The Biden administration has not sued. It did win a Supreme Court ruling that it could take down the razor wire that Texas has deployed in Shelby Park and elsewhere, which the administration said has led to drowning deaths among migrants. It has now cut razor wire in some sections of the border, but not in Shelby Park, which it can’t access.
Three Biden administration officials said the Supreme Court’s recent razor wire ruling was a win in federal government’s fight with Texas over Shelby Park, but they concede it does not explicitly give control of the area back to Border Patrol.
…
The three Biden administration officials told NBC News they do not want a confrontation between Border Patrol and Texas National Guard, but they still consider legal action a tool they might deploy. Shortly after Texas started blocking the Border Patrol from accessing Shelby Park, a mother and two children drowned while crossing the Rio Grande. The officials say they might have been saved if Border Patrol had been able to operate its equipment to surveil the river and respond to migrants in distress.
For now, however, optics mean the administration is holding fire, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. The official said that between the fight to pass a border bill, defend Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment fight, and other lawsuits challenging Texas, taking on the Republican-led state would ignite another fire at a time when the administration wants to appear tougher on border security.
The three Biden administration officials told NBC News they do not want a confrontation between Border Patrol and Texas National Guard, but they still consider legal action a tool they might deploy.
This is only an issue because Biden hasn’t activated title 10 to place them under federal orders…
The administration’s excuse for not taking action, is they haven’t taken prerequisite actions. While refusing to take the prerequisite actions.
Ignoring this makes it worse. Every day Biden refuses to activate them, it because just a little less likely they’ll all listen when he eventually does it.
This shit never works, and this is exactly how civil war 1 started.
There’s not going to be a civil war. Texas couldn’t even get enough warm bodies on the front lines.
There’s not going to be a civil war
We keep saying this, but the fact of the matter is the federal government has lost control of part its territory to the state of Texas. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I also think it’s a really fuzzy line, and we’re definitely headed in the wrong direction towards it.
front lines.
I don’t think a 21st century civil War would have those, it would be a lot of guerilla warfare and nobody will definitively win or lose for a very long time, we’ll just keep seeing headlines about another attack another explosion etc etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
We’ve already had wars like this in history, and I’m a little shocked this isn’t brought up more often. When the citizens with “differences” all live amongst each other and are not geographically separated, it becomes a real shitshow, real fast.
Nope.
More money = more drones = more power = undefeatable.
/s obviously, but it is maddening to hear people talk about modern civil wars as if they’re fought like the American revolutionary war: huge fronts of soldiers walking toward each other, where more bodies and resources were more indicative of a strong force.
That line of thinking went out the window 100 years ago. The sheer might of the US army does not mean as much when it takes just one disgruntled Texan to shoot critical power transformers, take a government official’s child hostage, blow up rail lines, etc…
The idea that the American army is an unbeatable force because of our money expenditure is nothing more than American exceptionalism, and I’d encourage believers of that line of thinking to learn about modern guerilla warfare.
I fully expect that the rest of the US, assuming they still acted in concert, could occupy Texas indefinitely, but it would be like Iraq and would be a huge cost in all sorts of ways. They bigger thing is I kind of doubt the rest of the red states would want to support that effort, and many of the blue states frankly would be happy to see Texas go and stop screwing up so much stuff while costing federal dollars.
They’ll welcome us as liberators!
I fully expect that the rest of the US, assuming they still acted in concert, could occupy Texas indefinitely, but it would be like Iraq and would be a huge cost in all sorts of ways.
Exactly
many of the blue states frankly would be happy to see Texas go and stop screwing up so much stuff while costing federal dollars.
Perhaps, but they’d be really short sighted then, because Texas would just become the Afghanistan to our Pakistan, e.g. where terrorist assholes flee to after launching attacks in Pakistan
If we really get to this point, it’s going to be bad choices and worse choices and just a lot of needless suffering and death
I don’t think we’re there yet, but I also think it’s a really fuzzy line
The really scary problem is that it’s most likely a line we won’t recognize until after it’s been crossed. It’s possible we’ve already crossed the line and are simply waiting for it to get out of control.
That’s why they banned abortion, so they can get the warm bodies 16 years from now.
They want young, dumb cannon fodder/slave(-ish) labor.
I frankly question needing the court at all. This isn’t a confusing case of constitutional law in need of clarification. The federal government owns the border and anyone trying to stop them should be arrested.
The official said that between the fight to pass a border bill, defend Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment fight
Ok, since these two fires have extinguished themselves…
…ignite another fire at a time when the administration wants to appear tougher on border security.
So tough they’re backing down and letting a state handle it? Right now they couldn’t even get to a starving asylum seeker in that area to preemptively expel them. Backing down when someone takes your shit and maybe considering possibly asking someone else to tell them not to isn’t projecting “toughness”.
FDR once activated the National Guard to seize a company and literally drag the CEO out of his office because the CEO refused to agree to a collective bargaining agreement…
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-seizes-control-of-montgomery-ward
Biden won’t activate the National Guard to stop them from acting against a supreme court order.
We need more FDR democrats and less neoliberals.
Give me another Roosevelt, Teddy or Franklin, I’ll vote for them in a heartbeat.
One protected nature, the other the nation.
Fucking FDR was so popular he made the two term limit to ensure no one else could control the country that long
He was the cause of the two term limit, but he didn’t propose or push it or anything. Otherwise, yeah.
Yeah, not what we want to be supporting. The Posse Comitatus act is there for a reason. I’d rather we don’t start supporting use of the federal military as law enforcement.
And I hate to say it, but pretty sure the reason they haven’t been activated federally is because they’re worried calling that bluff might not work out well and escalate the confrontation, potentially leading to something worse.
Frankly this is awful. But also something manufactured to sound a lot worse. From a states rights perspective this isn’t that different from states legalizing marijuana while it’s federally controlled and illegal.
That would only be true if the state then sent armed agents to prevent the FBI from arresting a pot dealer. Having different rules is vastly different from claiming territory and excluding the federal government.
So tough they’re backing down and letting a state handle it?
There is so much about this that pisses me off, but yes, this right here is so insane I can’t stop fixating on it. The goddamned idiot political consultants running the White House are seeing all these polls come in where voters are worrying about border security and don’t trust the Democratic party to handle crime on the southern border, and their response is to let Greg Abbott openly commit crimes on the southern border and brag about it, because at the end of the day things like “toughness” and “border security” and “law and order” just mean doing whatever the loud angry white dipshits in charge want to do and fucking over brown people, even under a Democratic administration.
Well you see, what you’re missing is a spinectomy. It’s required to become a Democrat. The worst these spineless losers can muster is the threat of legal action… while people are literally dying.
Republicans might be evil, but Democrats CHOOSE to aid them in tacit ways. They are, in fact, just as culpable.
Presuming that the administration doesn’t really want to do any liberalization at the border (a very safe assumption), what is the actual victory condition of escalation the confrontation here?
I really want everyone to think very carefully about the counterfactual here. What’s to be gained by going full scorched earth against Texas? What’s the political or practical benefit to going in and arresting government employees / Texas national guardsman who are acting according to orders of the governor?
Texas isn’t going to handle the border any better than the feds did. They will almost certainly handle it worse, and look like assholes and monsters while doing it. They’ll prove the administration right that the border is hard and these “simple” solutions are idiotic and ineffective. Denying fed access is unquestionably illegal and frankly seditious/secessionary. Even the people defending them know and agree that it is a bad look for a state that is begging for federal aid to be simultaneously refusing federal aid.
On the flip side, if the feds feed into the New Civil War politics by escalating or even turning violent against Texas, the entire Confederacy will close ranks and use that momentum to likely win elections. That’s what Abbot wants. That’s WHY he is making this very public provocation. If you actually look at the hotspot here, you’ll see that the actual “disputed” area is basically just one fucking park. It’s barely anything.
The controversy here is both literally and figuratively borderline inconsequential. It’s just a big, stupid political trap. “That’s nice, hun” and waiting for them to wear themselves out is the correct response to it.
Enforcing federal supremacy is neither scorched earth nor of negligible value. And I pointed out how muddling around and backing down makes Biden look weak.
All this talk about Republican traps is the same dumb shit where Democrats continually backed down from Trump because they thought he was some sort of political mastermind and any action would just be playing into his hands. The idea that the masterstroke for Democrats to just sit back and let the electorate come to the obvious conclusion that they’re the adults in the room is just an excuse for baked in cowardice. They’ve done this time and again and it never works out. People think they’re out of touch and dawdling and this is just a silly game while the Republicans are left to control the narrative, ratchet up to the next level of provocation, and look tough during troubled times.
Abbot isn’t some sort of political mastermind. These guys aren’t geniuses, they’ve got stupid playbooks they’re almost forced to follow because they’re competing to be the dumbest idiot of the dumb-dumb party and the moment they step out of line their lunatics fall on them. The only reason it works is because they’re almost never confronted with power.
And again, this is a convenient time when both the right political move and the right governmental move are the same thing. The federal government needs to shut this down yesterday. They have supremacy over the border and a call to allied states to send troops is blatantly rebellious. States can’t be allowed to play at rebellion, because when you let that grow you get closer and closer to the real thing. They’re just being performative blowhards, until they aren’t.
I’m not overly familiar on how the US works but if the mayor of a county starts doing shit at the border here they would be arrested and most likely charged with treason because they have zero authority over the border.
Something like this actually happened here back before my country wasn’t in NATO and Russia tried to pull the breakaway region bullshit in Viru county. Some Russian stodge got into power and held a referendum to join Russia which quickly led to them being in prison and a lot of Russian citizens being deported who took part in that.
because biden the conservative is trying to conserve the politics of yesteryear by playin nice in the face of fascists.
im sure that path will work out just groovy
Biden says legal actions, but shouldn’t he stop playing nice with the supreme court in the first place?
Edit: I mean that maybe he can do things like targeting their patrons, banning gifts etc.
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Only because Biden and all Democrats for that matter are all too much of a spineless loser to use the ONE thing fascists respect: force.
Why rush? The Administration knows the law is on their side, and will be whether or not Texas escalates what they are doing. Texas knows this as well, which is why I doubt they will do any huge escalation. Their big headline-grabbing letter quoted the minority opinion in the Supreme Court, and everyone who matters knew that when they read it. Minority = losing. I think they were so loud precisely because they know they are on the wrong side of the legal argument, and want to make noise for their base to react to.
Why should the Administration amplify that by making even more noise? They want to amplify the notion that Republicans in Congress are in disarray and can’t agree to do anything productive at all. Pulling the trigger on a lawsuit (or on federalizing troops there) will just serve to give the “five families” in Congress something to rally around.
The losers here are the migrants, of course, but they are already in a losing position. Lots of people are trying to turn this into another Ruby Bridges moment, but there’s a world of difference between asking for rights for US citizens of color vs. asking for rights for non-US citizens who are in the active process of breaking the law.
…asking for rights for non-US citizens who are in the active process of breaking the law.
It is not illegal to seek asylum at the US border. Refugees are not “illegals”.
It’s complicated. It is illegal to cross the Southern border at any random point that is not an official point of entry. International law recognizes rhe right of asylum, but “international law” is not binding here at all unless we choose to make it so. Migrants could go to a port of entry and claim asylum in a more legally binding manner but as far as I can tell they are far less likely to be let in there than if they make it to US soil through some other place.
When someone is apprehended crossing the border illegally and claims asylum, they are entitled to a hearing, but that system is so backed up that the hearing could take years. So where do they stay in the meantime? Prior to the Trump administration, they stayed here, in a quasi-legal status. Trump started forcing them to wait in Mexico.
So do these migrants who cross the border outside of official points of entry get to be legal simply by saying “asylum” to a CBP officer while on US soil?
Domestic US law recognizes that right of asylum. Don’t need to bring up any international law.
We have weaponized our incompetence against these people. We’re so bad at managing the border that we are unable to process them in a fair, safe, and orderly fashion. We’re unable to even follow our own laws and offer the due process our Constitution requires.
The expectation should be that the asylum-seekers do not know the process. Do not know the proper rules. Are desperate and maybe even afraid and just doing their best under life and death (i.e. coercive) circumstances. As the ones who defined that process, it is our job to catch and guide them through it. It is our job to give them their due process. There should be no presumption of their criminal intent. That should have to be proven in a court of law.
It’s definitely complicated. Feeding into the right-wing rhetoric about the “illegals” is a way to simplify and thought-kill that complexity.
You also understand, though, that current US law states that you need to enter at a designated point of entry. And entering at other points is illegal.
I’ll ask again, does a migrant entering somewhere else and simply invoking “asylum” make their entry legal? Because that seems to be the crux of all of this. I contend that it doesn’t magically make their entry legal, but does entitle them to a hearing, which gives them more rights than if they had simply snuck across and not said the magic word.
I’m not presuming any criminal intent other than the technicality of having to break ort laws, as written, to hane any success with claiming asylum in the first place. When we establish laws that must be broken in order for justice to be done, the laws need fixing.
The whole business is absurd. Republicans don’t want to fix it at all, because they want to campaign on it. But we do ourselves no favors by pretending the current system, based on magic words, is good for anyone.
I’ll ask again, does a migrant entering somewhere else and simply invoking “asylum” make their entry legal?
I feel like my last reply addressed that, but since you are asking directly I’ll be explicit. It does not make their entry legal. Their entry was already legal.
That’s what I mean when I say it is up to us to guide them through the complex process we’ve set up – they are seeking asylum which is a status we recognize. They might not know the proper legal incantations or arcane procedures for that, but they aren’t the ones who invented those legal incantations and arcane procedures. They are refugees doing their best. They should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
It is not illegal to, while acting in good faith, get lost in the bureaucracy, ESPECIALLY when that bureaucracy is designed from the ground up to be unmanageable in order to disparage your right, ESPECIALLY when your own personal circumstances leave your life at risk.
Sure, you can point towards people who clearly knew that particular point of crossing was not legal. And I will point to people who already had their proper rights disparaged without due process based on how much of a failure the “legal” crossing was.
If you’re only using these words like “illegal” in a 100% legalistic framework, where we care about the letter of the statutes and not the actual rights and people the statutes assert and protect… stop. Don’t do that. That’s harmful.
[Why isn’t Biden blundering right into the GOP traps and playing their game on their schedule?]
The fact that the White House actually believes in 4D chess strategies like this is a big part of why Biden’s approval rating has been so low imo
He’s playing right into their game by making the Republicans the party of “getting shit done” and Democrats into the party of “whiny losers” - Republicans get to juice up their base while the Democratic base becomes even more demoralized.
I bet you believe in Biden’s “bear hug” strategy with Israel too, don’t you? It’s all just 4d chess! He can’t just be bad.
