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Notes -
Backlash to the border bussing policies: To the surprise of no one, sanctuary cities don't actually want hundreds of thousands of poor foreigners wandering about in their backyards. New York City- which has received the largest number of migrants shipped from the southern border by Greg Abbott- is the site of protests https://nypost.com/2023/09/05/another-massive-rally-expected-outside-staten-island-school-turned-migrant-shelter/ Obviously not all of these people are democrats, but some of them seem to be. But the real story is down below, in LA.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/la-city-council-texas-governor-migrant-busing/story?id=102840424
Obviously, some of this is just hypocrisy and looking out for number one- it's fine for you to have hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers camped under highway overpasses with no say in the matter, but don't you dare dump any on me- but I'm struck by 1), the fact that the LA city council thinks injunctions and lawsuits will work
When in reality Abbott has no incentive to stop when a federal judge tells him to, he has every incentive to appeal to the supreme court and ignore the federal judge- he does after all want to win his 2026 primary- and realistically unless the federal government decides to take over the border itself, or meet his demands, they can't make him stop. Both practically- he wants these people to be someone else's problem- and politically- this makes him look tough to a base that doesn't already think of him that way- there's every reason for Greg Abbott to just keep doing this until he's lost much, much bigger than anybody seems to be talking about, or his demands are met.
And of course, 2), the decision to cast this as human trafficking
When, likewise in reality, "free bus tickets to New York/LA/DC" is quite an appealing pitch to migrants living under a bridge in McAllen and Eagle Pass Texas. After all, most of them didn't walk from Venezuela with the intent of settling in McAllen, they wanted to go further into the US. And obviously Abbott's real incentive is to get them out of his jurisdiction as fast as possible, which means offering free bus tickets to the places they actually wanted to go to in the first place. There just isn't a scenario where the migrants stayed in Eagle Pass long term; they could be deported to Honduras or wherever they came from, or they could go somewhere else in the country.
Of course they can. They can put him in Federal prison for defying them.
I am really curious as to whether you think that is actually, in the reality we currently inhabit, going to work out for them, if we assume that the Government of Texas doesn't believe that any crime has been committed.
How do you imagine an attempt to physically take him into custody would go, and are you already assuming that the FedGov would be willing to roll armored vehicles and/or Apache Helicopters up to the Governor's mansion?
If he pushes it, it will work out quite well for the Federal Government. He won't push it though, he'll give in if a judge tells him to.
They roll in with overwhelming force, take him, and win. You don't really think the state police are going to try to fight the military (or a nationalized Texas National Guard for that matter), do you?
The Texas national guard(and the other state national guard forces in Texas under Texan command) would refuse federalization orders if Greg Abbott came up with some kind of sovereign citizen tier bullshit(he is, after all, an accomplished constitutional lawyer) as for why they have the right to. That’s almost literally the story of operation lone star.
This would then cause a constitutional crisis that paralyzes everyone.
You’re forgetting the fact that Austin is in Austin. If this happened the national media would stir up George Floyd-level mob of “patriotic citizens” who would storm the governor’s mansion and the state capitol. If the Texas National Guard fired upon these protesters, it would be Fort Sumter all over again.
The Texas government relocating top executive functioning to Lubbock, Corpus Christi, or Tyler for particularly controversial decisions is a matter of routine, and even if it wasn’t Texas police are more willing than average to turn on the firehoses and Austin doesn’t have full control of its own PD anyways- state troopers patrol the streets on an ordinary beat.
It’s true that the entire government can’t be moved, but it doesn’t have to and Greg Abbott relocating to Tyler for a while and some protestors getting beaten by cops is a step on the escalation ladder, not a nuclear launch.
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