“If we did only have a national government right now, this pandemic would be much worse.”
On this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser about how states’ rights are coming into play during the coronavirus pandemic. A portion of their conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, has been transcribed below.
Another issue that’s coming down the pike is consumers who are distressed in the economic fallout that’s coming in the wake of the public health crisis. Here, too, we have to both pick up the slack that the feds might not be doing and, in some cases, sue the feds for their failure to do their job.
In a perfect world, you’re right, states have vast constitutional authority to regulate health and welfare in the state, but we also do have a long, long history of the national government involving itself in health policy, right? If we had a functioning Congress that wanted to be responsible in this pandemic, there are a lot of things that Congress could be doing.
Why haven’t we seen a massive authoritarian power grab from this administration? It has to be the case that federalism in this moment is one of the biggest checks against a really authoritarian power grab.
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