Fracturing of U.S. political system has been developing in public view over the past quarter century
The escalating dispute between Texas and the Biden administration over Abbott’s efforts to erect its own barriers to illegal immigration from Mexico show that the quarter of a millennium old federal US political system is collapsing along many different fault lines, constitutional and political experts told Sputnik.
Twenty-five state governors have come out in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s declaration that he will defy the Biden administration in Washington, DC and go ahead with building barbed wire barriers along his state’s land border with Mexico.
The Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision Monday authorizing federal Border Patrol agents to remove razor-wire fencing set up by Texas authorities on Abbott’s instructions. However, on Friday, Abbott said he was prepared for a conflict with federal authorities over the issue.
“We are prepared, in the event that that unlikely event does occur, just to make sure that we will be able to continue exactly what we’ve been doing over the past month, and that is building these barriers,” the Texas governor told Tucker Carlson in an interview.
The crisis was real and serious, US constitutional historian and political commentator Dan Lazare warned on Friday.
US System Fracturing
“Sure, it’s a crisis, a big one,” Lazare said. “It’s yet another sign of how the US constitutional system is fracturing along multiple fault lines.”
The crisis had been developing in full public view over the past quarter century, Lazare pointed out.
“First it was the breakdown on Capitol Hill as gridlock took hold from the mid-1990s on. Then it was the Electoral College, which backfired in 2000 and again in 2016 by cancelling the popular vote,” he said.
In 2022, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned the overwhelmingly popular Roe vs. Wade decision of nearly half a century before that had legalized abortion on demand throughout the United States. And now the process of disintegration and the discrediting of ancient national institutions was accelerating, he observed.
“Now it [the US political system] is cracking along state and federal lines. I have no idea how far this will go,” he said.
The crisis goes far beyond a local dispute between Texas and the federal government: it threatens the very existence and survival of the United States, Lazare stated.
“It is nearly 10 months to the presidential elections, yet already civil war is erupting. The 248-year-old American republic is crumbling before our very eyes,” he said.
Secession Measure
University of Houston Professor of African American History Gerald Horne agreed that the crisis was alarming.
“It is quite serious. The ultra-right in the Lone Star state is seeking to place on the ballot a measure that would allow for secession from the United States,” he said.
The principle of secession is not unimaginable in Texas but, on the contrary, it is deeply rooted in the origins and history of the state, Horne explained. “Recall that Texas seceded from Mexico in 1836, formed an independent state – then joined the United States in 1845… then sought to secede again in 1861,” he said.
Abbott has actually been traveling the world already to assess what support he might be able to gather for any move to secede from the United States, Horne noted. “As we speak the governor is touring abroad – ostensibly on a commercial mission but likely seeking to gauge international support,” he said.
Texas is the second largest state in the Union in terms of both territory (after Alaska) and population (after California).
Horne acknowledged that Abbott had not yet made any hard or irrevocable decision to break with Washington. “To be fair, he has not endorsed officially ‘Texit’ or Texas exiting the United States, [comparable to] the United Kingdom exiting the European Union (EU) or ‘Brexit,’” he said.
However, the possibility of a Texas secession followed by a wider disintegration of the United States remained very possible, Horne advised. “A question is this: does all this portend a breakup of the United States, especially if there is a controversy concerning the November presidential election: Stay tuned,” he said.
Not Serious Threat
Nevertheless, the crisis still had plenty of time to be peacefully resolved and there has been similar false alarms throughout US history, George Mason University Professor of Law Francis Buckley advised.
“[The crisis is Not [Serious]. It’s called interposition and [US Founding Father and early president James] Madison proposed it in 1798. [It] happens often,” he said.
Abbott has issued a “Statement on Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense” in which he stressed the state’s right to defend itself against an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, and he also accused Biden of violating and refusing to enforce immigration laws.
Michael Yon joins Alex Jones to issue an emergency warning to those American and Texan patriots who wish to actively help protect the southern border.
