Goin’ South

By James Moore

Goin’ South – etymology. (become worse): The origin is unclear. Common belief attributes it to the standard orientation of maps, where south is the downwards direction. Alternatively, it could stem from a euphemism used by some Native Americans for dying.

Instead of working to solve problems at the border, there is cascading stupidity to make the situation unimaginably worse. There are supposedly 750,000 tractor trailers bound for the Eagle Pass area, where the Texas National Guard is blocking federal agents from Shelby Park. The giant truck convoy, if it manifests, is said to be heading to Quemado, Texas, about twenty miles north of where the Border Patrol is stuck in a standoff with Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Military Department. As doubtful as it might be that three-quarters of a million trucks will roll into the brush country, the idea that such an event will serve to solve the immigration crisis is patently absurd. If they lined up nose to trailer all along the line from Brownsville to Tijuana, they might actually create an obstruction. Presently, though, they are just another distraction. And we’ve already got a few of those.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6mYkWYsP0o&t=24s

 

Hypocrisy is the Republican political fuel driving the crisis. Abbott of Texas and twenty-five other GOP governors are defying an order from the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Border Patrol agents to cut and remove the concertina wire lining the border. These Trump tools holding public office are people who sang the glories of the new conservative court and the rule of law when the justices overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a woman’s right to choose. The court, though, is not relevant when it rules against what the far right conservatives desire in their effort to turn this country into an authoritarian wasteland. Opponents to the decision are trying to artfully parse what they think it does not mean with Abbott deploying his doublethink to interpret the court’s intent.

“There were no sentences,” he said on a network news channel that has never questioned his actions, “Or paragraphs or pages of an opinion written by the Supreme Court, so no one knows at all what they were thinking.”

Greg thinks he knows what the justices wanted, though, and that’s for Texas to defy a law it finds offensive. He keeps citing the state’s constitutional right to protect itself from an invasion, but his misinterpretation of the language in the U.S. founding document is as dangerous as his rhetoric. Conservatives believe that Article I, § 10, Clause 3, give states the authority to muster up forces to stop foreign attacks, which is not what is occurring on the Rio Grande. Here is the exact text: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

A few analysts have pointed out that the language was composed at a time when travel was slow and distances were too great for military forces to move quickly so the founders gave states power of self-protection until federal resources arrived. “Admit of delay” is the key phrase. In fact, Texas appears to also violate the clause simply by keeping troops in a time of peace. The Texas Military Department includes the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas State Guard and those organizations have provided the soldiers erecting razor wire and anti-climb barriers along the border, following orders of their adjutant general and the governor while defying the U.S. Constitution, which gives border protection authority only to the federal government.

Odds are increasing of a Constitutional crisis down here. Defying federal law and ignoring orders of the country’s highest court is no minor thing. What happens when secessionists convince our radical governor that Washington has no authority to collect taxes? Or protect the environment or guarantee product safety? Federal regulations guide American business and lives and if those can be capriciously cast aside by an attention-seeking politico, what is their actual value? Don’t they become meaningless words on parchment or in pixels? President Biden has complete authority to call up the Texas National Guard and issue new orders to the troops as their Commander-in-Chief. What happens then? The political blowback will be loud with conservatives claiming such actions prove he wants an open border and Whites to be replaced by brown hordes from the south. Such a move by the President has great potential for danger that could turn into a flash point of a greater crisis.

It’s easy to see this, too, as a Gov. George Wallace of Alabama moment. Wallace, who ran his administrations with the slogan of “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” did not want Blacks enrolled at the University of Alabama. When the first two African American students arrived to register for classes in 1963, the state’s governor was standing in the schoolhouse door to stop their passage. President John F. Kennedy, when informed of the governor’s plans, federalized the Alabama National Guard, which then arrived to give Wallace the message he needed to get out of the way and let the two students enroll and begin the racial integration of the university. Abbott’s defiance is hardly different, and the same powers are at the disposal of President Biden, should he choose to use them. It is impossible to guess, though, if the outcome would be peaceful.

There is not an open border, though; there is an overwhelmed border, however. Biden does not want an open border and he has had a supplemental budget proposal to help fight the crisis. The President has been asking Congress to fund 1300 more border patrol agents, 375 administrative law judges to process claims of asylum and arguments for cause of entry, and more technology to detect fentanyl, which enters the U.S. mostly hidden in trucks crossing at legal ports of entry, not in the backpacks of desperate immigrants. The Senate has devised a bi-partisan plan that Biden describes as the “toughest and fairest set of reforms on the border we’ve ever had in our country.” They give the President the power to shut down the border when certain numbers of apprehensions are reached on a daily basis. There are guidelines also that will trigger mandatory expulsions back to Mexico and process asylum claims within six months.

The president has vowed to shut down the border the day the new law hits his desk for signature, but Trump’s party has no interest in solving a problem that can be used to effectuate political harm on the incumbent president. The House Speaker, who has not even read the measure, has called it “dead on arrival” in the house and that he would not put the law to a floor vote. Trump told his minions he does not want the bill passed, and, consequently, the votes are not likely to materialize in the lower chamber. If you fix the border, you sure as hell can’t run a campaign bitching about problems on the border, so, as I’ve insisted previously, there will be no agreement passed and we will live with this crisis until Biden is reelected and gets a Democratic House and Senate.

Meanwhile, down on the Rio Grande, tensions increase. Greg Abbott sees himself as America’s savior, violating federal law and endangering lives. Border Patrol agents will probably not begin removing razor wire but they are certainly authorized by the court to cut it and rescue immigrants entrapped or stressed by conditions on this side of the river. The frightening moment arrives when a BP agent exercises his or her authority to cut the wire and a Texas soldier steps in front of them with a gun to prevent the action. What defuses that situation? It seems a confrontation wanted by Texas leaders as they invoke images and language from the Texas Revolution and the “Come and Take It” cannon from the first land battle. They are spoiling for a fight. Not a solution.

 

 

This article was originally published in Texas to the World.

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James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

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