JASON WHITMAN/AP PHOTO
Voters won’t take lofty talk about democracy seriously when the action is lacking.
This article appears in the April 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
On March 5, four state attorneys general visited a high school auditorium in Phoenix, to take testimony from people affected, directly or indirectly, by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency’s rampage through the federal government. At this “community impact hearing,” AGs from Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Minnesota, all Democrats, heard from fired VA and Department of Agriculture employees; school superintendents; abortion care and HIV providers who are struggling with funding freezes; navigators who help people connect with federal benefits that may not be there for long; nonprofit leaders in energy efficiency and food security who are seeing the people they serve suffer; and many more. All the speakers articulated the damage to Arizona’s economy and its people.
The AGs framed the event as the bare minimum of small-d democratic responsiveness. “When the federal government and Congress abandon their responsibilities, it falls to us to step up and defend the people that we serve,” said Kris Mayes, the attorney general of Arizona, who hosted the hearing. Added Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s AG: “If the president is unwilling to listen to you … we will do it for him.”
The 23 Democrats occupying state Departments of Justice have assembled on daily teleconferences, strategizing counterattacks against what they consider MAGA and DOGE’s shredding of the Constitution and the separation of powers. The day after this hearing, Democratic AGs filed their eighth federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, this one over federal agencies’ intention to institute mass reductions in force without following prescribed statutes. “We have filed the lawsuits and we haven’t lost yet, folks,” Minnesota AG Keith Ellison told the crowd in Phoenix. “We can all get courage from each other.”
At a time when Americans opposed to the Trump-Musk agenda are thirsting for leadership, the crowd’s gratitude toward public servants with a sympathetic ear was palpable. Said Sandy Bahr of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club, who detailed the impact of funding cuts to public land management, “Thank you all for being here for Arizonans and people across the United States and pushing back on this harmful agenda.”
The Democratic Party has not had a superlative post-2024 rollout. In a recent poll, only 10 percent of those surveyed believed the party had a good plan for dealing with Donald Trump. Ideological factions, and those split between desiring a showy fight or a quieter approach, are at each other’s throats. At a time when Republicans are savaging the economy, angering the public, and lacking consensus on their agenda as well, it feels like not a single Democrat in the nation’s capital is positioned to capitalize.
Perhaps the biggest problem in blue America today is a reluctance to even have ambition.
But closer to home, in states under Democratic control, there are plenty of opportunities to take aim at Washington’s cruelty, and make real progress for tens of millions of constituents. Part of this involves defending 236 years of constitutional order; part involves taking over the important public protections Trump has nullified, from consumer regulation and privacy rights to economic security and inflation reduction. And blue America can chart a course that all Democrats claim to want: restoring the roots of the party of the working class. In 15 states, they have sufficient numbers in the legislature to not just talk about their goals, but act on them.
“It’s time to figure out what the next phase is for the Democratic Party, and that’s going to be figured out at the state level,” said Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project.
This will require blue-state Democrats to pay attention to governing, something that hasn’t always come naturally. Too many leaders on the left seem more comfortable as pundits rather than policymakers, worried more about how their actions will play politically than how many people will be helped. Inattention to governance has proven disastrous, as quality of life in blue states, particularly the ability to climb into and stay in the middle class, has deteriorated.
Some U.S. thought leaders have tagged barriers to building as the culprit behind blue-state failure. Others blame machine Democratic states controlled by big money and a clueless consultant class. But perhaps the biggest problem in blue America today is a reluctance to even have ambition, to carry forward a new idea or a pathbreaking project. That’s starting to change, as some Democrats build on work that has succeeded at the federal level. But for all the officials who have found their voice defending the value and purpose of government, as much energy and effort needs to go into making government work, starting in the places where voters have elected Democratic representatives to do so.
MUCH OF WHAT RANK-AND-FILE DEMOCRATS appear to want from their leaders right now is an eagerness to fight. That’s where Democratic AGs come in. Birthright citizenship remains the law, funding freezes have come unfrozen, the Privacy Act of 1974 has been invoked to safeguard personal data, and Elon Musk may be found to be serving illegally in government without Senate confirmation, all due to state AG lawsuits.
In a way, standing up for the country’s basic constitutional structure is the easy part, but the AGs prepared for the fight a year ago, by reading Project 2025, prewriting briefs, and gaming out scenarios. California received a $25 million boost in funding for government lawsuits in a special session in late 2024; Maryland added a “federal accountability unit” for the cases. Other states could follow their example and earmark some funds for this purpose.
Democrats were also bolstered, ironically, by Republicans. As a brief from researchers at Governing for Impact argues, since Missouri received standing to challenge President Biden’s student debt forgiveness by claiming the policy harmed a state-created entity, blue states could do the same by invoking universities, public hospitals, state-chartered banks, transit agencies, or any other state-created entities that receive federal grants or loans, or are diminished by federal actions.
The legal strategy is critical because of how unilateral federal cuts will shred state budgets on everything from education to health care. There’s been unusual cooperation and determination among the 23 Democratic AGs, and a rhetorical pitch that matches the moment. “What I hear in Washington, D.C., from the president and from Elon Musk,” said Raúl Torrez, attorney general of New Mexico, “is a language that is stripped of any humanity and stripped of any understanding of what truly makes America great.”
Another strategy is to pick up federal workers thrown overboard by DOGE. Several blue states have seized the opportunity to recruit laid-off and disrespected federal workers, which could infuse sorely needed talent into state government operations. Democratic governors in New York, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Hawaii, and even officials in Atlanta and New York City and Honolulu, have reached out to federal workers to fill vacancies.
States might also attack Musk’s wealth. California’s public employee pension fund has been reviewing a request to divest its Tesla stock, which has fallen precipitously in recent weeks, since October. The American Federation of Teachers has asked major asset managers to consider reviewing their investments in Elon Musk’s automaker. State pensions could also do some good with the resulting cash. As Arkadi Gerney and Sarah Knight have explained in these pages, pension funds in blue states could subsequently invest in the kind of companies Trump is demonstrably trying to marginalize, like renewable-energy providers.
With federal workers on board, blue states might also adopt federal functions. Weeks after Musk came for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell established regulations prohibiting junk fees, by forcing price transparency at the beginning of every sale. She used authority under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act; most blue states have some version of that law. Minnesota created an anti-fraud unit to scour the state for criminal bad actors, and California even has a CFPB-style agency called the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which could pick up the federal slack. Trump’s bank regulators will likely preempt state laws for the largest financial institutions. But the vast majority of financial players can still be held accountable by aggressive state enforcement.
State substitution can become contagious. “Most of the things that the government does, you can create some version of it at the state level,” said Garofalo. If Trump’s antitrust enforcers drop merger challenges or monopolization cases, many of the cases have multistate partners to keep them going. Through shield laws and protections for abortion providers, as New York’s Kathy Hochul has been doing, necessary reproductive care can be delivered even in the absence of a federal right. Dozens of states have anti-price-gouging laws that trigger in emergencies, where state leaders can show their commitment to not leave citizens behind.
Blue states are going to be constrained if congressional Republicans slash Medicaid or other programs that they have to backfill, and if Trump continues to wage war on governors he considers enemies. But Democrats in blue America can exercise a unique skill: writing a bill, assembling the necessary votes, obtaining the governor’s signature, and actually implementing the law in a way that constituents feel and appreciate.
YOUTUBE
(L-R) State Attorneys General Keith Ellison (D-MN), Dan Rayfield (D-OR), Raúl Torrez (D-NM), and Kris Mayes (D-AZ) at a March 5 community event in Phoenix
WHEN CHRIS WARD, A CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLYMEMBER from the San Diego area, learned last fall about companies using personal data gathered from customers to offer them varying prices, he was alarmed. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” Ward told me. “But when you put forward evidence … that different people have been treated differently, it raises their ire. They think they’re seeing a price that is available to them and it’s not.”
So-called surveillance pricing, with origins dating back to the dawn of the web browser, has been growing in prevalence, with marketers touting the use of one’s purchasing history, residence, or even financial data (like the date someone gets their paycheck) to charge each customer the highest possible amount. Smart TVs and other innovations to isolate customers could increase the practice.
Under chair Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission was alarmed enough to initiate an investigation into surveillance pricing. But Donald Trump won the election, and Khan’s FTC rushed out some preliminary findings days before she left office, signaling uncertainty on whether the investigation would continue.
That’s when Ward took action. He proposed a bill to outright ban surveillance pricing, preventing businesses from using personal, individualized data to adjust the price of goods or services. Individuals or the attorney general would be allowed to sue over the practice. “Knowing that California can lead on this issue, particularly as we do for tech regulation,” he said, “hopefully this becomes model legislation for other states to follow. And when the Federal Trade Commission re-engages, it can become a template.”
Similar legislation has been introduced in Colorado and Illinois. And 13 groups released a comprehensive report for state legislators in February, detailing surveillance pricing scenarios and their harms, and pinpointing both how to leverage existing laws or write new ones to crack down on the practice.
This is part of a growing trend. “A lot of people are trying to build state versions of things Biden did that didn’t get finished or are being undone,” said Garofalo. Eighteen states have introduced legislation to stop rental companies from using aggregated, proprietary data to engage in price-fixing. Every single state has introduced “right to repair” legislation to allow consumers to fix their own equipment; five states have passed laws, and Washington’s House of Representatives just passed their bill, 94-1. Bills to ban junk fees are moving through statehouses as well, and there are dozens of bills across the country to regulate artificial intelligence, three of which have passed in California and Colorado. Khan used one of her last days as FTC chair to encourage New York to pass a law banning unfair and abusive business practices.
These state-level efforts all extend from Biden-era initiatives to promote competition and weaken corporate power. Oddly, not all blue states take pride in setting a national example, but they will follow the herd. “California and New York, they get real excited about being the first state to do something,” Garofalo said. “I was talking to a Maryland legislator and he said, ‘We’re real comfortable about being the eighth state to do something.’”
High electric bills strain people’s budgets; state lawmakers can constrain the power of monopoly utilities to raise rates. Support for organized labor is near record highs; states can reform their laws to make it easier to organize, particularly in Colorado, where the state’s 1943 Labor Peace Act creates high thresholds for unions to receive dues from all workers at a company who benefit from a collective-bargaining agreement. Affordable housing is desperately needed everywhere, a problem requiring creative solutions, like Seattle’s fund for the construction of social housing.
What’s more, swing states might take inspiration from Democratic actions. In Arizona, where Republicans control the legislature, Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, made a priority out of making school lunches for needy students free. This became a high-profile issue when Minnesota passed a universal school lunch bill, and Gov. Tim Walz took the famous photo with schoolchildren mobbing him. Arizona’s ambitions weren’t quite as high, but the Republican legislature appropriated $3.8 million for free school lunches up to 185 percent of the federal poverty line in 2025, and a bill to extend that into 2026 could move forward.
Governors can also take their own action where appropriate. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s move to mandate project labor agreements in large construction projects gives a major boost to working-class jobs in the state; Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey followed up in mid-March by doing the same thing. Even purple-state governors can act: North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s executive order protecting reproductive rights by ordering open access to birth control at state agencies and refusing to investigate doctors who perform abortions shows a degree of courage that is often lacking from state Democratic leaders.
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS TALK A GOOD GAME about democracy. In a recent New York Times interview, for example, Massachusetts’s Gov. Healey criticized Trump for acting like a king and illegally taking away Congress’s power. Discussing the party’s “brand problem,” Healey said that the Democrats “should be about delivering for everyday Americans.” Gov. Gavin Newsom (at least when not selling out trans people or chatting with right-wing degenerates on his baffling new podcast) has called for the party to grow a spine. “Where the hell is my party, where’s the Democratic Party?” he asked after the Supreme Court ruling eliminating Roe v. Wade. “Why aren’t we standing up more firmly, more resolutely?”
Alas, that talk is not matched with action. In Healey’s state, the Democratic political machine bottles up good ideas supported by huge majorities of residents. Healey herself, according to state observers who talked to my colleague Bob Kuttner, has been governing just like her Republican predecessor. In California, Newsom has wielded his veto pen to block a cap on insulin prices when he can’t get his own public insulin manufacturing program off the ground.
Voters won’t take the lofty talk seriously when the action is lacking. “Show, don’t tell” is a guideline in creative writing for a reason. Republican states recognize this; practically all of them are passing laws to parrot Trump’s deportation plans and cut government spending. But not in Delaware, where state Democrats are pushing hard for a bill Elon Musk’s own lawyers wrote to allow corporate executives to rip off their shareholders. That makes it hard to be the party of the little guy.
“The party has a problem that is part perception and part reality: They don’t know how to govern,” said Garofalo. “It’s really important that Democrats get credibility back and govern effectively in places where they hold power … They have to show they have a governing platform that is effective and popular.”
While it’s not a governing platform per se, what state AGs are doing is at least identifying a government principle: that it should operate within the bounds of the law. In so doing, they are giving voice to an entire class of public servants who testify how government can be effective. “Chaos is not efficient,” Arizona AG Mayes said at that March 5 event. “Slashing jobs, gutting essential services, and leaving communities struggling to pick up the pieces, it is destruction.” Take that defense and turn it into policy, and you just might win some elections on the heels of improving people’s lives.
