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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   24728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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Is Nullification on the Horizon?

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-condemns-president-bidens-illegal-rewrite-of-title-ix

Recently the Biden admin rewrote some regulations to encode gender identity in title IX. While this is stupid, it's not something that in itself seems likely to be a productive motte top level post. Ken Paxton sued the white house over it, but this is just the default assumption about federal administrative rules on culture war topics. No, what I'm getting at is the letter from Greg Abbott:

Dear President Biden: Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically. The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes—male and female. You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they were girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President.

I am instructing the Texas Education Agency to ignore your illegal dictate. Your rewrite of Title IX not only exceeds your constitutional authority, but it also tramples laws that I signed to protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes. Texas will fight to protect those laws and to deny your abuse of authority.

https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/O-BidenJoseph1.pdf

I guess telling the federal government to kick rocks back in January and getting away with it set a precedent- and, obviously, Joe Biden is not going to send the troops in to escort male athletes into the high school girl's locker room in an election year.

This obviously raises the question- are we on the cusp of an era where big state governors feel free to resist the federal government? Obviously, being combative with the Biden admin is a political winner for Greg Abbott. It's unclear what he'll use as a replacement for it in the likely event that Trump sits there next year; I don't think he thinks he can get away with bullying New or old Mexico but the strongman image requires something. And, of course, are Ron Desantis and Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul watching closely and learning? Will they resist Trump policies as brazenly(no, blue states have not denied federal forces the ability to operate, their examples of arguable nullification are more noncooperation than open defiance and resistance) as Abbott does Biden's, given that he's emboldened by a base which may not be pro-secession but is absolutely confident Texas would be fine if it did happen?

And, of course, we could see the same thing on the left as well. We've at least seen resistance to listening to SCOTUS, and things like marijuana "legalization" seem not all that different.

things like marijuana "legalization" seem not all that different.

The difference is that in those cases, it's the Left doing it, with the backing of all the institutions they control. The Right, being mostly powerless, will not be able to get away with it the way the other side can.

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