In his latest flatulent bout of performative politics, Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to slap a tariff on anyone relocating to Texas from New York City in the fallout of that city’s much-watched mayoral election.
“After the polls close tomorrow night, I will impose a 100% tariff on anyone moving to Texas from NYC,” Abbott tweeted on Monday night in apparent emulation of one of President Donald Trump’s favorite threats.
The MAGA governor’s claim came on the eve of the Big Apple’s mayoral election, in which Democrat Zohran Mamdani tops the polls. The socialist candidate faces former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s running as an independent after losing in this summer’s Democratic primary, and Republican beret-enthusiast and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Before anyone takes Abbott’s threat seriously, let’s get a few things straight.
First, tariffs are taxes applied to trade goods, not people. Second, U.S. states are prohibited from slapping tariffs on goods from other states, never mind residents who relocate from them.
And while we’re explaining what a load of bullshit this is, we might as well add that the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment enshrines the “right to travel
.” That means citizens are free to move between states, and once they do, they can’t be penalized or treated as second-class citizens by the state to which they relocate.
As an attorney, Abbott presumably knows these things. Which likely means he intended his tweet as a joke for those in the know and an exercise in MAGA chest-beating for those uninformed enough to think he wields such power.
Whatever the governor’s intention, the tweet falls into his frequent pattern of playing monkey-see, monkey-do with Trump, who’s engaged in all sorts overheated rhetoric about New York mayoral race.
During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Trump falsely accused Mamdani of being a “communist” and claimed he’ll cut off funding to NYC if the election doesn’t go to Cuomo.
Of course, the courts are likely to tell Trump he’s got as much power to strip New York of federal funding as Abbott does to magically impose tariffs on millionaires fleeing Mamdani.
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