My latest at Newsweek:

“The leader of the free world is now an actual physical representation of the decline of American power and the American Republic. The President’s diminished capacity is being willfully and purposely ignored by those closest to him, something that is very well-appreciated by America’s enemies. As a result, the world is in chaos.”

The Biden apparat has tried to present the construct of a dynamic president promoting a traditional Democratic agenda, which has succeeded brilliantly. Sustaining that lie requires constant deception.   – Victor Davis Hanson

Et tu, CNN?

In 2021, Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration.    – Victor Davis Hanson       Meanwhile Biden is still talking to dead people.

Things are so strange, so surreal, so nihilistic in contemporary America that the chaos can only be deliberate.            – Victor Davis Hanson

Glenn Reynolds: Biden and the Border

So the war over the border between Texas and the Biden Administration is now in the “Sitzkrieg” stage. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has essentially declared war on illegal immigration. He invoked Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which forbids states from declaring war except when “actually invaded” (or in such imminent danger as to admit of no delay) and, by implication, allows them to declare war when that happens. He also invoked the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which requires the federal government to protect the states against invasion.

Abbott’s legal argument is that since he’s being invaded, he’s entitled to respond, and since the federal government is defaulting on its obligations it has no business – it’s basically estopped from – complaining. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at the time, with members of Congress calling on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and the like, but basically, nothing happened. The Supreme Court vacated an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from cutting the barbed wire that Texas had installed along the border, but – contrary to many media reports – didn’t rule that what Texas had done was illegal, or order Texas to stop policing the border.

Now not much is going on. The big complaints about immigration are mostly coming from outside Texas, places like New York City where illegal immigrants beat police with impunity, being released without bail after being arrested. (The usual endgame for this sort of thing in other societies has been death squads, organized either by police or by police-adjacent groups, taking out those whom the legal system cannot or will not control; we’ll see what happens in New York City.)

But next month Texas’s law allowing the state to apprehend and effectively deport illegals will go into effect, and that’s when the sitzkrieg is likely to end. Following are my (very) preliminary thoughts.

When serially attacked, loudly responding that we will only proportionally strike back and wish no wider war will only ensure a big, ugly one.   – Victor Davis Hanson