WASHINGTON —  U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday rebuked the Department of Education’s efforts to transfer its special education programs and civil rights enforcement to other agencies. 

Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii convened a panel of advocates and former department officials in Republican and Democratic administrations to blast the department’s moves, which represent a key step in President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Education Department. 

Education announced in June that the Department of Health and Human Services would administer programs under Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, while civil rights enforcement under its Office for Civil Rights would be transferred to the Justice Department.

Democrats have been highly critical of the moves since they were announced. 

Families of students with disabilities “deserve an educational system that is going to provide their kids with the education services that (are) required under IDEA,” Hirono said Tuesday. 

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, guarantees a free public education for students with disabilities. OSERS is responsible for managing and supporting IDEA. The umbrella unit includes the Office of the Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitation Services Administration. 

Meanwhile, Education’s Office for Civil Rights is tasked with investigating discrimination complaints from students and families.

Lacking expertise

Democratic critics of the interagency agreements say the Education Department is best equipped to deal with special education programs and civil rights enforcement.

“In my view, neither of these other agencies or departments have the expertise to really be able to handle their piece of this,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen said.  

The Maryland Democrat noted that he’d “much rather be in a position where we’re trying to make good things happen than trying to prevent harm to the Department of Education and the effort to make sure that we address the civil rights of students and make sure that people have the special education opportunity that the law requires, but here we are.” 

The Education Department announced 10 earlier interagency agreements with HHS, Labor, Interior, State and Treasury in an effort to shift several of its major functions to those agencies. 

‘One consistent answer’

Valerie C. Williams, who served as director of the Office of Special Education Programs, or OSEP, under the Biden administration, said the deteriorating quality of special education may not be immediately noticed, but would have significant consequences for the students.

“Here’s what worries me most, as someone who ran this office: The damage does not announce itself,” she said. “The erosion of enforcement and support does not show up the week it happens. It shows up months later, as a state that quietly stops getting monitored, a complaint that just sits, or a phone call that never gets answered.”

Laurie VanderPloeg, associate executive director for professional affairs at the Council for Exceptional Children, called on members of Congress across the aisle to “stand up for infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities by preserving the Department of Education and protecting special education programs from being transferred to another agency.” 

VanderPloeg served as director of OSEP during the first Trump administration. 

“We must resist the urge to make the fate of children with disabilities political, and urgently remain focused on supporting outcomes for all children,” she said. 

Seth Galanter, a senior fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law said “there’s a reason that Congress kept OCR and OSERS in the same building.” 

Galanter, who served as the principal deputy assistant secretary for civil rights during the Obama and Biden administrations, said “school districts need one consistent answer on disability rights, not two agencies pulling in different directions.” 

Administration defends transfer

Tuesday’s forum came just days after a Senate education panel advanced a bipartisan bill to rein in Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Education Department and would block interagency agreements that transfer programs regarding special education, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education and Native American education. 

That legislation notably would not apply to the administration’s efforts to shift civil rights enforcement under OCR to the Justice Department. 

Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the Education Department, doubled down on the administration’s efforts, in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Tuesday. 

Newhouse said Hirono and her Democratic colleagues “are either completely ignorant to the collapse of American education, or they are actively rooting for the bureaucracy over our children,” adding that “their desperate fearmongering, claiming students will lose guaranteed federal support, is flatly false.” 

Newhouse added that under Education’s partnership with Justice, “families retain the exact same direct line to staff for civil rights complaints.” 

Regarding Education’s agreement with HHS surrounding special education programs, Newhouse said “OSERS staff remain fully committed to protecting the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with bolstered support from HHS — an agency that already successfully manages grants and programs that serve individuals with disabilities.” 

A rock concert sized crowd packed the Overture Center in downtown Madison on Friday, July 17, eager to hear former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler talk about his new book, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.”

People are desperate for a little optimism and a sense of direction and Wikler offers both, served with a big smile and a hefty dose of energetic encouragement. To enthusiastic applause, he described, during an hour-long conversation on stage with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, how Wisconsin has played a starring role in the fight against authoritarianism and the destruction of democracy by a greedy, corrupt elite. He cast the long battle against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in heroic terms, connecting it to progress during Gov. Tony Evers’ two terms in office, the end of Republican gerrymandering, the defeat of Elon Musk’s preferred candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the election of a new liberal Court majority and, prospectively, a Democratic sweep of state government this fall. 

The Walker fight was a warmup for the battle against Donald Trump and the unprecedented destruction of society he unleashed, Wikler said. Our state is an example to the nation, leading the way in a people-powered fight to restore a more humane, civilized society.

Listening to him you could forget for a moment how tenuous Wisconsin’s political situation is, and how rocky the Democratic primary has been right up to the eve of an election that will determine who faces Trump’s choice for governor, Tom Tiffany, in November.

But the lesson Wikler is offering is not that political victory is a sure thing. The “plan” he’s devised involves a lot of hard work and a difficult fight. The outcome is far from certain. But he makes a solid case that organizing is the best antidote to despair and has resulted in some impressive victories here in Wisconsin.

It took years after the massive, historic protests of 2011 to defeat Walker, who survived a recall effort and went on to be elected to a second term before Evers beat him by a narrow 1-point margin in 2018. 

Evers hasn’t unwound all the damage Walker and the Republican Legislature did to workers, state agencies and, most of all, public schools in Wisconsin, but in Wikler’s opinion he did a great job playing defense against an arrogant, destructive Republican majority in the Legislature and put the state on the right path. Now that we have fair maps, the days of Republican supermajority control are over and Wisconsin is on its way to restoring labor rights and a once-great school system, Wikler says. Some public schools advocates who feel deeply disappointed by the “education governor” might disagree. Schools all over Wisconsin are in desperate financial shape and the ever-expanding private school voucher program, which is draining their resources, coupled with austerity budgets passed by the Republicans and signed by Evers, have left Wisconsin public schools in desperate shape. Advocates are angry that Evers didn’t get more done.

But broadly, Wikler makes a good case for optimism. And that is not just helpful, it’s necessary. Reminding people of past triumphs and encouraging them to fight for something better is the only way out of our current fix.

We are living in dangerous times. We need leaders to help bring us together. 

In the governor’s race, we saw yet another top candidate drop out this week under a cloud of damaging allegations. 

Meanwhile Wisconsin is reeling from a horrible police shooting, and a powerful tornado just leveled several communities days after wildfire smoke blanketed parts of the state, a reminder of the existential threat of climate change.

In the face of these challenges, and under a violent authoritarian regime, it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control. People are angry, desperate, divided.

Wikler offers a better vision. We could pull together and recommit to a peaceful, generous and unifying vision. It’s helpful to reflect on how we’ve done that before.

In the primary, ultimately voters have to come together behind a single candidate or just accept losing a high-stakes race.

But the same idea applies to communities buffeted by natural disasters. Politicians who deny what’s happening are betraying all of us, regardless of political party. We need to prepare and protect ourselves from the undeniable bad weather that’s going to continue to come our way and we need to organize ourselves to stop destroying the planet before there’s nothing left to protect.

On a smaller scale, Madison leaders need to engage with the protesters on Willy Street, take meaningful steps to address the series of appalling police killings in that neighborhood, and figure out how to allow the life of the neighborhood to go on, as tempers fray over an indefinite encampment on the site where Ruiz was shot.

Division and fear are part of what plagues the Madison neighborhood where a police officer killed Ruiz by shooting him in the head after knocking him off a bicycle in a shocking, broad-daylight encounter. Well-meaning neighbors and local officials have blocked streets and canceled community events in part to show solidarity with the protesters and mourners who set up the encampment, but also out of fear that those protesters will disrupt more events after they shut down the Concert on the Square, the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and a city press conference following the shooting. The fear is a symptom of our mutual isolation of an anxious, segregated city that wants to be progressive but has a long way to go toward fostering real inclusion. It ought to be possible to accommodate political speech and healthy public dialogue about racism, violence and injustice right in the same common space where local businesses remain open and we hold inclusive community events. The shutdown and the silent standoff with no visible movement by either the city or the protesters is becoming dysfunctional and driving people further apart. 

In a way it’s not surprising that the wheels are coming off the wagon in local communities as we face more rage, despair and bleak news every day. We are living in a click-bait world. We need to get out of fight-or-flight mode and connect with each other, discover our common interests and organize to build the society we want. 

That’s Wikler’s vision. It beats the hell out of being divided and conquered.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not planning an aggressive campaign at voting sites during the upcoming midterm elections, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday in response to a States Newsroom inquiry about a letter from U.S. Senate Democrats voicing concerns about armed federal agents at polling places.

ICE, an agency within DHS that has sustained intense criticism since the start of the second Trump administration for its aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics, has no plans to target polling sites in November, a DHS official told States Newsroom in an email. 

The official left open the possibility, though, that the agency’s plans could change based on available intelligence.

“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the DHS official said. “ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

The email came from a general DHS media account and did not name the official. The statement did not specify anything about DHS agencies other than ICE.

While DHS made similar statements earlier this year, this one responded to a request for comment about a letter this week from a dozen U.S. Senate Democrats to three Cabinet members demanding to know more about the administration’s possible plans to send federal law enforcement officers to polling places across the country. 

The group, led by Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, sent a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in which the lawmakers asked whether armed federal agents would be deployed at election sites, which they said would be prohibited under federal law. 

“Congress has enacted longstanding criminal prohibitions against sending federal personnel to polling places and using federal power to interfere with elections,” they wrote. “Americans should never have to wonder whether the federal government intends to police the ballot box with armed agents.” 

Democrats have voiced increasing worries that President Donald Trump is seeking to control elements of election administration, which is a state responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. 

The issue is at the center of lawsuits brought by Democratic campaign and nonpartisan voting-rights groups challenging an executive order restricting mail-in voting. And U.S. House Democrats say the administration is withholding disaster relief funds as leverage to force states to change their election laws.

“The letter reflects my and my Senate colleagues’ deep concerns that Donald Trump appears to be planning to steal the upcoming election, which Republicans cannot win on the merits,” Markey said in a Thursday statement to States Newsroom. “We know that no unlawful, illegal, and unconstitutional act is beyond him and we must be ready for it.”

Joining Markey on the Tuesday letter were Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

Growing concern 

The senators’ concerns, they said, arise partly from findings revealed earlier this month that came out of an investigation launched in 2025 by the Democratic National Committee. 

Last October, the committee sought records regarding the possible deployment of federal law enforcement officers to polling stations, ballot-drop sites and election offices. The departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense initially did not produce any documents, and during ensuing litigation, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement represented it had found “no responsive records,” according to the July 28 letter. 

But after the DNC challenged the search results, ICE admitted to finding “more than 11,000 potentially responsive pages,” while U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, said it located nearly 117,000, lawmakers wrote. 

The Department of Defense declined to comment Thursday on the senators’ letter, telling States Newsroom that it will instead follow its typical protocol of responding directly to the authors themselves. 

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s focus on elections  

Democrats’ inquiries into the administration’s plans also stem from comments President Donald Trump has made in recent months about election integrity.

When a PBS Newshour correspondent asked Trump in May if he would send ICE agents or National Guard troops to polling sites for the midterms, he said he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”  

And earlier this month, during a nationwide primetime address, he again reiterated claims about the country’s voting systems being vulnerable to hacking and disputed his 2020 presidential loss, sowing doubts about the entire election process despite having a lack of evidence to back up his words.  

“President Trump’s statements, coupled with his repeated threats to invoke the Insurrection Act — which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence — only heighten concerns,” the senators added in their letter. 

“The Administration now has a choice,” they wrote. “It can continue to fuel the appearance that it is laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal intrusion into state-run elections, or it can finally provide Congress and the American people with the transparency they deserve.”

The lawmakers requested that Blanche, Mullin and Hegseth provide details about any possible plans to deploy federal troops at election sites in November and identify who may have authorized such deployments, setting a deadline of August 11. 

They also asked that the federal agency leaders produce records “concerning the possible deployment of federal law enforcement personnel or troops to polling places or other election sites.” 

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries rallied a key group for his party Thursday, telling the American Federation of Teachers’ national convention that, if successful in November’s midterm elections, a Democratic majority in the House would pursue several progressive policies. 

The New York congressman addressed affordability, voting rights and what he called “the most corrupt administration in American history” while drawing personal connections to the conventiongoers. He said he was grateful for the work of public employees and the unions that represent them, having been raised by two union members in a modest-income household. 

“Organized labor has always been there for me, and organized labor is there for the American people,” Jeffries said as the crowd, gathered in a large room at the Walter. E. Washington Convention Center, erupted into applause. 

The AFT is a 1.8 million-member union representing educators, healthcare workers and public employees from across the country. The organization hosts a national convention every two years.

The union is a major benefactor to Democrats. Its political action committee contributed more than $1.9 million to Democratic candidates and $2.1 million to the House Majority PAC, which works with House Democratic leadership, in the 2024 election cycle, according to the campaign finance tracker Open Secrets. 

Jeffries urged the union’s members to help Democrats win enough House races in November to return the party to the majority next year. Jeffries would very likely become House speaker if that happens.

“Are we going to take our country back?” Jeffries asked the crowd to open his address. “Are you ready to help us take back control of the United States House of Representatives in November?”

Campaign promises

Jeffries said House Democrats would push back against “MAGA extremists” and block efforts to undermine popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare. And they will continue working to drive down the cost of childcare, healthcare and other household expenses, he added. 

In addition to promising better living conditions for Americans, Jeffries said Democratic leaders would fight to “clean up corruption” within President Donald Trump’s administration. 

He also said they would work to end the war with Iran and rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiatives, because the agency “is completely and totally out of control.” 

ICE officers have fatally shot immigrants this month in two separate incidents in Maine and Texas.

Spotlight on education

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, also spoke at the convention about the significant effect that public education had on him growing up.  

It was thanks to the support of his parents and public school teachers, as well as the help of Pell grants and student loans, that he was able to become a U.S. senator, he said. 

Now, what “keeps (him) up at night” is the fact that many children today don’t have access to the same opportunities, which he said would shrink the pool of future leaders in science, law and education.

“We have to invest in our children because we don’t know where the cure for cancer’s going to come from,” he said. 

He called for an increase in teachers’ pay, among other policies.

State of the union

AFT President Randi Weingarten also delivered her keynote address Thursday, touching on themes ranging from income inequality to the increasing power of big tech. 

“Our union stands at the intersection of the ways that regular people gain and exercise power in our democracy—through public education, unions and voting,” she said. “This election will decide whether we are a country governed by the people or ruled by the powerful, a country of opportunity or oligarchy, a country whose people live in freedom or in fear.” 

On Wednesday, Republicans from the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce took a first step toward dismantling the Department of Education, approving a package of 10 bills that would permanently reallocate some of the department’s duties to other federal bodies. 

“The House and Senate have less responsibility for public schooling than statehouses across the country,” Weingarten told reporters after her speech. “Yet the people who run the House (Education and) Workforce Committee spend more time fighting teachers and fighting unions and fighting against a better life for all of us … than actually helping kids have opportunity in a capitalist system.”

Reading Time: < 1 minute

If the 2026 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor seems large, 2018 certainly had it beat.

That year, 10 names were on the Democratic primary ballot, plus an 11th write-in candidate, according to results of the 2018 partisan primary kept by the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Two Republican candidates and two additional write-ins appeared on the 2018 GOP primary ballot. 

The Aug. 11, 2026, primary ballot includes seven Democrats and two Republicans.

In both years, a few candidates dropped out of the race, but their names remained on the ballot due to approval deadlines. 

As of July 14, that includes Democrats Missy Highes and David Crowley. So, only five of the Democrats on the Aug. 11 ballot are still campaigning.

In 2018, two higher-profile candidates had also dropped out by late June: Andy Gronik and Dana Wachs, though both appeared on the ballot.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Elections Commission: 2018 Fall Partisan Primary Results: Ward by Ward – Governor
• MyVote Wisconsin: What’s On My Ballot
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: Commission Meeting June 9, 2026 – Ballot Access
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Democrat Missy Hughes drops out of Wisconsin governor race
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee County Exec David Crowley withdraws from governor's race

Did more Democrats run for Wisconsin governor in 2018 than in 2026? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democrats are seizing the mantle of states’ rights to oppose the agenda of President Donald Trump, who has sought to reset Washington’s relationship with the states. 

While the party out of federal power has always pushed its agenda in statehouses, Democrats across the country have recently demanded more autonomy for governors and state lawmakers. Liberals, longtime proponents of a stronger central government, are now championing an ideology that evokes odious memories of slavery and segregation.  

Many state leaders hope that a renewed focus on federalism could help lower the national political temperature. By shifting more political decisions to the states, they envision a nation less subject to blue-red swings that change the entire course of federal law enforcement, environmental policy and business regulation. 

“Otherwise we just end up fighting every four years over red king-blue king,” said Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican. “And our entire nation goes entirely one way, and then 180 degrees the other way.”

Ivory said the pendulum swinging is “ripping our nation apart” politically and costing untold dollars as national policy reverses depending on who is in power. He leads Utah’s Federalism Commission, a bipartisan legislative group assessing state-federal boundaries and working to educate leaders across the country on federalism issues. 

While he’s been pushing for a smaller federal government and heightened role for the states for years, he said the fiery policy debates in Trump’s second term have given the effort unprecedented momentum. 

Last June, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said the White House had violated his state’s sovereignty in deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles without the governor’s consent. In a lawsuit the state ultimately won, California cited arguments made by founding father James Madison in the Federalist Papers calling for ratification of the Constitution more than 200 years ago. 

And this winter in Minnesota, Democrats pushed for more state oversight of the federal government after immigration officers killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. 

“This is a matter of states’ rights,” said Democratic state Senate leader Erin Murphy. “And while we can’t impact — except for next November – the makeup of Congress, we can impact and bring relief for the people of Minnesota.”

Many of the most high-profile conversations surrounding states rights’ have proven predictably partisan. Yet Democrats and Republicans behind the scenes have been quietly building momentum for a rebalancing of state-federal authority.  

Conservative state lawmakers who have long pushed for a smaller federal government are welcoming liberal counterparts to a growing movement underscoring the importance of federalism, the uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution to share power between Washington, D.C., and the states.

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the third in an occasional series examining the fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.

In Utah, the Republican House speaker called Rep. Ivory several days after Trump’s 2024 election, noting that even California’s liberal governor was talking about federalism.

“He says, ‘We have the opportunity of our lifetime. … We need to get out and work with other states, get them together,’” Ivory recalled. 

“I said, Mr. Speaker, I agree with you. But if Gavin Newsom does something that we believe is state jurisdiction, even if we don’t like the policy, we’ve got to stand with him. And he said, ‘I know,’ and that had never happened before.”

‘An inflection point’

The debate over how much power states should wield is as old as the nation itself: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the forebears of our two-party system, famously argued for larger and smaller federal roles, respectively. 

In Trump’s second term, Democrats have leaned on federalism principles as a means of checking federal power, said Troy Smith, a professor of constitutional federalism and director of the Constitutional Federalism Initiative at Utah Valley University in Orem. 

The American federalist system is always evolving as states and the federal government tussle over authority and the two parties come in and out of national power. Smith said state governments, namely governors, have grown increasingly partisan since the 1990s. But that may be changing as Republicans and Democrats embrace states’ rights.

“I think we’re in an inflection point now that looks like it has the potential to go in that direction as the states start recognizing they have many things in common that transcends party and cooperation could be to their benefit,” Smith said.

Federalism scholars took note of December’s inaugural meeting of the Assembly of State Legislative Leaders, a bipartisan gathering of lawmakers from 30 states. Though not highly publicized, that group signed off on a 449-word declaration on the importance of states’ ability to legislate independently. 

“I think that’s pretty unique and telling in this moment that Republican and Democratic leaders came together and unanimously approved that resolution,” Smith said. 

The group of lawmakers has yet to publicize any more meetings and its leader, Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman, declined an interview request.

But New Hampshire House Speaker Sherman Packard, who attended that gathering, said it was clear that concerns over the size and scope of the federal government transcend parties.

“It’s strictly a bipartisan issue,” said Packard, a Republican. “It isn’t an issue that’s dominated by one blue state or one red state. It’s an issue that I think almost every state legislature is dealing with, and red or blue, it’s worth telling the federal government, ‘enough is enough.’”

Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Karen Camper, though, is skeptical that the states will mark meaningful progress during Trump’s term. 

“Bipartisan has become a nasty word for this president,” she said. “So it’s going to have to be after he’s gone, because he will kill it. That’s what I’ve seen from this president.”

Camper, the Tennessee state House minority leader, pointed to May’s special legislative session in which the GOP pushed through a controversial congressional redistricting plan. It splits the state’s only majority-Black congressional district in Memphis across three districts, diluting that area’s vote as Republicans attempt to flip the state’s only Democratic-held district. 

“Look at what just happened in our state,” Camper said, highlighting Trump’s push for redistricting. “That was a chance for our Republican supermajority to say, ‘We’re not going down this road.’” 

Camper is also the chair of the Black Legislative Leaders Network, a national group of Black lawmakers who lead state chambers, caucuses and committees. She said she worries that too much focus on state autonomy could jeopardize important freedoms that were won at the federal level, including civil rights and voting rights.

“So we’re going to be fighting, refighting some of the same stuff, some of the same things that we fought for,” she said. “…We should be protected by these rights, regardless of where we go in this country, but in states’ rights, there’s a chance that you won’t.”

A complicated history

The debate over states’ rights is inextricably tied to race, equality and segregation. 

And some Southerners continue to argue that conflicts over states’ rights — rather than slavery — drove secession ahead of the Civil War. Historians, though, note the only significant right under debate at that time was the right to enslave people.

In the Jim Crow era, Southern states continued the siren call of states’ rights as they defended racial segregation and fought civil rights movements.

While the concept can still evoke those deeply divisive times, liberals in recent years have found political value in embracing states’ rights, said Paul Nolette, professor and director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University and co-editor of a national academic journal on federalism. 

That’s particularly true of Democratic attorneys general, who have been aggressively challenging the White House in the past year with scores of lawsuits over its immigration enforcement efforts, environmental policies and the withholding of federal funds from states.

“If states were just this weak link, then they would be able to do nothing,” Nolette said. “You know, it would just be the federal government getting whatever it wants. But in fact, the states have a lot of tools themselves to push back on the federal government.”

Though the federal government has grown in scope over the decades, Nolette noted, state bureaucracies have also expanded influence. Many federal programs, including the national food stamp program and safety net health insurance, are administered by state governments.

“So the nature of federal policy over the last few decades has actually given states additional powers to have a say in national policy,” he said. 

Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, acknowledged his view of states’ rights has evolved over the years. 

Like many others, the phrase to him frequently evoked the Southerners who championed states’ rights in their efforts to oppose racial integration. The state’s first Black attorney general, Brown previously spent years working in the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal agency he admired for its role in pursuing civil rights cases. 

But he said the Trump era demands a different role for states as the president continues to flout congressional appropriations and punish political opponents.   

“I think certainly we have to look differently at what states’ authorities are in this moment,” he said. 

Brown said a heightened focus on states is welcome after years of outsized attention on national politics. That’s because the issues most important to most people — taxes, schools and public safety — are most affected by local policy decisions, he said. 

Changing the structure 

In Utah, state officials are looking to lead a national movement to bring more authority back to the states. 

While fears over the Trump administration’s overreach have fueled Democratic interest, Ivory, the Republican representative leading that effort, said the initiative is more focused on governmental structure than politics. 

Ivory likened the current federal-state dynamic to a bicycle with a bloated front tire threatening to bust and a back tire so flat it’s about to chew the rubber off the rim.

“Well, the answer is not to get a different rider or a stronger rider or to steer the bike to the left or to the right. It’s to fix the balance in the tires,” he said. “Our structure, our vehicle of government was two spheres with very specific balance, and we haven’t been paying attention to that for a long time.”

This discussion comes naturally in Western states that have for generations feuded with Washington over the proper use and ownership of federal lands. Over 90% of federal lands are located in the West, according to the Congressional Western Caucus, with the federal government owning 1 of every 2 acres. 

Utah’s commission aims at connecting state lawmakers and agency staff from across the country to better adjudicate federal and state jurisdiction on everything from land management to law enforcement. Ivory said the group would also like to help fill the void left after the 1996 disbandment of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, an entity that put state and local governments in direct contact with federal agencies. 

Utah Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost acknowledged her initial skepticism of the GOP’s federalism push there because of its historic ties to slavery and segregation.

“I’m pretty liberal,” she said. “Federalism is something that was always viewed, I think for not unjustified reasons, as something that was hostile to equality and equitable outcomes and fairness.”

But after a 90-minute conversation with her Republican colleague, she began to see the value — especially now — of pushing for an expanded role for states. Now a member of the state’s federalism commission, she said she envisions a better structure where states stand together, regardless of party affiliation, to counterbalance the federal government.

“States are oftentimes too wrapped up in whether we’re blue states or red states to really have each other’s back,” she said. “And it’s been hard, politically, to convince a red state like Utah to vocally say blue-state California wants to do things its way, we have to have their back and say that they have the right to do things that way, even if it’s not how we would do things.”

As a member of the political minority in Utah, she acknowledged how difficult that can be. Utah’s Republican party holds all statewide offices and enjoys supermajorities in both legislative chambers. And Dailey-Provost said the state’s LGBTQ+ population has been subjected to “constant attacks” from the GOP there. 

Still, she said, she would rather have that debate locally than rely on the federal government to protect those residents. 

“So, I don’t like the current policy outcomes, but I see more opportunity to continue to work with communities and try to fix it over time here at the state level,” Dailey-Provost said. “… At least I feel like there’s a path forward at the local level.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. States Newsroom reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@statesnewsroom.com.