Texas’ extremist governor, Greg Abbott, is obsessed with creating a little principality for himself, where the laws of the United States don’t apply. I wrote previously about the state’s attempt to ignore federal law related to abortion, and now we’ve returned to the border with Mexico.

You may remember that last summer Abbott placed razor wire-wrapped barrels in the Rio Grande River and then ordered Texas border guards to push children back into the river if necessary to keep them from crossing into the US. On Monday the Supreme Court told Texas that the wire and the barrels had to come out of the river because federal law trumped state law. And yeah, let’s talk about that decision—4 of the wingnut justices essentially ruled against the Constitution’s supremacy clause. There’s no way to make that decision make sense—it should have been a 9-0 loss for Abbott.

On Wednesday Abbott responded to the court’s decision with a statement that included this bravado:

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

And then the other wingnut Republican governors of Oklahoma, South Dakota, Florida, Virginia, and Georgia have rallied to Abbott’s side. I would like to point out that none of these states share a border with Mexico. All of this is so ridiculous. There is no “invasion”. Migrants crossing the border are not Russian soldiers, and Texas is not Ukraine.

There was a point in my life that I would have kind of laughed all of this off because it’s such an obvious farce. But some things are not as funny as they would have been in the past. The Supreme Court’s decision being 5-4 over something as basic as the supremacy clause is worrisome. The governors who have rallied to Abbott’s side, some of whom had sent their state National Guards to the Texas border, are too easily capable of doing something rash and possibly violent. Certainly Ron DeSantis, fresh off his electoral humiliation, has already demonstrated the disdain he feels for migrants and their rights.

But even more than that, I remember the Cliven Bundy standoff and wonder how that translates to a confrontation between a governor and the federal government. I don’t see how this ends peacefully.

Bryan Ferry covering Bob Dylan can wrap this up.