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To this day, Republicans havent forgiven Chief Justice John Roberts for casting the deciding vote that upheld the core of the Affordable Care Act. But along with his tie-breaking vote in the 2012 decision, Roberts also did something conservatives give him far less credit for, and he even convinced two of his more liberal colleagues to join him. He dealt a crippling blow to Obamacares Medicaid expansion, declaring that the requirement was essentially extortion: Agree to expand health-care coverage or lose all of your existing Medicaid funding. This, Roberts wrote, was akin to a gun to the head of the states, and thus unconstitutional.

Blocking that kind of unlawful coercion is federalism in action, which conservatives have fought long and hard to defend as a local check against federal overreach. And now that Donald Trump is running the federal government, its a principle that liberals and progressives are embracing with open arms, as Democratic-leaning states and localities mobilize to shield themselves from federal policies they consider retrograde or just plain damaging to their residents and interests. Hand over undocumented immigrants to Trumps deportation machine? Perish the thought. Let the chief executive faithlessly sabotage the health-insurance market in an otherwise liberal bastion? Over our dead bodies. Or how about Jeff Sessionss intended crackdown on local marijuana laws? Get out of town.

Progressive federalism is not a phrase you hear often, but the Trump era may have prompted a liberal awakening to the benefits of local pushback against centralized executive fiat. When the president announced his ill-begotten travel ban a week after he took office, it was up to states like Washington and Minnesota to score the first major victory against the executive orders implementation. And so its been with other hotly contested legal battles over sanctuary cities, clean air, the payment of certain subsidies under Obamacare. It has fallen to Democratic attorneys general and municipal leaders to be standard-bearers for the legal resistance against Trump, who otherwise seems committed to trampling on states rights, conservative principles be damned.

For Heather Gerken, the new dean of Yale Law School and one of the leading scholars in support of progressive federalism, Republican control of Congress and the presidency has given new urgency to her work. In the aftermath of the election, she co-authored a users guide in the journal Democracy on how localities can best harness the power of federalism to serve progressive ends. Thats not to say Democratic enclaves will necessarily carry this flag for the long haul. In an interview, she told me that people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to opportunistically wield federalism for their partisan ends and not because of some high-minded constitutional commitment. Both sides are fair-weather federalists. Both sides use it instrumentally to achieve their goals, she said.

The leaders of the liberal resistance, naturally, wont just cop to favoring federalism because it now suits them. During a recent press conference to announce a new lawsuit challenging Sessionss war against jurisdictions that wont turn over undocumented immigrants to the feds, Xavier Becerra, Californias attorney general, suggested his effort wasnt about opposing Trump, but rather about standing up for our founding document. I dont see this as a fight against the federal government, Becerra said, according to the Recorder, a legal publication. Were fighting to protect the Constitution.

Thats the kind of lofty and legalistic talking point that Republicans have elevated to an art form. For example, Becerras counterpart in Texas, Ken Paxton, has insisted time and again that the scores of lawsuits his office felt compelled to file against President Obama were all about the rule of law and preventing federal encroachment in local affairs. To protect civil liberties and prevent the concentration of power, the Constitution divides authority through the separation of powers and federalism, Paxton wrote in a recent letter defending his decision to threaten more litigation over an Obama-era program aimed at protecting young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. If Texas really cared about federalism, it shouldve gone after the federal program that helps these kids years ago.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Democrats are the ones relying on similar litigation tactics and conservative precedents to oppose Trump. And theyve won some significant victories so far, which in turn have had the effect of slightly moderating the administrations stance on some issues. In April, a federal judge in San Francisco admonished the Department of Justice that it cant just threaten to strip funding from cities and counties simply because they refuse to do the governments bidding on immigration. And he did so borrowing from Chief Justice Robertss language in the first Obamacare challenge before the Supreme Court: The threat is unconstitutionally coercive, wrote U.S. District Judge William Orrick about Trumps executive order against immigrant-friendly sanctuary cities.

More dramatic still is whats been happening in the second most powerful court in the country, the federal appeals court in Washington, where the Trump administration has been waging a fierce regulatory battle with New Yorks Eric Schneiderman and other state attorneys general who insist that their states have skin in the game of how the federal government should enforce its own laws. In back-to-back decisions earlier this month, judges in that court recognized that these states should be able to intervene in cases where Trump, if left to his own devices, could simply decide that ozone pollution standards dont matter, or stop making millions in cost-sharing payments to insurers that make coverage affordable to poor Obamacare beneficiaries.

In these court confrontations, tellingly, lies a key difference in how progressives and conservatives employ federalism. For conservatives, its all about stopping executive policy they dont like: Texas alone spearheaded efforts to invalidate federal rules and directives aimed at protecting transgender students and patients, workers considering joining a union, and the undocumented parents of American citizens and permanent residents all in the name of upholding the Constitution and laws and their state budgets and businesses. Progressives, on the other hand, really like some of these policies and have jumped in the fray to save them from non-enforcement or outright repeal by the Trump administration. And in the face of new actions by Trumps team, their strategy has been to play offense, as in the bid by sanctuary states and localities to get the federal government to leave them alone on immigration.

These interventions have emboldened the Democratic base and maybe even contributed to the political aspirations of attorneys general and other local politicians. Federalism is now a tool to #resist. But is there a principled way for progressives to seize the moment and learn to love federalism for federalisms sake, rather than just as a means to score political points against Trump or salvage a policy they favor?

Writing in National Review, Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor and longtime libertarian scholar of federalism, expressed hope that the Trump era could well be the time to make federalism great again for both progressives and conservatives a moment for politicos and legal thinkers from both sides to find common ground and form a new bipartisan and cross-ideological appreciation for limits on federal power.

Yale Laws Gerken, for her part, is skeptical that one can make a bright-line rule for federalism, but she says that there are issues, such as national security and the enforcement of federal civil-rights laws, that everyone should agree belong in the realm of the national government vis--vis the states. Ive never met a [federalist who says] that a state should control our nuclear arsenal, she says. There are always things no matter what side youre on that you believe should be centralized. And there are almost always things that you think should be decentralized. The real question is, how much weight do you put on the scale for the values of federalism, and what you think federalism can achieve, given your goals?

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A New Romance: Trump Has Made Progressives Fall in Love With Federalism - New York Magazine

Common Dreams

The Long Game For Progressives Common Dreams "Progressive values include fairness, equity, a level-playing field, compassion, justice, reverence for our planet and environment, and a genuine pursuit of peace, not war all things which play extremely well in the hearts of Americans, not to ...

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The Long Game For Progressives - Common Dreams

Tuesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (DVt.) and Rep. John Conyers (DMich.) met with a crowd of 2,000 at the Fellowship Chapel in Detroit to discuss their new bill on universal healthcare. The event also became a rally for progressive values as cheers of Bernie 2020 came from the audience along with multiple standing ovations.

Conyers said his Medicare for All bill now has 117 cosponsors. He emphasized the government needs to combat high youth unemployment rates as well.

"There are two fundamental human rights in our great democracy: everyone should have health care from the minute they're born, and then of course, after you get born, you got to get a job," he said.

Conyers also discussed water activism, referencing instances when Detroits water has been shut off, stating it was a U.N. human rights violation.

Sanders touched upon the Charlottesville violence, as he criticized President Donald Trumps both sides argument. What was scary to U.S. citizens, he said, is that the United States has seen Nazis and white supremacists before, but have never seen a president Democrat or Republican who could not condemn them.

There are no nice Nazis, he said.

Sanders moved on to echo Conyers speech on universal healthcare. He also added the government should invest in education to combat youth unemployment and automatically register 18 year olds to vote, arguing his ideals are not radical if other countries do them as well.

During the Q&A session, an audience member asked if progressives should make their own party, leaving behind the Democrats and Republicans. Sanders, who is the longest running Independent senator in the United States, said while he welcome critiques of the Democrat party, it would not be accurate to equate them to the Republicans.

Dont lump Democrats and Republicans together, he said, explaining he made the choice to work with Democrats so the conservative party does not have another four years. He also emphasized the wish for the Democrats to open to the working class.

Vibha Venkatesha, a Wayne State University 2015 alum, said she came to the townhall interested in hearing about Sanders and Conyers healthcare policies. She wanted to see more about the Medicare for All push.

A lot of Democrats rally about keeping the Affordable Care Actwhich I agree with and I am on the Affordable Care ActI really wanted to see if there is any push to go beyond that, she said.

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Progressives rally in Detroit at Bernie Sanders, John Conyers townhall - The Michigan Daily

Paul Waldman, a senior writer for the American Prospect and a contributor to the Washington Posts Plum Line column, is out with a melodramatic performance piece tied to excerpts from Hillary Clintons forthcoming book. It was headlined: Has Hillary Clinton abased herself sufficiently to satisfy her critics?

The column instantly received praise from Democratic strategists and commentators for its unsubtle attack on people, whom Neera Tanden, Joan Walsh, or Mark Moulitsas might have labeled alt-left (except now that President Donald Trump used it to draw a false equivalency with white supremacists in Charlottesville, theyre a bit more careful when it comes to deploying it).

The central argument is that Clinton is repeatedly asked to apologize for failing to defeat Trump because she is a woman. Presidential candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry, or Al Gore never had to get down on their knees and beg forgiveness for their failures every time they appeared in public after losing their presidential elections.

He also argues Clinton has taken responsibility for her failure, and yet, it is not good enough for reporters. Much of the piece is spent on the mainstream media and how cable news spent time on a book by Peter Schweitzer called Clinton Cash, which made Clinton look corrupt. And of course, there were the damn emailsan orgy of coverage of Clintons emails.

Waldmans performance piece is undermined by the fact that he is not specific at all when claiming that there are people demanding a ritual begging of forgiveness from Hillary Clinton.

One can gather that people who share Waldmans perspective are upset about the media and how they covered Clinton, and they believe this played a significant role in the outcome of the 2016 Election. But then the column should be headlined: Has Hillary Clinton abased herself sufficiently to satisfy the media? Instead, it is abstractly aimed at critics.

Are these Trump supporters? Progressives or Democratic socialists who still fervently back Senator Bernie Sanders? Communists or full-blooded socialists? Is this a left-wing problem or a right-wing problem or both?

Maybe, Waldman and others are convinced the problem is so pervasive that it does not matter who is doing it. However, there are next to no critics named, and the only example offered is Clinton Cash, which the New York Times and Washington Post struck a deal to cover, even though it contained several falsehoods about the extent of the Bill and Hillary Clintons corruption.

This would not be a topic of discussion currently if Clinton was not in the early stages of hyping her book, What Happened, on her election campaign. She wants the public to see her campaign from her perspective, but consequently, that is going to result in critics questioning her assertions because that is what people do with politicians.

Waldman would have Sanders progressives and others with valid critiques silence themselves because apparently there is some need to guard Clinton from being perpetually vulnerable. Waldmans framing implies she is not a strong enough woman to stand up for herself, even though she was one of the most powerful Democratic politicians in the recent United States history.

This argument is born from the same detestable and intellectually dishonest place that birthed the Bernie Bro label used to smear those who challenged Clinton from the left during the election. In fact, Waldman wrote a piece for the American Prospect on June 27, 2016, called The Last Bernie Bro?

Waldman invoked the reports of Sanders supporters willing to vote for Trump. He also added, How many Sanders supporters are there who wont decide to vote for Clinton until Bernie says its OK to do so? The number gets smaller every day. And if he waits long enough, he could find that almost none of them are still waiting with him.

He ostentatiously quotes an excerpt (that is new) from her forthcoming book: Every day that I was a candidate for president, I knew that millions of people were counting on me, and I couldnt bear the idea of letting them down but I did. I couldnt get the job done, and Ill have to live with that for the rest of my life.

Waldman jibes, Is that abject enough for you?

It is as if all the statements people made that Waldman and other Democrats despise must be apologized for retroactively because the public now has a truly clear-cut statement from Clinton that she had a job to do and did not succeed.

On top of that, Waldman neglects to include statements like, I take responsibility for every decision I made, but thats not why I lost, which she uttered at the Code Conference in June. She blamed the Russian government, WikiLeaks, and Trump for weaponizing information, and concocted a kooky unsubstantiated theory about voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania doing Google searches for WikiLeaks to find fake news on the released emails.

Clinton contended the Democratic National Committees data operation was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, [and] wrong. She maintained she had to fund the operation to keep it from dying.

Andrew Therriault, the former DNC director of data science, reacted, Irony of her bashing DNC data: our models never had MI/WI/PA looking even close to safe. Her team thought they knew better.

He added, Also, thats pretty precious when she couldnt have raised all [her money for campaigning] without the DNCs higher limits as a laundering vehicle.

Why must anyone engage in a crass form of paternalism, this pseudo-feminist thinking that cheapens feminism, and ignore this aspect of Clintons responses to critics?

Every candidate, even those who win, makes lots of mistakes. There are no perfect campaigns, Waldman rationalizes. He concludes with a sentence that suggests the last thing we should care about is whether Clinton apologizes sufficiently for losing.

This really is not about Clinton. She can write a book, go on tour, and tell all the world about why she thinks she lost. She has nothing meaningful to offer anyone struggling to resist Trump nor does she have a meaningful alternative to his insidious agenda.

Clinton has crawled out from her cabin in the woods every couple of months to collect a hefty check for a speaking engagement and rekindle another round of arguments over the 2016 Election. That does not help anyone, but certainly, there are people like Waldman, who are far more comfortable debating the past than imagining and contemplating what to do for the future.

Democrats may think Waldman is performing some kind of meaningful service by fending off villainous critics. But what Waldman is doing is ensuring a comments thread at Plum Line remains populated with liberal Democrats, who bicker with Trump supporters and Sanders progressives so the Washington Post can keep up clicks and ad revenue. What he is really doing is ensuring that people squabble on social media and generate interest in his piece so the Post can justify keeping Waldman employed as a regular contributor.

And the effect is that the spectrum of permissible debate about the Democratic Partys neoliberal politics, and the politicians it promotes, remains narrow so that pundits who cheer this piece are not forced out of their establishment comfort zone.

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Have Hillary Clinton Supporters Tormented Progressives Enough To Satisfy Themselves? - Shadowproof (blog)

Well, if you want to lose faith in humanity and see the stupidity of hipster liberals in New York City, this is the video for you. Ami Horowitz took to the streets to talk about income inequality with some of the most insufferable people on the planet: progressives. Of course, they all felt it was a critical issue. One man was a member of the Working Families Party in the state. So, which country can we look to for guidance in solving this issue? How about socialist hellhole Venezuela? Its the nation with rolling blackouts, inadequate medical supplies, no toilet paper, no food, and rampant crime. Venezuelans are looting to survive, where people are eating pets and eating out of trashcans. With food supplies running low, government-run committees have been set up to assisted with distribution, but for those who have criticized the government, no food for you. Thats 21st Century Socialism.

Horowitz then asks the interviewees, all of whom no doubt are "still feeling the Bern," if they think that we should model ourselves on another country that promises "income equality": Venezuela, which, he explains, is in the midst of an economic death spiral to the point where it is experiencing dire food shortages and frequent violence between citizens and police forces. Despite the hellish reality of Venezuelas failed socialist state, all of his interviewees still thought Venezuelas day-long food lines would be preferable to the United States selfish, "undignified" capitalistic system.

Even though theres some downside, theres some violence there and some food lines," Horowitz says to bandana guy, "but still everyone has to do the same thing they wait in line equally."

Though the young man appears to be quite knowledgeable about Venezuela, nodding and agreeing with Horowitz' description of its crisis situation, he still agrees with Horowitz that its better to "wait in line equally."

"That is, I think, a fair system," says Horowitz.

"I agree," says bandana guy emphatically.

Interviewee after interviewee agrees that modeling ourselves after Venezuela is a great idea because America is just too unfair and "undignified."

"If you gotta wait in line for stuff, we should all wait in line together," says Horowitz.

Either these people dont read, dont care, or dont know. Regardless, slamming America while idolizing a left wing nation thats an economic nightmare; thats progressivism for you.

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Progressives On Socialist Hellhole Venezuela: Hey, It's Better Than The US - Townhall