\n<\/p>\n
For perhaps the first time in eight years, Donald Trump<\/strong> is not the face of the far right\u2019s anti-immigration fixation. In his stead sits Greg Abbott,<\/strong> the Republican governor of Texas who appears hell-bent on inducing a constitutional crisis by defying the federal government on two fronts. He has deployed the state\u2019s military assets to block federal law enforcement officials from accessing parts of the US-Mexico border and vowed to keep up the razor wire along the Rio Grande despite the Supreme Court holding that the Biden administration is authorized to remove the fortifications.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Abbott invoked<\/a> a dubious constitutional argument, claiming his state has a \u201cright of self-defense\u201d that supersedes \u201cany federal statutes to the contrary.\u201d Abbott\u2019s attorney general went so far as to falsely argue that Biden is \u201cliterally in partnership with these cartels\u201d supposedly invading Texas. All but one of the other 26 Republican governors have sided with Abbott, effectively making him the champion of an animating issue for conservatives. \u201cTexas is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it,\u201d Ron DeSantis,<\/strong> the Florida governor and thwarted Trump rival, declared<\/a> in a statement of solidarity. \u201cFlorida will keep assisting Texas with personnel and assets.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump attempted to recapture the spotlight by issuing a somewhat belated appeal<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cTexas has rightly invoked the Invasion Clause of the Constitution, and must be given full support to repel the Invasion,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.\u201d<\/p>\n In Washington, meanwhile, Trump is making his presence felt by attempting to torpedo<\/a> a border policy compromise that congressional Republicans have spent weeks hashing out with Senate Democrats and the White House. The deal would grant Republicans an unspecified set of stricter immigration policies in exchange for another military aid package for Ukraine. However, the former president is pressuring Republicans to oppose the negotiations\u2014the calculation being that any bipartisan progress on immigration would help Biden in November, while continued dysfunction at the border would have the opposite effect. This has greatly angered some Senate Republicans, a relatively moderate bunch compared to their House cohort. \u201cThat [Trump] would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn\u2019t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling,\u201d Mitt Romney,<\/strong> the junior Republican senator from Utah, told CNN.<\/p>\n House Speaker Mike Johnson,<\/strong> on the other hand, seems receptive to Trump\u2019s wishes. He said in a Friday letter<\/a> to House Republicans that \u201cif rumors about the contents of the [Senate\u2019s] draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House\u201d before vowing to antagonize the Biden administration further. \u201cWhen we return next week, by necessity, the House Homeland Security Committee will move forward with Articles of Impeachment against [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas<\/strong>],\u201d Johnson wrote. \u201cA vote on the floor will be held as soon as possible.\u201d Impeaching Mayorkas over the influx of migrants entering the US has long been a priority of Washington\u2019s more Trump-inclined members. In 2022, Kevin McCarthy<\/strong> virtually started his campaign for the speakership by threatening to do exactly that. But McCarthy never followed through and was ultimately ousted in a far-right coup spurred by Trump. His replacement, the more militant Johnson, is now providing Trump and his allies with much of what they want, lest he suffer the same fate<\/a> as his predecessor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n