The Democrats hold in their hands constitutional means yet unused to check the Trump regime’s ruthless attempt to impose a police state. That the Democrats thus far have failed to create this oppositional political center of gravity may be because the method has been lost to history, not wielded effectively for 113 years. Focused on the ICE outrages, however, this political instrument can be revived in the 16 states where the Democrats control the governorships and both chambers of the state legislatures, as well as introduced in states with mixed power.

Before the enactment of the 17th amendment in 1913, state legislators and not the voters selected US senators and regarded them frequently as their agents. It was a common practice for legislatures to send what were called “orders of instruction” urging senators and sometimes members of the House of Representatives to take a particular stand on important issues. The orders were not binding, but had significant force given the power of legislatures and political parties to decide who would hold Senate seats. These resolutions were variously called instructions, petitions and memorials.

The resolutions were not incidental to US politics. The practice of instructing senators was taken up by the antislavery movement beginning in the crisis over the admission of Missouri as a slave state in 1821. Northern state legislatures intervened with resolutions in the 1830s instructing members of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives to protest the gag rule by which the southern congressional leaders suppressed antislavery petitions. On the other side, slave states passed resolutions condemning abolitionists and favoring suppression of antislavery literature. After the Mexican War, northern states passed resolutions urging the prohibition of slavery in the territories through a measure called the Wilmot Proviso, which never passed. Congressman Abraham Lincoln voted in favor of it numerous times and declared himself a “Proviso Man”. That idea became the central platform of the new Republican party on which Lincoln was elected in 1860.

Today, state legislative resolutions would have far more political weight than any poll, provide a galvanizing mechanism to drive public opinion, and solidify the states as defenders of basic American rights seeking to safeguard constitutional freedoms and the safety of electoral processes. State resolutions would expose the brazen hypocrisy of the Trump administration as it tramples on the formerly sanctified principles of states’ rights and free speech, and as Trump poses a clear and present danger to free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.

Using such resolutions, the state legislatures could organize debate within the legislatures, stage public hearings with witnesses and experts, hold legislative votes that force Republicans on the record, conduct signing ceremonies by governors, and send delegations for formal presentations to the Congress. The process would command both local and national media attention, especially since the Democratic-controlled states are among the largest ones and include the media capitals in New York and California. And states could either have varied resolutions or coordinate their language.

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term the Democrats have been operating from a defensive position within the Congress where they are perpetually frustrated as a minority. They have few if any levers of power. They cannot call committee hearings, subpoena witnesses or administration documents, or set the legislative agenda.

Meanwhile, though lower courts have ruled overwhelmingly in state and city suits against Trump’s draconian tactics and policies, the conservative majority on the supreme court has relegated many of those decisions to a legal twilight zone through the “shadow docket” often without offering the slightest rhyme or reason. Their deliberately long-delayed rulings allow Trump the impunity to impose his authoritarian and unconstitutional methods without........

© The Guardian