Texas Tribune (1/22/24)

This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can remove the razor wire that Texas state officials have set up along parts of the US/Mexico border. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Elite news media, for their part, suggest we seek a hallowed middle ground between those two worldviews.

Corporate media are filled with debate about the best way to handle the “border crisis.” But what if there isn’t a border crisis so much as an absence of historical understanding, of empathy, of community resourcing, and of critical challenge to media and political narratives—including that reflected in President Joe Biden’s call to allow access for “those who deserve to be here”?

We hear from Aron Thorn, senior staff attorney at the Beyond Borders program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Transcript: ‘Texas Is Fighting for Its Right to Lay Concertina Wire’

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent coverage of Gaza protest and the New Hampshire primary.