It’s a bit strange or is it the calm before the storm?  I don’t know but it does feel like something has to give.  I guess we will see what gives after the U.S. Supreme Court rules one way or another on the matter of Eagle Pass.

As Glenn Harland Reynolds wrote, Texas has put the chaos on the border on page one.  What could do the justices do?  They could say that the federal government is right… Or maybe that Texas is right about the invasion.  Or, maybe they step back and let the voters figure it out.

This is a good summary of the situation:

Article I section 10 and article IV’s Guarantee Clause do in fact say what Gov. Abbot says they do, and his reading is certainly plausible.  But what will the Supreme Court say?

One possibility is that it won’t say anything.  There is a class of constitutional issues called ‘political questions’ that the Court treats as ‘non-justiciable,’ meaning that it can’t or won’t resolve them.  The most famous Guarantee Clause case was Luther v. Borden, which involved a sort of intrastate civil war in Rhode Island, with two different governments claiming to be the legitimate government of the state.  The Supreme Court declared that the legitimacy of one state government over another was a political question not subject to judicial resolution, but rather for the political branches to resolve.

My first reaction was that such a move by the justices would unleash more chaos.  It could also force elected leaders to tackle the issue of migrants.   For example, Democrats in blue cities will have to decide on whether their mayors are correct in taking dollars dedicated for them and now give them to new arrivals.  Did you hear about the debit cards in New York City?

Honestly, I like the idea of letting voters decide.  Who said that justices have to resolve all of our issues anyway?  

Make the situation on the border an issue in the campaign and let the Democrats defend what Joe Biden is doing.  I don’t know if this is what Governor Abbott had in mind when he started this but I am certain that a conversation about the border is the last thing that the Biden administration wants.

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