Founding Fathers were sent by their respective states to “tweak” the Articles of Confederation, our Founding Fathers instead tossed the states’ rights Articles into the trash and wrote a new Constitution that began with “We the People”, not “We the States”.
That’s also why no state, even if 100% of its citizens vote to secede from the Union, can secede: The Constitution is an agreement between ALL of We the People of the United States, and it requires a majority vote of ALL of We the People throughout our nation to allow any state to secede.
The “Supremacy Clause” of our Constitution gives our elected federal government the constitutional authority and power to trump (pun intended) state authority.
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Gov Abbott of Texas is a lawyer but apparently thinks his state is subject to the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution.
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The US constitution would not have been ratified had not there been protections for the states from an over zealous federal government. The Bill of Rights lays out the specific rights of the people–just in case the feds tried to take them away.
Tell the president that he must obey SCOTUS as well (paying college debt –aka buying votes). The US government must protect our borders from invasion–foreign and domestic. We should stand with Texas. If this was unimportant, 700,000 trucks, 25 Governors and multiple state national guard units would not stand ready to stop this. We hear what the administration and the higher ups of the BP has to say but start listening to the BP deputies on the ground and the ranchers have to say. They are pleased.
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protection from domestic invasion?
lol
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At the rate this government is going…you bet domestic tyranny
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You should take this comedy act of yours on the road, April. It can be exhibited to Gen-Zers, who will simply HOWL with laughter. Who knows, there could be an HBO comedy special in it for you!
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Gen Z is invading the electoral process and Repugnicans and their racist policies will soon be history. WE ARE AN IMMIGRANT NATION. Let’s keep it that way. High immigration numbers are GOOD for our economy AND for American working people, as any Repugnican could know if he or she bothered to find out. But the “leaders” of the Repugnican Party already know and refuse to acknowledge this because race baiting is so useful to them, and the MAGATS in the Repugnican Party don’t want to find out anything that would challenge their racist mythologies.
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So, here’s a question: After Gen Z voters weigh in and cause Repugnicans to lose election after election after election, how long will it take the Greying Old Party to wise up and start waking TF up? That is, scuttling their politics of hate and becoming woke?
That they must do or go the way of the Know Nothings. Which would be a better name for the party under loser ex-president Jabba the Trump.
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Repugnicans didn’t get it after the lost so hugely, everywhere, in the midterms. This is not surprising. These are not the brightest people, and they haven’t a clue how far behind our culture in general has left them.
They are about to find out.
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This is nonsense.
“Invasion” means invasion by foreign troops, not would-be immigrants.
This is typical Texas thinking – the rules don’t apply to them.
Texas has never considered itself subject to the laws of the United States. They think they’re their own country. They aren’t.
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Putin wants Trump or an isolationist like Tucker Carlson, in office. The Palestinian protests in the US have been infiltrated (or, initiated) by Russian influence. The migrant wave is, with a high probability, being fueled by Russian interference.
Fomenting trouble that costs Democrats, elections is the Kremlin game plan.
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All the people risking life and limb to get to the U.S. are really just being sent by Russia?
We are on Planet Earth, you know.
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April’s lack of interest in women’s rights in these threads… overarching concern for GOP talking points….
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jsr
The researchers at the Foreign Policy website are more informed and smarter than you are. Two years ago they posted, “Putin is taking advantage of the invasion-stirred migration crisis.” The article’s focus is Europe. The foolish assume the US is immune from a similar Kremlin strategy.
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The article from which Linda pulled that line has to do with Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Europe and the negative reaction in Europe to this refugee crisis, which is perceived to favor Putin. It has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with immigration via the U.S. Southern border.
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I see diplomacy is still a foreign concept to you.
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April,
What you describe is The Articles of Confederation, not the U.S. Constitution.
Do you think FDR bought votes with Social Security? Do you think SS should be eliminated and every state should have its own version?
How many Border Patrol officers on the ground have you talked to? How many ranchers?
Do you want to take responsibility for the mother and two children who drowned thanks to Abbott’s barbed wire?
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This is incorrect.
The Constitution had been ratified before Congress even took up the matter of a Bill of Rights. The House and Senate were in business before Madison brought up the idea. In fact, Congress wasn’t wild about the idea. But they considered Madison’s proposal anyway.
Madison had originally thought the Bill of Rights unnecessary, and Congress was surprised when he presented his suggestions.
Madison proposed no separate bill of rights. Instead, he proposed that his new proposals be written into the text of the Constitution itself. It only later became a separate document.
Madison thought of bills of rights as “parchment barriers”, because he had seen states create such bills and then ignore them.
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Those who are interested in being informed rather than, rejecting without basis, information, can do keyword searches and find a plethora of articles e.g. from Global Initiative, “Russian-speaking smuggling networks operating in Turkey, Central America, and Mexico.”
jsr- Your insults (“planet”) date you.
It doesn’t appear the public knows what view (in truth) Charles Koch and Leonard Leo have about Putin, who is a Christian evangelical. The public does know that Catholic Vote which is in the same political camp as Leo and Koch, praises Viktor Orban. Koch, during Russia’s war against Ukraine, has not been a defender of Ukraine.
The following may have been happenstance or a miscalculation. Catholic Church support for the GOP could become an albatross around the party’s neck because of American demands for reproductive freedom and, for the sanctity of life of a fetus’ “vessel,” as in the case of the 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.
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Putin is not an evangelical. He is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church and practices its rituals. Ukrainian refugees in Europe have nothing to do with immigration at the US Southern border, and while Putin is guilty of many, many crimes, sending poor Hondurans and Guatemalans etc. to our border is not one of them. That’s ludicrous.
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For some, assessment of a threat requires something more than written or oral information. For example, Susan Collins listened during the hearings for Barrett’s confirmation and underestimated the threat. Some Trump supporters in 2016 didn’t assess his threat, waking up later, for example, Gen. Miley. For some of Trump’s supporters, it took the insurrection on Jan. 6 .
On occasion or frequently,
infliction of bodily harm or direct witnessing is required for an individual to perceive a threat. In the case of the Catholic church’s political threat, it required women’s lives to be put at risk.
The Church’s threat to public schools required St. Isidore virtual school in Oklahoma. I don’t know why it took so long to recognize the threat.
We can hope that decision makers, e.g. voters, politicians, military, etc. try to do better in the future.
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What is “BP”?
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Bob- Just idle curiosity-
If Fiona Hill reported a conclusion that Putin exploits the migrant crisis, would you double down and reply, “Putin has neither the interest nor the means to ‘fuel’ the migrant crisis in the US?
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This is shocking and terrifying. I don’t know how we deal with this/Abbott.
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When he behaves in violation of federal law, he should be arrested and charged.
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He’s not a king. He’s a citizen governor.
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