The recent Supreme Court decision lifting the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order prohibiting Joe Biden’s Border Patrol agents from cutting or removing razor-wire fencing that Texas officials placed along the Texas-Mexico border as part of Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s efforts to defend the state's border and deter illegal border crossings has engendered a very dangerous constitutional crisis.
How dangerous you ask, given that the establishment media and pundits have largely declared victory for Joe Biden’s open borders policy and moved on.
Let’s engage in a little thought experiment, or what Albert Einstein called a Gedankenexperiment, based on our knowledge of history and how wars and revolutions start.
Governor Abbott is clearly in the right: The invasion clause of the U.S. Constitution, Articles IV, Section 4, which requires the federal government to protect states from an invasion and Article IV, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution, which states the governor has the legal authority to command Texas military forces and call them up to “suppress insurrection and to repel invasions.”
"The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States," wrote Abbott. "The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration."
He went on to outline the ways that Biden had undermined border enforcement and claimed that Texas had the right to defend itself when the federal government failed to provide and support that protection.
"That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary," Abbott continued according to reporting by our friends at Conservative Review. "The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border."
Democrats, on the other hand, criticized Abbott for not caving to the power of the federal government.
Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas called on the president to assert federal control over the Texas National Guard in order to reassert federal power.
“Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border,” he posted on social media. “If Abbott is defying yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, @POTUS needs to establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now.”
Conservative Review reported that former Democrat candidate Beto O'Rourke also posted support for Biden to seize control of the National Guard.
Let’s suppose for a moment Biden decides to take the radical step of “nationalizing” the Texas National Guard, as suggested by his fellow Democrats, and orders them to stand down and return to their bases and demobilize.
Now let’s imagine that the Texas Guardsmen, being Texans, decide to ignore the order, stay at the border, and arrest the officers who delivered it, and they get back up from the Texas Rangers and the sheriffs of the 50 Texas counties that have passed resolutions declaring an invasion.
Knowing what we know about the authoritarian nature of today’s Democratic Party and the people who are calling the shots at the Biden White House and Pentagon, it is not a stretch to imagine that someone might decide to call out one of the regular Army units stationed in Texas, say the 1st Cavalry Division, to disarm the Guardsmen.
So, a brigade combat team (BCT) of the 1st Cavalry rolls out of Ft. Hood (sorry, not calling it Fort Cavazos) under cover of darkness and stops just outside of Eagle Pass, Texas for a mission brief, where the troopers are told they are going to disarm the Texas National Guard and reopen the border.
This mission brief is delivered by one of the 1st Cavalry Division’s most notorious Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officers and it doesn’t sit well with many of the troopers, who start to grumble and suggest this is not what they signed up to do.
Incensed the DEI officer orders a couple of NCOs to take names and arrest the dissenters. In the ensuing scuffle the DEI officer is shot and killed as are several NCOs and troopers. The mission to disarm the Texas National Guard falls apart with a number of vehicles breaking out of the convoy to join the Texas National Guard at the border while the rest return to base.
Word of the disaster spreads through social media to other bases in Texas where troops hold impromptu rallies vowing not to fight their fellow Americans, but the rallies devolve into race riots pitting white troops against African American and Hispanic service members, with dozens killed and injured.
The chaos spreads off the bases with citizens protesting outside the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Austin, where the Progressive Democrat mayor orders the police to break up the riot. A number of protestors and police officers are killed and injured, but the Democratic Party headquarters is torched.
The protests and riots soon go viral on social media and spread outside of Texas…
Fortunately, this is (so far) just a Gedankenexperiment, but don’t fool yourself about how authoritarian and reckless today’s Democrats are and how fed up and resentful average Americans are of the Democrats' DEI and open borders policies. There’s a constitutional powder keg sitting on the Texas border and Joe Biden and the Democrats are waving matches.
Texas
Governor Gregg Abbott
Invasion declaration
Biden adminsitration
Supreme Court
Eagle Pass Texas
razor wire fencing
border patrol agents
Rep. Chip Roy
nullification
U.S. Constitution
Article IV, Section 4
Texas Constitution