Immigration update

Thom Hartmann - Rightwing seditionist media is positively orgasmic over the fact that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is quoting from the 1860 South Carolina Succession Proclamation in his defiance of a Supreme Court order that he back down from the border and leave immigration enforcement to the federal government. (Specifically, Abbott said the feds have “broken the compact between the United States and the States.”) They’re excitedly talking about this kicking off the long-awaited and much-anticipated civil war laid out in the two novels that have become the bibles of the neo-Nazi hard right, Camp of the Saints and The Turner Diaries: in each, armed white men rise up and kill Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, “communists,” and queer people, leaving a purely straight white “Christian” country... 25 Republican governors just published a statement backing Abbott’s insurrectionist sentiments and encouraging him to maintain his resistance to the federal government. So, what should Biden do?

Back in 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defied a Supreme Court desegregation order, using his state’s National Guard to block Black children’s entrance to the schools. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nationalized that state’s National Guard and ordered them to accompany the “Little Rock Nine” — nine young African American students — to school.

President Biden may be on the verge of doing the same in Texas, although his spokesperson this week said he’s going to wait to see if Congress can first pass the border aid package that’s currently being debated in the Senate (and opposed by Trump and

Politico- President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill to address the immigration crisis at the nation’s southern border, saying he would shut down the border the day the bill became law. “What’s been negotiated would — if passed into law — be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

Biden’s Friday evening statement resembles a ramping up in rhetoric for the administration, placing the president philosophically in the camp arguing that the border may hit a point where closure is needed. The White House’s decision to have Biden weigh in also speaks to the delicate nature of the dealmaking, and the urgency facing his administration to take action on the border — particularly during an election year, when Republicans have used the issue to rally their base.