Trump is force-feeding MAGA policies on Dem states to win 'culture war': analysts

For years, Republicans have sold their party as a defender of states' rights from an overbearing federal government that wants to impose its cultural will on communities that may have different beliefs. It's how the GOP fought against marriage equality, and how Trump defended his involvement in the elimination of Roe v. Wade protections.

But now Trump has the Oval Office again, he seeks to force blue states to submit to his favored policies even when voters there have soundly rejected them, wrote Ronald Brownstein in an analysis for CNN published Friday.

"In a flurry of early executive orders, Trump has threatened to cut off federal funds for states, cities, hospitals and universities unless they adopt a wide range of conservative social policies, such as banning transgender girls from competing in high school sports and ending diversity programs in education and employment," noted Brownstein. "Since most red states have already adopted these policies, the principal effect of Trump’s orders is to attempt to impose these ideas on Democratic-controlled states that have already considered them at the state level, and virtually without exception, spurned them."

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The about-face has not been lost on political observers.

“For most of my adult life, I grew up understanding that one of the cores of the conservative platform was empowering states’ rights and state laboratories of democracy and the like,” Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown told CNN. “At least what we are seeing in the first weeks of the presidency so far is a real abdication of that philosophy. [Trump] is trying to impose his will across a myriad of issues.” Brown is one of a number of Democratic AGs suing to block policies that constrain their states.

Jonathan Friedman of the free-speech group PEN America agreed, warning, “It’s quite clear that this is an effort to commandeer the federal government to win the culture war, so to speak, once and for all.”

Despite the pressure enacted by the federal government, Trump is running into both legal and cultural resistance. Many lawsuits have achieved preliminary injunctions against his policies, and in the private sector, some large companies are pushing back on efforts to eliminate diversity programs.