An outlaw state needs to be brought to justice
SAN DIEGO — These are dangerous times. The Biden administration is having its resolve tested. It must rise to the occasion.
The authority of the United States is being brazenly challenged by a rogue state, and the White House must respond firmly and unflinchingly. Anything less will be seen as weakness, which will only embolden our adversary. If Team Biden thinks the situation is complicated now, just wait. If the administration turns the other cheek, the threat will grow bigger and become more dangerous. That, in turn, will probably result in catastrophe, including further loss of life. The only way to handle a bully who hits you is to hit him back twice as hard — so he will never mess with you again.
Now it’s time for President Biden to hit back hard — at the outlaw state of Texas. The Lone Star State has gotten too big for its britches.
Consider recent developments on the U.S.-Mexico border. Notice that I didn’t say “Texas-Mexico border.” The international boundary was intended to separate two sovereign countries, not one country and a state with delusions of being its own country.
Texas officials are trying to illegally usurp the authority of the federal government to enforce U.S. immigration policy. Texas National Guard troops are putting up razor wire to keep out migrants. According to the Biden administration, those troops are also blocking the U.S. Border Patrol agents from having access to strategic areas near the border.
One such area is Shelby Park, a city-owned public park in the border town of Eagle Pass. The U.S. Border Patrol has used the park as a holding site for migrants. Last month, in a stunt that has brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott deployed his state’s National Guard to seize control of the park. Since then, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the troops prevented U.S. Border Patrol agents from entering the park.
The Department of Homeland Security gave Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton the chance to allow federal agents access to the park. But Paxton didn’t budge. He claimed in a letter to DHS that Texas has a “constitutional right of self-defense” and kept his response to the administration short and sweet. “Your request is hereby denied,” he wrote.
To Texans, their insurrection makes sense. They claim that the Biden administration is not policing the U.S.-Mexico border — at least not to their satisfaction. So Texas claims it can take over the job.
Yet outside the Lone Star State, none of this makes sense. The same immigration restrictionists who insist the border is open and that the administration isn’t enforcing the law will also, in the next breath, sound the alarm over the number of arrests at the border.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol agents had encounters with more than 300,000 migrants in December. If the border were really open, that number would have been zero.
Furthermore, over the past couple of years, Texas officials have claimed that the Biden administration is not enforcing federal immigration law. So now, by strong-arming the U.S. Border Patrol, they are preventing the administration from doing just that. How is that logical?
Also, Republicans usually argue for a strict constructionist approach to the Constitution. The founding document makes plain — in Article 1, Section 8 — that immigration falls within the purview of the federal government. What happened to the strict constructionists?
Finally, the Constitution also prohibits states from entering into treaties with foreign countries and from printing their own money. If Colorado or Maine was to sign treaties and print currency because the federal government wasn’t doing so, would this be legal? Not likely.
What should Biden do? History books hold the answer. In 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace also defied the federal government. He rejected the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education which struck down segregation in public schools. In a stunt of his own, Wallace stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent two Black students from entering the building.
President John F. Kennedy came down hard. As commander in chief, Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and ordered it to remove Wallace. No more stunt.
Biden should do the same thing with Texas: federalize the Texas National Guard and deprive the insurrectionists of their muscle.
Clearly, Texas Republicans haven’t thought this thing through. It reminds me of the shortsighted Texans who took refuge at the Alamo in 1836. How did that story turn out?