The GOP is mounting a dangerous new rebellion against federal authority
Washington Post
Opinion by
Imagine you’re a member of the National Guard, and your commanding officer informs you that you’re being activated for duty. New orders from Washington? A natural disaster? Nope. It seems a billionaire from another state gave your governor a bunch of money so she could send you and a few dozen of your colleagues to Texas to do border enforcement, something you’re not trained for.
While the details are still coming into focus, that’s essentially what is happening in South Dakota: Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who has her eye on the White House in 2024, is taking money from the foundation of Tennessee auto auction magnate Willis Johnson to deploy her Guard troops to Texas because she thinks the federal government isn’t doing its job.
This is much more than a weird new development in our ongoing immigration debate, and more than a stunt to serve Noem’s ambitions for higher office. It’s also representative of a new Republican assault on the authority and legitimacy of the federal government.
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We could be witnessing the beginning of a new period of revolt against federal power, with echoes of both the years that led to the Civil War and the Southern backlash against the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Back then it was “nullification” or “massive resistance,” the assertion by conservative states that when they chose they could simply ignore the authority of the federal government. What we’re starting to see now doesn’t yet have a name, but it is born of the same impulses.
No one seems to know if what Noem is planning is even legal. While each state’s governor is the commander in chief of its National Guard, there isn’t any precedent for this kind of move, as The Post reports:
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Privately funding a military mission is an affront to civilian oversight of the armed forces, said military and oversight experts, describing the move — a Republican governor sending troops to a Republican-led state, paid for by a Republican donor — as likely unprecedented and unethical.
“You certainly don’t want our national security priorities up to the highest bidder,” said Mandy Smithberger, a defense accountability expert at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog.
It’s tempting to dismiss this as a play for Republican presidential primary voters, which could be true on the surface level. Having watched Donald Trump seize control of their party with a campaign of vulgar xenophobia, every 2024 GOP presidential contender will try to show the party’s base their Trumpian bona fides with performative immigrant-bashing and border-based demagoguery. Noem is just being a little more creative about it than most.
But it’s also an assault on the structure of authority in American political life, especially the authority of the federal government.
Noem is essentially saying that she and other Republican governors can usurp the federal government’s responsibility over the border — and not only that, they can have conservative megadonors fund the operation.
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And she’s not the only one. Missouri Gov. Mike Pearson recently signed an extraordinary law that forbids law enforcement officials in the state from enforcing federal gun laws; a local law enforcement official who does so could be fined up to $50,000.
It’s blatantly unconstitutional — the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause means that states can’t simply declare federal law invalid if they don’t like it — and will inevitably be struck down in court. Yet Republican legislators in at least a dozen other states are considering laws like Missouri’s.
Meanwhile, the most popular figure in conservative media is spinning dark tales of federal conspiracies — that the Capitol insurrection was a false flag operation orchestrated by the FBI, that he himself is under surveillance by the NSA — to remind viewers that the federal government is a sinister and lawless force that must only be feared and hated.
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The big picture is that at this moment, Democrats control the federal government while Republicans rule in a majority of states — and it could be that way for a while. When many Republicans have convinced themselves that 1) any election won by a Democrat is fraudulent; 2) democracy itself is not particularly worthwhile if Democrats win, and 3) any authority wielded by a Democratic official is illegitimate, perhaps it isn’t surprising to see a growing rebellion against not just this federal government but the very structure of the American system.
We don’t yet know how far Republicans will take this rebellion. It could wind up being just a few stunts that garner momentary attention but wind up having little lasting effect. And unlike the right-wing resistance to federal authority in the 1850s and 1950s, it isn’t about just one thing. It could touch any policy realm where Republicans may decide that if they don’t like what Washington decides, then they don’t have to obey it.
We’ve always debated the contours federalism should take — which level of government has, and should have, authority over what. But disagreements are resolved within the system, often through court cases the Supreme Court decides. What’s so troubling about what we’re seeing now is some people’s rejection of the idea that existing rules and structures have to be considered legitimate at all.
It would be nice if we could say, “Don’t worry — Republicans don’t want to throw the whole system into chaos. They won’t take this too far.” But do you believe that?
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