The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) is campaigning for the Lone Star State to break away from the United States and become a fully independent country, using what it regards as the federal government's failure to control the Texan-Mexican border as one justification.
Just let the fuckers leave. Today. They can take their 2 Republican Senators and 38 Representatives (25R, 13D) with them. We'll build a wall on the border and make them pay for it.
Seriously though, how long do you think they would make it on their own? The last time they were they're own country they BEGGED the US to take them in for what, 9 years? Before we finally did.
Texas is one of the few self-sufficient Republican states. (eg. They contribute more than they receive from federal funds.) They’d survive.
That being said, their economy would be fucked because all the US trade agreements suddenly would disappear. Look how badly that affected the UK with Brexit, and then multiply it by 100.
5.2 million people voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election (46% of those who voted). It would be a tragedy to abandon them. It would also create an ongoing threat to the stability of the remaining country. As Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
To add to your excellent point (that there are more democrats in Texas than the entire population of many states), very, very few people are actually a part of this “movement.”
This isn’t a real thing that normal people actually endorse, it’s a bumper sticker you see on an old beat up truck in the wal-mart parking lot.
It’s like the Texas version of flat earthers or ghost/alien hunters or Bigfoot researchers. They do exist but they are massively over-represented in the press because it’s so stupid that people can’t help but “tune in.”
When a cancer invades a healthy organ, that organ is typically removed fully. That’s because, while there are good cells in that organ, the cancerous cells represent a greater danger to the overall being.
Unlike cells, liberals in Texas can move to a different state. Maybe they should.
I love shitting on Texas and Florida and, well every southern state, and most of the Midwest, and quite a few states out west, but as someone who lives in one of these areas I like to remind everyone that's there's a lot of decent people living in those states. That is all.
TNM has no teeth. They've been lobbying to secede for years. This is a ploy Abbott knows he's going to lose so he can play victim for the next 10 months to boost Republican voter turnout.
Can we agree this state/federal "laboratories of democracy" bullshit is a failed experiment? Our framers were wealthy land owners who suggested land owners be the only class be allowed to vote, they were far from infallible, and their quarter millenia old framework isn't compatible with or flexible enough for modernity.
It just makes 50 societies often working against one another instead of one with common governance. This need for systemically enforced competition and disdain for the concept of cooperation is a self-destructive cultural value.
Shall we unite behind God-King Trump then? The more decentralized and "competitive" the system, the better for most individuals. Sure, there is inefficiency, but those inefficiencies might save us from fascism.
The more decentralized and "competitive" the system, the better for most individuals.
According to? If I recall some of the worst crimes in US history we're committed with the authority of individual states. In fact it took a more centralized authority to secure the civil rights we enjoy today.
but those inefficiencies might save us from fascism.
Again, this doesn't follow logic or history. Fascist don't work within the operational parameters set by the status quo. Fascist are revolutionaries, not reformers, they don't care about how centralized or decentralized a government is. Their entire purpose is to destroy the current hierarchical framework and replace it with their own.
Also if we take a look at the nations where fascism did arise like pre war Italy or Germany, they were highly disorganized and fractured governments. The factional deadlock and decentralization were the only reason fascist parties made any headway in the first place.
No, but if we were a society we shouldn't play by different sets of rules, and root against other members of our society, which the mini-societies at odds with each other and rooting for each other's failures stokes.
We should either be 50 different countries not resentfully beholden to one another while competing against each other, or preferably one nation with the same communal rules and government to complain to and change with our combined democratic power. As it is, when California suffers, Texas cheers, and vice versa. That's a deeply broken nation at odds with itself.
This is just some broken, in-between limbo that's the worst of both scenarios. A house divided - by design! Good for monied interests to exploit and play against itself, think of Amazon starting tax cut bidding wars between states to build there, not good for the people en masse, the people that need their state's capitalist businesses to pay taxes for the commons like schools and roads.
State National Guards ordinarily fall under the control of their respective governors, but they can be federalized by a mechanism known as Title 10 status, which places them at the direct disposal of the president and defense secretary, with active duty officers taking over day-to-day command
Title 10 isn't even rare...
They do it for all types of shit, and Biden is fully within past usage if he does it here.
I'm cautiously optimistic he'll do the right thing here.
His donors don't want the instability of a full on secession
It's all fun & games till you're arrested for violating 18 U.S.C 111 & you're looking at a year Federal time, a $100k fine & never being able to work in law enforcement again.
I hope Texas police officers are aware that qualified immunity doesn't cover you when you are obstructing federal officers in the execution of their duties.
This statute outlines certain types of assault against a federal officer and the appropriate charges and penalties. Penalties for Defenses for Assaulting or Resisting a Federal Officer A simple assault of a federal officer carries a $100,000 fine and up to one year in prison.
For example, simple assault is forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, **impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officers while performing their duties. As noted, physical contact or injury is not required for a conviction.**
Simple federal assault is a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to 1 year in jail and fines of up to $100,000.
Actually, I don't care. The DoJ needs to start making examples out of the #fascists & their thug enforcers.
Whoever, in the commission of any acts described in subsection (a), uses a deadly or dangerous weapon (including a weapon intended to cause death or danger but that fails to do so by reason of a defective component) or inflicts bodily injury, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Use a weapon or injure one of those federal officers and it could be 20 years plus the fine.
Nobody in the texan government wants it to go through. They'll push it to give lip service to the worst parts of their support base, just as long as they're sure it will fail. We should pull a prank and let them push it over the finish line, and then invade the new texan independant state.
why does everyone associate the corpo owned politicians with the citizens?
sure as with other states you will find plenty of people who want otherwise for their state and grouping them in with those slime politicians and saying let them go does not help anyone
I can't see that going well, at all. Not a mutiny or fragging type situation, but a massive pencil pusher revolt.
I imagine their chain of command will pencil whip the fuck out of anything they can do that will cause issues for D.C., and as much as a headache as it'll be for the feds, it'll also be hilarious.
Canada had this problem with Quebec until it was made abundantly clear to the morons running the QC separatist movement that they can leave, but they can't take the dollar with them.
Once the people pushing this nonsense realize it will completely cripple their economy, they'll stop being stupid, at least in this particular regard.
Starting a new currency from scratch is exceptionally difficult and I doubt, with the debts that texas has, that it will be even remotely fungible to pay off their owing surplusses and create a functioning economy.
Just because texas doesn't have ridiculous tax laws on the rich doesn't mean that those tax laws will remain the same once papa government comes calling with the enforcers threatening imprisonment or death for not funding them.
Governments require money to run and texas does not currently have the freedom from financial liability to just go 'we're gonna go our own way', regardless how much they pretend.
There's no world in which a part of an internationally recognized country just outs and picks up their trade agreements, business agreements, and government continuity without fulfilling their former financial obligations.
I actually can't believe how unbelievably uneducated these people in power are that they think it's going to be smooth sailing leaving the republic. Even assuming the president and congress ok's it, you need to literally create all the fundamental requirements for a 'country' from scratch again and prove stability before anyone will conduct business with you and, spoiler alert, breaking away from a country with 11 carrier strike groups is the epitome of stupidity and objectively does not show stability.
Also, being part of a democratically elected government means you can't make a decision like this without a vote (See brexit and the hilarious ramifications of that for a near 1:1 example of what happens when you fuck around with this type of decision and the only reason the UK didn't completely collapse immediately is because they didn't actually adopt the euro and the pound has [had] it's own economic power)
Not only that but they'll lose a ton of industry that they've gained over the last few years. A bunch of tech stuff has gone down there and will probably move out now regardless because the environment is so unstable. There will definitely be financial consequences, but if they actually seceeded, let's see, would a giant tech company want to operate there where there will probably be sanctions or in the US with one of the largest economies in the world. Hmmmm.
So I looked up what "federalizing the National Guard" means in this case.
The National Guard is a unique entity in that it answers to both state and federal governments. Troops can be mobilized by a state governor or the president, depending on need. The National Guard personnel restricting access to Shelby Park are on state orders as part of Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s sweeping border security initiative.
In theory, the president or the defense secretary could divert those troops by tasking them with a federal mission.
“There are a variety of statutes that allow the president to federalize the National Guard in different circumstances. But the only one that would clearly apply in this case is the Insurrection Act,” said Joseph Nunn, counsel at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.
Nunn described the Insurrection Act as a “nuclear bomb hidden in the United States Code” and explained that using it would be politically costly.
“The Insurrection Act gives the president sole discretion to decide whether the criteria for invoking it are met,” he explained. “There are quite literally no safeguards to stop it from being abused.”
Historically, Nunn said, presidents have only invoked the act to federalize National Guard troops as a last resort. That was the case in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on desegregation.
So, this would mean USURPING the Governor's control of the Texas National Guard in order to get them to do something else.
THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT BIDEN TO DO.
THIS IS A STUNT.
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SECESSION.
They want to be able to point to Biden's actions in this and say "Bad" in twelve different ways.
They ALSO want someone to invoke the insurrection act so everyone can have carte blanche to use it whenever they want LATER, no matter who is in control.
This is a horrible precedent to set.
This whole situation is bad.
Rep. Joaquin Castro said: "Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border."
The best option here might be to let his own idiocy backfire on him. I just hope there's a way to do it without more loss of life.
Not a job Biden has the balls for but I'd love to be wrong. Trump is far far from the only fascist in office and the milquetoast Biden response to these people that's been empowering these behaviors was never going to be what the country needed to root out this problem. In fact Id wager more than most elected Democrats and all Republicans are unable or unwilling to fix this.