Buses, Not Backbone: Greg Abbott Mines a 12-Year-Old TNM Idea and Calls It Border Security

Greg Abbott hyped his April 6 border press conference as the speech of all speeches. What Texans actually got was a bus schedule. Abbott announced that Texas would charter buses to drop illegal immigrants at the U.S. Capitol, run enhanced inspections on commercial traffic crossing from Mexico, and add more personnel under the same command and the same failed plan. Daniel Miller opens with the part that sent him out of his chair: the Texas Nationalist Movement floated the exact same busing idea in a press release on June 7, 2010, written in response to the Obama-era Alien Transfer and Exit Program that was shipping migrants from California, Arizona, and New Mexico into tiny Presidio, Texas. Abbott did not break new ground. He mined a 12-year-old idea out of the TNM news archive.

The whole thing collapses on one detail Abbott buried until the reporter Q&A: the bus ride is voluntary. People interdicted in the act of crossing illegally, sitting in state custody, get to raise a hand and decide whether to board. Daniel walks through why that guts the policy, then turns to the heart of the failure. Abbott could have invoked Article 4, Section 4 and Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, declared an invasion, and called up the Texas military forces and a county-attached citizen militia. That is the position Don Huffines pressured him on in the primary. Instead the head of DPS admitted on the record that Texas has not even asked the federal government for permission to operate on the international bridges. Daniel’s question is the one that matters: why is Texas asking Washington permission for anything.

The line that truly set him off was Abbott conceding that securing the border is not cheap, then claiming Texas would pay nothing if the feds did their job. Texans already pay, through federal income tax and the debt loaded onto their kids, while Texas overpays an estimated 103 to 160 billion dollars a year into a federal system that refuses to perform one of its few core duties. With Title 42 on the way out and 165,000 crossings a month poised to double or worse, Daniel argues this episode proves the same thing Snowpocalypse 2021 proved when Texas had to beg permission to buy power: Texas needs new leadership, and a governor with spine would declare the invasion, repel it, and call a special session to put Texas independence to a vote.

In this episode

• A TEXIT resolution passed 530 to 300 at the McLennan County Republican Party convention after a volunteer used Daniel’s Robert’s Rules cheat sheet to stand up and speak for it first, giving others the courage to follow.
• Why the courage to be the first person to stand up, the way the woman who pulled over at a flag wave had been looking for the movement her whole life, is how a silent majority finds its voice.
• How Abbott’s three announcements, voluntary DC buses, commercial vehicle inspections, and more of the same personnel, fell far short of the invasion declaration many expected.
• The 2010 TNM press release that proposed busing migrants to Washington, and the Alien Transfer and Exit Program that dumped tens of thousands into Presidio.
• The constitutional powers Abbott declined to use: Article 4 Section 4, Article 1 Section 10, and his authority as commander-in-chief of the Texas military forces.
• DPS admitting Texas has not asked permission to operate on the federal bridges, and why asking Washington permission at all is the deeper problem.
• Abbott’s own admission that the federal government is refusing, not failing, to secure the border, one of the only reasons the union exists.
• What a real governor would do: declare the invasion, call up the Texas State Guard and a county citizen militia, and convene a special session to let Texans vote on independence.