Tangle - The border standoff in Texas.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saltzman. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the border dispute, the showdown between the state of Texas and President Joe Biden. Today is Tuesday, January 30th.

Starting point is 00:01:38 We've also got Josh Hammer from Newsweek dropping in to share his views on this dispute for a little 10-minute interview. So you'll hear some of that under what the right is saying. Before we jump in, I want to give a quick reminder that we are currently accepting applications for our College Ambassador Program, and we just extended the deadline to submit to Friday, February 9th. Tangle's college ambassadors engage with students and organizations on their campuses to boost the visibility of our work through a range of in-person and virtual activities. This is a paid role with a time commitment of four to ten hours per week during the spring semester. If you or someone you know is interested, you can apply with a link in

Starting point is 00:02:22 today's episode description. If you have any questions, don't email me. Email Will K. back. That's will at readtangle.com. He's running the program, and he will be happy to hear from you. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in with some quick hits. First up, U.S. officials said they failed to intercept a drone that killed three U.S. soldiers because they thought it was a U.S. drone returning from a reconnaissance mission. Number two, senior national security officials from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority are meeting to coordinate plans for governing Gaza post-war. Separately, Israeli intelligence shared information with the United States to support allegations

Starting point is 00:03:11 that at least 12 people in the United Nations' 13,000-person workforce in Gaza were involved in Hamas's attack on October 7th, and that 10% had affiliations with militant groups. Number three, a former IRS contractor was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking federal tax returns of famous Americans, including former President Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Number four, French farmers blocked major roads across Paris as part of a weeks-long protest for better pay and working conditions. Number five, U.S. and

Starting point is 00:03:45 Chinese officials discuss joint efforts to combat the flow of fentanyl into the United States, a notable point of cooperation amid tense relations. And number six, this is a little breaking news off the press right here at 11 a.m. The Justice Department is apparently conducting a criminal investigation into Representative Cori Bush, the Democrat from Missouri, for the misspending of federal security money. A lot more detail on that coming soon, I'm sure. The legal battle at the southern border over razor wire installed by Texas officials to stop migrants. The Supreme Court tonight giving the Biden administration a win in its effort to remove that wire fencing. Border patrol agents should be able to start cutting down or moving this razor

Starting point is 00:04:40 wire that Texas officials had installed at the border and they should be able to do it right away. Now, the Biden administration had gone to the high court over this, arguing the fencing is impractical and dangerous when migrants get stuck in there. The justices deciding to decide with the administration on this issue five to four. Last week, the Texas National Guard blocked federal officials from entering Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas. Border Patrol agents had been using Shelby Park as a staging area before processing migrants. The Biden administration is demanding Texas allow federal officials to use the park again. The move has raised legal questions over who has ultimate authority at the border, the federal government or state officials. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government

Starting point is 00:05:27 has the authority to access a park abutting the Rio Grande and remove razor wire installed by the state of Texas. The Department of Homeland Security told Texas to give it access to the fencing, which is in Eagle Pass, by Friday, but Texas has refused. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxson demanded proof that the federal government has authority over the border, while Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican, doubled down, saying he'll increase state border patrol and add more barriers and razor wire. A quick reminder on some background here. Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, confirmed that 302,034 migrant encounters at the border occurred in December, a new record. Since the beginning of the Biden administration, CBP estimates that it has had 6.3 million encounters with unauthorized migrants on the border. Roughly 4 million of

Starting point is 00:06:18 those encounters were in border sectors that are partly or completely inside Texas. Further, close to 2 million migrants have entered the United States without being apprehended, so-called getaways. In response to the record numbers, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a state initiative that enlists the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to support border patrol. As part of this effort, the Texas Military Department placed roughly 70,000 rolls of barbed wire on the border near Eagle Pass in October, one of the most popular crossing points for migrants. Tensions between state officials and federal Border Patrol agents began

Starting point is 00:06:56 rising shortly after. Border Patrol agents and the National Guard troops had to regularly cut the wire to allow migrants through or free those who had gotten stuck in it. However, they often disagreed about when to cut the wire, and in some cases, the Border Patrol would remove the wire unilaterally. In response, Texas sued the federal government to make the Border Patrol stop cutting the wire. On January 10th, the dispute escalated after the state of Texas seized Shelby Park, an area abutting the Rio Grande owned by the city of Eagle Pass. The Texas National Guard built fencing around the park and then denied Border Patrol access to its facilities, including a boat ramp. Border Patrol then stopped patrolling the

Starting point is 00:07:35 river because it had no access to the boat ramp, and the next day, a Mexican woman and two of her children drowned in the river in an area where the Border Patrol had previously been on duty. children drowned in the river in an area where the Border Patrol had previously been on duty. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Preligar then filed an additional memorandum with the Supreme Court, in addition to the one about the barbed wire, that involved Texas denying access to the Border Patrol on parts of the river and to Shelby Park. On Friday, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court then vacated a lower court's ruling that barred the Border Patrol from removing wire and granted them access to all areas of the park. But Texas has continued to deny the Border Patrol access. 25 Republican governors have since issued a joint statement backing Abbott's position, which is that Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution gives

Starting point is 00:08:21 him the right to declare an invasion by illegal immigrants and that the state can wage a war against them. The clause reads, quote, no state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power, or engage in war unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states, Abbott said in his declaration. The executive branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including immigration laws, on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. While this standoff takes place, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are trying

Starting point is 00:09:09 to hammer out a bipartisan immigration reform deal. However, former President Trump and his allies in the House have preemptively rejected the deal based on details that were leaked from negotiations to the press. Today, we're going to examine some arguments from the left and the right about this dispute and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. All right, let's start with what the left is saying. The left is disturbed by the rhetoric being used by Abbott and other Republicans in the standoff, suggesting it echoes that of the Confederacy. Some say Abbott is advancing a flawed interpretation of the Constitution that won't stand up to judicial scrutiny. Others call on Biden to respond quickly to Abbott's challenge.

Starting point is 00:10:02 In the Daily Beast, Rotimi Adeo argued that Texas's border stunt is based on the same legal theory Confederate states use to secede. At the crux of what is happening at the southern border lies the question, does the federal government have the authority to regulate access to Texas's borders? The answer is unequivocally, yes, he wrote. Governor Abbott's invocation of Confederate ideology and defiance of Supreme Court precedent threatens to undermine established constitutional principles and federal powers. By contesting the Supreme Court's ruling and seeking to undo the McCulloch decision, Texas risks unraveling decades of legal precedent and challenging the fundamental

Starting point is 00:10:39 structure of the United States government. Texas's border stance challenges the federal government's authority and goes against historical precedent. It is essential to ensure that the Constitution's principles are upheld and that the rule of law is respected as the situation unfolds. When states refuse to accept Supreme Court rulings they disagree with, it undermines and weakens the rule of law. In the Houston Chronicles, Stephen Vladeck criticized Abbott's dangerous misreading of the U.S. Constitution. Abbott makes an argument that's a modern variation on one in vogue in the early 19th century, that states can nullify those federal laws that they believe are unconstitutional. No matter how much one might sympathize with Abbott's efforts to address current immigration

Starting point is 00:11:22 problems, the power he is claiming, just like nullification itself, is utterly antithetical to the constitutional structure of our federal system in the long term and likely will be repudiated by the Supreme Court sooner rather than later, Vladek said. If the Civil War example seems extreme, so is Abbott's rhetoric. It may make for good politics, especially with news that congressional Republicans have backed away from reform legislation at the behest of former President Trump, who would rather run on the issue than work to solve it. But it's very bad constitutional law, Vladek said. And although the Supreme Court has not yet repudiated this particular argument, Abbott's behavior may soon force its hand. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch said Biden must federalize the Texas

Starting point is 00:12:06 National Guard. Abbott's reckless cruelty-is-the-point policies and his defiant stand are posing the greatest threat to federal authority since the South's massive resistance in the 1950s and 60s to the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that mandated school integration, Bunch said. The small d democratic institutions that could at least ameliorate this humanitarian crisis at the southern border are failing miserably, none more so than Congress, stymied by the GOP's ability to thwart legislation. In Eagle Pass, Biden has been presented with only two choices. The first is to back down in the face of Abbott's defiance, not only looking

Starting point is 00:12:45 weak and ineffectual, but ensuring more asylum seekers will die needlessly. The other is to be like Ike and federalize the Texas National Guard, order Abbott's Confederates to retreat from Shelby Park, remove the illegal razor wire and fencing, and resume the humane processing of undocumented refugees, Bunch said. If Biden is the one who backs down at Eagle Pass, then, at the risk of paraphrasing Trump, we won't have a country anymore. All right, that is it for what the left is saying. Let's jump into what the right is saying. First up, the right praises Abbott's stance, arguing that he has the clear moral and legal high ground. Some say the government is only making the problem worse when it could be helping

Starting point is 00:13:34 Texas address the migrant crisis. Others say the Constitution allows for the exact kind of action Texas is taking. Let's bring in Josh Hammer from Newsweek, who wrote a piece arguing that Texas is correct to defend its sovereignty from the border invasion. Josh Hammer, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. You bet. Thanks for having me. So can you just give our listeners maybe the quick two-minute overview of your position on this dispute at the border? Obviously, you wrote a piece in Newsweek, but I'd love to hear it a little bit in your own words here. Sure. So you have here a situation that implicates constitutional law 101. So, you know, long before I was in media, before I was a columnist, host of a show and whatnot, I'm actually a lawyer by background.

Starting point is 00:14:26 And I have a constitutional law background specifically. So that's kind of the lens through which I approach this situation at the southern border. And it is constitutional law 101. Pugin's old fairly recently, that both the national government and the states are sovereign entities operating within their own spheres of legitimate authority. And you can just conceptualize that by thinking about the fact that it was the states that created the national government to begin with. That happened at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, when the states literally created the national government, they ceded them limited enumerated powers. That's Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Starting point is 00:15:08 But the states remain sovereign. And as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his great opinion in the somewhat disappointing case, the 2012 case, Arizona versus the United States, he wrote time and time again that since the states are sovereign, they possess the right to exclude, which is kind of the very defining feature of what it means to be a sovereign entity. You can exclude anyone you want for any reason whatsoever. In his Arizona opinion, Justice Scalia quotes Emmerich de Vatel, who was an 18th century Dutchman and one of the leading progenitors of what we refer to today as, quote unquote, international law. And what this means in concrete terms is that Texas has the authority to keep anyone out from its border that it does not want entering the territory. It did not give up that right as

Starting point is 00:15:52 a condition of joining the union. On the contrary, it probably would never have joined the union in the first place if their joining the union was conditioned on giving up that authority. From a more narrow kind of legally perspective, the actual order that the Supreme Court issued last week, a tremendously disappointing order for which I blame in no small part Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump nominee who unfortunately joined the liberal bloc here. If you actually look at the order, the injunction was just permitting Biden administration's border patrol to actually go down to the Rio Grande and snip new razor wire fencing that Texas has put up. But the order is actually silent about what Texas can do. So

Starting point is 00:16:31 putting on my lawyer hat here, there is free reign for Texas, Greg Abbott and his Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers and so forth, to construct new razor wire fencing there. So that's what I think that they should do. I do not think the Biden administration is going to act on this. I think that they are essentially bluffing. And I think that Governor Abbott, who is now joined by 24, I think it is, fellow Republican governors who have vowed his support, I think that they should call that bluff and that it's the right thing to do. And the American people are also with him. So I'm pretty sympathetic, actually, to Texas's position here, given the crisis on the border. I write a lot about immigration and border issues. I'm a property owner in West Texas,

Starting point is 00:17:16 a few miles from the Rio Grande. It's a really bad time for this crisis. Things are not going well. I blame the Biden administration for a lot of it. When I read about this case, though, one of the things that I guess concerns me is, as you mentioned, you know, the Supreme Court is kind of silent on what Texas can do, but they're telling the Border Patrol agents basically that they can go remove this barbed wire. And I mean, I think there's going to be a fight now about whether they can enter, you know, Shelby Park and Eagle Pass. If the Border Patrol tries to go do this and Texas sort of stands its ground and doesn't allow them to,

Starting point is 00:17:57 doesn't that kind of enter a sort of lawless Texas is, you know, ignoring the Supreme Court's order here? I mean, how do you view that standoff? Right. So if it literally comes to an actual standoff where Border Patrol is marching in, then according to the U.S. Supreme Court's order at that point, Texas officials cannot physically block them from doing so. What they can do is just start rebuilding new wire. I mean, you know, presumably within seconds or minutes is just start rebuilding new wire. I mean, you know, presumably within seconds or minutes of them sniffing that wire. So it becomes something of a battle of willpower. I mean, you know, like pun very much intended, it's a Mexican standoff who will very much drop their weapons first, right?

Starting point is 00:18:40 And again, because of the politics and the optics of this, with Joe Biden in an election year where he's fighting for his life in many swing states, he's pulling underwater by a 25 to 30 point high profile, especially on the issue of immigration, not when he's going for re-election, not when this issue is his Achilles heel, not when the American people, based on what they tell pollsters, happen to be siding with Texas and their like-minded states. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

Starting point is 00:19:43 The flu remains a serious disease. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Not the Biden administration. So I just don't see it happening. I think maybe you'll see, you know, you mentioned Shelby Pass. Maybe you'll see like a stray event, like a one-off here or there. But there's not going to be a grand standoff here. There's not going to be that nightmarish scenario where you have, you know, Texas and federal officials pointing guns at each other. That's just not going to happen.

Starting point is 00:20:39 So you think Biden administration is going to stand down based on the position they've now walked into, basically? Yes, I think that this is somewhat of a stunt. And now that they've done it, I just don't think that they're going to take a whole lot of action to actually act on. I mean, I think about the optics of this. We have a literal record-breaking number of migrants who crossed the border illegally for the last month for which we have data. This is unprecedented in American history, the numbers right now. The American people are looking at what's happening everywhere from Lukeville, Arizona, all the way to Del Rio and Eagle Pass, Texas. And, you know, they're asking very reasonable questions. I mean, my family, I'm not I'm you know, I'm a conservative, but folks, my family, my parents are I guess you would call them centrist, maybe Bill Clinton Democrats.

Starting point is 00:21:32 They're freaking out about this issue. I mean, they live in New York. They see what's happening on the streets of New York City. This issue is very much touching home. This is no longer a fringe issue that is just impacting ranchers who live in southern Arizona and New Mexico. It's become a truly national sprawling issue, and it is a massive, massive political Achilles heel for Joe Biden. So I just don't see him making a big stink out of it. Again, the fact that Greg Abbott now has every Republican governor in the country other than Governor Scott in Vermont, who's vowing to stand with him, some in very public fashion, like my governor here in Florida, Governor DeSantis. I just don't think that Biden's going to make this a big thing at this point. So one last question for you before you get out of here. I, you know, I'll show my cards here.

Starting point is 00:22:16 I think we agree on the immigration crisis. I think I'm beginning to be convinced that you're right. Maybe Biden stands down here. I wasn't really sure how I felt about that. But in reading some of the arguments about the sort of legal standing that Texas and the federal government has before us speaking right now, I think I came out on the other side of it. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about that. I mean, I am not a constitutional law expert, so I'm very curious for your opinion here.

Starting point is 00:22:50 You quoted heavily in your piece in Newsweek from Antonin Scalia in Arizona v. United States. But in that case, Scalia did end up being the Supreme Court reaffirming this idea that the federal law is kind of what reigns supreme in these immigration-related disputes. So I think I gather from what you said in the beginning that you think the court erred in that ruling. So I'm curious if you could talk a tiny bit about that. And then if we continue to see this fought in the courts right now, do you think this iteration of the Supreme Court might sort of reshape some of the precedent we have in the kind of federal-state immigration dispute world? Yeah, I mean, Arizona versus the United States is an absolutely

Starting point is 00:23:35 egregious decision. It is an absolute flunking. If submitted on a constitutional law 101 exam, it should receive an F from the grading professors there. Yes, we have the supremacy clause in the Constitution that's right there in Article 6 of the Constitution. Federal law is supreme. But again, Scalia concedes this. He literally says this in his opening lines of Arizona v. United States. He says that unless there is superseding congressional legislation or an otherwise exogenous or extraneous constitutional limitation, then Arizona, or in this case Texas, is by definition sovereign and has the right to exclude by the means that it chooses to do so. And there is no superseding federal law that would prevent Arizona from acting the way it was back with SB 1070 back in 2010, or as Texas is doing now. On the contrary, there actually is clear,

Starting point is 00:24:31 unambiguous, black-letter federal law going back to the 1990s and the Bill Clinton era. At least you could go back further, but we really solidified this with EDPA, the federal statute passed after the Oklahoma City bombing in the mid-1990s. EDPA put in stringent requirements for the federal government to control illegal immigration, to immediately detain those who are here illegally, and so forth there. So on the contrary, not only is there no superseding federal legislation that would co-opt or enjoin Texas from acting as it is, the federal government is blatantly failing to act, just as it was during the Obama administration during the Arizona litigation back in 2012. So that limitation upon what Arizona slash Texas can do as sovereign entity simply does

Starting point is 00:25:14 not apply because the federal government not only does not have superseding legislation, they're just failing to act or failing to enforce the law to begin with there. Look, as far as the trajectory of immigration law at the U.S. Supreme Court, this is an issue, if I recall, that Brett Kavanaugh was actually fairly solid on going back to his time in the D.C. circuit. He voted the correct way on the order last week. I have no idea what is going on with Amy Coney Barrett. This obviously is a tremendous cause for concern. John Roberts is not reliable at all on this issue. He joined the horrific Anthony Kennedy majority opinion back in the Arizona case in 2012. So hard to say.

Starting point is 00:25:50 You know, there was Trump versus Hawaii, which was the major Trump-era decision. You know, they called it the so-called travel ban or Muslim ban, whatever you want to call it. It really was neither of those two things. It was a very mealy-mouthed and moderate attempt to secure America's national security. In any event, that was a 5-4 ruling where Roberts actually went the right way. So I think you'll probably see more 5-4 cases for the foreseeable future. I don't expect this to be a major trajectory one way or the other when it comes to Supreme Court doctrine. Josh Hammer is a Newsweek senior editor-at-large and the host of The Josh Hammer Show. You can find him on Twitter,

Starting point is 00:26:25 Josh underscore Hammer. Josh, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. You bet. Thank you. Aside from Josh's position there, the New York Post editorial board wrote that Joe Biden's war with Texas's Greg Abbott threatens a constitutional crisis. Make no mistake, Texas Governor Greg Abbott holds all the moral high cards here, and some legal ones too. With Biden refusing to enforce immigration law and millions flooding in illegally, Texas has been utterly swamped, the board said. What a horrific political spectacle. Texas is looking to secure the border, which Biden now finally admits is not secure,

Starting point is 00:27:01 yet the feds are aiming to block him. It's madness, and not just because taxpayers are getting stuck paying for both installation and removal of the wire. Abbott's legal argument is strong, but his moral argument about protecting the state and the country is unassailable. Only perverse open border radicals and politicians who do their bidding still deny the border is a nightmare, with a new record-high 300,000-plus migrants crossing in December. And it needs to be secured, the board wrote. Of course, none of all this stern undrang would be necessary if Team Biden just followed the law. In the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Nicole Russell said the Supreme Court and Biden are why Texas's border problem just got

Starting point is 00:27:41 worse. Only the federal government can enforce federal immigration law. Abbott doesn't protest this. But with so many people allowed to enter the country, it's clear the federal government isn't doing enough to enforce the law. So why can't Texas, in its sovereignty, quell the surge with law enforcement, physical barriers, and other methods, Russell asked. Razor Wire didn't keep migrants from entering Texas. The Wire had stopped migrants from claiming asylum. Razor Wire kept migrants from entering Texas illegally. The border situation is complicated, perhaps far more than most people realize, but anyone, everyone, regardless of party affiliation or immigration status,

Starting point is 00:28:19 should want to prioritize the nation's security and enforce immigration laws, Russell said. The Supreme Court is right to uphold the Constitution, but in times like this, when the federal government isn't enforcing the law, and it's quite clear they're not, it leaves Texas with difficult choices to make. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So on the one hand, I'm pretty sympathetic to the state of Texas. As I've written again and again, the federal government's actions on immigration have a disproportionate impact on the southwestern border states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. What has happened under

Starting point is 00:29:05 the Biden administration is totally unprecedented. There were over 300,000 border encounters in December, a number that was once unfathomable for a single month. The system is being overrun, and cities as far away as New York are being impacted. We have to do something different, and Texas is trying to rock the boat. On the other hand, as far as keeping Border Patrol agents out of Shelby Park and preventing them from cutting barbed wire, I think Texas' legal footing is pretty weak. There is now quite a bit of Supreme Court precedent that has repeatedly and consistently granted the federal government power in disputes similar to this one, including in Arizona v. United States from 2012. There's currently a federal law that says border

Starting point is 00:29:45 patrol agents can enter people's private land for the express purpose of patrolling the border to prevent illegal entry. There's also the Constitution Supremacy Clause, which says that the federal law is the supreme law of the land, and judges in each state are bound by it. This alone undercuts Abbott's position in a meaningful way. Biden now has two options. He can fight Texas with the power of the Supreme Court's order behind him, risking a standoff between federal and state agents. Or he can back down, cede the moment to Abbott, and allow the Texas National Guard to pursue whatever strategy it wants along the Rio Grande.

Starting point is 00:30:19 From my viewpoint, Biden's only real choice is to exercise his authority and ensure the federal government's continued control over the border. If these legal disputes keep working their way up to the Supreme Court, so be it. I suspect the court will continue to rule in the administration's favor. Biden backing down would set a precedent not just for how states can treat his administration, but for how they can treat all future administrations on this issue. I say that knowing full well that Texas might have better policies than the Biden administration does for securing the border, and that the involvement of state agents could very well be a good thing. They may even have some legal avenues here. I think Josh made a compelling case earlier in the podcast that

Starting point is 00:30:59 Texas is well within its right to do what it's doing, and the Supreme Court previously erred in its rulings. But remember this, the key to the problem at the border is disorder. Our immigration system lacks sufficient leadership, resources, and structure. And allowing a state official to run roughshod over the federal government, then putting state and federal law enforcement at odds with each other, is not going to bring more order. It is going to do the opposite. It will make the situation more complex, dangerous, and dysfunctional. Texas is not

Starting point is 00:31:29 completely helpless here. As Douglas Murray pointed out in the New York Post, the simple existence of so-called sanctuary cities is proof that individual cities and states have some autonomy on how to navigate this issue. The state's floating barrier in Rio Grande, for instance, appears to be on much better legal footing than its total takeover of Shelby Park. Texas can deploy state law enforcement throughout the region to work in concert with federal agents. It can continue to move unauthorized migrants out of Texas to other states, thus spreading its burden out more evenly across the country and ramping up political pressure on Washington, D.C. for major reform. Instead,

Starting point is 00:32:05 though, Abbott has focused on some of his weakest legal arguments. As Ian Millhiser noted, Abbott has been publicly focusing on a clause of the Constitution that actually functions as a prohibition on state actions like waging war, except in specific circumstances. In effect, Abbott is trying to use a provision of the Constitution that limits state power as an excuse to violate federal law. This is, to put it mildly, a terrible legal argument, Millheiser said plainly. Of all the failures of the Biden administration, I think the border situation reigns supreme. Not only have we exceeded all records of encounters and likely gotaways in the U.S., but the fighting between Republican

Starting point is 00:32:45 governors and the federal government has sown disorder. Rather than disperse the burden, infighting has spread the crisis into various cities and states across the U.S. not prepared to deal with an influx of migrants. This is the result of both the sheer number of migrants entering the country and the red state governors who unilaterally started transporting migrants out of their own states. But more than anything, it is a result of the Biden administration's failure to lead. They haven't exercised executive authority in a way that has improved the situation. They haven't mustered any reforms through Congress, and they haven't been able to maintain a functioning relationship with state leaders that have an R next to their name.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Just as the federal government's authority in this dispute is supreme, the federal government, led by President Biden, is fundamentally atop the blame pyramid for what we are witnessing now. This issue matters a great deal to me, and on Friday, I'm planning to write a lengthy edition on my ideas for solving the border crisis. For starters, having a functioning and well-regulated immigration system is one of the keys to America's long-term success, both economically and culturally. On a personal level, I grew up living on the border in the summers and am now a property owner in West Texas, just a few miles from the Rio Grande. I've seen how the border issue impacts the country up close, from small border towns to major U.S. cities. Like nearly everything else, the issue has a wide range of diverse perspectives and also a wide range of possible solutions.

Starting point is 00:34:07 For now, though, Biden needs to make it clear who has authority on the border and find a way to start working with Congress and governors like Abbott, who's pleased for something different, could not be more desperate. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take. We're skipping today's reader question because our main topic was a bit complicated and took up quite a bit of space. So we are going to jump in next with our under the radar section. The Wisconsin Supreme Court asked the state elections board to respond to Dean Phillips, the Democratic nominee challenging President Joe Biden, who said he has been unlawfully

Starting point is 00:34:52 left off the state's primary ballot. The Wisconsin Elections Commission and Wisconsin Presidential Preference Selection Committee listed President Biden as the only Democratic candidate in the state's primary. The move came at the request of party leaders after a meeting in the beginning of the year where Phillips said the party was forcing him to spend $300,000 to collect signatures through a separate process that he says is unnecessary. The Washington Post has the story on the dispute, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of deaths and disappearances of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022 is 686, making it the deadliest land route for

Starting point is 00:35:36 migrants worldwide, according to the International Organization for Migration. The approximate number of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the first 11 months of 2023 was 2.2 million. That's according to new data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The approximate number of migrants taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents in December 2023 was 225,000, the highest monthly total in the agency's history. The average number of migrants entering the U.S. legally who are processed by the government each month is 50,000. The amount of methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, and marijuana seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers over 11 days in El Paso, Texas earlier this month was 291 pounds. The percentage of U.S. voters who say immigration

Starting point is 00:36:22 is the most important issue facing the country is now 35%. That's the highest of any issue, according to a January poll from Harvard Caps Harris. The percentage of U.S. voters who say the immigration problem at the U.S.-Mexico border is getting worse is 64%. And the percentage of U.S. voters who say the Biden administration should make it tougher to get into the U.S. illegally is 68%. should make it tougher to get into the U.S. illegally is 68%. All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story.

Starting point is 00:36:55 The Chris Kindness Award is a non-profit out of Berkeley, California that awards $1,000 every month to a community member for committing an act of kindness. We recently found out about the organization from Executive Director Terry Kytrowski, a Tangle reader, who wrote in to tell us about the effect the organization has executive director Terry Kytrowski, a Tangle reader, who wrote in to tell us about the effect the organization has had on the Berkeley community members. They have kindness on their mind, and as a result, their own behavior starts changing, Terry said. They began extending themselves more to strangers. They became kinder. That's powerful. This past month, the award was given to local high schooler Farhat Nurzad for mentoring refugees. The Chris Kindness Award has Farhat's story and many others. There's a link to it in today's episode description.

Starting point is 00:37:36 All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. Don't forget, we're taking applications for our college ambassador program. There are details about that in today's episode description and in our newsletter. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel

Starting point is 00:38:50 a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Tangle - The border standoff in Texas.

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