States' rights, but only for GOP states

[marmar]

Trump takes aim at states' rights, and the Constitution
The once hallowed GOP concept is under threat by a would-be king

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published June 16, 2025 9:28AM (EDT)


(Salon) Five months into Donald Trump's second term, it already feels like five years. The administration's shock and awe strategy has left the country dizzy. There's the daft tariff scheme that has left Americans worried about an economic crash. We've watched as the civil service, legal system, academia, corporations and even churches have been forced to deal with an unprecedented assault by an administration hellbent on dominating every independent institution in our society. Now, with Trump's mass deportation push into Los Angeles and his decision to federalize the California National Guard, the Constitution itself is being assailed with direct threats to state and local sovereignty.

For as long as most of us can remember, "states' rights" was the bedrock of American conservative ideology. For generations, Southern states used the concept to justify slavery, the Civil War and generations of Jim Crow. And while liberals didn't approve of states' rights arguments being used to deny universal human rights (and believed those arguments were not made in good faith), they did not deny the concept of state sovereignty itself under the Constitution. Short of amending the document, or tearing it up altogether, they recognized it was pointless to pretend that federalism didn't exist or to only recognize the idea when it was politically useful.

....(snip)....

Trump is being very clear here about why he's targeting these cities. It's not because of immigration, although he's using that as an excuse. After all, two of the three states with the largest populations of undocumented people are the red states of Texas and Florida. And in recent days, Trump has exempted the agriculture, hospitality, and meatpacking industries, which apparently aren't part of the "Democratic Power Center." (The construction and manufacturing sectors better get on the ball and start doing some serious bootlicking.) No, he sees this as a way to start a conflagration in these cities, giving him the excuse to supersede the power of elected state and local officials by sending in troops, whether it be federalizing state National Guards or sending in active duty Marines.

....(snip)....

Ben-Ghiat goes on to explain that this is often a way that despots exert power, observing:

The Trump administration is now using the second-largest city in the country as a backdrop for its efforts to create the perception of a national crisis. Doing so could allow it to justify measures that would empower the government to act against its own citizens. This is concerning enough. Even more worrying is what history shows us: that all too often, such crises become semi-permanent — “not the exception but the rule,” as the anti-Nazi philosopher Walter Benjamin once observed.

The rhetoric in Trump's Truth Social post — that Democratic politicians and their voters are "sick of mind" and "hate our country" — means it is likely there will be more arrests and roughing up of Democratic politicians who try to do their jobs. And we can probably expect more violence, including the kind we saw this weekend in Minneapolis, when a far right extremist assassinated a Democratic politician and her husband, and wounded two others. That's the type of crisis Trump seems determined to provoke. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/16/takes-aim-at-states-rights-and-the-constitution/

[C_U_L8R]

1. Imagine for a sec that you're a Magat living in deep red Magatville

While Trump is busy going after immigrants in Democratic areas of the country where immigrants are welcome, he's NOT doing anything about immigrants in red states and cities where they are reviled, demonized and not welcome at all. It seems Trump is not helping the Magats at all, where they live and hate.

[Historic NY]

2. The Gov of California believe he can starve the Federal government by withholding tax money collected.

Treasury Sec. Trump hentchman threaten tax evasion charges. I think it would take months to file them in the courts and it would starve Trumps spending. They can't arrest everyone and there are more blue states. Trump is withholding Federal funds for grant and other programs in blue states. Perhaps deducting that from the collections.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/newsom-floats-withholding-federal-taxes-00393386]