NOTHING TO OFFER BUT HATE ITSELF:

It isn't that Abbott didn't anticipate the coming weather. In a December 20 letter to President Biden, he wrote:

With cold temperatures gripping Texas, your inaction to secure the southern border is putting the lives of migrants at risk, particularly in the City of El Paso. With thousands of men, women, and children illegally crossing into Texas every day, and with the expectation that those numbers will only increase if Title 42 expulsions end, the state is overburdened as we respond to this disaster caused by you and your administration. Your policies will leave many people in the bitter, dangerous cold as a polar vortex moves into Texas.

Help us understand the reasoning here. Is the problem that Biden has caused human suffering by letting people be exposed to freezing temperatures? In that case, how is the solution to move people to another freezing jurisdiction and dump them on the sidewalk?

When, in a similar attention-seeking stunt, Gov. Ron DeSantis flew a planeload of asylum seekers to Martha's Vineyard, it was at least in September. To treat human beings as props when there's a real danger of exposure increases the cruelty quotient. The two Republican governors are in a heartlessness duel. Perhaps the next step will be to shoot would-be migrants in the legs as Trump demanded in 2019.

Some Republicans love this performative malice. DeSantis got standing ovations after the Martha's Vineyard gambit, with Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall asking, "How I could get a ticket to drive one of those buses from the border to the Delaware beach?" They know it appeals to a swath of GOP primary voters who dine on a steady diet of hysteria about the border.

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