RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – As the United States of America marks its 250th anniversary this year, the relationship between the states and the federal government is approaching a breaking point.<\/p>\n
Led by a bellicose president, the executive branch has moved to dominate states, resulting in more than a year of escalating confrontations between the two levels of government.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has worked quickly: In the first year of his second term, he surged thousands of immigration enforcement agents into a resistant Minneapolis and other cities, with fatal results. He seized control of the National Guard in some states against the will of governors.<\/p>\n
His administration is trying to force states to turn over sensitive data on millions of voters ahead of the midterms. And it is blocking states from receiving, and distributing to their residents, billions of federal dollars for child care, public health, housing and a host of other congressionally approved programs.<\/p>\n
Political parties have swung in and out of power in Washington for centuries, and recent administrations have increasingly clashed with states run by the other party. This time is different, dozens of sources in and around government told Stateline.<\/p>\n
Trump and a coterie of loyal aides have set out to remake the nation in the president\u2019s image. Along the way, retribution and raw power have become the administration\u2019s primary tools to bend recalcitrant states to its will. Grants are pulled, armed force deployed, disaster aid withheld.<\/p>\n
The states have repeatedly gone to court, asking the federal judiciary to rein in the executive branch. They have also started testing the bounds of their own authority, such as moving to restrict the actions of federal immigration enforcement agents.<\/p>\n
The past year has led to a period of sustained state and federal conflict without parallel in modern U.S. history. The consequences for Americans over time will prove enormous, shaping the very nature of our government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of battle between the federal government and the states, we\u2019ve just never seen that before and it makes no sense,\u201d said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who was elected as a Republican but later helped co-found the centrist Forward Party.<\/p>\n
Tensions between the states and the central government are as old as the nation itself. Alexander Hamilton famously favored a strong central government, while James Madison offered the Bill of Rights \u2014 including what became the 10th Amendment, which reserves for the states and the people those powers not delegated to the federal government.<\/p>\n
But current strains are testing the bedrock principles of federalism, the uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution of power sharing between Washington, D.C., and the states.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the country\u2019s founding on July 4, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the first in an occasional series, The 50 vs. The One, that will examine the current fraught moment and what evolving \u2014 and often deteriorating \u2014 state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.<\/p>\n
In interviews and public remarks, current and former elected officials at all levels of government, as well as experts on American government, have described the country as approaching a pivot point. Trump\u2019s second term could mark a defining moment for American federalism, one that will be studied in history books alongside Reconstruction, the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n
The United States will either continue to adhere to the principles of federalism, they say, or it will take a significant step toward a more powerful central government that sidelines the states.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a period of challenged federalism,\u201d said Lisa Parshall, a federalism researcher and political science professor at Daemen University near Buffalo, New York. \u201cThe fact that we\u2019re here talking about federalism tells you something about the current state of American politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dramatic changes in a year<\/p>\n
Fears of diminishing state authority have animated state officials over the past year. Republican lawmakers in Utah have invested in federalism education and expanded a group to assess state-federal boundaries, for instance.<\/p>\n
In July, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, both Democrats, publicly abandoned the nonpartisan National Governors Association, in part because they said the organization was not doing enough to protect states\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n
States are \u201claboratories of democracy,\u201d Kelly said during an interview in February, using a classic civics textbook description. States have traditionally operated with relative freedom to pursue their own agendas and solutions to the challenges they face. In turn, states learn from one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been the beauty of it,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cIf that\u2019s to go away, if the federal government were \u2014 and they are, at this point \u2014 undermining states\u2019 authority and responsibility, I think you end up slowing down the entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same way the three branches of government \u2014 the legislative, the executive and the judicial \u2014 provide checks and balances on one another, federalism imposes a state check on federal power. The U.S. Constitution, which went into effect in 1789, ensured states would command broad power over local commerce, policing, elections and other matters within their borders.<\/p>\n
But Trump has at times raised doubt about whether he will always follow the Constitution and has claimed that he can ignore some of its requirements.<\/p>\n
Last spring, Trump replied \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d when asked whether he needed to uphold the U.S. Constitution in the context of due process for immigrants. In 2022, he said massive election fraud allows parts of the Constitution to be terminated. And after his 2020 election defeat, he urged then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the results, even though the vice president has no constitutional authority to do so.<\/p>\n
In February, Trump asserted that \u201cstates are just an agent of the federal government\u201d as he called to \u201cnationalize\u201d elections. Under the Constitution, the responsibility of running elections belongs to the states.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s critics fault the Republican-controlled Congress for failing to challenge his sweeping assertions of executive power. His administration\u2019s efforts to withhold from states billions in dollars appropriated by Congress, for instance, have spurred relatively little outrage among GOP lawmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I think we\u2019re seeing now is a whole different system of crushing state and local government,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat who has been in Congress since 2005. \u201cAnd bowing down to a new system where we are almost living in a one-person government.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to questions from Stateline, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement: \u201cThe Trump Administration faithfully upholds our Constitution and the immortalized American principles of federalism, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and his allies have cast the president as a heroic figure capable of smashing through the machinery of government to achieve results on behalf of his voters and at the expense of his enemies. \u201cFor those who have been wronged and betrayed \u2026 I am your retribution,\u201d he said in 2023.<\/p>\n
He has at times taken steps that his supporters argue empower states, including effectively gutting the U.S. Department of Education, which Republicans have long accused of federal overreach. His appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term helped cement a conservative majority that in 2022 returned the issue of abortion access to the states.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Republican Governors Association told Stateline the current administration trusts governors to run their own states.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy cutting government bureaucracy and unnecessary red-tape, President Trump is empowering governors to make decisions that best serve their individual states,\u201d wrote Kollin Crompton, an RGA spokesperson.<\/p>\n
Scrambled identities<\/p>\n
The U.S. Constitution has been gradually amended in ways that have limited state power, most importantly through amendments that abolished slavery, required states to treat their citizens equally under the law, and prohibited states from denying suffrage on the basis of race and sex.<\/p>\n
The federal government has also expanded its reach through legislation. President Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal in the 1930s and President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society in the 1960s imposed new economic regulations and created a federal social welfare apparatus that touches nearly every American.<\/p>\n
Over time, Democrats broadly came to be seen as the party more comfortable with an active federal government and Republicans as the party seeking a more restrained Washington.<\/p>\n
But the Trump era has scrambled those identities.<\/p>\n
Trump has shown less respect for traditional conservative ideology, such as limited government and a general deference to the authority of states. Instead, he has taken a maximalist approach to executive power.<\/p>\n
His actions have placed Democratic state officials in a position of advancing limits on the federal government, whether through lawsuits or legislation. And they have put Republican supporters of the president at odds with decades of conservative rhetoric.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that progressives are seeing that federalism \u2014 there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s in our constitutional order and it isn\u2019t just something that\u2019s left for conservatives,\u201d said Sean Beienburg, an associate professor at Arizona State University who researches federalism and constitutional law.<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, Trump deployed federalized National Guard troops onto city streets before courts held him back and he withdrew. For a time, active-duty Marines also patrolled Los Angeles, an extraordinary use of the military for domestic purposes.<\/p>\n
Oregon Democratic Attorney General Dan Rayfield, who challenged the deployment of the National Guard in his state, said the fight underscores why lawsuits matter in checking Trump\u2019s power.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should be shocked that Oregon has filed 55 lawsuits,\u201d Rayfield said in an interview earlier this year. \u201cTheir mind should be blown. But their mind should be equally blown at how often we\u2019re winning these cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has won seven court decisions \u2014 and lost 58 \u2014 so far, according to a New York Times litigation tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n I do think that progressives are seeing that federalism, there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s in our constitutional order and it isn\u2019t just something that\u2019s left for conservatives.<\/p>\n Democratic state lawmakers have also searched for ways to restrict federal immigration agents. In California, Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee has proposed prohibiting state tax breaks for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractors \u2014 a move that could carry national implications because of the size of the state\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also, now, are reasserting what the role of the states and the federal government are,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n But among Republicans, Trump has successfully maintained his grip. Many conservative state leaders have supported the president\u2019s most controversial moves, even those criticized as federal overreach.<\/p>\n During President Joe Biden\u2019s term, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was a staunch proponent of state autonomy and repeatedly challenged the federal government on regulatory issues and its deployment of a state\u2019s National Guard. But Abbott has supported<\/a> Trump\u2019s expansion of federal powers, going so far as to authorize the deployment of the Texas National Guard to aid immigration enforcement in Illinois and Oregon.<\/p>\n Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Justice, the previous governor of West Virginia, said federalism remains \u201calive and well\u201d under Trump. He said he was worried about the nation\u2019s trajectory before coming to Washington in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had to change things,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s new things that are going on that no question they\u2019re disrupting folks on the other side of the aisle.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, other Republicans have pushed back on the administration\u2019s escalating hostility toward liberal states.<\/p>\n Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt sharply criticized the deployment of the National Guard, saying \u201cOklahomans would lose their mind\u201d if a Democratic-controlled state sent troops to his state during Biden\u2019s presidency. He has warned that the expanding power and spending of the federal government is dangerous no matter which party controls Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we have this powerful of a federal government, it should be frightening for everyone,\u201d Stitt said during a February event at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \u2018States created the Constitution\u2019<\/p>\n As the reach of the federal government ballooned over generations, Democratic and Republican presidents have used federal funding to wield more influence over state and local governments.<\/p>\n Federal dollars account for an increasingly large percentage of state revenues, rising from 22% in 1989 to 36% in 2023, according to Pew, which analyzed census and federal economic data. States received more than $1 trillion in federal grants that year.<\/p>\n Over the years, that largesse has encouraged states to pursue policy agendas favored by the current party in power at the federal level.<\/p>\n But Trump has weaponized federal funds in unprecedented ways, experts say. Bypassing Congress and despite numerous court losses, the White House has held up funding for higher education, transit, housing and infrastructure \u2014 particularly for states that displease him.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s attempts to terminate funding for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey remain entangled in a lawsuit. New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said the White House has caused millions in cost overruns and delays, in what she characterized as the most urgent and consequential infrastructure project in the country.<\/p>\n In February, Politico reported Trump told congressional leaders he would release funding for the project in exchange for renaming Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Penn Station in New York City in his honor.<\/p>\n Parshall, of Daemen University, noted that more state leaders of both parties are pushing to reassert state-federal boundaries \u2014 whether in the areas of agriculture or the future of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n \u201cFederalism scholars are seeing this as a potentially pivotal moment in federal-state relationships,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Last August, elected leaders gathered at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston, where in 1773 colonists hurled chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of Great Britain\u2019s King George III. At the conference, lawmakers grumbled about a federal government increasingly sidelining states. That organization, representing more than 7,000 state and territory legislators, has consistently urged the Trump administration to respect states\u2019 inherent authority.<\/p>\n In December, a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers from 30 states gathered to discuss federalism issues, unanimously approving a declaration on the importance of states\u2019 ability to legislate independently. That document noted that the Constitution did not create the states, \u201cbut rather the states created the Constitution, ratifying a framework in which we would both govern collectively and independently.\u201d<\/p>\n New Hampshire state House Speaker Sherman Packard, a Republican, said state-federal tensions have been mounting for decades. He noted that the major tax and spending law the president signed last summer \u2014 often called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act \u2014 both cut federal funding to states and saddled them with new costs and administrative work. But it\u2019s just the latest example of what he views as a federal government overstepping its bounds.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s getting more and more prolific that they\u2019re taking on and doing things that most of us feel is inappropriate,\u201d Packard said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t fix this, we\u2019re going to lose state sovereignty altogether. And that\u2019s just not the way it was set up.\u201d<\/p>\n Reporter David Lightman contributed to this story. Stateline reporters Jonathan Shorman and Kevin Hardy can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org<\/a> and khardy@stateline.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n This story was originally produced by Stateline<\/a>, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes South Dakota Searchlight, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.<\/p>\n See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here<\/a> to report it.<\/p>\n