Here; an excerpt:
So for example, let us say that New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois declare a national emergency. The governors invite a select number of similar-minded anti-Trump states to send delegates selected either by the people or the legislature. The delegates’ job would be to draw up an inter-state compact, a declaration of rights of citizens and obligations of the participating governments. The compact would divide the funding of those obligations between the states and the federal government, if it were somehow adopted by Congress. It would create mandates that the federal government would fund – just for those states and any other that thereafter decide to join the compact.
That compact might begin with a preamble in which We the People of these several states recognize not just our rights but our obligations to treat each other with dignity. The preamble would recognize our obligations to ensure all have adequate food, social security, access to healthcare, and meaningful work for protection in a time of technological change. It should be explicit about the dangers of AI and a warming planet. It should insist on the federal role in medical research and scientifically based public health to ensure that we live better and longer lives.
And then there should follow a specific list of abuses by the Trump administration, acts of cruelty, that should be punished and redressed, and abuses by the supreme court, such as Citizens United, that should be voided by states adopting the compact.




I first met Professor Hoy when I returned to UC Santa Cruz in Fall of ’92 to finish my undergraduate…