On Federalism and Abandonment

Prior to their first week in office, members of the Trump team met with the new President about proposed budget cuts. Subsequent news reports stated that the Administration plans to cut all twenty-five federally funded Violence Against Women Programs. These programs vary in type and purpose, but all aim to provide funding to states, schools, and local organizations for the purpose of protecting and assisting survivors of gender-based violence. These grant programs also allocate funding to tribes, to engaging young men in ending rape culture, to developing culturally sensitive direct service curriculum, and to providing resources in elder programs and on college campuses, to name a few.

The anticipated collapse of these programs comes in the wake of the removal of civil rights, LGBTQ, and climate change resources from the White House webpage — all on day one of the presidency. In their absence, the White House website has been peppered with a number of proclamations and policy platforms, including a press release stating that the president will enforce President Obama’s executive order protecting LGBTQ individuals employed by the federal government from workplace discrimination, (and also celebrating the President for mentioning that community during his inaugural address). Also present are an “America First Energy Plan,” (which denounces the Climate Action Plan as “harmful and unnecessary”) and executive orders that target marginalized communities, such as the travel ban and the presidential memoranda pushing forward the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines.

Anecdotally, it has been suggested to me that the states will “just have to make up for these losses.” In 2011 alone, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that $607 billion in federal grants went to the states, however. Realistically, that is an impossible burden for states to shoulder.

That impossibility is multifaceted, and complicated by the administration’s next steps. On January 25th, the White House released an executive order proposing to deny federal funding to “sanctuary jurisdictions” that fail to comply with immigration laws. The order does not explicitly identify or define these jurisdictions, however. University of Virginia law professor and immigration expert David A. Martin recently provided annotations to the executive order for Vox. His annotations clarify that “sanctuary jurisdiction” has no set legal definition, and that it represents a spectrum of political stances taken by municipalities with regard to immigration policy. One can only assume that the order targets sanctuary cities, which have adopted a range of policies limiting compliance with ICE and DHS.

These cities — among them, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Chicago — would be considered in willful violation of federal law and denied federal funding as a means of enforcement. The order is named to “enhance” public safety, but it blatantly restricts funding to any city that stands in solidarity with immigrants and refugees. Those communities not only comprise a substantial portion of our “public,” but they contribute in mass amounts to our economy. Undocumented immigrants pay almost $12 billion in taxes every year. To make a point, the order not only risks the safety and wellbeing of immigrant families, but it fails to recognize an economic system that depends on the productivity of every participant, including those from immigrant families.

In a series of sweeping generalizations, the order sends a clear message that, for those who seek to protect their immigrant community members, dissent will not be considered a patriotic province of free discourse. One of the many difficulties of a federalist government is harmonious governance over peoples and across various issues. It necessitates that the federal government care for its constituents by extending money for areas of national concern. Money does not solve those problems, but it certainly assuages them. It allows the very community programs and resources now being deconstructed to exist. It encourages the possibility of betterment and growth. As inconvenient and unfair as it may seem, money is necessary to that end.

So what province do state and local governments have if they do not receive the assistance of federal funding? If they cannot rely on the budgets built in for their community programming, where do they turn to support resources for their constituents? When the federal government turns its back on survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault, refuses to offer resources to LGBTQ individuals, and erases the history of civil rights struggle in this country to the detriment of people of color, how much protection remains at the state level? By necessity, localized resources vary based on geographic location, historic manifestations of local violence, and economic concerns.

That variation will absolutely be exacerbated by the additional variation induced by sanctuary city status. It does not seem far-fetched that a willingness to protect communities other than immigrants might soon be met with similar economic penalties. What choice, then, do states have, if refusal to enforce harmful policies against a specific group results in denial of funding to their people?

The United States populace at large is finding ways to fight against the

threat. A number of sanctuary cities nationally have openly denounced the executive order. Somerville, Massachusetts mayor Joseph Curtatone called the executive order a “ransom,” before clarifying that his city “will not waiver.” California Governor Jerry Brown expressed the same sentiment, stating that California “is not turning back. Not now, not ever.” Minneapolis and St. Paul mayors have announced that the Twin Cities intend to continue “prohibit[ing] their police from acting as immigration enforcement agents.”

Some locales are bracing for the possible change in other ways. Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, has placed city funds on reserve. Several states including Washington and Virginia have been on the forefront of litigation against the administration. Thursday of this week, cities across the United States stood in solidarity with immigrant families affected by the ban by participating in “A Day Without Immigrants.” Business owners kept their doors closed, citizens refused to spend money, and a museum in Massachusetts made a statement by removing artwork by immigrants in its gallery and replacing it with labels that said “Created by an immigrant.”

There is also ample room to question the legal legitimacy of the Trump administration’s funding power play. While some outlets have called the order unconstitutional, it may also be infeasible. Mutual support as envisioned by any cooperative federalist model, is rendered completely useless when an executive abandons a locality for reasons of dissent. But just as the states cannot comfortably shoulder an $11 billion dollar deficit with reserves alone, the federal government relies on income tax and state cooperation to fund public programs. California is reportedly considering one very possible workaround for the lack of funds, which is to reallocate state money that would generally go toward federal projects. If your citizens and those like them in other cities cannot benefit from federal funding and protections, then there seems no point in paying into those resources. Perhaps the strongest argument for the strength in this strategy is that California is reportedly one of a few states that gives more to the federal government than it takes. It is not only state revenue that the country relies on, however. State Assembly member Anthony Rendon recently stated that California is home to the largest number of manufacturing jobs in the country and produces a quarter of the country’s food supply.

It is clear that the country’s greatest metropolitan areas are crafting a message that they no longer have to support federal programs that have abandoned them. Perhaps a next step is for sanctuary cities to form a collective fund to support one another, or perhaps budgets should continue to be reassessed for the utility of communities willfully forgotten by the administration. They remind us all to consider the collective power — social, political, and cultural — that exists within these “sanctuary jurisdictions.”