Trump, GOP Governors’ border threats smack of sedition

By Patricia Lopez

The US is edging closer to a constitutional crisis than it’s come in years, thanks to a pack of rogue red state governors determined to follow the cynical demands of a one-time president desperate to regain power.

Twenty-five Republican governors are backing Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s audacious stand-off with the federal government over border issues, publicly pledging their support in a statement that reads: “We stand in solidarity with our fellow governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border.”

On January 22, the US Supreme Court affirmed that the federal government indeed has the authority to remove razor wire that Abbott ordered strung along Eagle Pass, near the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border. They are in essence defying the highest court in the land.

Former President Donald Trump has been there to egg them on. Over the weekend he bragged of scuttling a hard-negotiated bipartisan Senate compromise on immigration, praising House Speaker Mike Johnson who had declared the bill dead on arrival. When news came that the deal was in trouble because of Trump, North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis called it “immoral” for the GOP to turn down the badly needed compromise just to help Trump’s quest to return to the White House.

“I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss,” Tillis told NBC News. “I came here to pass good, solid policy. It is immoral to me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

Trump, who is already facing 91 felony counts in four indictments, including for his role in January 6, now appears to be fomenting another kind of insurrection, urging “all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of illegals and to remove them back across the border.”

Representation of Governors' support over policing the US southern border.

Federal authority over the nation’s borders is well established and has been upheld by the US Supreme Court. Now that authority is being tested like never before. In one recent incident, Abbott ordered Texas National Guard troops to block US Border Patrol agents from rendering aid to migrants in distress crossing the Rio Grande. A woman and two children drowned as a result.

There is no question that the situation is at crisis levels. Federal agents encountered nearly 2.5 million migrants at the southern border last year, with about 250,000 in December alone. At El Paso area ports of entry just last week, officers intercepted 291 pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana.

That makes it even more infuriating that Trump is stoking rage while deliberately closing off productive solutions, all so that he can continue railing about immigrants as “vermin” that are “poisoning the blood” of this country, echoing language more typical of Hitler than an American presidential candidate.

So far, the governors, some of whom either are eager to get in Trump’s good graces or are auditioning to be his running mate, have been keen to pile on. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (who endorsed Ron DeSantis over Trump) posted on X last week that “Iowa sent the Iowa National Guard and State Troopers down to the border last year to stop this invasion. Iowa stands with Texas.” That bit of theater in 2022 cost taxpayers nearly $2 million in federal funds intended for Covid relief and restarting the economy. It didn’t solve the problem.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt went further, publicly questioning whether state National Guard troops would obey if Biden federalized them. "I think they would be in a difficult situation to protect their homeland or to follow what Biden’s saying,” Stitt said.

Biden, of course, is the commander in chief and there should be no question whose orders were to be followed. Troops who defied presidential orders could find themselves in serious trouble and military discipline would be ruptured.

Adding to the chaos and volatility, organizers of a “Take Our Border Back” convoy told Vice News that they are headed to the Southern border in the belief that this is a “biblical, monumental moment.” The convoy, calling itself an “Army of God,” began organizing before Trump’s directive, but there can be little doubt that his agitation has fueled anti-immigrant sentiment that may be hard to control.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, called the crisis prompted by the Republican governors “disgraceful, because we have a border situation that needs to be fixed and Republicans walked away from the best deal we could have gotten in half a century. They just want to put fear into people.”

More troubling, he said, is that they “are not just defying Biden, they’re creating a constitutional crisis that could split us apart.” The Supreme Court ruling should have put an end to the standoff, he said, but “now these governors are using their citizens and National Guard in direct opposition to that.”

Eric Janus, a constitutional law expert and former dean of the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, called the situation grave and dangerous.

“The politics of it are crystal clear,” Janus said. “But there is a deeper philosophical thread here. This is part of a radical agenda to free the states of the constraints by being members of the union of states. It’s authoritarian and very, very dangerous. There are certain norms that have held our democracy together. Among those are that when the Supreme Court rules, that’s it. You accept it and work to change the existing system.”

Janus is most bothered by Abbott and others’ contorting the meaning of an obscure portion of Article 1 of the US Constitution that references a state’s ability to self-defend against invasion.

“First, there is no invasion,” Janus said. “That provision of the Constitution does not apply, and I have no doubt the Supreme Court would rule that way. There simply is no textual support for what Abbott is claiming.”

There is another path here, one that steers clear of the demands of a self-professed dictator who seeks to further divide and distract. And it’s not to be found in the craven attempts of governors who would usurp federal authority as they divide the border into tiny fiefdoms.

The small group of Republican and Democratic senators that has been working diligently with the White House to resolve the border crisis is showing us the way. We can have strong border enforcement that sends actual resources to the border, is humane, and that eases a labor shortage that is becoming acute enough to threaten companies’ abilities to expand.

Biden has said the deal would include emergency authority to “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

It’s time to turn away from the perpetual rage, division and rancor that has proved so fruitless and work toward actual solutions.