Border Crisis & Constitutional Ignorance

Is the Media capable of historical context?

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States … under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Article Six; Clause Two - US Constitution

There it is, in simple clear language. Federal law trumps state law. This concept has been frequently challenged, once resulting in a civil war, but it has always been upheld as an essential component of our constitutional republic.

Which is why the muted media reaction the recent Texas law that was passed to supersede immigration federal laws is mind boggling. That is not to say that the story hasn’t been “covered” by the media as the Biden Administration got an assist from the US Supreme Court, which sided with federal immigration officials having control over the US Mexican border.

But the media is unable to break out of their myopic daily coverage and provide a more accurate telling of this story by using context. Is that asking too much? If a person is arrested for a brutal crime, it’s a far better story when reporters find out the assailant has a long violent history, or more interesting, appears to have no history of violence. Either answer gives a reader the context to better understand what happened and why (a failed criminal justice system or poor medical health detection efforts).

Efforts like Texas challenging federal immigration law—a move supported by 25 GOP Governors—have a long and failed history in the US and has been throughly discredited by a long list of distinguished Americans including Presidents Madison, Jackson, Lincoln and Eisenhower and several Supreme Court decisions that have upheld the plain text of the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution. Yet the media fails to provide their readers with a history of this unconstitutional behavior, just as they do when they write about the past history of a criminal.

But the problem is far deeper than the media failing to properly put Texas’ unconstitutional effort to usurp federal law into context, because the media should not have to tell people that the sky is blue everyday. Where are all those pocket-sized constitutions when you need ithem?! What do we teach in college-level history and government classes? Apparently the US is overwhelmed by attorneys who weren’t paying attention in their ConLaw classes.

Given the history of the run-up to the Civil War and Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, certainly the American elites—elected officials, journalists and pundits—know that federal law trumps state law. Why they act as they do is a subject for another day. But there is a natural check to these elites who omit basic content, and that is the audience the elites are trying to influence. You may recognize this “audience” as “We the People…” from Constitution.

The fact is most of “We the People…” have a very poor understanding of the Constitution and Texas’ challenge to federal law is a clear example of this. Federal law having supremacy over state and local laws is not an obscure or esoteric concept. Along with concepts like “checks and balances”, it makes-up the DNA of the Republic. If “We the People…” can not form a society that understands the basic rules from which we operate on (like the Constitution) then elites will be able to do as they want.