Image by Tina Chelidze.

In the days when overt racism was a thing (that is, the days of Jim Crow), it was often said that states’ rights had to be respected by the federal government. That same assertion of states’ rights and devolving power to the 50 states returned in the 1970s and was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. That dispute involved public lands in the West and demands that those lands be turned over to the respective states which would then issue permits for oil drilling, coal extraction, and so on.

The rights of states to make their own laws and set their own regulatory standards has been a primarily Republican complaint for the past decades. Federal government has become too strong, too powerful, it is said, so power needs to return to its “original” dual federalism model where decision making is divided between the federal and state authorities.

That was then, this is now. Whereas state authority was supposedly being taken away by a hyperactive national government in Washington, DC, suddenly the shoe is on the other foot in this day and age. On 22 May, The US Senate voted to nullify California’s planned transition to electric and hybrid........

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