Texas’ Latest Attack on the Biden Administration Is Coming Undone by a Technicality

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott craved a showdown with President Joe Biden over illegal immigration. He wanted a test case that would give the Supreme Court a chance to expand states’ authority to repel, persecute, and brutalize unauthorized immigrants. He wanted nothing short of a constitutional revolution that would shift jurisdiction over the southern border—and perhaps even the power to wage war—from the federal government to the state of Texas. What he got, instead, was a dispute over the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899. Abbott’s scheme to seize control...