Adam Serwer with an interesting observation on the Supreme Court’s decision in the Texas border case which Gov. Abbott and 25 other red state extremist Governors are openly defying:
There are many factors that led to this point. One is the reigning Republican ideology of Trumpism, which holds that only conservative electoral victories, conservative laws, and conservative governments are legitimate and must be obeyed—the ideology that led a mob to ransack the Capitol to overturn an election. Another is the steady drumbeat of catastrophizing right-wing propaganda about the recent rise in migrants at the border, which seeks to validate extreme responses, including violence and lawlessness. But even accounting for those two elements, the most significant proximate reason for Abbott’s response may be that four Supreme Court justices sent Abbott an implicit message that they agreed with him.
When the Court sided with the Biden administration, it was a 5–4 split, with Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joining the three Democratic appointees. This should have been a unanimous ruling; for more than a century, the Supreme Court has held that the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration law in most cases and that the states cannot usurp that jurisdiction just because they disapprove of federal policy. Abbott is now thumbing his nose at the federal government and, by extension, the authority of the high court itself, and four Republican appointees—Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—are saying: Go right ahead.
That’s certainly how the right wingers interpreted it. Roberts and Barrett are RINO squishes and might as well be Nancy Pelosi’s bffs. The only ones who count are the Fascist Four and they said that defying the federal government was just fine.
Serwer points out that this is actually stupid on their part:
The four justices’ little act of sympathy with Abbott’s antics has created a problem for the Court. If states can openly defy Supreme Court orders, then the justices no longer have influence. All of the justices grasped this dilemma last September, when they smacked down an attempt by Alabama Republicans to refuse to follow a Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act. Abbott’s reaction should give them some perspective: Their decision was not merely symbolic; it undermines their own power and legitimacy.
Conservatives may believe that they are the only ones entitled to play constitutional hardball and ignore the law if they don’t feel like following it. But the more the Supreme Court allows Republican politicians and GOP-run states to get away with defying the law, the less obligated their Democratic counterparts will feel to follow their dictates. And at that point, they won’t have any power at all.
They don’t believe that any Democratic state would dare to do that because their voters aren’t inclined to the kind of extremism that would lead to civil war. But things can change. They’re pushing it.