What happened to "states' rights"?
Federalism for me, MAGA dictatorship for thee.
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When Donald Trump deployed more than 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines into Los Angeles earlier this month, he did so without the consent of California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Mayor Karen Bass.
Not only that, but Trump’s justification — that LA is “war zone” under siege by “foreign invaders” — is a preposterous lie. The suspected undocumented immigrants that masked ICE agents are rounding up at Home Depot don’t have weapons of mass destruction, and Californians certainly aren’t greeting Trump’s army as liberators.
As unpopular as the MAGA occupation of LA may be, it appears to be the template Trump plans to inflict upon other blue cities. Last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed in LA that “we are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.” (Watch below.)
Then, on Sunday, Trump declared war on Democratic cities in blue states that won’t go along with his authoritarian program.
“I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role,” he wrote.
Not so long ago, Republicans would have condemned the White House’s designs as a gross violation of states’ rights — the long-held conservative insistence that political power should reside with individual states and not the federal government.
Indeed, early last year, the Biden administration was in a standoff with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who’d lawlessly usurped the federal government’s border enforcement authority. Texas strung up razor wire and buoys across a section of the southern border, which left migrants, including children, with lacerations and open wounds. Eventually, a narrow Supreme Court majority allowed the Border Patrol to cut through the wire, but Abbott ignored this ruling, declaring an “invasion” that gave Texas the right to “defend itself.”
Aside from Vermont’s Phil Scott, every Republican governor in the country publicly supported Abbott thumbing his nose at the federal government. This included then-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who proclaimed that if “Joe Biden federalizes the National Guard, that would be a direct attack on states' rights.”
Now, as secretary of homeland security, Noem is enabling Trump’s authoritarian overreach. She even reportedly asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to order the military to detain and arrest “lawbreakers” (that is, civilian protesters), a direct federal intervention in local law enforcement matters.
This is more than just blatant hypocrisy. Republicans act as if government exists only to advance their own interests, and they dismiss any law or court ruling that hinders their far-right agenda. “States’ rights,” along with any other principle they claim to value under a Democratic president, are just a convenient cudgel.
Quite simply, Republicans don’t think Democrats and the governments they run have any rights they are bound to respect.
The mad king
Although there is natural tension between state and federal governments regarding immigration enforcement, the second Trump administration has gone far beyond border security when imposing its will at the state level. Trump, with full GOP support, has embraced federal supremacy as he governs like a mad king.
When Barack Obama was in the White House, the term “imperial presidency” became a rallying cry for Republicans who insisted he’d overstepped his constitutional authority, mainly because he acted like he was the duly elected commander in chief. But predictably, Republican states’ rights stalwarts are silent when Trump threatens to withhold federal funding from Democratic-run states that don’t obey his often lawless commands.
After California suffered devastating wildfires earlier this year, Trump demanded that the state adopt his preferred voter ID laws in exchange for aid. House Speaker Mike Johnson supported offering aid with strings attached while bashing California’s Democratic government, even though Biden had just months earlier approved more than $65 million in disaster assistance for Louisiana related to Hurricane Francine without conditions or partisan pot shots.
During a February 21 White House lunch, Trump called out Maine Gov. Janet Mills for defying his executive order barring trans athletes from playing sports. When Mills responded that she was complying with state and federal law, Trump ranted like a less stable Judge Dredd that “we are the federal law!” and threatened, “you better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't.” (Mills fought the White House in court and won.)
We don’t need to imagine how Republican governors would’ve responded if Biden had acted similarly. Republicans freaked out when Biden issued federal mask and vaccine mandates in 2021, even as the Delta covid variant raged across the nation. Noem vowed at the time in a USA Today op-ed, “If President Biden mandates vaccines, South Dakota will see him in court.”
“The Biden administration has no business forcing vaccinations on the American people through executive decree or rule,” she wrote. “Biden has no constitutional authority to do so.”
Noem later issued her own executive order that she claimed protected state employees from federal vaccine mandates. Most Republican governors uniformly defied the mandates on familiar “personal freedom” and “states’ rights” grounds.
Right-wing covid backlash also demonstrates MAGA’s selective support for Americans’ constitutional right to protest. In 2022, Sens. Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson met with truckers from the so-called People’s Convoy that disrupted traffic in the Washington DC area to protest covid mandates. Sen. Rand Paul said he was “all in” on the convoy.
“Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, you name it,” he said at the time. “Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.”
Note the different reaction when Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently told a New Hampshire audience, “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They must understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.” World-class hater Stephen Miller immediately told reporters, “His comments, if nothing else, could be construed as inciting violence. This war that Democrat governors and mayors are waging against federal law enforcement — I mean, this is nullificationist behavior. This is secessionist behavior.”
Miller perversely cast modern-day Democrats as antebellum secessionists, even as his boss proudly announces that he’s restoring the names of military bases that honor Confederate traitors.
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Trump’s chief propagandist also had nothing to say last year during the Texas border standoff when Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt came shockingly close to saying that federal troops should refuse to obey Biden’s orders. Republican Rep. Clay Higgins from Louisiana demonstrated actual “secessionist behavior” when he posted on social media that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground” and ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling. During the Biden years, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene frequently called for a “national divorce,” declaring in her own tweets of secession, “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.” Rep. Lauren Boebert infamously tweeted, “This is 1776” shortly before Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol on January 6.
The true “nullificationist” behavior comes from Republican who seek to nullify the basic constitutional rights of non-MAGA Americans. Sen. Tom Cotton supports invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters in Los Angeles: “Violent insurrectionists turned areas of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes over the weekend, with anarchists setting fire to vehicles, throwing scooters and debris at police, and looting businesses — all while waving foreign flags,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal — vastly and irresponsibly overstating the scope of actual criminal activity.
Cotton’s played that fascist tune before: During the protests in summer 2020 after George Floyd’s murder, he wrote an op-ed that the New York Times gullibly published calling for Trump to use the military against civilians in “an overwhelming show of force.”
Yet Cotton somehow rediscovered the First Amendment during the Biden administration, when local school officials across the nation received unhinged messages and threats of violence from parents upset over mask policies and the mistaken belief that public schools were indoctrinating their children in “critical race theory.” During an August 2021 Senate hearing, Cotton accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of “siccing the feds on parents at school boards across America” because the DOJ was investigating these serious threats. Cotton never condemned them nor did he defend the officials who were the targets.
Coverage of Cotton’s latest “Send In The Troops” op-ed that doesn’t mention his showdown with Garland and his tacit support for violent protest misses the larger story, which is how Republicans in the Trump age are increasingly open in their belief that only certain Americans have rights … or are even Americans at all.
The United States of MAGA
Trump’s actions toward Democratic-run states resemble the thuggish behavior of a hostile foreign power. When he rants online about “liberating Los Angeles” from a “migrant invasion” that doesn’t exist, it’s reminiscent of Putin’s flimsy pretext for invading Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Trump has openly weaponized the federal government against his political enemies, including elected officials. Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver from New Jersey was formally indicted by a grand jury last week after the Department of Justice, led by Acting US Attorney Alina Habba, accused her of “forcibly impeding” federal officers during a congressional oversight visit at an ICE facility.
Last Thursday, California Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a press conference after he tried to question Noem. The senator was manhandled, tossed to the ground, and handcuffed.
Despite the constant claims about Biden “weaponizing” the DOJ, no Republican members of Congress were ever cuffed or arrested while doing their jobs. Reps. Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs even avoided any legal consequence for defying congressional subpoenas from the January 6 committee. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz were able to visit the jail where January 6 defendants were held without incident. Now, Trump’s own former personal attorney is going after Democratic politicians with literally trumped-up charges.
Republicans are treating Democrats and liberals as inherently criminal and less than “real” Americans. Los Angeles has a population more than three times that of South Dakota, but Kristi Noem smeared 3.8 million Americans as a “city of criminals.” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be imprisoned and said, “LA looks like a third world country — anarchists are in charge, law enforcement is being attacked, and the rule of law is nonexistent.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan actually threatened to arrest Newsom, which Trump said sounds like a “great idea.” Rather than distancing himself from this authoritarian rhetoric, Speaker Johnson ramped it up to a disturbing level.
“I’m not going to give you a legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested,” Johnson told reporters last week. “But he ought to be tarred and feathered.”
This is a shocking statement from the man second in line to the presidency. Republicans disingenuously argued during the 2024 election that calling Trump a threat to democracy, which he is, somehow incited violence against him, but the speaker of the house has no shame about putting a target on Newsom.
The Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC charged in 2023 that “Joe Biden abuses his power to target journalists, politicians, activists, and concerned parents.” Now, Republicans are realizing the dystopian fantasy they daydreamed about not long ago. It would be easier if they were just hypocrites. In fact, Republicans still believe in states’ rights, but only for MAGA states, and they’re now at war with the rest of us.
That’s it for today
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It is incredible that a member of congress suggests a cruel torture, tarring and feathering someone, and no one bats an eye. Yet I know that cruelty and objectification are key tactics in the fascist’s playbook.
I often wonder what would have happened if the South had been allowed to secede from the United States. Spielberg could have made a great movie of a split timeline.
All the recent Republican terribleness in one post.
Rinse and repeat.