A House Divided: On Trump v CASA

This is the Roberts Court breaking out the bucket of gray paint with which they draw dull blurry lines. The decision is written as procedural rather than an explicit repudiation of the 14th amendment but the practical result of the decision is to recreate the antebellum system of civil rights.

In 1857, the US Supreme Court issued the Dred Scot decision, stating that no-one of African descent could ever be a US citizen. In 1858, at the Illinois Republican State Convention, Abraham Lincoln gave the famous “House Divided” speech as his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for Senate and said.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

Three years later, the country was embroiled in civil war.

It appears to me that we are now rolling to a second civil war, or at least ferocious conflict. A person born in the United States is to be considered a citizen when they are born in one state and not another? How can that fail to lead to conflict? And the people who wish to entirely discard birthright citizenship are going to attempt to expand that. As Lincoln said, they will not be satisfied, even with some states, recognizing birthright citizenship. They will reach out to other states and attempt to deport people they don’t regard as citizens.

A violent wave of deportations is already being undertaken. At this moment, the Republican Party is voting on a bill that will vastly increase the resources of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the paramilitary government organization that is carrying out the deportations. Resistance has begun and will continue. There will be conflict, and it is going to take great effort to avoid a second civil war.