- We are in many ways moving faster than other, towards an autocracy than other countries that have backslid or slid into it.

We've seen, you know, a pretty hostile takeover of much of the media in the last eight or nine months.

We have seen the use of federal troops and powers in cities that go against our, you know, rights and our tradition.

So I just, I, I think the one thing I would just say to people is we, we cannot just await the midterms and the markets and kinda be depressed and hope things turn out.

You know, Americans have to sort of assert their opinions and their rights and stand up for what they want.

- Welcome to Forum, I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Over the last 20 years, Republican controlled states and their allies in the judiciary have built a new power infrastructure out of the latent potential of statehood.

And now, as the Trump administration breaks norms and often laws in pursuit of a different America, there have been calls in blue states to fight back against federal power.

But what should the states do and how it's not just resisting?

Blue states are also building new alliances to take on some of the tasks that traditionally would've been federal responsibilities.

In a new essay in Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery outlined some of the many tactics now at play to throw the states economic might around.

It's a set of maneuvers that could be town to mount to a soft secession to talk about what that could mean.

We're joined by Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Welcome, Clara.

- Thanks so much for having me, Alexis.

- And we're also joined by John Michaels, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and Advisor to the Dean on Civic Engagement.

Welcome, John.

- Thanks for having me.

- So go, let's just go straight to the name.

Soft secession.

How do you define that?

- Well, it's defined sort of as not a violent break of like 1861, but a another term for it is non-cooperative federalism.

Basically, we're states that are aligned in, in values and purpose team up to either defensively or offensively act in their own best interest to protect their citizens, their values, their programs, their funding.

- Hmm.

And who is actually arguing for this?

Are there people out there, aside from your essay, mother Jones saying it's time for self secession.

Are there democratic politicians saying this?

Or is this more of a kind of whisper network thing?

- It, I would say it's more of a, a essayist law professor, sort of people who historically have probed this even before the Trump administration, but also coming to the fore with people just searching around for solutions and also searching around to describe the things that are already happening.

- Hmm.

- Like these vaccine compacts, like these moves by Blue State Ags to sort of mount a defensive wall against some of the worst Trump administration incursions, certainly around things like, you know, immigration raids and trying to roll back the rights of both citizens and, you know, residents.

- John, our law professor here on the show.

I am curious how you see this playing out in the legal community.

Obviously going back a long time to the very founding this kind of state versus federal power, an enormous issue in constitutional law and many other things.

But things are different now, it feels like.

- Yeah.

So, you know, I think the term secession invites a lot of curiosity, a lot of enthusiasm and aversions.

And so the provocative nature of it is a conversation starter.

But I think what, and, and I don't want to, I don't wanna speak for Ms Jeffery, but I think we're, we're talking about decentralization.

We're talking about a reconfiguration of federal state power.

And as you alluded to, that's happened at various periods in our history.

Some quite productively, some quite problematically.

And so I think what the, the energy in this virtual room and in the conversations that are happening are trying to wonder whether the federal power that is being essentially mobilized against large segments of the American people and the American culture are, if that federal power can be recalibrated in a way that gives states and communities more authority and more discretion to kind of chart a different course and to, so, so I think we'd start there.

And if we wanna get into the history, the history is very rich with examples that can be mined.

- Hmm.

I mean, does it feel uncomfortable Clara Jeffery, to feel like you're arguing for state's rights?

You know, this kind of long time - Right there, there's, there's very, there's very much an irony there that it, you know, traditionally in my lifetime, it's been the Republican party, and particularly the, the far right wing of the Republican party that's advocated for state's rights to fend off things like segregation or gun reform laws, or, you know, - Well, integration off integration.

Well - Fend off desegregation.

Yes.

Thank you.

So yes, it is a sort of flipping of alliances on its head as it were.

And I, and I think we are, to your earlier point, seeing this play out, you know, more and more in real time at higher levels.

I mean, last night Gavin Newsom basically threatened to walk away from the Governor's Association, which has been around for more than a hundred years.

And JB Pritzker kind of did the same.

They're like, Greg, I, but if you're gonna send troops into our state over our wishes and in ways that we think are against the law, then we are not gonna be aligned with you in this sort of compact of governors anymore.

So once you start looking around for signs that there's a grand reconsideration happening, you'll, you'll see it everywhere.

- John, tell us about the kind of legal infrastructure that's in place here.

Obvi, I mean, again, going all the way back, but over the last 20 years, it feels like there has been a new set of decisions and a new kind of set of understandings in red states about how to resist federal government power that now maybe can be put in play for blue states.

- Yeah, I think it's helpful to frame things that way because it also talks to one of the big challenges, which is resistance in, in non-compliance is a lot easier when you're not engaged in constructive state building, when you're not that interested in ensuring that your basic institutions are well funded, well supported, and are serving the interest of your community.

And so obstruction and so withdrawing from things like the governor's union or withdrawing from various types of, you know, cooperative federalism engagements, including things like healthcare and, and various forms of, of disability insurance and whatnot, stepping away from that is fairly easy.

Trying to build an alternate infrastructure of support, such as for our universities, such as, again, for our, our under-resourced populations is, is, is the, is the challenge and speaks to that asymmetry.

So when the states that have been noncompliant in the past, they've been working, they've been, they've been going downhill as it were because they're just putting their foot on the brake.

We're trying to put our foot on the brake, jump outta the car and run uphill on our own, you know, on our own foot power.

And so that's why the infrastructure that would ha has to be built largely and new.

- Hmm.

- And it's not impossible, it's just different.

- Yeah.

I mean, where my mind goes is the pandemic era packs, right?

But those kind of had this kind of flowering early in the pandemic, and then did they actually go anywhere?

Did they get the things done that people wanted them to have done?

- I I, I think they did start to fall apart along the politics of, of, you know, various states and, and cities.

But I think in a way we are seeing that certainly around vaccines.

And I think we're seeing that in terms of pandemic and other public health response preparedness.

They're starting to be kind of new alliances, confederations, whatever you wanna call it.

Certainly the western states in Hawaii have joined into a vaccine alliance and, and New England has, has done much the same.

But I I wanna say that this also goes to a, a deeper issue of high population states.

California in particular, California, you know, has 67 times the of Wyoming, of the same number of senators.

Donald Trump would not be invading blue cities and blue states if there, if there were no electoral college, he would not risk alienating voters in those states.

Whatever political persuasion they have, there's just too many people.

So we are seeing some anti-democratic things that were built into the Constitution become more and more anti-democratic.

They were always sort of compromises to appease the slave states and the, the, the sort of unbalanced nature of that has gotten worse and worse over time.

So that's a deeper problem that we're seeing come to the fore.

- Yeah.

People may remember over the years, there have been a series of kind of attempts to turn California into more than one state, right?

There was the six Californias ballot initiative in 2013, and then, you know, that kind of got replayed a couple times, but never actually made it forward.

What you're suggesting is not this.

Right.

- I am suggesting basically that people are starting to look at all kinds of ways to both take on the, the onslaught of, of Trump policies and aggressions that they think are unlawful and unfair, but also that it's combined with this sort of, you know, growing sense over the last few decades.

That there's just something about the way that the Senate and the electoral college are set up, particularly in combination that is undemocratic to large swaths of the country.

- Yeah.

You know, David writes, this is political pornography for me.

I love the idea of California seceding.

I would like to hear a practical step by step of how this could happen, rather just rather than just a pie in the sky discussion, David, we're gonna get to some of not the steps of actually seceding, but some of the steps of building this alternative infrastructure of governance.

Right, John?

I mean, this is what your work is really trying to do right now.

- Yeah.

So there we could talk practical policies about what, what can be done and what needs to be done.

I think there has to be a collective will.

And so the first step I think would have to be, we've reached a place where we have to focus considerable attention on re reshaping our state, reshaping our, our cluster of states in order to kind of remain resilient during this period of kind of economic deprivation from the federal government that shut funding off.

So that would be one component.

Another component we could talk about is how can we preserve and, and maintain our resources such that they're not put to use for punitive purposes like our national guards, men and women.

Right?

So there's different ways we could start saying, all right, if there's a real commitment here, if someone were to call us up, if the next caller that comes calls up is Gavin Newsom or JB Pritzker, we can, we can say, all right, stay, stay with on this.

We're not talking about, you know, going to the gun shop.

This is what we can do.

- Hmm.

We are talking about John Michaels professor of law at UCLA School of Law advisor to the Dean on civic engagement.

We've also got editor-in-chief of Mother Jones in the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Clara Jeffery with us.

Her new piece in Mother Jones is, it's time for a soft secession.

Of course.

We want to hear from you.

What do you think about this idea of California banding together with other blue states to create some kind of alternative governance structure outside the United States of America?

You can give us a call.

The number is 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

That's 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

The email address is forum@kqe.org.

You can find us on Blue Sky, on Instagram, on discord.

We're KQED forum.

We're gonna be back with more, with the nuts and bolts of soft secession when we get back.

Welcome back to Forum Alexis Madrigal.

Here.

We've got Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery, we've got John Michaels a professor of law at UCLA.

Clara Jeffery's got a new article out called It's Time for a Soft Secession, and we're taking your calls of course.

8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

John, I mean, is there a constitutional problem with doing these things like more?

The other place my mind has gone in this is cannabis enforcement.

It's also gone to sort of the anti-abortion things that southern states have done, Medicaid expansion, like there, there're these examples, but like, where is this illegal power really reside here?

- Yeah.

So I'm glad we circled back a little bit to the, the constitutional question, whether it's about reforming the Senate or better or differently articulating the, the who has dominance in the, the policing power as you're referencing with, with drug.

And I think what, what we've come to recognize over time, and so it kind of helps, I think, focus our attention on what's possible and what's not possible is that the Constitution is virtually unamendable.

And once we come to realize that it, it gives us a, it gives and, and we come to grieve that possibility, for instance, it gives us an opportunity to kind of focus our attention and what the United States as a community has done in those moments where we've had irreconcilable differences.

We've either gone to war, which we don't wanna go back to, or we've kind of stepped back from the ledge and developed workarounds and compromises that have allowed us to continue forward.

Not withstanding the fact that the constitution seems to limit our horizon.

So in a different moment, which we're not in yet, and maybe not, you know, maybe not for the foreseeable time, but this is why these conversations are both pie in the sky, but also really practical is to expand the universe of options so that a some reason reasonable people who might disagree with some of these policies, but recognize under underlying them is a cry for a recalibration of power would be to lessen the intensity of the standoff.

Hmm.

And so, so that's one of the reasons why we're, we're at a crisis now.

And at other moments, which you've referenced, there's been some tacit understanding to back off of this, this confrontation.

Hmm.

What's, what's again so challenging in this moment is, is the temp, the temperature keeps on rising and the conflict keeps on escalating.

And so it's pushing more and more I think, feelings of dejection and also feelings of, of of great hosp hostility and despair about our democracy.

And so we have to have these conversations and have to have 'em in a constructive fashion because we can't just say, oh, we'll see you at the Constitutional convention where we'll outvote you, it just isn't gonna happen.

- We were joking, you know, that maybe Governor Newsom would call in, but actually the tenant governor El ny Kunaki is on the line right now.

Welcome.

- Good morning, Alexis.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

- What do you think about this concept, Lieutenant Governor?

- You know, I think it's really important that you're having this conversation.

When I ran for office back in 2017, right after Trump came into power, I was, I went to all 58 counties and I was out in parts of the state, but up north, known as the state of Jefferson where people have been talking about succession in their own state for a long time.

And those are much more, I guess, red parts of the state, but then it was in blue parts of the state and people were saying, Hey, can we, can we succeed?

Can we form our own country?

Can we join with Canada, along with Oregon and Washington?

And so these conversations really are happening out there.

But I think it's really important that we are super careful because we have seen now in, in the last few months that the Trump administration is serious about taking over national guards, about turning our military against our people.

And California does not have our own standing army with our own chain of command.

Of course, the chain of command for the National Guard does go up to the governor, but it has apparel of chain of command to the federal government.

They are responding to the federal government.

We've seen that.

And our country is facing some real issues where, you know, as your guests are talking about having alliances with other states where we're working on, on combating climate change, protecting women's rights, all of that is, is really great.

But this conversation can distract from what we really need to do, which is California's voice in the national conversation about why as a country we need to fight back against Trump's policies and not as going down a rabbit hole of something that could very well in light of what this administration is capable of doing, could lead to something that would have dire consequences.

When we're talking about to tearing apart the, the, the nation as a whole - Lieutenant Governor, stay with us.

What do you, what do you think Clara, Jeff?

- I think two things.

I mean, I think there is a very real fear we're seeing it that, that Donald Trump is looking for a provocation.

And so even talking about alternate scenarios of the future of the United States, that isn't kind of, that is in some ways objecting to or protesting him even in the sort of pretty mild ways that is happening now.

I do have that fear.

At the same time, I think that when you have a president that is pushing this country far quicker than anyone thought towards a form of urbanism or beyond really moving into sort of an autocratic system, we can't not talk about how we're going to push back.

And I think, you know, as we saw with the Jimmy Kimmel situation, some of that pushback is economic.

California alone is like 15% of America's GDP.

We have a huge amount of economic clout.

How we go about kind of using that wielding that in this moment, I think that's a very complicated issue, but I don't think we can just kind of sit back and do nothing and kinda hope things work out.

So we need to start talking about what we can do.

- Lieutenant Governor, what do you think would be the most effective thing California could do to throw its economic weight around?

- The most important thing that we can do is show that our policies here in California work and that they will work elsewhere in the country.

And there's been a lot of efforts to really, you know, California is an inconvenient fact.

We are the fourth largest economy in the world.

Largest, and we are a majority minority democracy with incredible diversity, a much higher percentage of immigrants.

They don't like that about us, but we have to do a better job showing that the things that work in California are the kinds of policies that would be good for the country.

But I'd like to just say one more thing.

I don't know that, that your other guest knows, but I was the United States ambassador to Hungary.

I probably spent more time with Victor Orban than any other US government official.

The United States is not Hungary.

Victor Orban has a country of 10 million people that does not have a tradition of, of individualism and democracy that we have in this country.

The best thing we can do is remind Americans that this is a system of self-government governance.

That's what democracy is, that we have a right to demand responsiveness from our leaders.

That if they take away our healthcare, if they make it more expensive, we go to the polls and we fight back.

So we have a lot of power within the country to fight back against the, these efforts of the MAGA Republicans to move toward an autocratic system that are, to me, a much more important way to mobilize than going down a rabbit hole of this idea of succession.

- Elany Kunaki, Lieutenant Governor of California.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having - Me.

Yeah, thanks for calling in, John.

This is a really, I mean, this is an interesting question.

I know, I, I want, I know you want to get in, you can get in.

Yeah, - Yeah.

Thank you.

So first of all, I really appreciate the, the input and the responsiveness from the Lieutenant Governor.

And I think she makes a lot of really important and valid points.

And one thing that I think concerns me about, let's wait, let's, let's recapture the White House.

Let's recapture the House and the Senate, which could take anywhere between, you know, six and 10 years to happen.

Some of those things, given the way the Senate turns over is that I'm worried what the federal government's gonna look like by then.

The federal government is being torn apart, root in branch, the shutdown is not healthy.

This is the, this is, I was talking to my students about this last week.

This is the rare occasion where the president is, is perfectly happy for a shutdown.

It's not a game of chicken with Congress.

It's a collusive effort with Congress.

Federal employees are being laid off, they're gonna find other work, especially the best ones.

The infrastructure of government is, is rapidly being broken and sometimes eagerly.

So I think that the idea that, well, California is going to put its best foot forward is a, is is a true and concerted effort to withstand all this.

But it still requires an understanding, I think with, with due respect that California's gonna have to shoulder a whole lot more, - More.

- And if California's gonna have to shoulder a whole lot more in the absence of a competent federal administration, then there's gotta be a lot of creativity and resourcefulness to make that happen.

And I don't think that requires, I think that requires efforts starting today.

Not, not in 18 months or something.

- But, you know, isn't the big question with many of these things.

As Breno, one of our listeners asked, isn't the big problem federal funding, right.

Taxes and the cost of living already so high here, I don't see how we could pay for things without it.

And of course, the federal government can just borrow money in a way that the state of California can't.

Right?

Or, and, and no state can.

So you'd need some sort of vehicle to finance these things, right?

Sure.

Or would it just be states would do it by raising taxes on themselves and, and funding some of these things that otherwise the federal government would just deficit spend into.

- Right.

Which California has not shown itself to be particularly effective or resourceful at, at raising the revenue that we need, let alone keeping taxes low and affordable and housing affordable in schools at a high quality.

So there's a lot that needs to be done.

And a again, the, the, the being a model for the nation, we're, I think one way to do that is to show a type of resourcefulness that that is maybe to some extent overdue.

And I would, I would say that if you really wanna get creative about these things, and there are various ways one could do it, I don't know how much of it is nipping at the margins, but there are one thing that actually Trump administration has proposed, which I don't think is a terrible idea if it's, you know, if, if it's taken the right direction, is for funders, particularly public funders, to renegotiate intellectual property with the researchers.

So that's something that Howard Lutnick is proposing to do at the, from the Department of Commerce.

And it sounds like, well, state control over basic research sounds like a terrible idea, but in a time of fiscal crisis and with the federal government, it's a artificial one.

It's a completely manufactured crisis.

But like you said, for our state, it's not a manufactured crisis.

It's, it's one that's been forced upon us.

How can the state pony up a lot more money to cover all the shortfalls, keep our, our, our tech, our healthcare, all of our, our engineering research?

Of which I get none.

So I'm not, I don't have a, a direct stake in any of this.

I just have a pen and paper when I as my resources at UCLA.

But for my colleagues, you know, it, it doesn't feel great to have a lot of, you know, control or having to share ip, but maybe the state should keep some more.

And so that when one of my colleagues creates a billion dollar enterprise, the federal government gets a windfall.

Now we're not gonna see that right away, but that's how the market would respond.

That's how venture capitalist would, would talk about.

Well, in a world in which there's a scarcity of resources, we have to be more creative, things like that to make it more palatable.

To tell the California people we we're gonna have to pony up a whole lot more, more money because the ucs are being starved.

- Hmm.

You know, Daniel Wrights speaking to the political will question here, Clara Jeffery, most Californians are moderates or center left or center right.

And would see this as far left denialism over the fact that most voters do not support their core positions, especially on immigration, crime, and homelessness.

How does the panel get around this fact?

- Hmm.

That's a sort of interestingly phrased question.

You know, I, which sort of implies moderation on his part, but then at the end, sort of belies a sort of seemingly fairly anti-immigration stance, which is his right.

What I would say is that Californians, like Americans do not like what's happening.

Polls are showing they are opposed to the invasion of states.

They don't want the National Guard coming in on, you know, bogus pretenses to take over cities.

They certainly don't want customs and border patrol agents repelling into an apartment building in Chicago and arresting or detaining everybody.

This, these are things that people do not want.

And I, I just wanna go back to what the Lieutenant Governor said.

It's true, we are not hungry yet.

And we have a different tradition that said, we are in many ways moving faster than other, towards an autocracy than other countries that have backslid or slid into it.

We've seen, you know, a pretty hostile takeover of much of the media in the last eight or nine months.

We have seen the use of federal troops and powers in cities that go against our, you know, rights and our traditions.

So I just, I, I think the one thing I would just say to people is we, we cannot just await the midterms and the markets and kinda be depressed and hope things turn out.

You know, Americans have to sort of assert their opinions and their rights and stand up for what they want, which is, you know, I think across most of the political spectrum is rule of law.

You don't get to shove people into a, a van and ship 'em off to God knows where and send them to El Salvador, that people get hearings.

That we don't have federal law enforcement officers and our highest officials blatantly lying to Congress, to the American people all the time.

The Department of Justice has been so weaponized, not just against, you know, the quote unquote enemies of Donald Trump, but against the American people.

And we have to be clear-eyed about what is happening.

However we push back or resist or reconfigure ourselves.

Denial is not the answer.

Denial is not gonna make this sort of go away.

It's not a nightmare that we just wake up from.

Yeah.

- John Michaels, I mean, what do you think, like if people have built out academics, have built out these sort of scales for trying to measure democratic backsliding or slide into authoritarianism and these sorts of things, like, do you agree that we are moving faster than some of these other states that have done the same thing?

- I think it's, it's, it is a good question.

I, I'm surprised at how quickly we're backsliding.

I've been caught off guard by, its the ease with which it's been effectuated.

I think our country's different in a lot, lot of ways.

I don't think that the numbers per se the population size per se, makes things complicated.

I think we have a more tribal sense of ourselves.

We're not as homogenous as a country like Hung Hungary.

And I think that both buffers us, but also creates dynamics for the state to leverage the, the underlying tribalism of the country to achieve more quickly through non status means, essentially weaponizing red versus blue America, or white versus multi multiracial America.

To circle back though, to the, to the last - Comment sec commenter.

Well sec, let's actually hold, hold the last commentary just for a sec.

'cause we're talking about options for Blue State leaders to push back on President Trump's agenda.

We're joined by John Michaels, professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, and Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Her new piece in Mother Jones is if time for a soft secession.

We wanna hear from you, of course.

What do you think California and other Blue State should do in response to the Trump administration's actions here in our state?

The number is 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

The emails forum@kqe.org.

I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Stay tuned.

Well come back to forum Alexis Madrigal.

Here.

We're talking about options for Blue State leaders to push back on President Trump's agenda, reconfigure power within some other apparatus.

Aside from states and the federal government.

We are joined by Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as John Michaels professor of law at UCLA School of law.

John, you were just saying you wanted to come back to a previous commenter who I think had been talking about the sort politics of California.

- Yeah.

And just thanks for that.

And just for the, the notion that this is, has a far left valence again, I what I, I kind of took notes while, while we were talking, while, while we were responding to that question.

And the only policies that have been voiced, I believe, until the very last comment was support for vaccines support for school funding.

And implicitly when I was talking about the federal government being depleted of its resources, I was, and I didn't say this, but so, so in fairness, that's fine.

But I was thinking of things like ensuring that we have resources to support clean air, clean water initiatives, social security I did mention, and things like food, like safe food and drug priorities.

Those don't strike me.

Whatever the politics of the, you know, of anyone on this panel may or may not be as far left regimes, we weren't talking maybe to our discredit, but we weren't focused on crime and we weren't focused on housing other than affordable housing, which strikes me as a middle class issue as much as any anything else.

So I, I just, I don't, again, I don't want us to get pushed into a corner per se of saying, oh, this is, this is a, a hail Mary pass by a, you know, by far left people, I mean there, there may be far left people who are throwing Hail Mary passes.

But this is a, you know, this is a, this is a, a set of responses, at least I understand them.

And, you know, we can, again, quibble about labeling, but we're in, in a, in a governance crisis, we're in, we're we're staring down an economic crisis and we have a rule of law crisis.

So under those circumstances, it's, it would be a luxury to talk about things like basic income and, and other types of kind of what I would associate with kind of far, you know, further to the left that for me, or, you - Know, wishlist, seizing the means of production, you know, the more traditional far left interest and things.

Yeah, - Yeah.

But that's, that, that hasn't been part of this conversation, at least a totally, you know, and so I, I just wanna to be clear you didn't miss - It, I promise.

Yeah, - No, this is a, this, this is a, this is a way of responding in a moment where people want answers or a, a a, a roadmap in a, a moment that pick your issue.

That is, that is how has your life been adversely affected.

And even, and again, I wanna go back to what Ms.

Jeffery said, and she didn't say this explicitly, but you know, there's a lot of people who may not be super enthusiastic about extensive immigration, who are still absolutely horrified by the way in which immigration enforcement is being carried out in, in our communities.

So there's a huge gap between what we think about on paper and what we're seeing practiced in the street that I think is, is a harbinger for a re a shuffling of those kind of political labels, if nothing else.

Hmm.

- I think in some ways the, the central question of this moment is how do we stick up for ourselves and our neighbors?

And what we've seen again and again in media amongst major law firms, amongst the university system is, is Donald Trump's going to pick off things one by one, make demands the those who acquiesce will find themselves very quickly facing more demands.

And that's because we have a collective action problem.

So how do we collectively act together many different levels of that.

But one level is at the state government level, and whether that's between governors, whether that's between departs of general, general attorney's general, which they had, they, the, the attorney generals came in prepared, they the, you know, day after the election or something, they started having Zoom calls and they've been coordinating on the, on the things that they expected and saw, which is, you know, things like trying to overturn birthright citizenship.

They came out united against that and in other kind of anti-immigration methods and, and have been quite successful.

So I, I think it really, again, is on every level state government only being one of them, how do we ban together and stick up for what we believe America is or should be.

- Hmm.

Let's bring in color George in Sacramento.

Welcome George.

- Hi, Alexis.

Thank, thanks for taking my call.

My idea seems probably a little radical, but I think just maybe give them what they want and get rid of the federal income tax and we'll keep all the, that excess dollars we send out to those red states in our own state and we'll be fine.

So I'd love to see a democratic politician put that bill forward and really push it and, and see if they go for it.

It's not the best thing for our country, but in considering the situation, that's how we defend ourselves.

- John, what do you think?

Yeah, I'm nodding because I, I wrote an essay when the salt tax was being debated and most of the supporters of having a salt tax deduction, that's the state - Local, tell us what that is.

Yeah, yeah, - Yeah.

That's the sustain local tax deduction that is often framed as, as anti progressive because the folks who have a high staying local tax burden tend to be homeowners and, and folks who are on the higher end of the socioeconomic status.

And what I, what I said, which was not, not in keeping with kind of a lot of the, the politics of of, of many of my colleagues and friends was that this is not a kind of a rich poor issue.

This is a red blue issue at this point because when you have a, every, every dollar that is kept within the state of California, one is depriving the federal government of all the resources it has to essentially, you know, bring about politicized prosecutions of democratic officials and everything else.

But it also creates a, a bigger incentive for California politicians to provide greater programming because we know a lot of us will get a, you know, a quarter or third back on, on ev on, on the, the enterprise.

So the, if you don't have assault deduction, then the incentives are to be like Texas and Florida.

- Hmm.

- And those, those states have pretty weak welfare systems.

- Bradley, listener Bradley writes in to say, regarding congressionally proof funding for California that has been withheld by Trump, could the governor direct taxpayers, including employers to remit federal taxes owed to a state escrow account rather than the federal government, the escrow would be settled once the multiple lawsuits over withheld federal funding that are pending in the federal court system got settled.

- I'm gonna kick that to the law - Professor.

Yeah, that's what I - Me too.

- You know, I I, - But no, this is an easy one.

No, they can't do, - But you know, you do hear people starting to talk about and an individual level, but just like, well, maybe I just won't pay my federal income taxes.

And I, I would rather us think about how we can act in some kind of unity to push back than, than sort of people taking on that, that risk or that that kind of bravado whatever themselves.

But to the caller's point, yes, California pays more into the federal government than our citizens get back in any kind of government benefits.

And, you know, a lot of red states are recipients of Blue State wealth essentially.

And you know, that's probably not long-term healthy for either blue states or red states, but this too is another sort of long-term structural problem that's coming to a head at this moment.

- Yeah, it's interesting, you know, like if you just step back and look at the United States as if it were some other country, and you see that there's these massive economically productive regions which are essentially becoming politically controlled by less wealthy other regions of the country, less populous regions of the country.

It does it, it really feels like a major, major structural problem that in another country we would not expect that to continue.

But of course we have our constitutional setup, right, that has this rich history of minority control.

- We, we do, and I think I, you know, we were all brought up to sort of revere the constitution and the process even once more and more, Americans became very aware of how flawed the men themselves who helped write it, were personally that we believed in this system of checks and balances and that that would all work out well, what are we seeing now?

Congress, the Republican controlled Congress is abrogating its responsibility completely.

These tariffs are not legal, but Congress is just sort of like me and the Supreme Court has revealed itself to be so politicized, the sort of shadow docket way of not addressing these challenges leaving lower and appellate courts.

I'll again kick this to the law professor to sort of guess at these, the, the, there's no, there's nothing written down about why they're sort of ruling temporarily this way.

So the lower courts have no way to know how to sort of adjudicate things that, like where that goes.

I mean, our system is law is based on precedent for, for better and for sometimes worse.

And, and that's just sort of end running around all of it.

So we can't, we can't look at what's happening to our, the structure of our federal government and just sort of clinging to this idea that it will all write itself somehow we have to write it somehow.

- What do you think, you know, listener Aaron writes in to say, this is a very dangerous conversation, Putin's dream coming true.

I assume what this listener is sort of suggesting is that pulling a at the seams of American democracy on a, you know, state versus federal level is, is bad.

What do you think, John, when, you know, I'm sure you maybe not phrased exactly like that, but I've heard, I'm sure you've heard criticisms of this sort.

- Yeah, I think the current state of affairs is pretty exciting to our biggest adversaries to watch us pulling ourselves apart at the seams whether we have this conversation or not.

Again, I think the notion of, and I don't mean to challenge the, the, the, the, the labeling of that, you know, that that's the lead article in Mother Jones.

But I, I think we're still just talking about a recalibration of federal state power.

And I think, not to undercut the work at all, but it's, it is not it, it is not that, I don't wanna say it's not that big of a deal, but it's, it's, it's a conversation that state officials are constantly happening having even in less dire times about the calibration of, of power and what makes sense, - Right?

Right.

What, what is American federalism at this moment?

Right?

Right.

I mean, that's the basic, - Basic conversation.

We, that is a question that happens in every single moment.

And that is something that our framers, whether they're flawed or geniuses anticipated, I think, and just to tie it back to the last set of comments too, is one of the challenges is that we've always had, we've always been I think, fairly clear-eyed about how compromised the Constitution is as a, as a document that is, you know, set in stone and very hard to amend.

And we've had at other moments, we've, we've allowed greater play at the joints because we can't, we're not explicitly changing the constitution.

And I know I'm repeating myself here, but this is the, this, this is what makes this moment different.

And so if I, I would the hazard to guess, and I have no lying to the Kremlin, that they're pretty happy with the way that Supreme Court has been interpreting our constitution for some time to make it a, a more sclerotic compact than, than it needs to be.

And that I don't, I would say that the framers necessarily even wanted it to - Be, let's bring in Pam in San Francisco.

Welcome, Pam.

- Hi.

I just wanted to add the thought perhaps on a different line that I think conversations about succession are seeding the field as opposed to changing the field, beating the field to Trumpism, and this red state, blue state division is not going to advance the argument, it's just going to expand it.

So I think the blue states ought to be pursuing assistance to the red states and their resistance rather than abandoning - Them.

- Trump.

- Thank you, Pam.

Appreciate that perspective.

I mean, you know, I think Clara, on the political question of this, I mean, one of the things that has shaped my thinking is watching the way that the, you know, inflation reduction act and different, you know, climate bills, green energy bills were designed essentially to plow money into red states so that the political infrastructure of those states would not actually roll back the national legislation.

But that hasn't happened.

Like there was this massive infusion of, of cash and technology and knowhow and all this stuff into, into red states and then it didn't work politically.

- That's right.

And I think it didn't work politically for a couple of reasons.

I mean, one is that I don't think the Biden administration sold its policies.

Well, I don't think we had a good spokesperson on the part of the president, and I don't think that anyone stepped into that breach as much as, as folks should have.

It's also very super complicated technocratic, you know, so it's complicated stuff to, to, to explain - Long term, - But that's it.

I mean the, the Red State governors aren't super happy about these, you know, battery plants and wind farms being pulled back or downsized.

They're not, they're just afraid of Trump.

So, you know, the, the, the, the notion was basically like, let's mimic what the defense contractors do and put a little bit of every fighter jet in every state.

Let's put a little bit of, of America's green infrastructure and the needed changes in every state.

What we should have been maybe selling this for is like, look at what China is doing now.

I mean, what China's doing just in the last year on solar and wind and renewables and batteries is astounding.

And you know, they have the full power of the, as we know behind them, but it's also that we are seeding technological research ground on this front and on every front.

I mean, the destruction of our biomedical research is just flabbergasting.

Who, who does this help?

Don't we want to cure childhood cancer?

What, what are we doing?

You know, it just, it just doesn't make any sense really, except there's a sort of loathing for like higher education and, and sort of that form of elites.

But it's like in the end, aren't we trying to fix childhood cancer?

Aren't we trying to fix Alzheimer's?

Isn't this what we want?

Don't we want cleaner rivers and cleaner skies and cars that can charge and go for, you know, a thousand miles and don't burn coal and gas and oil.

I mean it's just, it's, it's sort of nonsensical.

So how do you, how do you push back against that?

I mean, I think that's another way in which the states can coordinate better, cooperate better, just prioritize more to the lieutenant governor's point.

But those things take time.

California in particular has not been super good about prioritizing housing.

Definitely needs to do more of that now, but how long will it take until people see the effects?

We can't wait until people feel that impact of being more bountiful housing.

- Right, right.

Last few listener comments here.

You know, listener over on the Discord writes the question is how to get this 60% of apathetic Americans and Californians to care.

That would help.

Julia writes at last, I feel strangely comforted that these truths as outrageous and foreign as they seem are being spoken and addressed openly.

A couple of other things, one listener on blue sky rights.

How do we push back or even think of soft secession when we have a very weak democratic party?

That's our only other choice and it's not a good one.

Mimi writes, without immigration, California's population is shrinking and large businesses are fleeing because the state is unaffordable.

Get real.

How's it plausible for California to self function?

The state operates with a major structural deficit, is a major exporter of tax dollars to the federal government and already has nearly the highest state tax rates in the United States.

Where would the money come from for California replace the functions defunded by the Trump administration?

Lots to think about.

Of course, we have been talking about Blue State leader pushback.

We've been joined by Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones in the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Thanks Clara.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- We've also been joined by John Michaels professor of law at UCLA School of Law.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And a special thank you to Lieutenant, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis for calling in earlier with her thoughts and for listening to the show.

I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Stay tuned for another hour ahead with Mina Kim.