Washington – In a post two months ago, with the coronavirus pandemic not yet in our national consciousness, I wrote this about the current state of American government:
The states of the Northeast and West Coast in particular may look at asserting what remaining sovereignty they have left to fend off a national government led by an increasingly autocratic president unconstrained by traditional checks and balances. Areas of likely conflict: environmental protection and climate change, judicial process, consumer protection, immigration, and health and education.
Little did I know that it would be the health issue that would create the predicted fracture and shake the very foundations of our federal system, in which states and the national government share sovereign powers under a single constitution.
Today, the New York Times reported this:
Two groups of governors, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, announced Monday that they were forming regional working groups to help plan when it would be safe to begin to ease coronavirus-related restrictions to reopen their economies.
Their announcements came hours after President Trump, who has expressed impatience to reopen the economy, wrote on Twitter that such a decision lies with the president, not the states.
A showdown is in the offing over states' constitutional police powers to protect the health and welfare of their citizens. The question might go to the Supreme Court, quickly. The Court's conservative faction will be torn, in one direction, over their increasingly obvious political loyalty to Donald Trump and, in the opposite direction, over the principles of federalism, which embody state sovereignty, as espoused by the powerful interest group that secured most of their appointments, The Federalist Society.
My reading of The Federalist Society is that it has become more political than principled, so look for the Court to try to side with Donald Trump. During his presidency, the Court's decisions have become more and more contrived to fit desired political outcomes.
The Court must watch out, however, against granting Donald Trump authority over elections, which are constitutionally the province of the states. This is the slipperiest of slopes. Will the dispute over the coronavirus bring about the end of our federal system in favor of essentially a unitary form of government, and an authoritarian one at that?
