Trump's not gonna protect workers from forced labor
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As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are not popular. Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is extremely unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.
Keeping this fact in mind is essential if we are to nurture hope's embers, and fan them into the flames of change. Trumpism is a coalition of people who hate each other, who agree on almost nothing, whose fracture lines are one deft tap away from shattering:
The vast unpopularity of Trumpism presents endless opportunities for breaking off parts of his coalition. Take noncompete "agreements": contractual clauses that ban workers from taking a job with any of their employers' competitors for years. One in 18 Americans has been captured by a noncompete, and the median noncompete victim is a minimum-wage fast-food worker whose small business tyrant boss wants to be sure that she doesn't quit working the register at Wendy's and start making $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's.
The story of noncompetes is bullshit from top to bottom. The argument goes, "Your boss invests heavily in training you, and lets you in on all his valuable trade-secrets. When you walk out the door and go to work for a competitor, you're stealing all that training and knowledge. Without noncompetes, no boss will invest in the knowledge-intensive industries that are the future of our economy."
Now, like I said, the vast majority of people under noncompetes are working low-waged, menial jobs with little to no training, and no proprietary trade secrets to speak of. Which makes sense: workers with less bargaining power end up signing worse contracts. That's half the case against noncompetes.
Here's the other half: the most IP-intensive, profitable, knowledge-based industries in America operate without any noncompetes. California's state constitution bans noncompetes, which means that every worker in Hollywood and Silicon Valley is free to quit their job and walk across the street and join a rival.
If Hollywood and tech are examples of industries that "can't attract investment," then we should be shooting for every sector of the American economy to be so starved for capital. Silicon Valley's origin story is based on the ability of key workers at knowledge-intensive firms to quit their jobs and go to work for a direct competitor: the first Silicon Valley company was Shockley Semiconductors, founded by William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing silicon transistors.
Shockley literally put the "silicon" in Silicon Valley, but he never shipped a working chip, because he was a deranged, paranoid eugenicist who ran such a dysfunctional company that eight of his top engineers quit to found a rival company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Then two of the "Traitorous Eight" quit the Fairchild to start Intel, and the year after, another Fairchild employee quit to start AMD:
This never stopped. Woz quit HP and Jobs quit Atari to start Apple and the tradition of extremely well-capitalized companies being founded by key employees who quit market-leading firms to compete with their old bosses continues to this day. There are many things we can say about AI, but no one will claim that AI companies – especially not those in California, where noncompetes are banned – have trouble attracting investment. Half of the leading AI companies were founded by people who couldn't stand working for Sam Altman at Openai and quit to found a competitor. Just last week, Altman flipped out because Mark Zuckerberg poached his key scientists to work on competing products at Meta:
Knowledge-intensive industries are provably compatible with a system of free labor where workers can work for anyone they want. You know who understands this? The lawyers who draw up employment contracts with noncompete clauses in them: the American Bar Association bans noncompetes for lawyers! Every law firm in America operates without noncompetes!
Everyone hates noncompetes. They are bullshit, and only get worse with time, as the largest companies in America metastasize into sprawling conglomerates, they compete with everyone. Who isn't a competitor of Amazon's?
Biden's antitrust enforcers hated noncompetes, too. Former FTC chair Lina Khan held listening tours and solicited comments to hear workers stories about noncompetes, developing a record that she used to create a rule that banned noncompetes nationwide:
America's oligarchs weren't happy. They sued to overturn the rule, and got a nationwide injunction (you know, those things that Trump's illegitimate Supreme Court claims are unenforceable) that suspended the FTC rule pending a full hearing.
It's clear that Trump's FTC is going to walk away from this fight and let the rule die. Trumpism is wildly unpopular, and this is no exception. Americans overwhelmingly support banning noncompetes, but Trump's richest donors are terrified of another Great Resignation and want to keep us indentured to their shitty companies, so Trump's FTC will sell us all out.
But that's not the end of things. As David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, states and local governments can pass their own noncompete bans, and they are:
Take NYC mayor-in-waiting Zohran Mamdani: unlike Trump (and the Democratic Party's billionaire wing), Mamdani campaigned by offering to create policies that are popular, including a ban on noncompetes. New York City has two distinct groups of workers who are screwed over by noncompetes. One of those groups is Wall Street finance bros, who work for some of the most legendarily toxic assholes to ever draw breath, and are overwhelming bound by noncompetes that will all become null and void the day Mamdani dons his sash.
The other group of workers Mamdani will liberate are those at the very bottom of the income distribution, from fast food workers to gig workers to doormen, who are victims of some of the dirtiest noncompete clauses in America, including "bondage fees":
Big cities are filled with workers who are getting screwed by noncompetes and every city government has it in their power to liberate every one of those workers (who are also voters).
States can do even better. There are already four states that ban noncompetes, two of them blood red: California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Other states place significant restrictions on noncompetes, including Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. Nevada bans noncompetes for hourly workers, Idaho only allows them for "key employees"; Louisiana limits noncompetes to two years, and NJ bans noncompetes for domestic workers.
Up and down the country, in states blue and red, noncompetes are unpopular, and banning noncompetes is popular:
Oregon just banned noncompetes for doctors and other health workers, as part of a sweeping, bipartisan law that banned the "corporate practice of medicine":
Oregon's in good company: noncompetes are banned in the health sector in 32 states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Colorado.
Lina Khan's FTC developed an irrefutable evidentiary record about the abusive nature of noncompetes, proving that industries can attract capital and field successful companies without them. States have it in their power to step in where Trump has betrayed American workers. This isn't the most efficient way to protect workers – that would be a federal ban on noncompetes – but it will still get the job done, and it will weaken the Trump coalition, which is barely holding together as it is.
We need a movement to fully unlock the potential for resistance by states
Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot at The UnPopulist:
As the U.S. Supreme Court rolls back long-standing constitutional protections, advocates are increasingly looking to state courts and constitutions to protect civil rights and liberties.
The shift toward state constitutions as sources of expanded rights crosses ideological lines and issues, from abortion to criminal sentencing to property rights. It reflects a basic, often overlooked, truth about our system of government: States can provide more expansive protections for individual rights and liberties than the federal Constitution.
Bringing a state constitutional claim, then, is like taking “second shot” when “you can’t win under the federal Constitution,” as federal Judge Jeffrey Sutton put it in November at a symposium organized by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Northwestern Law Review.
What’s more, state court decisions that rest on an “adequate and independent state ground”—rulings that are not dependent on federal law interpretation—are generally insulated from U.S. Supreme Court review. In other words, when state courts interpret and apply federal law, their decisions can be appealed to federal court. But “[a] state court’s view on issues of state law is, of course, binding on the federal courts,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 1984. That includes interpretations of state constitutions that offer broader rights than those available under the federal counterpart.
As a result of this constitutional federalism, state courts, drawing on their respective state constitutions, are increasingly emerging as an avenue for advocates who care about securing protections for individual rights and democracy, independent of anything the Supreme Court might do.
[...]
A Movement Supercharged
At around the same time as the Jones decision, the Brennan Center launched State Court Report, a non-partisan publication focused on news and commentary about state courts and constitutions. The Brennan Center has also filed friend-of-the-court briefs encouraging state constitutional interpretations independent of federal case law; brought together judges, scholars, and practitioners at symposia to discuss the role and importance of state constitutions; and conducted research about spending in judicial elections, legislative assaults on state courts, and diversity on state judiciaries. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Institute for Justice have shifted focus to state supreme courts, and new organizations have popped up to focus exclusively on state courts and constitutions.
The emerging movement around state courts and constitutions gained speed after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization declared there was no federal constitutional right to abortion, overturning decades of precedent. The decision also raised questions about the future of other rights rooted in substantive due process, such as contraception and same-sex marriage.
Dobbs triggered an explosion of state constitutional litigation around reproductive rights. To date, 12 state supreme courts have recognized at least some constitutional protections for abortion. At the same time, supreme courts in five states have held there is no right to an abortion in their constitutions. Some courts have raised the specter of “fetal personhood”—a doctrine that would not just allow but likely require prohibition of abortion, further curtailing reproductive freedom in the name of fetal protections. This demonstrates that robust state constitutional protections don’t necessarily favor those on any particular side of an issue.
State constitutional litigation over abortion restrictions is ongoing in another dozen or so states. Additionally, as of 2024, citizens of 10 states have voted to add amendments to their state constitutions protecting abortion, including in Arizona, California, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, New York, Ohio, and Vermont.
State constitutional abortion litigation invokes a range of diverse constitutional rights and provisions, including privacy, bodily integrity, equality, healthcare freedom, and even religious liberties. This array of theories underscores the creativity of advocates and the breadth of constitutional protections across the states. It has also exposed the dangers of lowering the federal floor: The country is now a patchwork of rights, with freedoms depending on geography and conflicts erupting about which states’ laws should apply to inter-state disputes related to abortion care.
Voting Rights, Ballot Measures, and Gerrymandering
Given the midterm elections this year, a substantial portion of upcoming state constitutional litigation is likely to center on democracy-related provisions. Almost every state constitution explicitly protects the right to vote. State courts are frequently called upon to apply these provisions to determine the constitutionality of laws governing when and how people cast ballots—especially in the run-up to an election.
About half the states allow for some form of direct democracy, or citizen-initiated referenda on proposed constitutional amendments and statutes. State courts play a significant role in determining whether proposed amendments will appear on a ballot, adjudicating disputes like whether signatures were properly collected or initiative language is misleading. In January, for example, the Montana Supreme Court rejected a proposed initiative for the 2026 ballot that would have added to the state constitution a provision combatting corporate political spending.
[...]
Unique Rights
Much significant state constitutional development has centered on state clauses explicitly protecting rights not found in the federal Constitution. For example, every state constitution requires the creation and maintenance of public education. While fights over what entails an adequate public education have raged for decades, battles over whether the requirement that states provide a “common” or “free” education precludes the use of public funds to non-public schools are a new frontier. School choice advocates have won in some states, like West Virginia, but lost in others, like South Carolina.
Love this article in The UnPopulist: Robust state constitutionalist ways could protect rights from a tyrannical federal government that is acting in authoritarian ways.
MSNBC's Ali Velshi talks with constitutional lawyer Kermit Roosevelt III.
A good portion of the discussion was on the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution. That amendment gives to the states or the people the powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. It's rather uncomplicated, just 161 characters.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
While it might be lost in Trump's other unconstitutional actions and hissy fits, the assault on the 10th Amendment has been getting additional scrutiny in New York.
And yes, Kermit Roosevelt III is the great-grandson of Teddy.
To fight Trump and the GOP, blue states are planning to appropriate a Republican strategy: federalism.
Over the past several months, a small coterie of wonks and lawyers—and a few farsighted Democratic governors—have been working in anticipation of this moment. They have prepared measures to insulate states from the Trump administration’s most aggressive impositions. They have constructed plans to preserve abortion protections within blue-state borders and to protect environmental regulations enshrined in their books; they have formulated legal strategies for at least slowing Trump’s intended mass deportations.
But as Democrats developed these tactics, something unexpected occurred. Some of these wonks began to extol a vision that promised more than merely preventing the worst. As they pondered the latent power of state government, the outlines of a new progressive vision of federalism—pugilistic and creative, audacious and idealistic—began to emerge.
Hungary Blocks €90 billion E.U. Loan for Ukraine: Holding the E.U. Ransom
Hungary's Viktor Orban is holding the E.U. hostage and helping Putin by vetoing the E.U.'s loan for Ukraine even though Russia, not Ukraine, damaged the oil pipeline to Hungary. The EU should retire the requirement of unanimity. https://thewordenreport-governmentandmarkets.blogspot.com/2026/02/hungary-blocks-90-billion-eu-loan-for.html
Founding Fathers 1, Trump 0: Judge Perry Just Drop-Kicked His Militia Fantasy Back to 1776
BREAKING: Judge Perry Slams Trump’s Militia Fantasy — Uses Founders’ Own Words to Trash His Claims
So here’s the storyline: Judge April Perry just dropped a ruling so fierce it ought to come with its own sound effects. She took Trump’s “send the guard to Chicago” gambit, strapped it to the stake, and lit the match — using the words of Hamilton, Madison, and our constitutional traditions as fuel.…
