Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott is openly defying a Supreme Court ruling that confirms what was already well established: the federal government is in charge of our borders.
Abbott has manufactured a series of stunts to score political points over immigration. Now, he has erected razor wire barriers at the border and mobilized the Texas National Guard and police to block the efforts of federal agents to take the barriers down and enforce federal laws.
This, as Abbott knows, is performative politics. He is in the disreputable tradition of Alabama Governor George Wallace “standing in the schoolhouse door” to stop integration, or Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, who became infamous for threatening to beat Blacks seeking to integrate his restaurant with ax handles.
Now Abbott claims the right to spurn the laws and the Constitution and the Supreme Court, invoking Texas right to self-defense. He has been supported by 25 of the 26 sitting Republican governors.
The Party of Lincoln has twisted itself into the Party of Calhoun. It was South Carolina’s John Calhoun–who put forth the doctrine of nullification. In defense of slavery, he argued that slave states could nullify federal laws that trampled their laws enforcing slavery. It took the Civil War, the most costly war in U.S. history, to assert federal authority and establish the fact that the United States was an “indestructible union.” This was the great triumph of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party.
Now Abbott and his fellow Republican governors stand on the side of Calhoun against Lincoln and for nullification, even scorning the majority of the most reactionary Supreme Court since the 1800s.
Public concerns about immigration and the Mexican border are real. Republicans have decided that this is an issue that they can use to rouse racial and nativist fears, feed on the anger of Americans to divide us and wield against Joe Biden.
This is all posturing and performance. How do we know? When Senate Republicans and Democrats produced a very harsh bipartisan bill that would provide $20 billion for border security (along with aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian relief for Gaza), Donald Trump told Republicans to torpedo it. He didn’t want Biden to have a “victory.” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had demanded that border security be included in any bill providing aid to Ukraine or Israel, then announced that he wouldn’t even allow the bill to come up for a vote in the House if it passed the Senate. Republicans don’t want to address the problem. They want to preserve the issue as a political club.
The posturing is an ugly business. Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification and state rights led directly to the Civil War. Southern defiance of the Supreme Court order to integrate the schools led to President Eisenhower mobilizing the Arkansas National Guard to protect Black students and President Kennedy mobilizing the Alabama National Guard and ordering Wallace to step aside. Joe Biden may have to do the same if Abbott’s defiance continues.
Texas, for all the bluster, has no desire to secede. More than 20 percent of state revenues come from the federal government. Moreover, as tragically demonstrated in the power crisis of 2021, where 246 people died and more than 4.5 million were without power for several days in the middle of a brutal cold freeze, Greg Abbott’s administration lacks the competence to manage independently.
The cynicism here is clear. Once more, in an election year, Republicans seek to gain by dividing Americans. Once more, they block efforts to address concerns in order to be able to campaign on them. Once more, they will inflict cruelty on the most vulnerable for political profit.
Lincoln believed that we were a better people than this. In the 1860s, it took a war to bring slavery to an end. In the 1960s, it took a civil rights movement to bring segregation to an end. Now Americans must decide again – will those who seek to divide us benefit, or will we seek leaders who appeal to our better angels and seek to solve problems, not posture about them?
You can write to the Rev. Jesse Jackson in care of this newspaper or by email at jjackson@rainbowpush.org. Follow him on Twitter @RevJJackson.
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