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
That's the thing about secessionists: they think they're the only ones who can claim "rightful ownership" of... anything. Women? Minorities? Taxes? Land? They're all just property, and as such, ought to be theirs.
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.
I mean, they technically have their own independent power grid, so whether they are their own country or a state, Texans freezing to death would be left to fate, anyway...
I wonder how they would manage imports and exports, for two examples. Or the visa system for visiting the US and its territories? Their own WIC and other (currently federal) social service programs, or are they planning to discontinue them in typical forced-birth fashion? I would really like to see them do it and see if they want what they get.
But they aren’t left to that fate because every time the wind blows to hard and their power grid fails they come crawling for federal disaster relief hand outs to fix it.
That's my point--because they cut themselves off from the rest of the country electrically, it doesn't matter what their status is: when that underfunded and unsupported network fails, people will die. It happens every time.
And, would disaster relief be much different? Maybe the asking as a sovereign nation would take longer and have to be approved by Congress (?), but I've never heard of a state or nation every paying back US aid. If this has happened, please educate me. Seriously.
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.
Yeah, I guess survive vs thrive is the point I was trying to make. Texas produces enough food and energy to be self sufficient, but their global economic position would crash.
All the tech companies in Texas would leave. As would most Democrats with the means to do it. There goes your highly educated workforce (Democrats tend to be more highly educated based on demographic data).
The US military would leave. And then there goes all the defense contractors too.
They wouldn’t be self-sufficient on their own. They’re only self sufficient because they’re part of the US.
I’m a Texan and a Democrat. I would be out of here so fucking fast. I’d rather work at McDonald’s in California than live in an independent Texas Republic.
Also, you’re forgetting an important factor: food. Texas is not part of the breadbasket, it is not known for its agricultural produce, and the amount of good soil is not enough to feed the population.
Assuming Texas dips into its slush fund to buy things like grain, it would be flat broke in a decade, with only oil fields and beef to trade (they’d lose their offshore oil rigs).
I’m not sure they’re self-sufficient anymore. If I remember correctly, that one study was from 20 years ago and was done by a right-wing think tank, and the trend for Texas was overall negative. They stopped that study basically right before Texas started breaking even.
Their economy would be fucked because they’d need to draw up an entire economy overnight. What is a US dollar to a non-American? What does a Texas bank look like, and how does it function differently from a US bank? Do the companies currently operating nationally across the US have the right or capability of operating in New Texas? What forms must they fill out to file their taxes? Where goes the money that was previously pouring into the Houston area due to NASA jobs that suddenly don’t exist there? What about the money in San Antonio, Waco, and other towns with military bases suddenly drying up? What about the fact that the federal government owns the land those military bases are built on? What do the private companies who operate phone lines and Internet backbones do with the physical media installed in the ground which they presumably own?
The people who are cheering on secession have no fucking clue about this stuff. They lack the ability to perform a reality check. They don’t even know how to question their ideas, and they don’t have any independent thoughts. Their minds are controlled entirely by their political and religious shepherds.
The politicians who lead them on with the idea they might get away with it don’t need to answer the questions. They say and do these things because the people who put them in power think of the argument for secession as the equivalent of a schoolyard fight. “Oh yeah, well if you won’t kick the transes out of the kickball game then I’m just gonna take the ball and go play kickball over there by myself.” It’s stupid and childish and completely unrealistic.
I hope I’m right that Abbott, et al, have thought of all this and are only grandstanding, allowing their collective lobotomy of a voter base to rabble rouse, and won’t actually go for this. It would be an absolute bloodbath when they all starve or get summarily executed as the full thrust of the most expensive military budget in the known universe blasts in to establish order.
I hope I’m right that Abbott, et al, have thought of all this and are only grandstanding, allowing their collective lobotomy of a voter base to rabble rouse, and won’t actually go for this.
I hope so too, but there’s always the possibly that the situation gets out of hand and Abbott and his goons lose control of the populace and start a chain reaction they can’t stop.
All it world take is for one of the many unregulated militias to engage with federal forces over the razor-wire dispute.
Other “militias” see this as the start of the war that Abbott has been promising them and follow suit.
Then you have multiple engagements that require a response from the US government.
Even if it doesn’t break down into a full “civil war”, people could die and tensions could greatly escalate.
He’s playing with fire, and if he isn’t very careful he could easily fumble it and make a mess he’s not prepared to deal with.
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.
Could Americans, just for once, take responsibility for their own shitty politicians and politics, rather than blaming it on foreigners? This “Putin secretly controls everything” bullshit is basically the same kind of conspiracy theory scapegoating that Republicans do with Qanon, and it’s bordering on fascistic in it’s attitude.
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.”
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.
There’s not a mechanism for secession from the United States. That’s what started the civil war. So unless our leadership gives up on our citizens, it’s not a question of being forced to. I would encourage progressive minded people to have empathy for our fellow humans and not assume that all people from “red” areas are uniformly awful.
Left leaning fella in a deep red district in Georgia. Can I move elsewhere? Physically, yes. Financially, not a friggen chance. Lots of us are stuck in place for financial reasons or even familial.
Oakies in the dust bowl didn’t have a pot to piss in. Civilian Palestinians in North Gaza didn’t want to move. The Hmong people from Vietnam didn’t want to move. The Rohingya didn’t want to move. They still moved - because there was no other alternative.
At the end of the day those are just excuses. You can always move, you just choose not to. You just haven’t felt that the conditions are dire enough. I suppose you’ll just have to wait for them to keep getting worse. It’s not like your neighbors or fellow citizen voters are going to stop voting for Trump, Kemp, and MTG.
What do you think is happening in Texas?!?!
You sound like my in-laws talking about Portland as if it’s constantly on fire with ANTIFA checkpoints throughout the city.
Cities in Texas (where most people live) are the same as every other city in America, overpriced housing, tech bros, craft breweries, overpriced coffee, tapas bars, suburbs filled with church-going pearl-clutchers. It’s literally the same exact shit with slightly different food and ethnic background of blue collar workers.
The rural areas are significantly more fucked up, economically (and I would argue socially) but that’s true of absolutely every blue state. Go to rural California, Oregon, Washington and you have the EXACT same people as rural Texas.
Go to LA, NYC, SF, Portland and you have literally the same people as Austin, Dallas, Houston, because a lot of people you meet are from those cities.
Texas isn’t some dystopian hellscape like your examples, nor will it become one in our lifetime.
It’s just another example of a gerrymandered state with loud-mouthed shitheads riling their base up and clinging to power despite their declining poll numbers.
47% of Texan voters chose Biden in 2020, 52% voted Trump. Meanwhile in California it went 64% Biden, 34% Trump. Not that different. Also interesting to note, 6 million people voted for Trump in California, while only 5.9 million people voted for Trump in Texas. Seems like California has a bigger problem than Texas, maybe we should give them to Mexico or have them secede or whatever as well?
Texas has a good chance of being blue in our lifetime as cities grow in population and the demographic continues to skew… younger and less “white.” Texas is trending blueSource
Edit to add: let’s say for fun that your Gaza/Hmong/Rhohingya comparison is true and a liberal holocaust is coming. One stereotype about Texans that actually is true is that most of us (left and right, urban and rural) own guns and generally like guns for sport, hunting, defense, etc. Attempting a liberal holocaust in a densely populated, urban environment full of gun fanciers that don’t like authority would not go well for the invaders.
Also interesting to note, 6 million people voted for Trump in California, while only 5.9 million people voted for Trump in Texas. Seems like California has a bigger problem than Texas, maybe we should give them to Mexico or have them secede or whatever as well?
Worth pointing out that Texas has 30 million people while California has 40 million.
If people had to move states every time a relatively tiny group of idiots advocated for something stupid that’s never going to happen, there would be nowhere on earth to live.
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.”
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.
The difference is the issue being discussed. Being discussed is a state seceding from the US. What you are interjecting is a comment on the US’s foreign policy.
Those Texans forget that current prosperity relies on being part of the Union. As soon as they leave they will be worse than just having tariffs; they’d be embargoded so hard Cuba looks like a trade empire.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, let them be “independent” until businesses demand they come back. I give them one fiscal quarter (3 months) of plunging sales. No one will trust the government of Texas like they do the US Government.
TBH with Abbot spending all their money on razorwire that appears to magically increase immigration numbers against its intended purpose, they might be going bankrupt even without ever seceding.
Unless all of that National Guard expenditure somehow made it out of federal military budget?
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.
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
lol. how naive. have you been to texas or the south? those upstanding citizens are worse in many cases that the corporations that lobby those states. stop thinking that the world is full of good people seduced by a handful of corrupt elite. that's the road to conspiracy theories. fanatical religious nationalists are some of the most loathsome people in the world and texas is full of them. how do you think all the corrupt politicians keep getting elected? democracy still mostly works. states with shitty government are states with shitty people.
Add comment