Trump has declared war on states that oppose him. It’s time to stop him

By Virginia Kase Solomon

The State of the Union address is the one moment each year when an American president is given an opportunity to demonstrate how the state of our union is stronger because of their leadership. It is a moment to showcase a vision for our collective future that unites us as a country.  

Given what we know and what we’ve seen over the last year, we can likely expect that Donald Trump will not use this moment for that purpose. 

Rather than unite us as one nation, he’s spent the last year declaring war on anyone who disagrees with him, including governors who represent millions of Americans across the country.  

The media keeps covering President Trump’s attacks on governors as a left versus right spat in a hyper-partisan political environment. But that’s the wrong lens; the real motive is much more nefarious.  

Donald Trump and his cronies are engaging in a highly coordinated, systematic effort to force all state governments to submit to his will, a fundamental reshaping of American federalism. To do this, he is stretching the power of the federal government while the legislative branch stands by. It is incredibly dangerous. 

Consider two recent examples: President Trump’s attempts to nationalize our elections and the administration’s efforts to withhold federally appropriated funds.  

It’s no secret that President Trump has a long history of election denialism. As early as 2016, then-candidate Trump refused to say whether he’d accept the 2016 presidential election results if he lost. Anti-election rhetoric has been a feature of Trumpism for over a decade, but it hit a turning point when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results on Jan. 6.  

Now one year into his second term, the president continues to repeat false claims about the 2020 election. Since returning to office in January 2025, the president has said multiple times he wants to cancel the midterm elections and has launched a partisan campaign to redraw state congressional lines to favor his party.    

Donald Trump and his cronies are engaging in a highly coordinated, systematic effort to force all state governments to submit to his will.

It’s therefore no surprise that this administration has carefully and meticulously engineered an atmosphere of fear and danger around our voting and elections systems so they can push forward unconstitutional policies that would nationalize our elections.  

With the SAVE Act and the MEGA Act, the administration has routinely spread lies that noncitizens are voting en masse, which is completely false.  President Trump has demanded that states turn over their voter rolls to root out these supposed noncitizen voters, including trying to coerce Gov. Walz into handing over Minnesotans’ private data in exchange for removing ICE agents from Minnesota. And now, they’re trying to impose a one-size-fits-all federal mandate requiring a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, overriding existing state verification systems.  

The goal here is obvious: the Trump Administration wants to control who can and can’t vote in our elections. When leaders talk about ‘nationalizing’ the vote and overriding local officials, they are using the language of dictators, not democratic leaders. The Constitution is clear — states, not presidents, control our elections.  

In addition to abusing federal power to nationalize our elections, President Trump has also weaponized the federal purse to exert his control over states and withhold federally appropriated funds.  

At President Trump’s direction, billions of dollars in wildfire relief, infrastructure funds and healthcare dollars to states from California to New York have all been withheld. This is money that states are legally owed and congressionally appropriated, yet the administration is using these funds as a bargaining chip. The message to every governor, Democrat or Republican, is clear: If you don’t fall in line, we’ll withhold resources and let your constituents suffer. This is extortion, pure and simple, and it’s a dangerous threat to every state government, regardless of which political party is in power.  

This isn’t about blue states versus red states either. This is about whether governors and other state officials, elected by their own people, can exercise independent authority without fear of federal retaliation. If they can’t, federalism as we know it is dead.  

We need to name these actions for what they are — not policy disagreement, but coercion. Americans need to understand that if one man in Washington has the power to unilaterally punish a state for dissent, it’s not just a partisan dispute. It’s punishing every single person, of every political affiliation, who lives in that state.  

Many governors, like California’s Gavin Newsom and Minnesota’s Tim Walz, have been fighting back against Trump’s authoritarian power grab. Yet just many are bending the knee. Over 10 states have willingly handed over their states’ voter rolls to the Department of Justice, putting their residents at risk, and capitulating to the Trump administration. 

We cannot afford to let capitulation become the norm. Unlimited presidential power is a threat to every American. We have checks and balances for a reason, and it’s time the legislative and judicial branches step in to protect states from federal overreach.  

Virginia Kase Solomon is the president and CEO of Common Cause.