Texas
Texas Is Spoiling for a Civil War
Politics
/
January 30, 2024
As Governor Greg Abbott escalates his border fight with the Biden administration, he is sounding a lot like an old Confederate.
Texas National Guard soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Rio Grande river at Shelby Park on January 12, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas.
(Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
Many Democrats treat the Empire of Texas as an alarming side show. Sure, the state executes the most people in the country; places bounties on those who smuggle pregnant people out of state to receive reproductive care; and uses migrants for target practice—but for many liberals the state is just a sick joke that can be disregarded until Ted Cruz shows up for a football game. Even now, as the state openly repudiates federal laws, the most common refrain from the “always-online” liberal community is “Good: give Texas back to Mexico.”
That is not the right answer. First of all, Texas doesn’t want to leave, it wants to invade the rest of the United States and remake the country in its own Christofascist image. Moreover, as is typical with these “states’ rights” types, the definition of “freedom” envisaged by the white guys running Texas is one where they are the only ones forever free—and they are allowed to subjugate women and people of color in their grabbable areas. But most important, allowing a state like Texas to thumb its nose at human rights and federal authority does nothing but give aid and comfort to other would-be rebel states to do the same.
Texas is not a side show, it is ground zero in the battle to reassert state’s rights over individual rights and the federal government. And, with the help of Republican judges and a Democratic administration that still seems beholden to a rulebook Texas is eager to torch, Texas is more or less winning the first battle in this Civil War reenactment.
The flashpoint for this crisis is, of course, the border. I have written before about the crossing at Eagle Pass, Texas, a place along the Rio Grande where it is popular for immigrants to make the crossing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has erected a series of sadistic obstructions across this part of the river—including buoys ringed with razor wire and underwater traps—meant to maim and even drown people trying to swim across the river. Should people, and their children, survive Abbott’s gauntlet, Texas officials on the other side have been accused of pushing them back into the river, or denying the survivors medical aid or even water.
In response to this murder-barrier, which is in clear violation of both federal law and international human rights laws, US Attorney General Merrick Garland… filed a lawsuit. Because when a rebel force erects a literal death trap on federal lands, the right answer is to use the slow and plodding legal process instead of sending, I don’t know, a Zumwalt-class naval destroyer into the river to clear the obstructions. The lawsuit is still pending while people drown, of course.
Lawsuits do have some effect on restraining Texas’s actions. Governor Abbott recently admitted: “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.” So, good job “murder laws,” way to make murderers think twice before murdering people. Nonetheless, Garland’s lawsuit did not compel Texas to tear down its medieval fortifications.
Current Issue
Eventually, the Biden administration did send federal border patrol agents to Texas to monitor and provide humanitarian aid to the people Abbott would let die. In response, Abbott erected another razor wire fence, this time to keep the federal agents away from the river and prevent them from helping.
Again, instead of cutting through the razor wire and arresting the people trying to obstruct the federal government, the Biden administration sued. I’m going to say this part really slowly for the MAGA “tourists”: preventing federal officials from carrying out their duties is a crime.
The federal government has nearly unfettered authority to make national immigration policy, and even if you’ve watched too much Fox News to believe that, it certainly has total constitutional authority to patrol the nation’s borders. Lawyers for Texas argued, however, that the government’s authority does not extend to repurposing private dwellings to enact its policies, and that’s true. But putting up a fence to block access to an international waterway does not convert the Rio freaking Grande into a private dwelling.
The Supreme Court heard this case on emergency appeal—and last week it ruled in favor of the Biden administration. But, shockingly, the vote was only 5-4, with justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh all dissenting without comment. (It might have been interesting if they did; we might have gotten the first judicial comment about the Third Amendment—which prohibits forcing private individuals to provide for federal troops—that anybody can remember.)
Despite the legal loss, Abbott was undeterred. Perhaps inspired by the fact that there appears to be at least four justices willing to defend Texas’s right to go to war with the federal government, Abbott issued a lengthy statement claiming that Texas is under foreign “invasion” (from desperate migrants who are too exhausted to stand after their ordeal); that the Biden administration has failed in its federal duty to protect Texas from invasion; and thus Texas has the authority to “defend itself” through any means. Abbott says Texas has a right to “stand its ground”—and we should all know by now that “stand your ground” is white people code for “kill brown people who bother us.” If that argument sounds totally detached from any reasonable code of laws, that’s because it is, but it should also sound familiar. Abbott and Texas has already made this exact same argument in defense of its recent “show me your papers”-style racial profiling bill, which allows Texas to arrest any undocumented immigrant—or any suspected undocumented immigrant, whatever the hell that means—and jail them or deport them back to Mexico, even if they’re not Mexican.
This ridiculous “invasion” rhetoric is being parroted by red-state governors across the country. South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, for instance, has said she is willing to send her state’s own troops to help Texas “secure the border.” Yes, red-state governors are threatening to send troops to Texas to fight federal agents.
Popular
“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →
Liberals online dunked on Fox News because, after a New York jury announced that Trump owed E. Jean Carroll an additional $83 million for defaming her, Fox quickly cut away from the verdict to return to its ongoing “border crisis” coverage. It looked like Fox was doing its usual thing of distracting from the legal woes of their Lord and Savior with more fear mongering and fake news about immigration. To be clear, the network was certainly doing some of that. But we are in a situation where there is a state in open rebellion against both federal law and a Supreme Court order, and they’ve got guns.
The white-wing media complex is simply giddy about the prospect of defeating federal agents trying to enforce the law, while the left is devoting a lot of time to defending Taylor Swift. Don’t get me wrong, Swift seems like a really cool lady, and I hope that she and Kansas City Cultural Appropriations tight-end Travis Kelce have found true and everlasting love, but Texas is leading a revolt against the federal government, as it continues to harm immigrants, while the Biden administration waits for the refs to throw a flag.
People will say Texas is merely “causing a constitutional crisis” as opposed to spoiling for civil war. But that is the wrong frame. There is no “constitutional” crisis here, because there is nothing up for reasonable interpretation. Texas is violating the Constitution, as well as a court order, and it’s doing so in order to continue to hurt desperate people. The state is literally blocking humanitarian aid to people it deems disposable, effectively trying to shove them underneath the waves before the federal government can throw them a life raft. This is not a legal crisis: this is a rebellion against federal authority and the basic human decency that it’s trying to provide.
If President Biden will not enforce federal laws in Texas, nobody will. In this case, enforcing those laws requires not just breaking down the razor wire defenses and deconstructing the Eagle Pass barrier but also arresting the people who obstruct federal agents performing their duties. If Governor Abbott tries to further obstruct the operations of the federal government and continues to violate the Supreme Court’s order, he should be arrested for treason. And if all that seems aggressive and likely to escalate the conflict, I’d simply point out that appeasement never works, and Texas has already taken the aggressive step of violating court orders in order to harm as many migrants as it can, all while Biden and Garland impotently shout “hey pal, that’s not fair” as dead bodies float on by.
Does Biden have the stomach to fight this? Abbott is betting that he doesn’t. It’s the same bet John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee made about Abraham Lincoln: they didn’t think they could “win” the Civil War, they thought the Union wouldn’t have the will to stop them.
The Confederates were wrong about Lincoln. The Republicans may be right about Biden.
-
Submit a correction
-
Reprints & permissions
More from The Nation
Undoing the country’s authoritarian experiment.
David Ost
Marlene Engelhorn has committed to giving away 90 percent of her wealth. Will a council of citizens be able to decide how to spend it?
Zoë Beery
Sociologist Naomi Braine’s new book on the global feminist movement for self-managed abortion took her to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study activists’ work the…
Q&A
/
Felicia Kornbluh
The conversation about Israel’s devastating war in Palestine should also urge a discussion about the state of the country’s Black residents.
Column
/
Kali Holloway
The NHL took the first step toward expansion in Texas earlier this week, agreeing to terms with billionaire Dan Friedkin and his family to explore the feasibility of putting a franchise in Houston or Austin.
Far enough from the Dallas Stars, who relocated from Minnesota in 1993, a new team would not interfere with their territorial rights. And the league has shown no fear of adding one team at a time, so No. 33 does not have to come with No. 34.
“Symmetry I don’t think should necessarily govern expansion,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday. “You expand if you think it makes sense and enhances what the league has.”
What is behind the NHL’s interest in Texas
Money is the obvious answer. Bettman said the total investment of the project would be some $3.5 billion, which would include expansion fees paid to established owners along with the cost of building a new arena.
The Houston Rockets’ arena downtown is publicly owned but controlled by team owner Tilman Fertitta’s Clutch City Sports and Entertainment group. The home of the American Hockey League’s Texas Stars, in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, has a capacity of 8,000 that is a little over half the size of the NHL’s smallest current rink (Winnipeg).
“I would be surprised if the NHL would be OK with an expansion team that does not have a new arena,” said Brian Mills, an associate professor at the University of Texas who teaches courses on sports economics and strategy. “The revenue potential with the luxury boxes and the way that they set those up and the money that they like to extract from the local cities is way too large to pass up.”
They are also huge markets. Houston at nearly 2.4 million is the fourth-most-populated U.S. city; Austin at just over 1 million is in the top 12.
“Obviously it makes sense if you’re a sports league to have a franchise in the nation’s fifth-largest metro area and one that is growing rapidly,” said Holy Cross professor Victor Matheson, an expert in sports economics. “Houston obviously makes sense in general as a destination for any league.”
Austin is smaller but has doubled its population since the mid-1990s and has seen an infusion of people over the past five years. Only eight of the NHL’s existing markets are bigger.
“It’s becoming more and more of a tech city, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more hockey fans here than there used to be,” Mills said. “I would imagine there’s some market for the NHL here in Austin, particularly more than when it was a sleepy, small town capital of Texas 30 years ago.”
History of hockey in Houston and Austin
When hockey was picking up in popularity in the 1960s and ‘70s and the NHL went from six teams to 18, the rival World Hockey Association was founded and Houston got a franchise when the one in Dayton, Ohio, failed to get off the ground.
The Aeros’ inaugural season was in 1972-78, and they were best known for “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe playing for them along with sons Mark and Marty. They won four Avco World Trophies as WHA champions before folding.
An AHL team using the same name existed in Houston from 1994-2013. The Texas Stars have played in Austin since ’09.
“There’s some interest of hockey,” University of Houston economics professor Steven G. Craig said. “Houston is full of immigrants from around the country and around the world. And Austin is sort of similar in the sense of a pretty heterogeneous population.”
Pros and cons of a Houston or Austin NHL franchise
Growing the sport in another so-called non-traditional spot is a big benefit. Smashing successes in places like Las Vegas and Tampa, Florida, show what hockey can do across the Sun Belt when strong ownership is involved.
“Southern cities have been doing pretty well now these days in the NHL: the Lightning and the Panthers,” Mills said of the two teams in Florida. “You’ve got some pretty good hockey teams after some pretty miserable failures with some earlier expansion to the South.”
Abandoning the second try in Atlanta (the Thrashers from 2000-11) was more a failure of ownership than the market. The same could be said in Arizona, where a revolving door of owners led to arena miscues and eventually the Coyotes being sold and moved to Salt Lake City in 2024 to become the Utah Mammoth.
A 33rd team also means 20-23 more NHL players and hopefuls in the minors. The changing landscape of hockey development at the junior and college levels has the potential to churn more talent through the pipeline in North America than ever before, along with players coming from Europe.
“You do have a pretty big pool of players,” Matheson said. “I’m not particularly worried about diluting the talent there because I think there’s a lot of skill.”
What’s next and where the 34th team may be
After this six-month exploratory phase is complete, recent history suggests a season-ticket drive would be one of the subsequent steps. Ticket drives validated interest that led to the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken.
The Board of Governors would need to approve moving forward in the process. No vote has yet been held, though the executive committee supported exploring Houston and Austin.
And while the NHL is comfortable with unbalanced Eastern and Western conferences, getting to 34 teams seems inevitable if it goes to 33. Bettman said the board on Tuesday was updated on situations in Atlanta and Arizona, and it would be no surprise if one of those places got another crack at it.
ere’s everything you need to know about one of the most recognizable trophies in North American sports — The Stanley Cup.
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletters here.
Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election.
“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.
Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others.
Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.”
“There is nothing more important in our office than this project,” Adkins said.
TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up.
For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don’t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track.
The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources.
The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.
Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February.
Earlier this month, Nelson announced she’d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to appoint her successor.
Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes
According to public records, the state’s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state’s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.
Bettencourt raised questions about Civix’s work during the hearing. “When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,” Bettencourt said.
He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. “Yes, sir,” she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor’s biggest election management and voter registration software customer.
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade,” though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues.
The agency specified that it didn’t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year’s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates on time.
Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 23: NBA commissioner Adam Silver shakes hands with Dailyn Swain after he is drafted fifteenth overall by the Chicago Bulls during Round One of the 2026 NBA Draft at Barclays Center on June 23, 2026 in New York City. (Photo b
AUSTIN, Texas – Former Texas standout Dailyn Swain was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the 15th overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft on Tuesday night.
What we know:
Swain is a 6-foot-8, 225-pound wing that emerged as one of college basketball’s biggest risers during his lone season with the Longhorns. He transferred to the University of Texas from Xavier University in Ohio. The 20-year-old led Texas in points, rebounds, assists and steals while helping establish himself as a first-round prospect.
By the numbers:
Swain averaged 17.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.8 steals per game during the 2025-26 season. His versatility on both ends of the floor made him one of the nation’s most productive all-around players.
Dailyn Swain #3 of the Texas Longhorns dunks the ball against the Gonzaga Bulldogs during the second round of the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament held at Moda Center on March 21, 2026 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos v (Getty Images)
Dig deeper:
As an Ohio native, Swain starred at Africentric Early College in Columbus. He entered the 2025-26 college basketball season largely outside first-round draft projections but steadily climbed the draft boards with his strong play.
Known for his physical frame, defensive versatility and playmaking ability, Swain can impact games in a variety of ways. Outside shooting remains an area for development after he shot 31.7% from 3-point range last season, but evaluators still view him as an NBA-ready wing capable of contributing immediately.
What’s next:
Swain becomes the latest Texas player selected in the NBA Draft and joins a Bulls team looking to add size, toughness and versatility on the perimeter.
The Source: Information in this article was provided from live coverage of the 2026 NBA Draft.
-
Vermont2 minutes agoExperienced pros have Vermont Green women’s team on cusp of USLW playoffs
-
Virginia8 minutes agoVirginia Lottery Powerball, Pick 3 Night results for June 24, 2026
-
Wisconsin17 minutes agoWisconsin Lottery Powerball, Pick 3 results for June 24, 2026
-
West Virginia23 minutes agoMorrisey announces more than $700,000 to support rural domestic violence and sexual assault victims
-
Wyoming29 minutes agoPolitics in the Park: GOP gubernatorial candidates share visions for Wyoming governor
-
Crypto33 minutes agoThe cryptocurrency industry has entered the “Show Me” era: merely relying on vision is no longer enough | WEEX Crypto News
-
Finance38 minutes agoQuadient Recognized as a Leader in the 2026 SPARK Matrix for Accounts Receivable Applications
-
Fitness45 minutes ago22 Trainer-Approved Bodyweight Exercises That Actually Build Muscle
