A reelected Donald Trump could pull several levers to try and pare back federal policies aimed at speeding the transition to electric vehicles.
Why it matters: EVs are becoming more mainstream, but they’re still a small share of U.S. car sales, and President Joe Biden has been keen to juice deployment.
Catch up fast: Trump, the GOP frontrunner, released a video late last week that, among other things, bashed EV costs. He vowed to reverse what he called a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.”
Trump’s seeking auto workers’ votes in competitive states like Michigan, at a time when the United Auto Workers leadership is skittish about EVs.
The big picture: It’s hard to see the votes for outright repealing the Democrats’ climate law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if Republicans have both chambers of Congress after 2024.
Yes, but: Trump would hardly be powerless.
Zoom in: His campaign released a list of proposals alongside the video. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but let’s explore some of those and other ways he could alter policy.
Trump’s vowing to kill the EPA’s brewing tailpipe CO2 emissions rules. The agency sees bringing EVs to 67% of U.S. light-duty sales by 2032.
Reversing a completed rule is time-consuming and legally fraught. One wrinkle: if the final rule was still tied up in court when Trump took office, his administration could decline to defend it.
A Trump-led Treasury Department could take a more restrictive view of how many EV models qualify for consumer purchase subsidies up to $7,500.
The climate law tethers tax credits to key battery materials sourced, processed or recycled domestically or from free-trade partners. But Treasury has wiggle room in the interpretation.
The Biden administration has also been crafting mineral-specific trade agreements with some countries that could be altered.
A Trump administration could make it harder to access funding streams and manufacturing incentives in the climate and infrastructure laws.
For instance, the infrastructure law has $7.5 billion for building out EV charging networks, but the money is doled out over multiple years.
State of play: Trump’s policy agenda comes as rapid EV growth in recent years is showing signs of slowing.
EVs were 7.2% of U.S. sales in Q2, down very slightly from Q1, per Cox Automotive.
The bottom line: The move toward EVs is too far along to kill as automakers embracing them commit billions of dollars and expand their lineups. But Trump could alter how fast the tech is adopted.
This is a man who ran for president whining about low flow toilets and complaining that it takes too long to wash the Tres Semme out of his hair in the shower. (He actually just complained about the shower flow but we all know what the problem is don’t we?) He is going to do everything he can to exacerbate climate change because he believes that he’s the worlds greatest environmentalist because he says he wants clean air and water. In fact, he brags that during his term we had the cleanest air and water in the history of the world.
This cannot happen. We re in a state of crisis which this summer’s heat domes are showing in living color. People need to sober up and understand that electing tee-totling moron because we’d liketo have a beer with them or because they are the best insult comics is going to kill life on this planet.
It appears that COVID is not going to be a big issue in the 2024 election and perhaps we should be grateful for that. It was only three years ago that the entire world was in a health crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen in over a hundred years. In July of 2020 tens of thousands of Americans were dying each day in the first wave of a deadly pandemic and President Donald Trump was all over television alternately telling the people that they could cure themselves with unapproved drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin or telling them that the virus was going away and the economy needed to just open up and carry on as usual. It was a terrifying time and the trauma it caused has been very deep. 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the U.S. so far leaving many more family members and friends dealing with the grief and the loss.
It’s only recently that it has felt like the country is getting back to normal with the economy fully recovering and a sense of freedom in our business and social interactions. But we may have changed permanently in some respects and not necessarily for the better. The conspiracy theories that sprang up during the pandemic about vaccines and masks and a sense of mistrust in public health and science in general are having a pernicious effect on our society in ways that are going to test us in the future especially now that they have become part of the right’s tribal identity.
It’s odd that the main purveyor of vaccine misinformation today isn’t a Republican, it’s the son of one of the most beloved Democrats of the 20th century, Robert F. Kennedy. RFK Jr’s perverse Democratic primary campaign is based almost entirely on the same anti-science, anti-government conspiracy theories that are being pushed by Republicans. Slick operators like Steve Bannon are advocating for Kennedy and he’s been featured all over right wing media for months now. Congressional Republicans even called him before congress to testify that his views have been censored for political reasons. (It was quite the show.) And it’s mostly Republicans who are financing his campaign.
Kennedy is not a serious candidate and basically serves as a performance artist for the entertainment of the right wing which thinks it’s owning the libs by promoting him. But the COVID politics of 2020 just aren’t playing in the GOP primary and it’s highly unlikely to be a big issue in the general election.
Florida Gov. DeSantis’s primary campaign is floundering for many reasons but one of them is his bet that he could successfully attack Donald Trump from the right on his pandemic response. He staked a good bit of his reputation and image on the fact that he supposedly ran the best COVID response of any state by ignoring the Trump administration’s allegedly draconian lockdown policies. The ongoing anger among Republicans over that was going to show him to be more Manly than MAGA but it isn’t working out that way.
Six different Republican operatives, campaign officials, and pollsters described or shared with Rolling Stone internal data and surveys they’d conducted or reviewed last and this year…Across the board in the surveys, Covid-related policy — including vaccines and vaccine mandates — did not rank as an item of high concern for voters. That held true even when voters were specifically given the option of Covid policy when asked about their concerns.
DeSantis’ rise was predicated on his alleged refusal to order lockdowns and his defiance against vaccine mandates. But he’s gone full-blown anti-vaxx since then. As recently as December he requested that the Supreme Court of Florida empanel a grand jury investigation “to investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the Covid-19 vaccine.” That’s right — “crimes and wrongdoing.”
And his campaign has hit Trump hard for the one thing he did right in his COVID response which was to sign off on operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines as quickly as possible. Ironically, Trump isn’t allowed to take credit for that accomplishment because his followers are anti-vaxx so he’s had to allow DeSantis to attack him for it. The good news for Trump is that nobody cares.
The rest of the country should care, however. Both of these men are world class phonies when it comes to their leadership during the pandemic. They each claim they were heroes for forcing businesses to open up when the truth is they were never really closed down. It’s only in the fevered minds of those intent upon seeing the pandemic as some kind of political act, that any of the mitigation efforts were draconian assaults on our individual freedoms.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber hosted a special recently revisiting Trump’s COVID response based upon his taped interviews with Bob Woodward, who released them with a book called “The Trump Tapes.” Listening to the excerpts of the interviews it became clear once again just how irresponsible and reckless Trump was in his handling of the crisis. It was all about how it was affecting his re-election campaign. In an echo of his refusing to concede the election despite all the legitimate legal election experts telling him that he’d lost, he also ignored all the science and medical experts who informed that COVID was going to kill vast numbers of people unless he mustered a rapid federal response. Trump just refuses to listen to anyone or hear anything he doesn’t want to hear.
Perhaps the most telling moment of the tapes is when Woodward asks him if he considered the crisis his greatest test of leadership and he instantly replied, “no!” He was wrong. It was. And he failed.
Likewise Ron Desantis’ vaunted response was also a miserable failure. The NY Times analyzed the data on his state’s results and they are not good. DeSantis pushed for vaccinations for people 65 and older early on but started going the other way once they were approved for younger people and then instituted a crusade against mandates for health workers and cruise ship employees effectively undermining the accepted public health approach to a pandemic. Florida ended up with many fewer vaccinated people when the big Delta wave hit and the consequences were severe:
Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis. With less than 7 percent of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14 percent of deaths between the start of July and the end of October.
He too was planning for his presidential campaign and wanted to be on the side of the emerging anti-vaxx sentiments on the right, no matter how many people had to die.
Both of these men were serving as executive leaders during a time of great crisis and peril. And they both cravenly and cynically put their political ambitions ahead of their duty to protect American citizens. Whatever promises they make about the future we already know who they are and what they will do as leaders. They failed their test and disqualified themselves for high office ever in the future.
Tim Miller with a word for the pundits who think Tim Scott or Nikki Haley are running in a real primary:
THERE’S ANOTHER WORLD out there—one that’s better than ours. In this world there are two healthy political parties waging vigorous primary campaigns with vibrant debates between factions and these factions have genuine disagreements over what policies will best serve our fellow Americans. I don’t begrudge anyone aspiring to build such a world. I don’t even begrudge those who have chosen to live in a blissful state of disreality and disconnect from politics entirely, rather than face the Super Not Great world we do live in.
But I would expect professional political commentators, and donors shelling out millions in campaign cash, and the political strategists receiving that cash, to live in the real world.
Alas this is not the case. Instead we have a heavily capitalized right-wing ecosystem that exists to prop up an imaginary Republican presidential primary so that the participants can feel better about their party identification. This way they can do business with Republican politicians or chew the fat at the club without feeling icky at having to admit that their Grand Old Party has become something dark.
In this fake primary there are several candidates using creative strategies to figure out how to make it onto a debate stage. Yet should they succeed, they do not plan to use that stage to directly challenge the person beating them by 50 points in the polls. (If he even bothers to show up.) Some people in this fantasy world are even talking about Rick Scott running for president. Yes that Rick Scott! The one with the inverted endo- and exoskeletons.
But most absurdly, the “professionals” who are running these fantasy campaigns are haughtily dismissing Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the few candidates who is participating in the real primary since he has actual support among the MAGA Republicans who will decide the winner.
“Vivek is like the fajitas that go by you at the restaurant,” one advisor on a rival campaign told Semafor. “They make noise, look exciting, and come on the fun plate. But if you order it, it’s too much, too annoying to assemble, and you wish you just ordered tacos.”
Another advisor on a rival campaign noted that Ramaswamy has “barely raised any money outside of what he donated himself,” and predicted the 37-year-old’s campaign “will fizzle out”—adding he’d ultimately see success in the form of “increased book sales and inflows into his investment products.”
First things first: If I were a candidate I would immediately fire anyone who revealed themselves to be too lazy to assemble fajitas. But moreover, this analysis is just totally wrong. And unless these anonymous hacks work for Trump or DeSantis, the fajita man they are dismissing is currently kicking their ass.
Nikki Haley’s Super PAC put this nonsense on the record in a memo to donors saying “Let’s be honest, there’s only four candidates who can win the nomination: Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Tim Scott.”
Are you sure you want us to be honest, Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the Haley PAC? Because I suspect you can’t handle the actual truth. But here goes.
If there really are only four candidates who can win this primary, then Nikki Haley sure as hell isn’t one of them.
THERE ARE TWO REASONS these strategists can pull the wool over donors’ eyes with these phony arguments:
(1) All parties involved in this exchange deeply wish that the fantasy world existed.
(2) They are hermetically sealed off from what is happening in the real primary.
Do you think Mark Harris or the big donors funding Haley have ever been to a Trump rally? Do you think they watch Greg Kelly Reports? Do you think they have any close friends or colleagues who genuinely believe Joe Biden is a fraudulent president? Because I don’t. And those are the people in the real primary.
As I wrote last week in a profile of Candace Owens, in the media outlets consumed by the MAGA voters who will decide the nominee, candidates like Haley are just apparitions. They’re barely even talked about.
The real campaign among actual voters is essentially between Trump and DeSantis, and right now it’s a blowout. Other than that, these voters are most intrigued by two long-shot options—Vivek and RFK Jr. In the real primary the competition is intense. But Scott, Haley, Youngkin, Will Hurd, and the rest aren’t involved.
For example, last week the MAGA web was on fire debating some highly charged fissures in the real primary. First there was a rare cogent point from the frontrunner in a straight-to-camera video in which he mocked DeSantis for changing the pronunciation of his name to “Dee-sanctus” in the middle of the campaign (something we have also noticed).
Then there was the influencer beef where one Trump supporter called former Trump lawyer and now DeSantistan Jenna Ellis a “stupid cow” and a “thundercunt.” There was also a fiery back and forth over Daily Wire host Michael Knowles’s claim that DeSantis surrogates were harming their candidate’s cause by being too mean to poor Mr. Trump. Oh, and there was a debate over the merits of a new national poll that showed Vivek and “Rod” tied for second place. (The DeSantis team convincingly argues the poll was put out by grifters, though that doesn’t really explain another poll showing Vivek closing fast.)
That’s the real primary. Tainted polls, vile accusations, Vivekmentum, and unidirectional Trump/DeSantis slap fights.
The voters who are consuming that information will be the ones who decide if Donald Trump is nominated by this party for a third time. If some unanticipated “event” upsets the apple cart (if, for example, there is an artery-clogging, well-done cheeseburger of destiny between now and Iowa), these voters still won’t turn to the candidate in a half-zip sweater whom Karl Rove is trying to anoint at a confab in Sun Valley.
There are honest, well-intentioned reasons to run for president without expecting to win. Chris Christie seems to be doing it because he wants to kick Trump’s ass and eat Hardee’s and he’s all out of Hardee’s. Good on ’im. In 1996, Steve Forbes wanted to raise the salience of the flat tax—not my cup of tea, but it was a good-faith effort on behalf of an issue. In 1984, Jesse Jackson wanted to show that his “Rainbow Coalition” had a real constituency and he succeeded.
But that’s not what any of the non-Christie pretenders are doing this time. They are trying to convince the world (and themselves) that once GOP voters get serious in a few months things will go back to normal. They’ll keep on pretending that this is a normal party having a normal primary right up until the moment they are forced to get in line behind the most abnormal, abominable major-party nominee in our nation’s history.
Here’s the reality: The only *serious* people involved in this primary are the ones who see their fantasy for what it is.
Nearly every conversation, memo, and piece of analysis that comes from the donor-class fantasy campaign isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. And everyone except the consultants building a new pool house off their McMansion would be better served if the money going to write those memos were instead redirected to food-insecure youth who have been forced to become vegetarians.
And to be really honest, the primary is over. Donald Trump has been the presumptive nominee since January 21, 2021. The rest of it is really nothing more than a death watch.
A Gallup poll relased this month finds shifts in what Americans find “extremely” or “very important” in their lives.
In a headline, “America used to have 2 religions: God and money. Only one of them is recruiting followers, and it’s not Jesus,” Forbes’ Chloe Berger reports:
Decades ago, money was listed as extremely important to 67% of respondents, whereas religion was only slightly less esteemed, at 65%. Now, money has surged in popularity, described as extremely important to 79% of those surveyed. Religion, on the other hand, has lost traction, as only 58% regarded it as a very important part of their lives.
Money increased in value across the board, and was slightly more important for younger generations than baby boomers (increasing by 14% for those aged 18 to 34 and 35 to 54, and only by 10% for those 55 and older).
Despite “In God We Trust” appearing on the coins, it’s buying power, not spiritual power, that average Americans value most these days.
Yet the religion was more part of the hegemony not all that long ago, as in 1972 and even the early 1990s, 90% of adults in the U.S. identified as Christains, a number that’s since dwindled to 64%, per Pew. While dwindling in numbers, some extremely religious individuals have exerted a demonstrable amount of power recently, as Evangelists gain speed and push anti-abortion and anti-trans laws that are not largely reflective of the nation’s beliefs.
John Lennon, 25 in 1966, told interviewer and friend Maureen Cleave, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right.” A half century later, Gallup seems to confirm Lennon’s prediction.
Lennon followed up by saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
All of us are in a union. The Union of American Taxpayers. Republicans want to take away our benefits the way entertainment companies want to shortchange the writers, actors and crew who create their products.
Of course, it’s important to remember that they are completely shameless and will have no problem screaming “liar!” at anyone who suggests they agreed not to cut social security and medicare. But it will still be useful to have this to point out to voters.
And, by the way, this fatuous “we’re only cutting it for the young” has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future. The old people have kids and grand kids to protect and the young aren’t that stupid.
“Everybody in this business is not rich,” said comedian Leslie Jones in an epic Twitter rant about the SAG-AFTRA strike. She was 47 before she made any money in show business. People like her are striking for the 87% of their members who make less than $26,000 per year.
If you comment fuck shit on my post I’m gonna block you no questions ask! I’m tired of insensitive pieces of shit with a fucked up opinion. I don’t want your follow. Respectfully go fuck yourself!! LET THE BLOCKING BEGIN!! I STAND WITH MY @sagaftra PEERS!! pic.twitter.com/rdnYYkMllX
Why are wealthier SAG-AFTRA members like Jones on the picket line? To defend co-workers who have not made it yet. Because they’ve been there. Because they’ve made it doesn’t mean they will leave their fellow members behind. But that’s what Republicans think seniors on Social Security will do to younger workers who have not yet reached retirement age.
It’s the same dynamic. I’m alright, Jack.
I’m All Right, Jack is the title of a 1959 British comedy featuring Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers. The plot involves a union on strike and management shenanigans. The title comes from an expression Americans like myself first heard in the 1973 Pink Floyd song, “Money.” As Wikipedia tells it:
“I’m alright, Jack” is a British expression used to describe people who act only in their own best interests, even if providing assistance to others would take minimal to no effort on their behalf. It carries a negative connotation, and is rarely used to describe the person saying it.
The phrase is believed to have originated among Royal Navy sailors; when a ladder was slung over the side of a ship, the last sailor to climb on board would say, “I’m alright Jack, pull up the ladder.” The latter half of the phrase, typically used as “pulling up the ladder behind oneself”, has been used to call out unfairness and hypocrisy on the part of those who are seen to have benefitted from opportunities handed out to them, only to deny such opportunities to others.
Don’t be that asshole.
You heard him, folks.#sagaftramembers are right. The studios are WRONG.
Wealthier SAG-AFTRA members refuse to pull up the ladder behind them. Americans on Social Security had best refuse to let the GOP to pull it up and screw over younger Americans. Don’t fall for it. We’re all in this together.
“You’ve been pissing on our heads and calling it trickle down for decades,” comedian Trae Crowder in his rant about the strike. “And y’all better come to the table and make this right, because if you don’t, the next time you check your watch it’s liable to be pitchfork 30. How about that?”
Trump remains broadly unpopular with the public: 63% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former president, while 35% view him favorably. A year ago, Trump’s rating stood at 60% unfavorable.
In the new survey, 66% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have a very or mostly favorable opinion of Trump, while 32% have a very or mostly unfavorable view of him.
Democrats and Democratic leaners continue to express overwhelmingly negative opinions of Trump. About nine-in-ten Democrats (91%) view Trump unfavorably, including 78% who have a very unfavorable view. Just 8% have a favorable impression.
Views of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
The public’s views of four other political leaders included in the survey, including President Joe Biden, also continue to be more unfavorable than favorable.
Six-in-ten Americans hold a very or mostly unfavorable opinion of Biden, while 39% view him favorably. Biden is viewed slightly more negatively than he was a year ago, when 55% held an unfavorable opinion of him.
Around six-in-ten Americans (59%) also view Vice President Kamala Harris unfavorably, while 36% express a favorable opinion of her. Views of Harris are more negative than they were last July, when 52% held an unfavorable opinion of her and 43% rated her favorably.
Democrats’ ratings of both Biden and Harris are somewhat less favorable than they were last year. Seven-in-ten Democrats view Biden favorably, down 5 points from July 2022. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats (66%) have a positive opinion of Harris, a 9-point decline during the same span.
Views of Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer
Half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while a quarter view him favorably. A similar share (23%) have never heard of him. McCarthy has become better known over the past year: The share of adults who say they have never heard of him has declined 14 percentage points since then, and both favorable and unfavorable views of him have increased over this period.
About half of the public (49%) holds a very or mostly unfavorable view of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, while 27% view him favorably and 22% have never heard of him. Unfavorable views of Schumer have increased 6 points over the last year (from 43% to 49%), as the share saying they have never heard of him has declined by 4 points (from 26% to 22%).
It’s all tribal at this point. You can see why the election is going to be close again…
Florida Republicans knew that Democrats in the state who applied to vote by mail during the pandemic were new to the practice so they decided to force them to re-apply. Normally, once you apply they automatically send you a ballot for four years. Now it’s just two:
Florida Democrats say they’re spending and organizing to chase down people who vote by mail after election officials across the state canceled all standing mail ballot requests this year.
The mass cancellations were to comply with a 2021 election law that added new restrictions to mail-in voting. The legislation — which was celebrated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and slammed by voting rights advocates as discriminatory — cut the duration of mail-in ballot requests in half from four years to two. It also required that existing requests for mail ballots be canceled at the end of 2022, forcing election workers to cancel millions of requests and start their lists of vote-by-mail voters from scratch.
In practice, that means that voters who requested mail-in ballots in 2021 or 2022 will have to make such requests again to vote in local races and the 2024 primary and general elections. In previous years, voters would not have had to request a ballot again for four years.
Democrats in the state say the change disproportionately affects their voters, who have embraced mail-in voting more than Republicans since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed mail-in voting was rife with fraud. The new law is forcing campaigns to adapt; Democrats say they’re organizing aggressively to educate voters about renewing their mail ballot requests, sapping resources from voter registration and other outreach efforts.
“It’s doing exactly what they intended it to do, which is suppress voters and take resources,” said Nikki Fried, chair of the state Democratic Party. “Instead of focusing our money, resources and time on other endeavors and talking to voters, we’re having to spend resources to get people back on the rolls.”
Campaigns and volunteers who might have connected with voters once or twice to remind them to return their mail-in ballots may now need to connect with them three and four times to turn out a vote, Fried said.
“I’ll be very honest with you: In the Black community, it’s very top of mind,” said Shevrin Jones, a state senator who represents part of Miami-Dade County. He runs a group called Operation BlackOut, which focuses on getting Black voters to sign up for mail ballot requests. They are just one of the many groups mobilizing to get voters of color on the mail-in voting list, he said.
Election officials, too, say they’re sending out mailers and text messages and reminding voters of the change whenever they get the chance. But in the six months since the ballot requests were canceled, less than a third of voters in three large counties have taken steps to request mail ballots again.
They just want to make the Democrats have to put in tons and tons of work to get their vote out. As usual.
And they have the nerve to call the Democrats the cheaters…
A pregnant teenager writhing in pain as she suffered a miscarriage while trapped in the barbed wire that Texas has strung along miles of the state’s southern border.
A 4-year-old girl collapsing from heat exhaustion after Texas National Guard members pushed her away from the wire as she tried to cross it with her family.
Texas state troopers receiving orders from their superiors to deny water to migrants in triple-digit heat. Officers on another occasion ordering troopers to drive back into the Rio Grande a group of migrants, including children and babies, that they found huddling alongside a fence by the river.
These are all incidents that a medic in the Texas Department of Public Safety says he witnessed during recent patrols, according to an explosive email published this week by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. “I believe we have stepped over a line into the in humane [sic],” the medic, Nicholas Wingate, wrote in the email.
These revelations capture not only the extreme tactics that Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, and state law-enforcement officials are employing against undocumented migrants seeking to cross the U.S. border with Mexico. They also show how aggressively Texas and other Republican-controlled states are maneuvering to seize control from President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration policy. To many immigration experts, these moves by Texas, like the harsh measures against undocumented migrants signed into law this spring by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, push to the edge the legal limits on states’ ability to infringe on federal authority over immigration.
“U.S. immigration law governs the border; Texas law doesn’t govern the border,” David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me. Federal law, he noted, establishes a process for handling undocumented migrants seeking asylum in the United States. “It may not be a process that I like, or you like, or people in Texas like, but it’s a process,” Leopold added. “And that process does not include taking a 4-year-old child and throwing that child into the water … or depriving them of water when the temperatures are above 100 degrees. Those are not our values. Those are not our laws.”
Abbott has defended the state’s enforcement effort by arguing that Biden’s immigration policies have exposed his state’s residents to dangerous migrants and drug smuggling, and has endangered migrants themselves by encouraging them to make the arduous trek to the southern border. Responding to Wingate’s email, Abbott’s top law-enforcement officials issued a joint statement in which they maintained that “these tools and strategies—including concertina wire that snags clothing” were necessary to discourage migrants from making “potentially life-threatening and illegal crossings.”
The red-state offensive against undocumented immigration sits at the crossroads of two powerful trends in the Donald Trump–era Republican Party. One is the growing movement in the red states to roll back a wide range of civil rights and liberties, including voting rights, access to abortion, and LGBTQ protections.
The other is an arms race among Republican leaders to adopt ever more militant policies against undocumented immigrants. That dynamic is carrying the party beyond even the hard-line approaches that Trump employed in the White House.
This is where Trump has had a serious effect on the GOP. They’ve always been cruel and racist. But he’s started an arms race that has them trying to one-up each other on how vicious they can be toward some “other” where it’s Muslims as it was in 2016 or back to the perennial Latinos. Needless to say, their hostility to Black people is always obvious.
The lengths they are prepared to go to now are just one step shy of shooting on sight. And invasion of Mexico is on the table, That’s how far they’ve gone.
Both DeSantis and Trump, for instance, have promised that if elected, they will move to end birthright citizenship, the guarantee under the Fourteenth Amendment that anyone born in the United States is automatically an American citizen. In his town-hall appearance on CNN, Trump suggested that he would reinstate his widely condemned policy of separating the children of migrants from their parents at the border to discourage illegal crossings. And he’s promised to “use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” That’s an idea Trump often discussed but never risked trying to implement as president.
DeSantis, meanwhile, has indicated that he would authorize federal border-enforcement personnel to use force against suspected drug smugglers. He’s also talked about deploying the Navy and the Coast Guard if Mexico does not act more aggressively to interdict the arrival of chemicals used to manufacture drugs.
Simultaneously, DeSantis and Abbott have been at the forefront of the red-state efforts to seize more control over immigration policy. The legislation DeSantis signed contains sweeping measures to crack down on undocumented migrants, including criminal penalties for anyone providing transportation for such a migrant in Florida.
Abbott, for his part, is building an enforcement apparatus outside the control of the federal agencies legally responsible for managing the border. His efforts represent one of the most tangible—and consequential—manifestations of what I’ve called the red-state drive to build “a nation within a nation” that operates by its own rules and values.
Abbott has not gone as far as conservative activists who claim that the Constitution gives states the right to set their own immigration policies, on the grounds that they are facing an “invasion” of undocumented migrants. During a campaign stop in Texas, DeSantis embraced that fringe legal theory and argued that it provides states, not just the federal government, deportation authority.
This guy will say anything. He is very dangerous and I just hope he is forced to find another career if this one flames out as it looks like it’s doing.
Most immigration-law experts are dubious that even the current conservative Supreme Court majority would agree, and Abbott has not claimed this power. Operation Lone Star, the expansive enforcement effort he launched in 2021, is not attempting to deport undocumented migrants it apprehends in the state. Instead, Texas has returned them to the border, arrested them, or bused them to Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. Abbott’s choice not to claim deportation authority under the invasion theory has generated a steady stream of criticism from some immigration hard-liners.
Yet the revelations in the emails from Wingate, the Texas state trooper, show how far the state has already moved toward usurping federal authority. It has lined its southern border with miles of concertina wire and sunk barrels wrapped in that wire into the river. Recently, the state placed floating buoys in the river to block areas that might be easier and safer to cross. State troopers and National Guard members are also using force to push migrants away from the barbed-wire barricades. Republican governors from nearly a dozen other states have sent law-enforcement personnel, equipment, or both to Texas to support Abbott’s efforts.
“In the federal government’s absence, we, as Governors, must band together to combat President Biden’s ongoing border crisis and ensure the safety and security that all Americans deserve,” Abbott wrote in a letter asking other states to send resources.
Wingate, in his email, noted one consequence of these efforts: “With the [razor] wire running for several miles along the river in areas where it is easier for people to cross. It forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”
He recounted the story of a woman who was rescued in the river with one of her children, while another one of them drowned. Wingate also reported that a man suffered “a significant laceration” on his leg while extricating his child from one of the wire-wrapped barrels sunken in the river.
“We have a governor who is literally using the full force of his government to inflict physical harm and even death on people,” Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas told me. “The fact that he is using the government doesn’t make it any less horrific and it certainly doesn’t make it lawful.”
Beyond the human costs, the red-state border-enforcement effort raises pointed questions about legal authority. Escobar and six other Democratic U.S. representatives from Texas last week wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asking them to investigate whether Abbott’s buoys violate U.S. and international law, including the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War. Escobar told me she believes that not only should the Justice Department take legal steps to stop Abbott’s enforcement program; the Biden administration should be “sending in federal personnel to remove all of” the physical barriers Texas has constructed.
The DOJ has filed suit and we can only hope that the Supremes don’t find some “originalist” state sovereignty rationale for allowing these people to run their own border policies. I wouldn’t put it past them.
And Abbott and the others are refusing to back down. They are seceding in slow motion:
Abbott’s willingness to pursue such a militant enforcement campaign, and the decision by so many Republican governors to assist him, provides another measure of the same impulse evident in the proliferating red-state laws restricting or banning abortion, rolling back voting rights, and prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors. All capture a determination to slip the bonds of national authority and impose a set of rules and policies that reflect the priorities and grievances of the primarily older, white, nonurban and Christian coalition that has placed these states’ leaders in power.
That impulse, as Leopold says, is producing a dangerous “balkanization” of the country reminiscent of the years before the Civil War. It has also motivated the leadership of the nation’s second-largest state to conclude that the threat of undocumented immigration is sufficient to justify, both legally and morally, entangling children and pregnant women in coils of razor-sharp wire.
On Friday, after this article was published, the Justice Department disclosed that it had sent a letter to Abbott announcing its intention to sue Texas if he does not commit to removing the floating buoys in the Rio Grande by Monday afternoon eastern time. But the department did not demand in the letter that Texas dismantle any of the barbed wire it has placed on the shore or in the river, and did not disclose any further investigative action into the behavior of Texas law-enforcement officials interacting with migrants. On Twitter, Abbott signaled that he will not comply with the demand to remove the buoys. “We will see you in court, Mr. President.”
He sounds as if he’s looking forward to it for some reason. Maybe he’s been sharing some cigars with Harlan Crow.
This is something we have to keep our eyes on. These radical right wingers are without any real ideology anymore. It’s not really nationalism as we understand it. It’s just about dominance in whatever sphere they happen to operate.
Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party’s leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program.
In comments on Sunday as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Social Security will need to be revamped — but not for people who are near or in retirement.
Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch either Social Security or Medicare — a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party’s views — and has more recently hammered DeSantis for wanting to cut the program.
It’s in the DNA of the Republican Party to end the safety net. It just is. Trump may have temporarily taken it off the table but it will be right back on the minute he leaves the scene. I have never believed for a minute that this was a permanent change of ideology.
But there’s this to throw in their faces when they do it:
Of course, it’s important to remember that they are completely shameless and will have no problem screaming “liar!” at anyone who suggests they agreed not to cut social security and medicare. But it will still be useful to have this to point out to voters.
And, by the way, this fatuous “we’re only cutting it for the young” has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future. The old people have kids and grand kids to protect and the young aren’t that stupid.
There is a very easy way to shore up the program and that’s to lift the cap on contributions from rich people. At some point that will have to happen. But until then this silly kabuki dance will continue. And it just figures that DeSantis is leading the way. There is not one issue he’s on the right side of.
