Xi Weijian is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Marxism, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen).
Recently, the contradictions between the US border migrants have continued to ferment, and the struggle between the two parties has entered a new stage. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow the Federal Border Patrol to dismantle barbed wire at the Texas border. Texas Governor Greg Abbott unexpectedly accused Biden of "treason", believing that the federal order to open Texas' borders was "a bad government in collusion with Mexican drug cartels", which seriously undermined the constitutional democracy system of the United States and the freedoms enjoyed by the American people.
The Texas governor's move was supported by the governors of 25 states, including Ohio, Tennessee, and South Carolina, and a new round of federal power and state power game is on the way. At the same time, the "Texas Nationalist Movement" lost no time in activating the propaganda slogan of the "Lone Star Republic" with the aim of promoting Texas independence under the slogan "Texit".
There is a serious confrontation between the federal ** under Biden and the Republican-controlled states** represented by Texas on the issue of immigration, and the political rift in the United States has reached an unprecedented level.
The bipartisan struggle has made the U.S. immigration problem difficult to solve.
The intractable issue of immigration in the United States has nothing to do with the legality of the immigrant group, and its essence is a vicious bipartisan struggle over the political identity of the United States. The United States used to be the most typical shift in the world. But for many years, groups of illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries have provided a large number of laborers for the U.S. economy, and at the same time are considered to pose a serious threat to social stability. After two or three generations of immigrant population, the source of votes composed of Latino immigrants has become a force to be reckoned with in various electoral activities in the United States.
As the proportion of the U.S. population has plummeted as the dominant ethnic group, the so-called WASP group, the U.S. national identity has gradually cracked. As early as in his book "Political Order in a Changing Society", the famous political scientist Huntington constantly emphasized that the rise of the United States was not so much an ethnic group, but the kind of "positive, thrifty, self-disciplined, and self-governing 'Anglo-Saxon' Protestant culture" carried by this group, and Huntington also expressed concern that foreign immigrants could not be absorbed and integrated into this culture, and even that they would change this culture in turn.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that according to the results of the 2020 U.S. Census, the non-Latino white group in the United States, represented by WASP, has increased from 19.6 billion reduced to 19.1 billion, accounting for 637% to 57 in 20208 percent, the lowest level on record, and the decline in the white population is about eight years earlier than previously expected. By 2050, whites will make up less than 50 percent of the total U.S. population, losing their ethnic majority. Whether to stick to "political correctness" and win the source of immigration votes, or to try to "make America great again" under the populist banner of "blood & soil" is the main partisan disagreement between the two parties in the United States.
The bipartisan struggle has touched the "heart" of the U.S. Constitution
The bipartisan struggle has touched on the "hardcore" question of the American constitutional democracy, that is, whether the ultimate subject of human rights protection is the states** or the federal government**, whose legitimacy is questioned. In 1804, the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was promulgated under the leadership of the fourth Madison of the United States, emphasized that the federal government was responsible for foreign affairs, defense, and interstate affairs, and that the states were solely responsible for state affairs. Emphasizing the protection of human and civil rights is a constraint on federal powers, not state powers.
With the passage of time, as a political achievement of the Union ** winning the Civil War, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution passed in 1868 subverted the "dual federalism" laid down by the "Father of the Constitution" of the United States, requiring states to also abide by the "Bill of Rights" aimed at protecting human rights. Looking back at the "Warren Court" from 1953 to 1969, Warren made a series of progressive precedents that promoted the democratization of American society in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment. However, since 2023, marked by the overturning of the 1973 "Roe v. Wade" precedent, the Federal Supreme Court, as the authority to protect human rights, has been increasingly questioned by many states** and even the American public, indicating a serious crisis in the American constitutional democratic system.
The bipartisan struggle to "**" the judicial system
The bipartisan battle has "remodelled" a judicial system that was supposed to achieve a delicate balance between "due process" and "equal protection." On December 19, 2023, the pro-Democratic Supreme Court of Colorado ruled in a 4-3 vote structure: Under the provisions of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the so-called "insurrection clause," former Trump was primarily responsible for the Capitol Hill in January 2021 and therefore ineligible to hold office again, and ordered the state to exclone him from the state's Republican primary list. Judging by the current situation of tearing the political body of the United States, the Colorado Supreme Court's move full of "judicial **" not only does not reflect the so-called "judicial independence" and "local autonomy", but is the latest embodiment of Biden's "**ization" of the local judicial system in the United States, and the latest symptom of the vicious fighting between the two parties frequently breaking through the bottom line.
In order to prevent Trump, who is holding the "red neck" populist forces into self-respect, from winning the White House again, the Democratic authorities have filed such lawsuits in courts in more than 20 states in the United States. Meanwhile, in December 2023, U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jake Smith appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the criminal charges facing Trump "raise a fundamental question at the heart of American democracy: whether a former ** is completely immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office" and asked for an expeditious ruling on whether Trump enjoys immunity. But in line with the attitude of the aforementioned state courts, even the Supreme Court recently announced that it would not immediately make a decision on this critical issue. This is what Biden, who is eager to end Trump's political career and completely eliminate the threat of re-election, does not want to see.
On the one hand, due to the political public relations crisis induced by the "Epstein List", Biden is increasingly losing the patience of the mainstream media in the United States, on the other hand, he has not responded effectively to the new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and has been disgraced by the tough resistance of the Houthis in the Red Sea, resulting in his strategic focus being repeatedly scattered. It is foreseeable that this situation of internal and external difficulties may further induce a crisis in the system of constitutional democracy in the United States.
Editor: Tang Hua, Jiang Xinyu, Zhang Yanling.