How do you impose tariffs on an individual?
Feel free to bash on Abbott all you want. I know I will. I’m just genuinely trying to make sense out of what he said.
It’s just total nonsense right?
According to CBS News, the Governor’s office responded and said, “He was just joking on the assumption that people would want to move if Mamdani is in fact elected.”
EDIT: Yes, that link’s headline inverts Abbot’s tweet
Yes, it’s nonsense. The Constitution protects your right to move between States.
Even if it doesn’t, the sort of people who would want to move because of Mamdani are the sort Abbott would likely want to welcome.
It doesn’t really work on any level, even as a joke.
They will pass a law with the right of private action to sue anyone moving to Texas from New York for up to 100% of their moving costs.
No constitutional problems, because it isn’t the government doing it, but a private citizen. The private citizen doesn’t need to have standing, because by simply seeking an abortion moving to Texas you have opened yourself up to the lawsuit.
See also here and subsequent posts:
Definitely a violation of the Right to Travel (non-SovCit version). But as a Privilege & Immunity, the right to travel only applies to US Citizens. So can he legally impose a tariff on non-citizens?
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
emphasis added
Has it ever been expanded to legal residents? Or all residents?
No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 2
Would people be considered an export/import?
Republicans don’t care about the Constitution.
The fact that the concept doesn’t actually make sense, that is what makes it nonsense. Even the Republicans can’t do something undefined to someone.
States aren’t allowed to have tariffs, only the Feds are.
So even among fanatical MAGAts like Abbott, tariffs are openly recognized as a deliberate performance of punitive hostility, rather than as a valid and effective economic instrument like Trump keeps pretending they are?
I’m surprised they’re being that open about it, tbh. “Yeah, we do know that high tariffs are just a fiscally pointless exercise in inflicting misery on people we don’t like! We don’t give a fuck, joke’s on you if you ever imagined that we actually believed tariffs would accomplish anything constructive for the economy! Ha ha!”
Not since 1863.
Before that, I could see imposing a tariff on the value of the slaves you’re bringing with you from New York. Um…. yeah, I see some issues with that, even in 1863!
The biggest problem with all of that is that you would then be living in fucking Texas.
Technically 1865.
That is how Trump should deal with immigration!
“All immigrants are welcome, but you have to live in Texas.”
“Thank you Mr. Trump but I’d prefer Venezuela.”
Sure, but…it’s part of the right wing fantasy that living under the right wing is better. So making moving to Texas harder has to be a threat, because admitting otherwise means admitting just how unpleasant living under the Right is.
We’re both correct 
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order in January 1863. The actual constitutional amendment wasn’t passed until 1865. I didn’t realize that there was such a disparity of dates.
It only freed slaves in the states in rebellion so New York could still have had slaves.
I remember reading that - the joke was that West Virginia could still have slaves, because the state did not join the Confederacy. All the other states, the ones NOT in rebellion, weren’t slave states anyway. So the proclamation was just so much hot air. (correction: the slave states that did NOT join the Confederacy were Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri).
Don’t quote me on any of those details, I might have gotten some wrong…..
In any case, the thirteenth amendment made it moot.
West Virginia wasn’t a state when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
West Virginia was recognized by the U.S. government as the thirty-fifth state on June 20, 1863
That’s likely what I was vaguely remembering.
So in theory, WV could still have had slaves at that point (assuming they did already).
I don’t know how that territory was treated between the time Virginia voted to leave the Union and the creation of West Virginia. I suppose it was simply part of Virginia legally.