Republicans Are Embracing Rebellion

Republicans Are Embracing Rebellion. The Federal Government Must Respond | Opinion
Story by Nicholas Creel •
01/29/24

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Texas National Guard soldiers patrol the Rio Grande near Shelby Park on Jan. 26, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas.

© Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently called on members of the Texas National Guard and other armed state officials to defy the Supreme Court's ruling on operational control of the nation's border with Mexico. At least 25 Republican governors have since supported Abbott's defiance, as have Republican members of Congress. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee for the presidency, despite the fact that the man fomented the Jan. 6 insurrection in an attempt to unlawfully retain power after losing his bid at re-election. One cannot come to any other honest conclusion other than admitting that the Republican Party has embraced rebellion against the United States as a core tenant of its party platform.

Abbott's stunt is no doubt an attempt to highlight immigration as a major issue as the 2024 election approaches. The economy is roaring with GDP growth consistently beating expectations, unemployment at multi-decade lows, and inflation fast approaching the Federal Reserve's longstanding target of 2 percent annually. Unable to attack President Joe Biden on his economic record, Republicans absolutely need to cast immigration as a problem only they can solve, or else they'll have nothing to run on in the upcoming election. Hence, Trump himself is doing everything he can to wreck any chance of a bipartisan immigration deal coming out of the Senate. Abbott is simply carrying water for Trump and his party by instigating a standoff with federal border officials.

The reasons for Abbott's actions are ultimately immaterial, as his motive doesn't mitigate against the fact that he is rejecting the Supreme Court's lawful authority to define the law. He is, definitionally, engaging in rebellion. The only question left is, what should be done about it? To that end, President Biden and the Supreme Court cannot allow this Republican commitment to rebellion continue.


To start, the Supreme Court could deliver two powerful decisions that would go a long way to quashing this spirt of rebellion. First, they can do so by issuing a strong rebuke to Governor Abbott's modern-day attempt at state nullification of federal law. They must announce, as they have many times over in the past, that states cannot unilaterally decide to supersede the supremacy of federal authority.

The Court's initial ruling on this issue was terse and non-specific. It simply vacated an appeals court injunction which prevented federal officials from removing razor wire that Texas was erecting at the border. This gave Abbott a degree of legal and political cover to defy the spirit if not the letter of the law by continuing to order more razor wire to be put up even as federal officials are now unequivocally allowed to take it down. A follow up decision that specifically spells out the inability of a state to actively undermine federal authority at the border in this manner is needed to make it absolutely clear to Abbott that if he continues down this path, he will be doing so with the knowledge that he is acting in direct violation of the Constitution.


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'Civil War' Warnings Grow Over Texas Border Standoff
The second action the Supreme Court should take is to quickly issue a decision relating to Donald Trump's eligibility for president, declaring that states must exclude him from their ballots for his having engaged in insurrection. Doing so will illustrate to fellow Republicans that there are consequences for rebellion, while also working to strengthen our democracy against threats from within.

President Biden must be incredibly careful in his response to Governor Abbott, at least for the moment. First, he must exhaust every legal mechanism at his disposal to force Abbott to back down. That begins with taking this matter back to the Supreme Court with all due haste. As noted above, the Court is all but guaranteed to forcefully reject Governor Abbott's arguments, which will give Biden the political capital to later take more forceful action, should it become necessary.

Ideally, Abbott will back down after a second loss at the Supreme Court. However, if he presses on thereafter and continues to defy the lawful authority of the federal government, President Biden must then invoke the insurrection act and federalize the Texas national guard, as well as the national guards of all other states that have sent troops to the Texas border, in order to take operational control of these military forces away from governors who have chosen to participate in an open rebellion against the federal government.

President Biden must also make a primetime national address in the coming days, explaining the situation to the American public and speaking specifically to how Abbott's actions are actually making it more difficult for border patrol agents to do their job. In so doing, he should plead with congressional Republicans to lower the temperature and work with him to legislatively resolve the very real illegal immigration crisis with a bipartisan border bill. The power of the "bully pulpit" combined with a reasonable call for civility and compromise will dramatically weaken Governor Abbott's hand in this standoff and maximize the likelihood that the federal border can be secured.

Nicholas Creel is an assistant professor of business law at Georgia College and State University.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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