Blue states could band together to push back against President Donald Trump's lawlessness, according to a legal expert — even if the move ends up being political theater.
Trump's second presidency has upended political norms and violated constitutional values in unprecedented ways, and attorney and author Thomas Geoghegan published a column for The Guardian making a case for blue states charting a course for themselves.
"Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body — an embryonic constitutional convention — that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control," Geoghegan wrote. "The Constitution already provides some authority for doing so."
California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York could, for example, declare a national emergency, and their governors could invite other blue states to send delegates to draw up an interstate compact to declare the rights of citizens and obligations of the participating governments.
"That compact might begin with a preamble in which We the People of these several states recognize not just our rights but our obligations to treat each other with dignity," Geoghegan wrote. "The preamble would recognize our obligations to ensure all have adequate food, social security, access to healthcare, and meaningful work for protection in a time of technological change. It should be explicit about the dangers of AI and a warming planet. It should insist on the federal role in medical research and scientifically based public health to ensure that we live better and longer lives."
The states could then issue a list of Trump's abuses and acts of cruelty that deserve redress and invite the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to participate on the same footing as states to adopt the compact. Geoghegan specifies how this could work.
"The compact would set out the specific programs that the state should fund and those that the federal government should fund – at least for the states that enter the compact," Geoghegan wrote. "The document would not only be a constitution for the ages, but a budget document for the next fiscal year. It should include a restoration of funding for Medicaid, and reduction of premiums for other forms of healthcare."
"Finally, the compact should include a call to Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, and every other non-signatory state to join as well, even if they were not originally invited," he added.
The move, no matter how theatrical, would diminish Trump's power and restore some of the revolutionary verve of the colonial period that birthed the United States, Geoghegan argued.
"It would give the blue states credit for their own little smashing of the pottery," Geoghegan wrote. "All the better if the other states do not show. In the early American acts of resistance, only some colonies showed up, and the constitution took effect despite some states staying out altogether. In creating a new constitutional prototype, we may think more clearly, or at least draw it up more freely, if other states were not around."
"The idea of a compact may be dismissed as political theatre, but acts of political theater can turn into the real thing," Geoghegan added.