Elizabeth Jo

So I don't know if you remember in 2023, Texas thought it would be a good idea to install a 1000 feet system of buoys.

along the rio grande river these were do you not recall that at all yeah well this happened this was a giant buoy line they were connected by heavy chains and the buoys themselves were like four feet across so so large that you couldn't kind of climb over them and essentially this is to prevent people from crossing into the united states right by swimming across the river um

It's mostly symbolic because I said it was 1,000 feet, right?

And the Texas-Mexico border is like 1,200 miles or something like that.

So it was only covering a small portion.

Well, Governor Abbott relied in part on Article 4's protection clause, that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the state from invasion.

And the federal government wasn't fulfilling its obligations.

This is during the Biden administration.

Of course, there's a huge problem with Abbott's argument.

Texas isn't actually being invaded by anybody.

So as soon as Texas implemented this barrier of floating buoys, the federal government actually sued Texas in federal court over this.

But what happened actually is that the Biden administration did not actually –

engage with the constitutional argument.

And instead they said that Texas was violating federal law about river control, navigable waters.

And the case is still ongoing.

I think you can kind of imagine why they didn't want to engage with the constitutional argument.

I mean, they did not want this to be answered in any way by the Supreme Court.

You know, the possibility that a majority on the court might say something like, well, actually, maybe Texas can defend itself because I, you know, do you really want to live in a world where each state gets to decide that they're invaded and engage in some kind of self-defensive acts?

Right.

Yeah, it's sort of a free-floating metaphor for terrorizing people.