2024 and the invasion at the southern border

Donald Trump crushed the New Hampshire primary, as every poll in Alpha Centauri predicted he would. Nevertheless, his sole remaining opponent for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, “vowed to fight on.” Why? A cynical person might suggest the interaction of two volatile liquids: cash, on the one hand, and consultants, on the other. Haley is swimming in both. The cash is coming from two sources: brittle, establishment faux conservatives like the Kochs and wily Dem operatives like the billionaire Reid Hoffman who, in addition to shoveling gobs of money to Nikki Haley, is also funding such entrepreneurial activities as E. Jean Carroll’s bizarre lawsuit against Donald Trump.

In a sane world, the support of a malignant figure like Hoffman would be disqualifying for Haley. Will Haley have dropped out (“suspended her campaign”) by the time you read this? Maybe. I predict, though, that as long as there is cash in the kitty, Haley’s consultants will “advise” her to “fight on.” After all, consultants are people, too, and they have mortgages and therapy to pay for.

But whenever the money runs out and Haley disappears, one thing that is not going to change is the overriding issue of this campaign. People are worried about inflation, yes; the economy, of course; America’s overextension in the foreign wars that have started since Joe Biden’s tremulous hand lay on the Bible and he promised faithfully to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” you betcha.

But as Iowa and New Hampshire and every poll taken across the fruited plain remind us, the one overwhelming, all-absorbing, keep-you-up-at-night concern is the southern border, which is to say the lack of a southern border. People everywhere, in the trenches in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, as well as far-off Iowa and New Hampshire, are terrified by the hordes of trespassers pouring over the southern border. They have been coming in their tens, nay, their hundreds of thousands, their millions, in fact. Poor, unskilled, surly and, most of them, male. The US government showers them with largesse. US citizens regard this with irritation: why does Joe Biden pamper criminals with such booty when they are accorded no such consideration?

Texas stepped into the fray and, under Governor Greg Abbott’s direction, began protecting its border in place of homeland security agents. The Texas National Guard erected razor wire, kept the feds at arm’s length and was beginning to seal the border.

The Biden administration, outraged that the National Guard should presume to guard the nation, appealed to the Supreme Court. Poor John “finger-in-the-air” Roberts was terrified — he usually is terrified — about what this might mean for the “prestige” of the Court. The chief justice prevailed upon Amy Coney Barrett to give him the 5-4 majority he needed to intervene and reassert federal supremacy, or maybe I mean state irrelevancy. A day or two later, the feds were there removing the razor wire. As one wag put it, “SCOTUS just affirmed the federal government’s right to refuse to enforce its own laws.”

Governor Abbott has bravely declared that the fight is “not over.” He issued a statement declaring an “invasion” of Texas and invoking Article I, §10, Clause 3 of the Constitution to affirm the state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself.” That authority, he said, “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.” This could get interesting.

Some have suggested that Roberts threw this bone to the left to clear the way for a bigger victory in one of the myriad Trump cases vying for the Court’s attention. Roberts has seemed loath to buck the left too often. He gave them the voting rights case last year, but then delivered the resounding defeat of the Harvard affirmative action case. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, the invasion at our southern border continues unabated. This has prompted several observers, including Governor Abbott, to dust off the US Constitution, especially Article IV. That’s usually known as the “full faith and credit” bit, but the article in fact details other important aspects of the relationship between the states and the federal government.

In the entire Constitution, the phrase “the United States shall” occurs but four times, twice in Article I, once in Article III, and once in Article IV when defining the obligations of the federal government to the states. “The United States shall,” the Article reads, “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion…”

There are two things to note. First, the word “shall” is used in its imperative, not strictly temporal sense. That is, the article is not concerned with what might happen in the future but rather in defining the duty of the federal government in certain eventualities.

Second, the Framers put the danger of invasion front and center. The United States has the constitutional duty to protect every state against invasion. Invasion is a hydra-headed threat. It might mean incursion from the serried ranks of an army. It can also mean confrontation with other hostile forces — a tsunami of illegal immigrants, for example.

It is often observed that Democrats encourage illegal immigration because they see in the advent of such masses so many embryo Democratic voters. Perhaps this is so. But the destruction of the country for the sake of temporary partisan advantage seems a high price to pay. Then there is the utter failure of the executive branch to faithfully execute the laws. That constitutional outrage is an impeachable offense, but I suspect it will be remedied not by a trial in the Senate but at the ballot box in November.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2024 World edition.