Showdown at the Rio Grande
'Lesser Magistrates' Seek to Overrule the Supreme Court
On a day where the front runner in the Republican primaries declined to accept the title of presumptive nominee, his party followed orders to go all-in on sabotaging immigration reform and border security.
We’re now in general election campaign mode. Bringing on the chaos necessary to keep the truth (and the trials) from impacting the election is in full force.
This year’s primary season has effectively silenced any voices within the party who might have other ideas. And the word is out that there will be no forgiveness henceforth.
Via The Hill:
“Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!” Trump continued, using the nickname “Birdbrain” to refer to Haley.
Trump’s direct threat against Haley’s supporters signals a sharpening in his rhetoric, as the former president seeks to compel support from all corners of the GOP.
Now we're seeing an all-of-the-above plan, consisting of re-written history, economic and political sabotage, and a frontal assault on the rule of law. This isn’t about policy or populist promises; it’s another attempt at a coup, sans the angry mob. A showdown at the border re-enforces the GOP falsehood about an invasion, and precedents are being set to defang the federal government for good.
Good news on the economy has derailed GOP efforts to frame the upcoming election as a plebiscite on a failed America under the Biden administration. This effort was initially wildly successful, so successful that major media outlets are still adding serious doses of economic pessimism to news accounts. After all, 97% of economists predicted a recession by 2024.
Having seen that so-called culture wars don’t make for favorable election results, Dear Leader has declared that his opponent will go down to failure bearing the burden of a border crisis not of his making.
A glimmer of hope that the more bipartisan-minded Senate would enable legislation concerning the budget, foreign aid, and a tax break for families with children has been snuffed out personally by Donald Trump.
Although MAGA Republicans have insisted the border is such a crisis that no aid to Ukraine can pass until it is addressed, Trump is preventing congressional action on the border because he wants to run on the issue of immigration.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans that “the nominee” wants to run his campaign on immigration, adding, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.” “We’re in a quandary,” McConnell said.
Just last week, McConnell was singing a different tune:
“One of the things that I keep reminding my members is if we had a 100% Republican government — president, House, Senate — we probably would not be able to get a single Democratic vote to pass what Sen. Lankford and the administration are trying to get together. “So this is a unique opportunity to accomplish something in divided government.”
HuffPost reported that Trump directly reached out to Republican senators to kill the bipartisan border deal being finalized, “because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” one source said.
“The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” according to this source. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”
Adding to the heat being generated by migration, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced he’ll defy the Supreme Court. Texas National Guardsmen continued adding concertina wire along the Rio Grande yesterday.
Via Jay Kuo: (highlighting is mine)
The Texas governor apparently wants the world to know he doesn’t plan to comply with the Supreme Court, if and when it puts the federal government fully back in control of the border and immigration policy. A little thing like the Supremacy Clause doesn’t seem to phase Abbott, and he means to call the federal government’s bluff.
When he told the state guard to “hold the line” at Eagle Pass, however, it wasn’t exactly clear what this meant. Remember, it was Texas that had sued to obtain an injunction against the Border Patrol, in order to prevent the feds from cutting and removing the razor wire that Texas had erected. All the Supreme Court did was tell the Border Patrol it could continue to cut and remove as before. It didn’t specifically order Texas to back off, at least not yet, and it wasn’t clear whether Abbott would actually try to stop federal removal of the wire.
The presumptive Republican nominee wants some of this action:
“We encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border. All Americans should support the commonsense measures by Texas authorities to protect the Safety, Security, and Sovereignty of Texas, and of the American people.”
While the righties are trying to make this stance by Abbott into a precursor for the civil war they’ve been promising for years. Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk has anointed himself as head cheerleader, according to Media Matters for America:
On Wednesday afternoon Abbott issued a statement invoking “Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” which he claimed is “the supreme law of the land.” Throughout the day, at least nine governors backed Abbott on X, even if they fell short of Kirk’s demand that they travel to the border. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all posted their support for Texas, as did Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
In the same episode, Kirk told his audience that they had “better buy weapons,” and “have a lot of guns at your disposal.”
That afternoon, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh echoed Kirk. “Red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court and do what needs to be done to protect their citizens and the border,” Walsh said. He later added, “The last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't.”
Gov. Abbott / Texas today faces a 24 hour notice to allow federal agents to start cutting barbed wire. Look for wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News.
The doctrine of federal supremacy over states in legal conflicts has a long and storied history. Gov. Abbott has suggested that his moves are part of an attempt to create a record for a court case challenging the long-standing precedent that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over border issues.
MAGA faithful are pledging allegiance to an obscure doctrine –called Lesser Magistrates– being revived in Calvinist corners of the evangelist movement and trumpeted by various extremist factions that think they know better than the rest of us.
This notion, dating back to the days of the 16th century, holds that lesser authority figures (originally princes) were justified in defying the emperor in instances where they believed “God’s law” wasn’t being followed.
Word and Way, a Baptist newsletter covering issues of religion intersecting with politics and culture, has a detailed posting on this subject, should you wish to take a deeper dive. Here’s their relevant quote in their essay calling Lesser Magistrates a threat to democracy:
If widely accepted as a doctrine in the U.S., the lesser magistrates philosophy could lead to a breakdown of our constitutional system. If it just takes someone in any office — be it a governor, city council member, or police officer — to believe God doesn’t like a certain policy passed by those on the other side, then it would be hard to see any law enacted. Rather than recognizing authority and its various levels, this theory flattens authority to allow virtually anyone in any minor office to claim the divine right of a king.
This confrontation over the border is just one of many we’re likely to witness in the coming year.
While insanely cruel laws about abortion keep appearing, the misery inflicted on women keeps ramping up. A report published in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped, “but few (if any) obtained in-state abortions legally.”
Inflicting misery is at the core of what the high priests of Trump offer. GOP officials in Red states are seemingly in a contest to see how much misery they can inflict.
Diana Butler Bass, writing at The Cottage, does a great job of pulling all the threads together in an essay explaining why it is that evangelicals are so supportive despite Trump’s unchristian behavior.
What I suddenly recognized is that once I too wanted everything to be broken, everyone to be miserable. When I became an evangelical. You know evangelicals — especially white ones — the religious people who love Donald Trump, stick with him no matter what, and vote for him in massive numbers. They also love making people miserable. Indeed, it is a central tenet of evangelical faith, the entry ritual into community.
In evangelicalism, the first step to salvation is making you miserable. Sermons point out your misery, your sad state of existence, the hopelessness of the human condition. If you aren’t an evangelical and seem happy, your evangelical friends are convinced you are pretending, hiding something, are in denial, or are deluded by Satan. If you ever reveal a doubt or sorrow, they are waiting to pounce — to point out your misery and remedy it through conversation. You must see that you have led a miserable life, made miserable choices, are a deeply miserable person. Misery is the doorway to being saved.
The core of evangelicalism is theological — it reveals a deep, inescapable human problem (we are locked in misery by sin) and salvation from the problem (surrender to Jesus through conversion). The only real happiness is eternal life, the heavenly realm. You cannot be happy or go to heaven without profound sorrow over the misery of your soul. You must be broken before you can be saved. Only a strong Savior can fix you. And, once you have experienced this, you have to tell everyone. Point out all the brokenness, bleakness, corruption, and carnage. Yes, soul carnage. That’s our true state. American carnage. Global carnage.
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Personal Note: I missed posting on Thursday and may be absent without notice at times over the coming days. We have brought my mother home for hospice care, and my immediate family is doing what we can to be supportive as she makes her journey.
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Friday News Clips Worth Reading
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Trump WH pill mill prescribed fentanyl, Ambien, Provigil to as many as 6,000: DoD IG report via Daily Kos. Remember this the next time you hear a GOP blowhard posturing about drugs.
https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jan/09/2003373440/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2024-044_REDACTED%20SECURE.PDF
“While Trump lived under the White House roof, the pharmacy reportedly kept messy, handwritten records, spent lavishly on brand-name medications, and failed to comply with a slew of federal law and Department of Defense regulations governing the handling, distribution, and disposal of prescription medication.
Through in-person inspections and interviews with over 120 officials, the report concluded “that the White House Medical Unit provided a wide range of health care and pharmaceutical services to ineligible White House staff in violation of Federal law and regulation and DoD policy. Additionally, the White House Medical Unit dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff.”
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Billionaires Are Journalism’s False Saviors by Sarah Jones at Intelligencer
The situation is revelatory. Media layoffs tell us something about an owner’s business prowess, but they also show bigger forces at work. Though companies say layoffs are business decisions, there is an ideology underneath the jargon. Owners like Soon-Shiong sound noble at first, but ultimately they prioritize profit over the public interest. Their goals, then, are at odds with the purpose of journalism. Media workers can’t serve the public if there are no opportunities for them to do so. By cutting jobs in journalism, the ruling class cedes ground to the rabid right-wing media — whose benefactors are committed to an ideological project. The prospect of an emboldened right wing and a corresponding reduction in reputable news sources does not trouble them nearly as much as the loss of profit.
There is no morality to that logic, and no interest in the world, for that matter. Media layoffs betray a damning incuriosity among our elite. They’re content to rule and fundamentally disinclined to understand or empathize with the people they dominate. In contrast, journalism at its best has the power to illuminate. A good journalist can pull back the layers of the world to show the structure underneath. Wealthy owners don’t want the knowledge and they don’t want the scrutiny either. They’re rather blunt about it, too: Layoffs speak loudly, as do corporate mouthpieces. A spokesperson for the L.A. Times said last week that “relying on a benevolent owner to cover expenses, year after year, is not a viable long-term plan.”
There’s some truth to that, admittedly, though Soon-Shiong is more than capable of eating his losses for years upon years to come. Billionaires are fundamentally untrustworthy. Journalism doesn’t function like a traditional business, nor should it; its objective isn’t profit but service. For that reason, most journalists know they can’t trust a billionaire’s whims. Media unions are growing because they offer some security and, crucially, a way to fight back. A billionaire can survive a news desert. The rest of us won’t.
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Biden hits pause on natural gas projects amid plans for carbon ‘mega bombs’ Via the Guardian
Joe Biden’s administration has hit the brakes on the US’s surging exports of gas, effectively pausing a string of planned projects that have been decried by environmentalists as carbon “mega bombs” that risk pushing the world further towards climate breakdown.
On Friday, the White House announced that it was pausing all pending export permits for liquified natural gas (LNG) until the Department of Energy could come up with an updated criteria for approvals that consider the impact of climate change.
The pause, which will likely last beyond November’s presidential election, could imperil the future of more than a dozen gas export terminals that have been planned for the Gulf of Mexico coast. According to one analysis, if all proposed LNG projects go ahead and ship gas overseas, it will result in 3.2bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to the entire emissions of the European Union.
