Opinion: Where Trumpism leads us: Chip Roy tells Texas to ignore the Supreme Court

On Thursday, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that Texas should not obey a Supreme Court ruling issued on Monday. The ruling allowed the United States Border Patrol to remove razor wire and floating buoys that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered placed along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass.

USAToday has reported dead bodies found at the site, including at least one caught up on the buoys, not to mention a five-year-old Venezuelan boy whose leg was slashed by the razor wire as families tried to cross the river.

Governor Abbott said Thursday that notwithstanding the Court’s order, “We are adding more wiring.”

Roy has offered his theory for defiance. Texas officials, he said, “have a duty under the Constitution … to protect your citizens… [even] if the Supreme Court wants to ignore that truth….”

There’s just one problem with Roy’s constitutional scholarship. Article IV’s Supremacy Clause prohibits states from “interfering with the federal government's exercise of its constitutional powers, and from assuming any functions that are exclusively entrusted to the federal government.”

Control of our international borders and navigable waterways are just such functions.

Courts are the foundation of a rule of law society. Disobeying their decisions is precisely where Trumpism leads. If Roy and his ilk are free to decide which court rulings must be followed and which may be disregarded, so is everyone else.

The founders of our country knew better. They were profoundly influenced by French Baron de Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. In it, he wrote:

[I]f one citizen could do what [the laws] forbid, he would no longer have liberty because the others would likewise have this same power.

Hence, the constitution which the framers wrote established a Supreme Court. Its emphatic duty, Chief Justice John Marshall declared in the seminal 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, was “to say what the law is.”

With Roy’s anarchistic statements Thursday, Marshall is rolling over in his grave. Along with George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, among others.

It’s no mystery from whence comes Roy’s promotion of taking the law into one’s own hands. Donald Trump is the champion of an uncivil society. Remember when:

● In February 2016, he told a campaign rally crowd to “knock the crap out of” a protestor. “I will pay for the legal fees,” he said.

● In July 2017, as president, in a speech to law enforcement officers, he told them, “Please don’t be too nice” to suspects.

● In October 2018, he praised then-Congressman Greg Gianforte (R-MT) for assaulting a reporter.

● In May 2020, referring to protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police, Trump said approvingly, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

● On January 6, 2021, in his Ellipse speech which was the prelude to Capitol violence: “[I]f you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

● At 2:24 pm the same day, when he learned that his Vice President was fleeing the Capitol-invading mob, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done?”

● In December 2022, when he called for “termination of . . . the Constitution.”

● This Jan. 19, when he said that as a former president, his immunity from prosecution should extend even to “events that cross the line.”

Now the former president’s constant permission-giving for lawlessness has metastasized to MAGA adherents like Roy. We shouldn’t be surprised.

As Montesquieu and our country’s founders understood, law developed to establish the order that is prerequisite to liberty. When officials like Roy say elected leaders may disobey the law, it won’t be long before chaos follows and our safety, freedom and liberty are at risk.

The good news is that citizens can speak out against “MAGA-knows-best” thinking when it comes to disobeying the Supreme Court. More importantly, we still have elections in this country. November is our opportunity to cast our ballots for the rule of law and against the lawlessness that Trumpism represents.

A former federal prosecutor, Aftergut is counsel to the nonpartisan Lawyers Defending American Democracy. He wrote this commentary for the American-Statesman.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: Where Trumpism leads: Chip Roy tells Texas to ignore the Supreme Court