Can Blue State Resistance Save Us?
I have found it very difficult to write about the current political moment, because of how dispiriting it is. When I get this feeling, I can feel better if I start to read about political theory and comparative politics, because it not only gives me a handle on how bad things are in relative terms & whether I should worry less or more, but because theorizing can sometimes can give you a “cheat code” for figuring out how to get America out of the authoritarian moment we’re in.
The Trump administration’s invasion of Los Angeles and its current military occupation of the District of Columbia have led me to a new poli sci paper called “Can Federalism Protect Subnational Liberal Democracy from Central Authoritarianism?” To rephrase the paper title into more plain English, you can take the more general version of the title question & focus on the more specific question that is on American minds: Can liberal states (i.e., the “blue” states) protect American democracy from Donald Trump by defending democracy in their own states?
The answer to the question posed by the paper is “In the short run, maybe. In the long run, probably not.” I believe liberals and the more liberal U.S. states should use federalism as a bulwark against Trump’s push for authoritarianism right now in the short term, but there are two flaws in using this as a long-term strategy. One problem is that authoritarian regimes cannot be trusted to live up to their promises. In order for a liberal state to survive long-term in an authoritarian federal regime, the larger authoritarian regime has to agree not to interfere with smaller liberal state within it, but a basic characteristic of authoritarian regimes is that they are not bound by law & they cannot be held to their promises.
For example, White House aides came to an agreement with Columbia University in May that did not require the university to pay any fines, but Donald Trump then unilaterally extorted an additional $200 million from the university. As an another example, the law firm Paul Weiss agreed to a settlement to preempt being attacked in an executive order by the Trump administration where they had to slander one of their attorneys who had advocated prosecuting Trump for falsifying business records (i.e., the Stormy Daniels campaign fraud case) and disavow pro bono cases that involved suing the Proud Boys and other far-right participants in January 6. After making the deal with Trump, leaders at Paul Weiss sent out a letter to all employees that assured their justifiably nervous workforce that the deal only required the firm to do pro bono work on relatively benign topics, such as protecting veterans, promoting criminal justice reform, and fighting antisemitism. But that proved to be a lie, because Trump has now extorted Paul Weiss into doing hundreds of millions of dollars free legal work for the U.S. Commerce Department. Every time Trump reaches an informal, closed-door agreement with one of his targets, he simply uses the agreement as pretext for extorting more. Given what Trump has done to universities and elite law firms, blue states should not Trump to honor his agreements either.
Another problem with relying on federalism to protect blue state liberal democracy is that federalism is unstable if the governmental units in a country don’t share similar enough values. Although the 18th century political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu was a major influence on the Framers of the Constitution (U.S. separation of powers was partially due to Montesquieu’s influence), Montesquieu also warned that federal systems are unlikely to last if the individual units of that system to share agreement on fundamental values of governance.
The emergence of the U.S. Civil War less than a century after the ratification of the Constitution proved that Montesquieu was exactly right in this prediction. The slave-dominated economies of the South led to expanding illiberalism that hurt all members of the United States, not just the slave states. The U.S. slaveocracy imposed a gag rule that prevented any discussion of antislavery petitions in the House of Representatives, deadly anti-abolitionist mob violence proliferated in northern states in the 1830s, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 violated the sovereignty of anti-slavery states in the North. The incursions of Donald Trump’s ICE into blue states with sanctuary jurisdictions for immigrants is just another version of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 updated for the 21st century. The only difference is that at least the slaveholders of the 1850s had the decency to pass the Fugitive Slave Act according to the rule of law and by act of Congress, whereas Trump is simply violating sovereignty of the blue states by executive fiat.
The current military occupation of DC suggests that Trump’s violations of the sovereignty of liberal blue states could take a darker path. One reason that Trump has been able to get away with the his military occupation is due to DC’s lack of statehood. DC has no representation in Congress, and its police and National Guard are controlled by Congress, not a leader elected by the people of DC. Trump has invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows the president to take over DC’s police and national guard if he “determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exists.” This is way too much power to put in Donald Trump’s hands, because there is no guarantee that his “determinations” have any relationship to reality. If anything, Trump is declaring an emergency over crime in DC, when crime is currently at a 30-year low in the district. Six Republican states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, have sent in National Guard troops into DC, even though New Orleans and Memphis both have higher crime rates than DC.
Another worrying part of the occupation of DC is that it could serve as a template or “proof of concept” for Donald Trump sending in National Guard troops from GOP states into Democratic-run blue states against their will. If this is the lesson that Trump draws from the military occupation of DC, then the federal system and the state sovereignty of the blue states might not be enough to prevent Trump from successfully creating a unitary authoritarian government.