Abbott and DeSantis are cynically doing election year stunts to keep their base whipped up to drive them to the polls in November.  Abbott bussing families to DC and New York, and DeSantis flying them to Martha’s Vineyard violate more than a few state and federal laws against human trafficking, crossing state lines with undocumented immigrants, misappropriation of taxpayer funds, and  others.  Clearly, both governor’s believe they are above the law (like TFG) and are thumbing their noses at immigration and law enforcement agencies.

I say, fine.  Don’t go after the governors’ lawbreaking (yet), but cut off access to the services they’re using to illegally dump immigrants around the country.  Let’s use the same tactics that anti-choice politicians use…get some our own pawns to use.  Go after those who are enabling this unprecedented cruelty, the drivers and owners of the buses and the pilots and owners of the aircraft being used.  They KNOW they’re transporting undocumented immigrants (or should know), so federal authorities should go after them and indict them for trafficking.  Pilots convicted of crimes lose their licenses.  Drivers may not lose their license but will certainly lose their jobs.  Both will certainly face jail time.  If we do that, no bus company or air charter company will touch this business.  Problem solved, at least until the governors get prosecuted.

The only way to fight fire is with fire.  The hallmark of TFGist Republicans is cruelty and dickishness.  The only way to stop them is to cut off their resources and make them pay personally.

The National Butterfly Center, located in Mission Texas is (was) the North American Butterfly Association’s (NABA) “flagship facility and a primary focus of its efforts aimed at educating the public about the value of biodiversity, the beauty of the natural world, the wonder of butterflies, particularly, and the powerful role they play in maintaining healthy ecosystems and sustainable food resources.”  The NABA was founded in 1993 to study and preserve the butterfly populations that migrate between North and South America, and hold butterfly counts and other conservation programs to protect these delicate creatures.

Why am I writing about a butterfly sanctuary?  Because it was forced to close indefinitely in late January after suffering years of harassment by QAnon followers and other rightwing nutjobs who believe that the sanctuary is not really a butterfly center, but actually a hub for child sex trafficking.  Remember PizzaGate where some idiot shot up a pizza shop believing bullshit that it was being used by cannibalistic Democrats led by Hillary Clinton for child sex trafficking? Well, the same thing has been going on now for 4 years at the butterfly center after rightwing grifter and pal of Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, unleashed a barrage of false accusations in retaliation for the center filing suit to stop TFG’s construction of his border wall right through the sanctuary.  Kolfage, who, along with Bannon, is under federal indictment for fraud over their “We Build the Wall” project that duped a whole lot of gullible people out of about $20 million.  Kolfage is well known for releasing nonsense and wild conspiracy theories into the rightwing Noise Machine to attack his perceived enemies.  He’s been banned from social media for all kinds of things including spreading conspiracy theories and creating fake accounts, but his followers do most of his dirty work now for him.

One of those followers is a fringe candidate for Congress from Virginia, Kimberly Lowe, who is apparently so far out there that she was even uninvited to the anti-immigration “We Stand America” rally recently in South Texas, but she took the opportunity while there to “investigate illegal immigration and sex trafficking” at the butterfly center with her friend who was apparently posing as a Secret Service agent.  It went about as you’d expect, with a physical altercation between the center’s director, Marianna Treviño Wright, Lowe, and her friend.  Lowe had demanded to see where the “smuggling” was going on, and, well, you can guess the rest.  The center had planned to close for the duration of the rally, but is now closed indefinitely due to the danger posed to the center and its staff by nutjobs.

It’s easy to stand back and shake your head at the nonsense that proliferates on social media, but this stuff is so corrosive that it’s actually endangering lives and has poisoned all reason, threatening the very foundation of our system of government. It’s especially bad in Texas and other red states where this nonsense has infiltrated once mainstream conservatism and goofy conspiracy theories are now repeated by elected leaders.  Since the base is now crazy, and gerrymandering has cemented it in, I don’t see a path for a return to any kind of reason.

Greg Abbott, well known for doing everything wrong, is already sitting in seat 1A on the Crazy Train to 2022.  Because he has primary opponents to his right (if that’s even possible), he’s desperately trying to get farther right and has already targeted women, minorities, women who are minorities, children, the poor, the sick, and anyone not in perfect health.  As part of this targeting, Abbott had the great idea of taking immigration at the southern border away from the feds and empowered local law enforcement and state police to arrest anyone they suspected of crossing the border and being on private property.  The charge?  Trespassing.  The scheme includes not bothering with constitutional rights by quickly convicting, then jailing the immigrants.  When their sentences are served, they are then sent to the Border Patrol for deportation.  It’s illegal as hell, and Abbott knows it, but doesn’t care.

About 1,300 people have been prosecuted under Abbott’s scheme, and apparently that’s not enough, so apparently what’s happening is that when local law enforcement finds someone crossing the border on federal or federal land, the walk them to a ranch or other private property, THEN arrest them for trespassing.  The Val Verde County prosecutor just dropped trespassing charges against 11 men who claim they were apprehended, marched to a private ranch and ordered to climb a fence onto the property when they were promptly arrested.  Conveniently, there was no police body cam video from any of the officers involved in the arrest.  The case was so sketchy that the prosecutor determined the arrest was not prosecutable.

As anyone who is paying attention knows, the problem here is not fixed at the border.  It’s fixed in countries south of the border by forcing (and funding) countries in Mexico, Central and South America to root out corruption and crime as well as providing economic opportunity in these people’s home countries.  We also simply must stop allowing immigration to be a once every two years wedge issue and reform the system of entering the country into a workable system rather than allowing chaos to reign.  There is a solution to this problem, and politicians like Abbott are the wrong people to find it.