Governors pledge to oppose federal overreach — even when their party runs Washington

Filed 1h ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Alexander Nakarada · creatorchords.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The National Governors Association updated its federalism principles for the first time in over a decade, with governors from both parties pledging to push back on federal overreach regardless of which party controls Washington. The new policy calls for presidents to seek gubernatorial consent before deploying the National Guard and to limit such deployments to cases where federal resources are truly insufficient.

The update follows Trump's 2024 deployment of National Guard troops into Democratic-leaning cities he described as crime-ridden, which drew objections even from Republican governors like Vermont's Phil Scott. Scott and North Carolina's Josh Stein, who led the bipartisan working group behind the change, both framed the effort as a test of whether governors believe in state sovereignty only when it's politically convenient.

Stein credited Republican colleagues for criticizing federal overreach under a president of their own party, calling it harder to do 'in these inflamed times.' The policy is nonbinding but signals an organizational stance ahead of continued state-federal friction over AI regulation, elections and immigration.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

It's a nice thing to hear governors say the Constitution matters no matter whose team is in the White House, and it would be nicer still if it hadn't taken a year of troops rolling into cities to get the paperwork updated. Principles that only get written down after the fact tend to read more like an apology than a policy. Still, an agreement that survives contact with an actual president deploying actual soldiers is worth more than the usual conference-room handshake.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Medieval Loop One · Alexander Nakarada · CC BY 4.0

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