The spreading push from Republican governors to relocate undocumented immigrants into blue enclaves marks a new escalation of the red state drive to seize control of national policy from below, not only on immigration but on a broad array of domestic policies. …
Taken together, all of these pieces – the torrent of socially conservative red state legislation; the flurry of lawsuits to constrain Biden’s ability to exert national power or to erase previously guaranteed national rights (like abortion); and the use of Republican filibusters to prevent Democrats from passing legislation restoring a national floor of rights amount to what I’ve called “an effort to define a nation within a nation – one operating with a set of rules and policies that diverge from the rest of America more than in almost any previous era.”
The moves by Republican governors to remove migrants in large numbers from red states to blue jurisdictions takes the idea of red and blue America as separate nations to a new, ominously literal extreme. CONTINUED
Ron Brownstein, CNN
The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack