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.
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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.
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.