I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
Joshua Zeitz has a great piece up at Politico on the folly of Supreme Court originalism, which drove the conservative majority’s decisions last week on guns and abortion. I asked Josh to join me tomorrow for the Truth and Consequences Zoom Chat to discuss the article and review the Court’s performance this year (I’m guessing that neither Josh nor I will be giving them a passing grade). The link is here. See ya tomorrow at 12:30.
Open Borders All The Time
On Monday a truly horrific story unfolded in San Antonio, not far from the US-Mexico border — 53 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico were found dead in a tractor-trailer, the result of a human smuggling effort that went horribly awry. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for Republicans to try to make political hay out of this tragedy and blame President Biden for it.
There is a rather obvious problem with the GOP’s argument that open borders led to these migrant deaths — if the US actually had an open border policy along the US-Mexico border, there would be no need for human smuggling of migrants. If the border were open or easy to cross, desperate migrants wouldn’t be giving their money to smugglers. Instead, they’d simply cross the “open border” themselves.
Indeed, you don’t have to believe me. Here’s what Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus said about the incident, “Horrified at this tragic loss of life near San Antonio. This speaks to the desperation of migrants (italics added) who would put their lives in the hands of callous human smugglers who show no regard for human life.”
These deaths directly result from a broken immigration system that makes it increasingly difficult for any migrants to cross the border, which is precisely the immigration policy that Republicans want. Stronger border controls and fewer migrants able to legally come to America breeds desperation — and that leads to the death of 53 migrants in a tractor-trailer outside of San Antonio.
But when it comes to the GOP’s talking points on the border and immigration, facts tend not to play even a cursory role. Indeed, seemingly every time there is a major seizure of drugs at the Southern border, Republicans immediately blame President Biden for his weak, open border policies … when, again, a significant drug seizure would suggest that Biden’s border policies are working in preventing drugs from entering the country.
So to review:
If migrants are stopped at the border or if migrants evade the Border Patrol — it’s the fault of Biden’s open border policies.
If drugs are stopped at the border, or if they make their way into America — it’s the fault of Biden’s open border policies.
If migrants die at the border or if they live — it’s the fault of Biden’s open border policies.
Heads the GOP wins; tails Joe Biden loses.
To be sure, all the talk about “open borders” has long been a lie. No serious Democratic politician supports such a policy. And that certainly isn’t the position of the Biden administration. While it’s true that Biden has put in place less draconian rules than the Trump Administration (like the one where customs agents and border police forcibly separated migrant children from their parents), it doesn’t remotely resemble an open border policy.
Of course, “open borders” is not a literal expression. It’s a tool for riling up the Republican base. It’s all about enraging Republican partisans and convincing Americans that only the GOP is serious about border security. We don’t have an actual debate about border control in this country. We have one political party chanting the mantra of “open borders” over and over again — and the entire conversation revolves around that false talking point.
It’s yet another example of how so many of our political debates are grounded in myths and exaggerated GOP talking points. Debates about voting rights become about voter fraud, which is non-existent, but since Republicans constantly repeat those words en masse, it becomes part of the policy conversation. Arguments about reproductive rights devolve into discussions of late-term abortions, which are less than 1 percent of all abortions, but according to Republicans, are ubiquitous and uniformly supported by Democrats. It’s just a distraction from the insidious impact of GOP-supported abortion bans, but they bring it up constantly, so it’s now part of the policy debate. The Second Amendment and near unfettered access to guns are about self-defense, or so pro-gun Republican politicians tell us. Never mind that guns are exponentially more likely to be used in a crime or an accidental shooting than in self-defense — and having a gun in one’s home (nominally for self-defense) dramatically increases the likelihood that someone in that home will die from gun violence. They say it all the time … so it’s part of the national discussion.
There’s an important national conversation to be had about the effectiveness of US border policies. One could even raise the question of whether a true open border policy would be preferable. But instead, our policy debates, more often than not, focus on Republican talking points describing policies that don’t exist.
BREAKING: Everything
Nothing says smaller, unobtrusive government than prosecuting women for seeking a medical procedure outside a state's borders.
Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere, according to people involved in the discussions.
The idea has gained momentum in some corners of the antiabortion movement in the days since the Supreme Court struck down its 49-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide, triggering abortion bans across much of the Southeast and Midwest.
The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state. The draft language will borrow from the novel legal strategy behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.
I wrote the other day that America is increasingly unified by geography and not creed … and the GOP’s response to scrapping Roe v. Wade makes the point. The Supreme Court’s decision has set the stage for years, if not decades, of fights between states over abortion. Indeed, American society's already deep and growing divides are about to get even worse.
GOP Overreach/Monstrousness Alert
Something tells this is a policy position that will not go over well:
You know who Philip Gunn doesn’t consider all that valuable — the 12-year incest victim forced to carry the baby of her father or uncle to term. If you care about “life,” how can you be indifferent to the trauma that such a government mandate would inflict on a child? And how can you be stupid enough to say it in public? It’s heartless, monstrous policy positions like this — which are the logical outgrowth of the religious right’s militancy on abortion — that could have disastrous political consequences for the GOP in November.
And this isn’t going to help either:
One of the byproducts of the Supreme Court abruptly ending a constitutional right to abortion is that it creates more questions than answers. Doctors and health care facilities, dealing with often vaguely written and never enforced abortion bans, will err on the side of caution and make decisions like this one in Missouri — ending access to emergency contraception. That’s only going to increase the political backlash against Republicans.
The Supremes Weigh In Again
It just keeps getting worse.
The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent, saying that the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”
Do you know what might be the craziest thing about this decision? It arguably could have gone worse. The conservative majority could have taken a sledgehammer to the administrative state. Instead, they will slowly demolish it. We’re headed to pre-New Deal days and the Lochner Era in judicial jurisprudence. I wish I had a good solution for this, but I’m not sure there is one. The Supreme Court is a rogue body imposing its ideologically driven, minority views on the rest of the country. Maybe the only solution is for the other branches of government to ignore the Supreme Court and declare that they’re no longer abiding by judicial review.
Musical Interlude
Correction:
Earlier this week, I wrote, “The number of working households toiling below the poverty line is 40 percent higher in blue-state America.” Several readers pointed out that this is wrong. It should have read, “'The number of working households toiling below the poverty line is 40 percent higher in RED-state America.” Sorry for the error, and I will try to better the next time.
Excellent read!!