The White House has also raised humanitarian and environmental concerns. This week the justice department sued Abbott over the floating barrier, claiming that Texas unlawfully installed it without permission between the border cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The governor recently introduced a roughly 1,000ft line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande to stop migrants from entering the US. In Texas, Abbott has been testing the legal limits of states’ ability to act on immigration for more than two years, erecting razor-wire fencing, arresting migrants on trespassing charges and sending busloads of asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities in other states. With Democrat Joe Biden in the White House, Republican governors are seeking to assert their independence, with red states such as Florida and Texas styling themselves as bulwarks of resistance even if that means rattling America’s increasingly fragile democracy. It’s literally the red states separating from the federal government and the rule of national law.” If you think about America breaking into red and blue states, this is like the culmination. “We’re seeing it across the board in immigration, healthcare, education – it is defiance. “This is an onslaught against the federal government’s reach, power, effectiveness,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota.
And while there has always been tension between states and the federal government, it now comes with the accelerant of political partisanship and blue (Democratic) v red (Republican) state polarisation. It reflects a trend that has seen state parties embrace extreme positions in the era of Donald Trump and Maga (Make America great again). The disobedience is sure to score points with the Republican base. Earlier this month, Kay Ivey of Alabama signed into law a redistricting map that ignored a supreme court ruling ordering the state to draw two Black-majority congressional districts. In May Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill allowing the death penalty in child rape convictions despite the supreme court banning capital punishment in such cases.
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