Why Are Red States Yielding to Biden’s Blue Government?

As Republican gubernatorial and congressional candidates seek to ride the red wave into this year’s election cycle, one issue has been conspicuously absent from the discourse: the dramatic erosion of state sovereignty under Joe Biden’s presidency. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we must fight for the basic principle of federalism so that states may continue to operate as separate and distinct laboratories of democracy. Put simply, our constitution contemplates the need for Americans to be able to flee Gavin Newsom’s oppression and seek asylum with Ron DeSantis in the free State of Florida.

But Biden’s federal government aims to cancel “voting with your feet” by imposing inescapable federal edicts on matters that the Constitution leaves to the states. Quelling red-state rebellion appears to be the president’s motive. But so far, the Republican response to an overweening executive has been underwhelming.