Went to Milwaukee.
Will be airborne just before BaiDen leaves Duluth.
Let’s go back a few centuries.
The Articles of Confederation constituted a treaty and was ratified by the governing bodies of the states, the state legislatures. Under treaty law, treaties contain an escape clause so that an aggrieved party can withdraw by notifying the other parties. However, the Articles contained the Perpetual Union Clause which prevented withdrawal. This was intended to prevent one state from going behind the back of the other states in seeking a separate peace with Great Britain. There is a tendency to read more into that clause than was intended by its authors.
Madison pointed out that the Constitution was different from the Articles in that it was a compact, or contract, ratified by state conventions elected by the voters. Granted, only white men 21 and over who had paid their property taxes were entitled to vote, which was only about ten percent of the state’s population, but under the terms of the time, that constituted the electorate. Under contract law, an aggrieved party can withdraw from the contract only if the other parties to the contract agree to the withdrawal. There are two conditions upon which the contract is considered null and void: Fraud and Failure to Perform.
There were minor secession crises under the elder Adams, Jefferson and Madison. The major crisis in 1832 over the Tariff of Abominations produced a statement by Jackson, supported by the elderly Madison in a newspaper article after the crisis, that unilateral secession was unconstitutional, legally impossible and treasonous. If a state wished to leave the Union, the Union must first be dissolved to permit it, and that dissolution and re-constitution of the Union would require a negotiated settlement between the departing states and the Union. Jackson was willing to go to war to prevent unilateral secession. Jackson’s precedent was later upheld by Taylor, Buchanan and Lincoln, who actually went to war to prevent it. The Supreme Court in 1869 in Texas v. White upheld the precedent by stating the Union was permanent and indivisible. Thanks to that case, the dissolution of the Union would require either a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court reversal of Texas to allow it.
Abbott is charging a failure to perform under the terms of Article IV in which the federal government is required to protect the states from invasion. This breaks the compact between the states and the federal government that controls the Union. If the contract is broken, this creates what Locke and Hobbes called a State of Nature – the modern term is anarchy – and this frees the states to withdraw from the Union and create their own new political construct. The fallback is Federalist #46, where Madison laid out how the states can force the federal government to back down without dissolving the Union. Madison’s quotes are here and here.