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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

His problem was that he had to be seen as doing something. His credibility was low with the right.

He's been off side with the base regarding some recent legal issues. Alex Jones was getting railroaded by a far left judge in Austin and Abbott didn't even make a token comment about due process. A bunch of Bushies were upset about Ken Paxton beating George P Bush and teamed up with the Dems to impeach him in a process that abused the rules. After Paxton won Abbott sent out a press release congratulating him on winning a fair trail instead of admitting the problems with the process.

So Abbott needs to shore up his credibility with the right.

Picking a fight over the border is attractive for a number of reasons.

  • Biden's border policies are extremely unpopular, to the point that his administration wants to avoid delineating them. Forcing Garland to take them to court likely means forcing the Biden admin
  • Under Trump the legal left took the position that States had a number of rights to defy federal immigration law and enforcement. This puts them in a position where they need to oppose their own legal briefs from five years ago.
  • Any legal fight will take years and keep illegal immigration in the news for that time. If Biden tries to do something extreme it more of an opportunity for Abbott.

I'd agree that it's political. The political situation is either A) You know the Feds will stop you, so you be a good boy and do nothing. Your meek compliance gets you zero enthusiasm from the right, and whispers start that you're an open-borders sympathizer, or B) You do something like this, stick to it as long as possible, make the Feds physically stop you. It'll help for a little while with the actual situation, and being seen to try to do something is good for his political support. Forcing the Feds to actually physically stop it and showing video of them doing that will help his political situation, making the case that he's on their side and is a fighter, and it's the Feds' fault that it isn't working.

Except Abbott is almost assured to get slapped down very fast. He’s literally a top constitutional lawyer; he knows he’s going to lose at court and his options will be ‘back down’(much more likely) and look weak or ‘nullify federal law directly’ which he doesn’t have enough troops to do.

If you start from the position that this is a probing action, it doesn't really matter if it gets slapped down.

How long will it take to have a case like this run through the system? Who’s bringing the lawsuits? The optics are very much in Abbot’s favor here. He is going to be sued by the federal government for checks notes protecting the border when the federal government decided not to. And keep in mind that Abbot’s position is extremely popular among conservatives.

The courts tend to hold the right to the intersection of leftist and rightist strictures, whereas they hold the left to no standard at all. In this case the courts will rule Abbott is wrong on the grounds of Federal authority overriding his.

It will also take months or years for something like this to get to the courts. Courts tend to work slowly, and it can always be appealed to a higher court until ScOTUS. Then the feds simply have an order telling Abbot to stop, but if he doesn’t he’s had years to dig into positions that allow him to control the situation. And that’s assuming that the feds will risk the optics of trying to forcefully remove the TNG, which almost certainly will get violent.

No, the courts can move fast with preliminary injunctions when they want. And they want far more often when it benefits the left than the right.

Texas is in the fifth circuit, which I believe is more right-leaning?

It doesn’t matter when it’s this blatant.

Yeah, you're probably right.

I guess I mostly just meant that the one-sidedness probably applies less there.

It doesn't matter that much. BOTH left- and right-leaning courts at the appeals and higher level tend to favor the left over the right, though the left more so than the right.

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