Texans are fantacizing that Biden is about to wage war on Texas. Someone produced an audio clip purported to be the President caught on a “hot mic” saying “We’re going to make sure those cowboys don’t stop the surge of military-aged men from entering. If we have to send F-15s to Texas there and wage war against Texas, so be it.” This was, of course, fake. But it went viral anyway. Other rumors about Biden punishing Texas are flying fast.

This is about Texas taking over control of part of the border with Mexico and not allowing federal Border Patrol access to it. Greg Abbott should be happy that nice-guy President Joe Biden is in the White House now, and not Andrew Jackson. When South Carolina threatened to nullify a tariff it didn’t like, President Jackson considered it treason. “Tell … the Nullifiers from me that they can talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts’ content,” Jackson said. “But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the Laws of the United States I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.”

South Carolina met in convention and voted to not collect the tariff. The state passed an Ordinance of Nullification that prohibited the collection of federal tariffs at South Carolina ports, to go into effect on February 1, 1833. The state also authorized raising an army and appropriated money to do so. Jackson let it be known he would have 50,000 troops ready to march on South Carolina in a little over a month. At the same time, he also asked Congress to lower the tariff a bit more to avoid violence.

Congress began to debate a modified tariff, but it also passed a Force Bill that authorized Jackson to do whatever it took to collect tariffs. Jackson let it be known he could have 200,000 troops in South Carolina by February 1. South Carolina appealed to neighbor states for support, but got no help. In the end Congress did modify the tariff, and South Carolina stopped the nullification before it went into effect.

Andrew Jackson did some dispicable things in his life, but one imagines that another president — I’m thinking Franklin Pierce or James Buchanan — would have flapped about helplessly and allowed South Carolina to nullify federal law. And by now the nation would have crumbled to pieces. But let’s get back to present-day Texas.

The latest:

The Biden administration has given Texas until the end of Wednesday to stop blocking the US Border Patrol’s access to 2.5 miles along the US-Mexico border that includes the area where a woman and two children drowned after state authorities last week barred federal agents from the zone, according to a Department of Homeland Security letter Sunday exclusively obtained by CNN.

The letter to Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton says the state’s actions “have impeded operations” and are unconstitutional, and it cites the deaths – among the latest in the ongoing migrant crisis – near a city park abutting the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass where state authorities have erected fencing and kept out federal agents.

“Wednesday” was this past Wednesday, January 17. Texas did not comply. As I understand it, Abbott is using Texas National Guard as well as law enforcement officers in this mess.

CNN today:

Texas authorities arrested migrants at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, late Wednesday evening and charged them with criminal trespassing, marking the first arrests of migrants since the state took control of the area at the US-Mexico border last week, an official said.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is inciting a conflict between Border Patrol and the state’s National Guard that is inching closer and closer toward a violent clash between armed agents of state and federal law enforcement. The governor, as commander in chief of the Texas Guard, has directed his soldiers to block Border Patrol’s access to migrants, physically preventing federal officers from performing the duties assigned to them by Congress and the president. Abbott has received key assistance from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit, which cleared the way for him to obstruct federal border enforcement.

Tensions on the ground are escalating by the hour, as the Texas Guard—emboldened by the 5^th Circuit—is wiring off an ever-greater portion of the border. The Guard is refusing entry to all federal law enforcement and to active duty service members. Even in an emergency, like the potential drowning of a migrant, the Texas Guard will not let federal officers or service members through to the border. If the Supreme Court does not reverse the 5^th Circuit very soon, there is a real possibility that Abbott’s partisan stunt will spiral into open battle between the state and federal governments.

The current dispute is yet another consequence of Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s cynical effort to usurp authority over immigration from the Biden administration. It’s also symptomatic of the failure of our judiciary and the Supreme Court’s inability, or lack of desire, to check radical Trump-placed judges below it that issue far-right rulings with devastating consequences for democracy and human rights. The multibillion-dollar “operation” in question here directs Texas Guardsmen and state troopers to police the southern border and arrest migrants who cross over without authorization. It has utterly failed to reduce unlawful border crossings, though it has produced egregious acts of cruelty toward migrants; guardsmen have tried to drown these individuals, deprived them of water, and left them to suffer heat exhaustion in the tangle of razor wire set up by the state.

Unlike Andrew Jackson, President Biden can’t count on help from Congress. The Senate has been working on a bill to provide funding for more border security as well as for Ukraine and Israel. This bill has bipartisan support. But of course the wackadoos in the House are already against it. They’ve all talked to “the President,” by which they mean Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t want them to pass a border bill that might make Joe Biden look good.

Trump has recently told confidants in influential conservative media and political circles that “stupid” Republicans, particularly “RINOs” in the Senate, seem eager to hand Biden a win as he’s sunk in 2024 polls, and that GOP lawmakers shouldn’t be doing Biden any favors right now, a source familiar with the matter and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone. In essence, Republicans are concerned that approving a border deal could potentially benefit Biden in an election year when he’s expected to face off against an ascendant Trump.

Late Wednesday night, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Republicans should reject a border deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!” 

Some Republican politicians are echoing Trump’s sentiment that the party shouldn’t be doing anything to benefit Biden, all but openly saying that a bipartisan deal for harsher asylum and border restrictions is a bad idea because it would deliver a vulnerable president a political victory. 

Earlier this month, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told CNN that he’s “not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating. …I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?” Nehls also shouted “Trump 2024, baby!” when asked last month what he hoped to gain from impeaching President Joe Biden, in a video obtained by Rolling Stone last month. 

Senate Republicans have been trying to tell the House Republicans that even if Donald Trump gets back into the White House, they won’t get everything they want.

“To those who think that if President Trump wins, which I hope he does, that we can get a better deal — you won’t,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Wednesday. “You got to get 60 votes in the United States Senate.” 

“To my Republican friends: To get this kind of border security without granting a pathway to citizenship is really unheard of. So if you think you’re going to get a better deal next time, in ’25, if President Trump’s president, Democrats will be expecting a pathway to citizenship for that,” he said. “So to my Republican colleagues, this is a historic moment to reform the border.”

Miz Lindsey: You might as well teach physics to a duck. I’m not sure Johnson-Greene-the rest of them have more than two brain cells to rub together. And here we are.