Democrats across the country are desperate for our party to take a more aggressive and coherent fighting stance against Donald Trump. That is why there is so much anger about the decision by Senate Democrats not to filibuster President Trump’s bill to keep the federal government, and his agenda, rolling along. But if nothing else, what that decision revealed is the abject weakness of the cards that congressional Democrats are playing with. A far more effective fight, however, can be waged by Democrats in state houses across America.
Fifteen states, home to 123 million people, have “Democratic trifectas”: Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature. Democrats control two of the three in another five states, home to an additional 37 million people. In a heavily overlapping geography, 22 states and the District of Columbia have a Democratic attorney general. In other words, roughly half of America’s population lives in states where Democrats have far more power than they do on Capitol Hill.
These are the states that generate the bulk of our nation’s economic activity. They are also the places most likely to be affected by Trump’s agenda, which will target both progressive policies and federal funding streams that blue states in particular depend on. Trump will be happy to see places like New York and California forced to choose between losing federal education funding and, say, green-lighting school privatization schemes or between slashing Medicaid and curtailing access to abortion care. And so blue states have both a lot of reasons and a lot of power to be creative and proactive in fighting back. Here’s what that might look like.
Empower state agencies to do what the feds won’t. Trump’s dismantling of the parts of the federal government that protect ordinary Americans may be the place where blue states can most readily respond. From housing discrimination to consumer protection to environmental preservation, legislators should give state agencies the authority and resources necessary to take enforcement action and protect their people. And with the crack-up of federal public health infrastructure, blue states should expand information sharing between their health departments and fund multistate consortiums, so vital disease tracking and response efforts can continue across state borders.
Protect the people Trump is targeting. With each passing day, the Trump administration and its gubernatorial proxies in deep-red states get bolder in their efforts to persecute by prosecution, or even to round people up with no due process—from doctors providing abortion care to immigrants who have broken no laws. Blue states should pass laws to shut down cooperation with the federal government and red states when it comes to the weaponization of law enforcement.
Supercharge state attorneys general. Democratic A.G.s are already fighting and winning in court to stop or slow down some of the most draconian actions by the Trump administration. But this represents a massive new line of work that could extend into any number of policy areas, and blue states should be providing their attorneys general with significant new resources to litigate on every front.
Wage fiscal warfare. Perhaps the most existentially challenging assault that blue states will face will be financial. This may come in the form of straightforward federal funding cuts or more pernicious political gambits where state officials are told to bend the knee on policy issues in order to hold onto federal cash. Bending the knee, of course, is not a smart long-term strategy when responding to the accelerating creep of fascism. Blue states must figure out how to fight back, including developing mechanisms to replace federal funds without the kinds of tax increases that drive people from one state to another.
One obvious way: increasing corporate income taxes that are tied to in-state sales rather than a company’s physical presence. Increases could be structured to go into effect if and when states are hit by federal funding cuts. This would have the added benefit of putting direct pressure on some of the billionaires whose support, or at least acquiescence, Trump depends on. Another, more nuclear, option being proposed in Maryland and New York would withhold state payments to the federal government when Trump refuses to disburse funds owed to the state in contravention of a court decision. This is not a distant hypothetical. Less than two weeks after Trump took office, a federal court issued a restraining order against his administration’s massive funding freeze, and a week after that, the judge in the case said that the administration was ignoring his order as states still couldn’t access funds they were due for infrastructure projects.
Different pieces of this state-based resistance agenda have been enacted, or are being pursued, in different places. But now is the moment when every Democratic governor and legislator in every blue state must summon their most legally aggressive—and risk-tolerant—policymaking instincts. Even where a particular idea falls flat or gives the MAGA crowd grist for their political mill, lawmakers should not be deterred or over-calculate. And to the extent that states can act in concert, these tools will have even more power.
We are in uncharted—and, indeed, impossible to chart—territory. The net effect of an all-out fight in the states will be to protect people from very real threats posed by Trump and his minions—and to give Democrats something to rally around between now and the time we can try to wrest back control of Congress and more effectively confront Trump at the federal level.
