The NPR Politics Podcast - Republican Statehouses Are Flexing Their Muscles To Rein In Cities

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Statehouses have long passed legislation in order to curtail or overrule local governments, but there is a renewed focus in many Republican-controlled legislatures to enforce conservative cultural priorities in Democratic-leaning cities.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Kelsey Snell, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Alicia Friend from Orange County, California. Earlier today, I was catching up on the podcast and my earbuds ran out of batteries. I started playing the podcast through my phone speakers instead. My 13-year-old Australian shepherd named Galileo heard the voices, thought there were intruders, and started barking. It took me a while to convince him that our house wasn't being invaded by the NPR politics podcast hosts. This podcast was recorded at 109 p.m. on Thursday, May 4th of 2023. Things may have changed by the time you're listening, but Galileo will probably still be sound asleep

because protecting the house from the wonderful NPR politics podcast hosts is hard work. I want to meet Galileo. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover politics. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And today on the show, we are going to zero in on a trend that is happening across the country in state legislatures. Lawmakers have been debating bills that would strip local officials of their authority, taking away power from mayors and city council members to make decisions about certain policies, and instead putting that local authority into the

hands of the state. And Kelsey, I know you have been doing a lot of reporting on this. I want to start with you. Give us a frame of where you're actually seeing these discussions play out. As I was talking to the folks at the National League of Cities, which is a broader national group that represents a lot of states and local governments. They said that they are seeing more than 600 of these bills active in legislatures in the country right now. This session. In this session. That is a lot and a big uptick.

They said that it used to be that these things would play out over all 50 states, but they're seeing it in a narrower group of states this year, particularly when it comes to culture wars issues. They said a lot of bills around rent control, housing, public safety, like policing, LGBTQ rights and education, those things are happening mostly in Republican legislatures. And they're seeing a lot of attempts to control things that are being passed in democratically led cities. Kelsey, I feel like I remember hearing a few years ago, maybe this was around the 2016 election cycle or so, about a similar trend happening where certain cities were trying to pass laws, and the state was superseding them. And I think this was about plastic straws or paper bags, right? And I don't recall what the circumstances were, but it feels like this conversation has been happening for a couple of years. Yeah. You know, these laws are called

preemption laws are not a new concept. They did kind of see a little bit of an uptick in the end of the Obama years. Some governors were starting to try to exert some control during that time. But really, there's been a major uptick in the use of these bills in the post-COVID years. One of the people I talked to, Mike Ricci, who used to work for Maryland's former Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said that governors had to use a lot of powers that they weren't normally tapping into to manage the public health crisis at the beginning of the COVID outbreak. And then they realized that they could use these in other ways, too. And it started kind of rolling from there. And more and more

Republican governors started using it to kind of push back on cities that were trying to pass new progressive policies that were not in line with the politics of Republican legislatures and governors. So Deirdre, this is an interesting dynamic because on a national level, you always hear Republicans talk about states' rights and about returning issues from federal control to the state level. And it sounds like what Kelsey is describing is completely flipping that argument on its head, this idea of local control. It has.

And I feel like it's part of this trend that we've talked about in the podcast over the last few months or even the last couple of years about sort of the fundamental realignment of the Republican Party, how the Republican Party's orthodoxy is changing. Right. As you said, Republicans principles used to be about or the Republican platform stressed devolution, you know, devolving power back to state and local governments. A lot of legislation we covered in Washington was about block grants. We're going to have the states and local governments decide how best to spend the money. We don't want federal mandates. But you're really seeing that completely flip on its head. I mean, we recently covered the House of Representatives here in Washington blocking a local crime bill from the Washington, D.C. government. They didn't think the crime bill was tough enough, and they blocked it.

And they've continued to hold some other votes in the House of Representatives, mimicking some of the state laws on LGBTQ rights that they're seeing in red states. And they want to put the message out there that they are aligning themselves on these cultural issues. And instead of just letting the states go ahead and do it, like you see in Florida, like you see in other red states, like Missouri, they're passing these bills on the federal level. I mean, it's a real change from sort of the traditional Republican Party. And I think it's also, you know, states' rights. And now he is using his power as the governor of a state to pass laws that are overtaking what cities and even a corporate entity in his state, Disney, is doing. So it's really just, I think, a lot about

who holds the power and how they decide to use it. And I also think it's really interesting that so much of this in Kelsey's reporting comes out of post-COVID dynamics because governors realized they were really in the driver's seat in terms of like how different states dealt with policies. And those became so politically charged that you can see how they're carrying over to all these other issues. Deirdre, I'm glad you bring that up because Mike Rigi, who also used to work for former House Speaker Paul Ryan, had this to say about it. But now we see it all the time. And I think that will continue. I truly believe that preemption and these tools will be the new normal. The idea of it being the new normal came up a lot. And that, you know, we should say Democrats

do sometimes use this. This is not exclusively a tool of Republican governors. But what Deirdre is saying about it being a real departure from the politics, the core politics of how Republicans thought about government is very interesting. I do want to ask you, though, a follow there on how Democrats have used this, because it seems like they use it in different ways, presumably, than how Republicans have tried to use this. Yeah, one of the things that Democrats have done, in New York State, they set a minimum wage floor,

which required a certain base level minimum wage across the state. And they could go above that, but setting a floor, that's one example. The analysts I talked to say often Democrats will use it to set minimum access to rights. And Republicans in this case, and in this kind of new uptick of addressing culture wars issues, are trying to clamp down on those rights that cities are trying to give to their local citizens. I could see how there's a trend for both parties to turn to this strategy for changing laws that they want to change. Because if you look at divided government in Washington, we're at pretty

much gridlock. There's just an inability for Congress to address a lot of these issues. And so you see a lot of these legislatures at the state level being like, we can do it. We've got the votes here. So they just take control of the situation. Exactly. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. And Kelsey, you have spoken with local leaders who are feeling the impact of these bills. I'm curious what you're hearing. What are they saying to you? I in particular spoke with the St. Louis Mayor Tashara Jones about the situation

in St. Louis, Missouri, where the state legislature is trying to impose state control over the police force in St. Louis. Voters decided about a decade ago to end a Civil War era law that granted the state control over the city's police department. So they've had about 10 years where St. Louis was in control of their police department, and now Republicans are saying they want to take that control back. And it is turning into a really serious and ugly fight. Democrats say that this is not about crime, which Republicans say they're just trying to protect people in the city. Democrats say it's about control, and they say it's also about race and politics. You know, this is becoming a really big debate because this isn't the only place it's happening. I saw in Jackson, Mississippi,

the state was granted control of the police department there. And there are real concerns because public safety has long been a local issue because police departments are interacting directly with the unique circumstances of a city or the area that they cover. And in St. Louis and in Jackson, they say moving that control to the state level takes away accountability, takes away that relationship between public safety and the people in the city where they live. And Republican lawmakers' justification is presumably that this is a public safety concern and that there are concerns that that's, you know, it reminds me of years ago, I covered this story in Massachusetts of a school system that was failing. And that particular school district came under receivership, which does happen in certain states for similar reasons,

even though schools are often under the local control of a, you know, local municipality. Yeah. And, you know, the thing that Mayor Jones said to me was that this isn't a situation where the lawmakers are able to show that there would necessarily be some grand turnaround of the public safety issues in St. Louis. She also says the people who are pushing these bills don't live in the city. They aren't experiencing this. But she said that there is also a much bigger picture concern of hers. And that is that, you know, if voters see the people that they are electing to run their cities being overruled by the state, that that could completely alienate them and might make them lose faith in elections

in general. It makes voters angry, especially when they elect their leaders on the local level, and then they see that their leaders constantly have to fight for the rights of our cities. So that is a broader concern for not just, you know, the interaction with the police department, but with the democratic process in a state. I mean, it just underscores how divided we are as a country. And this is where the rubber hits the road when you come to preemption. You have these largely blue cities in a lot of states that are purple or led by Republican governors. And it's just a fundamental disconnect in terms of, like, philosophies about how a city should be governed versus the, you know, tough on, let's-all-take-control approach that a lot of these Republican governors. And you can see how this trend is only going to increase.

Yeah. I mean, I hear that concern around voter disengagement, if folks don't feel like they actually have the ability to control their own destiny, right, by voting. I mean, that's a real concern. Right. And we see this not just because of these preemption laws, but as people are seeing their representative districts being redrawn, not just their congressional districts, but their state legislative districts. There are concerns about whether or not people will be represented at all levels of government as a representative government is intended to do. You know, Deirdre, this does make me think, though, of the major criticism that has been leveled against the Democratic Party, which is that Democrats have not invested in state elections. And you've seen Republicans win control of state legislatures, and then they're enacting these policies.

And, you know, you hear Democrats, what did you expect to happen when you didn't necessarily invest at this level? Right. There has been a lot of criticism. And I think in hindsight, looking back at what has happened in the last few cycles, the issue that illustrates this dynamic, I think the most right now is abortion. Once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were already states that had passed laws on the books that were linked to the Supreme Court decision ready to go into effect to restrict access to abortion in those states.

So I think, you know, they were already ready to go and that they had already been passed. I think now a lot of outside Democratic groups, groups like Emily's List, groups that are trying to recruit people to run for office at the state level, are out there looking to try to fortify their support in state assemblies and state senates all over the country, especially in states where they're really closely divided, state houses where they feel like if they put in a little bit more time and money, they can tilt the balance back. But for now, Republicans have the edge. All right. Well, on that note, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the

White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover politics. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.