new balkanization news, come get your civil war slop

The Utah bill, introduced as the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act,” was signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox on January 31.

“The Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty,” the law states.

With the bill, Utah joins a long-standing small-c conservative push to promote states’ rights, particularly when the federal government is controlled by the opposing party. It’s a debate going back to the original founders of the US Constitution, through the “Nullification Crisis” of 1832-33, when South Carolina tried to avoid paying federal tariffs, and into the Southern states’ attempts to avoid racial integration in schools in the 1950s.

Most recently, Texas and the US have been in a legal battle over security at the US-Mexico border, historically under the federal government’s control. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the federal government, but the tight vote suggested the principles of the Supremacy Clause “might be in a degree of flux,” according to CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck.

Utah Sen. Scott Sandall, who sponsored the Sovereignty Act, said he hoped the bill spreads to other states.

  • Wheaties [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    With the bill, Utah joins a long-standing small-c conservative push to promote states’ rights

    it’s written like they’re trying to pass this off as a thing with precedent and nothing new, but… kinda seems like Utah is trying to keep the LDS church from being investigated or prosecuted federally? That seems pretty unprecedented. For a long time, the Church has had this belief in a prophecy that it’s destined to Save The Country by folding the constitutional systems into its own structures. A kinda Catholic Papacy / Roman Empire sorta style deal. They’re sitting on a lot of money, and it’s more than just tithing. That I’m aware of, the LDS church owns a significant amount of ranch-land in Nevada, Idaho, and Florida; as well as a bunch of stock in a wide variety of companies. The big one I’ve heard about is The Coca-Cola Company (KO).

    At it’s most crass, they’re a dragon looking to protect their hoard. But… as a social organization, they cultivate a lot of capital-t capital-b True Believers, and not just in general membership. I’m sure there are cynics in leadership… but I suspect they’re in the minority. Utah may be the indicator of interesting times.

    • whatup@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      They also hold an incredibly large monopoly on news related media. The LDS Church owns Desert Digital Media, Bonneville and a ton of random radio stations and periodicals. Weird how when you Google ´Mormon media control’ or ‘Mormon media monopoly,’ all you get is news articles about Mormons being oppressed and misunderstood. Wonder why that is…

  • Melonius [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I hope they write a “Supreme Supremacy clause” to cancel out any state issues supremacy clauses and the legal arms race never ends

  • GinAndJuche@hexbear.netM
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    4 months ago

    Is it constitutional? No.

    Does that mean anything? No.

    Are they going to use this to do evil shit? :pain:

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Utahan nationalism in the United States was something quite different from, let us say, Texan, Floridan or Californian nationalism in that the former was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petty-bourgeois intellectuals without the slightest roots in the economic, political or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since Utah never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic tablets of Joseph Smith.

    • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      this is a funny bit but precisely backwards lol, Texas/California are the baseless, the Utahn cult freaks have the greatest basis for an independent existence of the secessionists. a religion is an evergreen justification for separatism

    • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Didn’t Utah literally try to form an independent government when the Mormons were getting pogrom’ed from every other state. Only the problem was, that forming a state in a desert takes time and people, and the Utah territory was annexed by the US before the mormons even got enough people there to form more than 2 towns.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        they fought an undeclared war on yankee settlers and soldiers until an army showed up and forced them to accept annexation. this was 10 years after Guadaloupe Hidalgo had officially transferred utah to the US

        • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Waging war on the US government because you want to do a slightly different kind of theocracy seems like such a strange decision. Though I know that a lot of mormon converts in the early days were recruited straight from Britain, which is why Utah today is one of the least germanic states in the US, and it’s too satanically racist to allow central americans to live there with any permance.

          • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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            4 months ago

            whoops that was a very poor characterization, they weren’t trying to secede really, they’d just entered the US basically managing their own affairs, and they raised militias and did some massacres when the federal gov’t decided to appoint officials and enforce anti polygamy laws.

            rolled right over when the army arrived, to the officers’ disappointment

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        We’re they getting exterminated or did they just get told to leave town? I know that Joseph Smith pushed the persecution narrative a couple times. I know that they did get persecuted but don’t remember to what extent

        • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Don’t think they were ever exterminated, but doesn’t “leave town or suffer vigilante violence” count as a pogrom, given that the local authorities knew about the things that were happening and either participated or didn’t care to stop them?

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    The Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty

    if i understand that correctly that’s perfectly constitutional and states do it all the time wrt federal law enforcement. the difference is between cooperation/noncooperation with federales and preventing them from doing their shit, the latter this bill doesn’t seem to be preparing for.

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Biden isn’t doing shit about it.

      We keep hearing how Biden is thenonly person who can stand up to the fascists but any halfway competent position would involve cutting off all federal funding as soon as this bill came up for discussion.

      “They passed a bill declaring themselves above the authorift of the federal government sonwere not gonna a keep giving them money.”

      Instead it’s just a lot of aww shucks and lectures on how we have to let them murder everybody they don’t like because if the federal government did anything to stop them we’d be as bad as them.

      • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        Obviously there’s no meaningful difference between the two. What I meant is that a democrat in office sends the chuds into a frenzy so they do dumb shit like this bill or having a standoff with the feds in Texas. A vote for Biden is a vote for balkanization.

        Joking ofc I would never participate in bourgeois electoralism

        • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Yea saw the flip side of that too when a bunch of libs were actually paying lip service to the idea of direct action for 4 years when Trump was president.

          And then immediatly started lecturing people for making the same criticisms 12 hours after Biden was elected.

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    This is only slightly dumber than Hawaii declaring the “spirit of aloha” overrides enumerated rights in the Constitution.