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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   1991 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Texas Border Situation Continues This is a developing situation so I'm moving updates to transnational Thursdays. Last update was this one: https://www.themotte.org/post/832/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/179653?context=8#context

The federal government's deadline for Texas to relinquish control of Shelby park has come and gone with no changes(as was expected). https://texasscorecard.com/state/texas-rejects-biden-administrations-demands-for-access-to-eagle-pass-park/

The likely result is a legal battle; indeed that's what Paxton's letter rejecting federal demands promises:

President Biden has been warned in a series of letters, one of them hand-delivered to him in El Paso, that his sustained dereliction of duty in securing the border is illegal. By instructing your agency and others to ignore federal immigration laws, he has breached the guarantee, found in Article IV, § 4 of the U.S. Constitution, that the federal government “shall protect each of [the States] against Invasion.” Texas, in turn, has been forced to invoke the powers reserved in Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which represents “an acknowledgement of the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Although you invoke the majority opinion in that case, it never addressed these crucial constitutional guarantees because Arizona did not raise them. Having abandoned the field of immigration enforcement, in defiance of Congress’s commands, your agency is in no position to claim preemption under Arizona v. United States and the Supremacy Clause.

Rather than addressing Texas’s urgent requests for protection, President Biden has authorized DHS to send a threatening letter through its lawyers. But Texas has lawyers, too, and I will continue to stand up for this State’s constitutional powers of self-defense. Instead of running to the U.S. Department of Justice in hopes of winning an injunction, you should advise your clients at DHS to do their job and follow the law

Obviously, injunctions will go back and forth and be roundly ignored on both sides.

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