Where Do We Go From Here, Now?
We are still have not completed the first year of the second Trump administration and a couple of realities are emerging. First, the consolidation of his authoritarian regime is being powerfully resisted. The No Kings demonstrations were one of the largest protests in American history. Spontaneous and widespread local resistance to the administration’s rogue paramilitary forces have arisen with “Know Your Rights” education, groups that monitor and track ICE, direct protest against federal facilities, and even simple warning systems of whistles and social media. Surprisingly, even the lower courts have also strongly resisted the administration’s autocratic moves, but they have been sabotaged not only by the Supreme Court but also by the destructively sclerotic pace of our justice system. The foreign adventurism and the increasing violence of the state’s internal paramilitary forces as illustrated by the occupation and murder in Minneapolis show an administration that is failing and flailing. As the resistance strengthens, ICE expands its capabilities with its enormous budget, the economy weakens, and the President’s mental capacities further deteriorate, so will the administration’s violence and recklessness increase.
The second reality seems less generally understood, especially by the leaders of the opposition party. This administration is not just at war with small-d democracy but also with big-d Democratic governance in particular. Stephen Miller may want to ethnically cleanse the country, Russ Vought may want to destroy the administrative state, and Donald Trump may act like a dictator, all those projects initially are focused on attacking Democratic states and voters. That makes sense, of course, since the Republican party is fully on board with all those projects and Democrats are the source of the greatest resistance. The ICE invasion of Democratic cities; the mid-decade gerrymanders; refusal to seat a democratically elected Democrat in the House for nearly two months while seating a newly elected Republican in two days; the unlawful freezing of child care funds and food stamps; the denial of emergency disaster aid to blue states; the veto of the Colorado water project as a political reprisal; the siccing of FinCEN on Minneapolis; these are all attacks on democracy in general and Democrats in particular.
Democrats can’t prevent anything that Republicans want to do on their own that requires just a simple majority, but it is understandable that congressional Democrats would like to work with whatever Republicans they can in order to restrain the administration’s lawlessness. However, there is no reason for those Democrats to vote to keep on funding the very mechanisms that are used to target their own voters when they have the chance not to, nor to keep on voting for administration nominees who will help execute those mechanisms simply to satisfy some BS bipartisan scorecard. While it is also understandable to want to prevent millions of Americans from losing access to health care simply because they can’t afford it, this is very clearly the Republican policy, and, at some point, they have to be made to own it instead of trying to save them from themselves. After all, Republicans have spent the last few decades sabotaging government and then successfully blaming Democrats for its failures. Turnabout is fair play. Instead, Democratic congressional leaders keep on providing votes to keep this autocratic government running and searching for solutions to problems that Republicans can then take credit for. It’s lunacy.
Accordingly, the battle for democracy and Democratic governance will not be won in Washington, regardless of how the midterm elections turn out in November. The administration will still ignore the law and the courts and continue its march toward autocracy. And, with or without Trump, there will be three more years of it. While we all may wish for a quick solution that will return the federal government to at least a somewhat sane and rational purpose we have known pre-Trump, the destruction and corruption of federal capacity will be far too great by then. No, this battle will only be won in the streets and in the states. The real lesson of Renee Good’s murder and the escalating violence of the administration’s paramilitary gangs and purveyors of stochastic violence is that every Democratic state and every Democratic city need to be doing everything in their power to protect their citizens from the encroachment of the illegitimate use of federal power and support those citizens in the fight against it. Just as our allies are decoupling from the US as best they can, so should blue states and cities. Federalism and its associated states’ rights provide the clearest path to not only resistance to federal lawlessness but also for rebuilding our democracy. States have enormous taxing and policing power, and often state and local resources are required for the federal government to exercise its powers and execute its policies. Democrats need to start using those levers extensively.
To be sure, blue state AGs, both alone and in concert with other blue state AGs, have been fighting the administration’s lawlessness in the courts with significant success. Blues states have fought back and apparently will win the mid-decade gerrymandering war that Republicans started last year. But the last few months have made clear, in city after city, neither the courts nor the current Congress can protect us from a rogue paramilitary invasion that ignores the law and the Constitution. Before Trump was even inaugurated, Josh Marshall wrote that blue state governors should be meeting with the leaders of their national guards and state police to determine which groups might remain “loyal” to the state and resist lawlessness from federal forces. It appears that few took that advice to heart, or, if they did, they found no allies.
Whatever the case, states must become more creative in finding ways to restrict ICE using state laws. The most obvious approach is to refuse to collaborate with ICE in any way, especially data sharing. States can limit ICE actions in schools, courthouses, hospital, and libraries by requiring judicial warrants to enter those locations. California implemented a ban on mask-wearing by law enforcement with limited exceptions such as medical exemptions but has delayed enforcement while its litigated. States can mandate that state legislators and inspectors have unfettered access to the private detention centers in their jurisdiction and close down any of those that are in violation of state codes and laws.
But it is also clear that simple non-collaboration is insufficient. These rogue paramilitaries must be actively interfered with when they are violating the law. These ICE agents are breaking the law constantly – simple moving violations, assaults, kidnappings, illegal searches and detentions, etc. It is necessary for state and local governments to do more than just rely on the public to document these illegal acts; there needs to be arrests and prosecutions. I believe it was in Minneapolis that a police officer was at a protest that blocked an intersection and when an ICE vehicle wanted to go through that intersection, which would clearly inflame the situation, the officer threated the ICE personnel with arrest unless they simply drove around the block to avoid the protest. Similarly, city workers simply towed an illegally parked ICE vehicle while ICE was detaining someone. The officer who shot Renee Good should never have been allowed to leave the scene on his own and should have been detained by local police.
It is understandable that Democratic governors and mayors may be leery about calling out the National Guard for fear it will simply be federalized or create a standoff between armed police and the federal paramilitaries that will allow Trump to trigger the Insurrection Act. And it is unclear whether police will comply with civilian orders. But those governors and mayors can certainly start building some kind of deputized force that will do what the police refuse to do. Many states have the ability to form state militias that are answerable only to the state and cannot be federalized. And they better move quickly. ICE has managed to close down the Minneapolis public schools and basically shut down business in that city. What will states do when this kind of federal invasion that makes leaving your home actively dangerous occurs around election day this November?
Longer term, we are already seeing green shoots of progress. States responded fairly well to the cutoff of SNAP aid during the shutdown with big help from their local communities. They have also taken steps to mitigate the damage from the administration’s Medicaid cuts. In neither case could they make up the full difference, but it will hopefully be a start in building more robust state systems. In response to RFK’s threat to vaccines, blue states on each coast created health compacts to fill a vaccine void left by the federal government. They have now merged into the Governors Public Health Alliance, which now includes Illinois and represents over one-third of the total population. Imagine the buying power for drugs and health insurance that such a market represents. Remember, too, that insurance companies are licensed by the states, which should also give this alliance enormous leverage, should they choose to use it.
As the federal government abandons green energy projects, nine East Coast states have formed the Northeast States Collaborative on Interregional Transmission to expedite the expansion of the electrical grid and green energy initiatives, which will still be necessary whether or not the AI generation boom happens or busts. In Oregon, the Democratic governor is pushing a similar effort. In New York, Mamdani and Hochul are implementing universal childcare, starting in New York City, and then extending statewide. The state is also extending municipally-sourced fiber broadband to rural areas. Democratic constituencies are finally starting to tackle housing issues. Last year, California passed major housing reform legislation and Mamdani is focused on increasing the housing supply in New York City. As the Mamdani campaign as well as his initial weeks of governance have illustrated, there are a myriad of projects that government can do to improve the quality of life. It simply takes the will to overcome the latent bureaucratic bottlenecks and/or inertia. The majority of America’s problems are solved problems in that the solutions have already been deployed in other developed countries. All that is needed is the political will and muscle.
Protecting the citizenry from federal lawlessness and filling the gap created by the abandonment of the social contract by the federal government will take money. Around a dozen states have a higher tax bracket for higher earners, with five of those having a “millionaire” tax bracket. There is increasing momentum for an even higher bracket for “billionaires”. Considering how easily high earners can game the tax code to earn money that is not considered “income”, the obvious answer is some sort of wealth tax, and the easiest way for states to implement such a tax without running afoul of the corrupt Supreme Court would be through a property tax surcharge for high value physical assets such as houses, estates, second homes, and boats.
State banks offer another avenue for decoupling from the federal government. A truly radical approach is to force payroll taxes to be funneled into escrow accounts in the state bank which would make the threat of withholding federal taxes more real. State banks could offer banking services that compete with the private sector or provide simple financial service such as check cashing. More typically, state banks only take deposits of state money which then provides the opportunity for the government to capture fees and float that now is lost to the big banks. In addition, their lending power can reduce reliance on federal grants for state projects as well as provide additional collateral to entice private investment. The latter will help in the critical effort to get blue states to build more housing. Relaxing building codes, zoning changes, tax breaks, conversion of state properties, higher taxes on undeveloped residential property, and encouraging density are all options that are currently under consideration in a number of constituencies.
None of this is going to be easy, especially for blue cities in red states. And, yes, state legislatures and city councils are notoriously corrupt and easily captured and controlled by moneyed interests. But they are no more corrupt than the Trump federal government is today. It would be nice if some of the millions of dollars that get raised at the federal level could somehow trickle down to reform and (re)build some of the state Democratic parties. The difference between what Anderson Clayton has been able to do in North Carolina compared to the (willful?) incompetence of Jay Jacobs in New York or the mess that is the Florida Democratic party is quite stark. There are hundreds of thousands of qualified public employees who have been dismissed by the federal government, providing states with an unrivaled pool of talent with which to improve their governance. Democratic counties are still the engine of the US economy. The crisis we are living today is also an opportunity, and the states that can capitalize on this opportunity are going to be well positioned going forward.
Already, there have been over 400,000 LBGTQ refugees who have moved from states where they felt they had lost protections to those states that provide it. Women are conscious about where they go to college, where they will live, and where they will build a family based on the state’s women’s health protections. Beyond the lack of new construction, the reason that housing in blue areas is so expensive is that people want to live where there are jobs and a good quality of life. The billionaires always threaten to leave these places but always stay. As the federal government continues its domestic assaults and abandons its commitment to the general welfare and the Constitution, that migration from regressive states to protective ones will only increase.
States have always been the laboratories of democracy. It is time for them to become so again and begin the second reconstruction of American democracy, this time with Democrats in the lead. This battle will take years – the rot of Republican rule in Washington is too great for any kind of quick fix. Our base is enraged, the citizenry is engaged, and it is in the streets and the states that the battle to re-form and retain our democracy can and will be waged.