Brenna Goddard

But it's important to note that this would ultimately be a decision in federal court, and it wouldn't be the federal administration officials who have been speaking about this being the ones who are making that determination.

Yeah, so this idea of dual sovereignty and the checks and balances that come with that is baked into how our country is designed.

So at the founding, there was this idea that if the federal government overstepped on people's rights, the states would be there to check the federal government and vice versa.

And that was really seen as foundational to protecting people's rights and guarding against corruption.

tyranny and abuse from the federal government or state governments.

Throughout history, these cases have come up most frequently during periods of more friction between the states and the federal government.

Some of the times where we've seen this come up include the prohibition era, where there was pretty intense and violent federal enforcement of prohibition laws.

And states were charging federal officers with violating various state criminal laws like manslaughter, murder, assault in carrying out those actions.

Other times, we've seen states more actively pushing back on the enforcement of federal laws, such as when the Fugitive Slave Act was in existence.

We saw a number of states, including Wisconsin, charging U.S.

Marshals with kidnapping for capturing previously enslaved people.

And...

In some of those cases, the federal courts were quite quick to throw out those charges because the federal officers were acting lawfully under federal law, but the states were nevertheless using that as a tool to push back on those federal actions.

And then conversely, we saw during periods of desegregation, some states pushing back on federal government efforts to integrate schools and enforce desegregation policies.

Yes, there have been multiple statements from federal officials threatening to charge state and local officials who are considering charges against federal officers.

to charge them with federal crimes like obstruction, harboring aliens, conspiring to impede federal officers, or seditious conspiracy.

We've seen these from U.S.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, as well as Stephen Miller and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

These statements really upend the traditional dynamic in these cases where it's typically up to the federal courts to decide whether a state is overstepping in its prosecution.

And that's the check and balance that we have in this system.