---
id: "workshop:opportunities-for-practical-federalism"
type: "InnovateUS workshop"
title: "Opportunities for Practical Federalism"
url: "https://innovate-us.org/opportunities-for-practical-federalism"
date: "2025-03-20"
duration: "60 minutes"
language: "English"
instructors: ["Charles Keckler"]
recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rQL6jjN3A"
transcript: "automatic, from the recording"
source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)"
licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org"
---

# Opportunities for Practical Federalism

InnovateUS workshop · 20 March 2025 · 60 minutes

In this session, participants will explore the complex interplay between federal and state governance, examine common challenges in implementing federal programs at the state level, and learn effective strategies for maximizing state autonomy while maintaining compliance with federal requirements. The workshop will cover practical topics such as federal grant management, opportunities for state policy innovation within federal frameworks, and techniques for productive engagement with federal agencies. Attendees will gain actionable insights into leveraging federal resources while preserving state interests, understanding key Supreme Court decisions affecting state authority, and identifying opportunities for policy leadership within the federal system.

## Learning goals

- Differentiate between exclusive federal powers, state powers, and shared authorities to identify opportunities for greater autonomy and policy innovation while maintaining compliance with federal requirements and achieving program objectives

- Apply lessons from successful intergovernmental partnerships to improve collaboration with federal agencies, focusing on effective communication strategies, negotiation approaches, and relationship-building techniques

## Speakers

- **Charles Keckler**, Professor, Northeastern University

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rQL6jjN3A

## Transcript

Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/opportunities-for-practical-federalism.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/opportunities-for-practical-federalism.json (every segment with its start and end second).

**Charles Keckler**

[0:00](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=0) Thank you very much and thanks to Innovate U.S. and thanks to all of you for joining me today. Welcome. Today we'll be exploring the practical aspects of federalism and how to navigate the current governance landscape effectively. This isn't just a theoretical discussion, it's about some concrete tools and skills that you can use in your work regardless of your you know policy preferences and so forth and views about state versus local government. Let me start by sharing with you what you'll take away from our time together. First, you'll gain a clearer understanding of today's federalism landscape. Second, you'll see the opportunities that these shifts create. Third, you'll develop some skills to leverage federalism principles regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on. Most importantly, you'll master some practical strategies and tools that hopefully you can apply immediately in your work.

[1:05](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=65) I've taught federalism as an academic subject but you can also say that I've lived it across three administrations. I've administered programs that are crafted federally but implemented locally and at both HHS and at the Legal Services Corporation. So that practical experience is going to shape everything that I'm going to talk to you about today. Let me start by talking about an overall look at the landscape as it were. We're experiencing a significant shift in the way that federalism, which is inherent in the American system, operates. Several key trends are shaping this. First, there's congressional gridlock and that's limited the federal legislative action on a lot of fronts. Second, the executive branch has responded with administrative action, not just in the current administration but I would say in several recent administrations. You'll see this increasing shift towards administrative activity. Third, the judiciary, and particularly speaking about the Supreme Court, has become increasingly interventionist in reshaping federalism boundaries. Together, all of these trends have created a meaningful shift of authority towards two things. One, the states and secondly, the courts and especially the federal courts. So this new landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for public professionals in the states like many of you.

[2:38](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=158) Here are some of the implications that I think are relevant here. First, but the federal government is pulling back from certain policy areas. The Supreme Court has constrained sort of federal administrative authority across environmental regulation and certain areas of health care and beyond. Second, that naturally I think leads to substantial opportunities for state level action action. Where federal gridlock exists, states have stepped in or at least they had can step in as policy innovators in lots of areas, environmental protection, education, public health, economic development, what have you. And third, I just want to add in as a commentary that these shifts are constitutional by design. The Tenth Amendment reserves powers not delegated to the federal government, to the states or to the people. And so if the federal government doesn't have them and the Supreme Court has decided that they're not the federal government's powers, then they are reserved to the states or to the people. There's a sort of an automatic connection there. And this division of authority is of course designed by the founders to prevent power concentration and it enables policy experimentation that's closer to the citizenry.

[4:02](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=242) Let's start out by talking about what's happening today, for instance. So today at four o'clock, the president is going to sign an executive order that plans to dismantle the Cabinet Department, the Department of Education. Now that's, and in doing so, they quote unquote return education to the states. And over the last month or so, there've been ongoing efforts to reduce the size and budget of this and the scope of its programs. Although it's obvious, and I think they've acknowledged this, that any kind of complete elimination of the department would of course require congressional legislation. Now you might personally oppose or support these efforts. I think the latest polling that I've seen is that the American people are a little bit skeptical of getting rid of the Cabinet Department entirely. But what matters at the moment for our purposes is just recognizing that changes like this create considerable new opportunities for state leadership and education policy because it's going to create a void in that. Education has historically been a quintessentially state and local responsibility and as federal involvement potentially recedes, states can reassert their authority and craft innovative educational approaches. New funding formulas, curriculum standards, reflecting the views that are prevalent in your state, teacher certification pathways, homeschooling, charter schooling, or just the increased use of educational technology that's tailored to local needs all become possible. This illustrates a broader point. Shifts in federalism create spaces for innovation regardless of the policy preferences at the moment. You know, the beauty of federalism is that its tools are available to everyone regardless of policy preferences or political orientation. Whether you're advancing environmental protection, economic development, educational

[6:04](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=364) reform, these kinds of tools here can serve your goals. You can strategically engage with federal rulemaking processes to shape implementation. You could creatively use federal funding mechanisms to advance state priorities. You can develop innovative state legislation that fills gaps where federal law is silent or has been removed. You can form interstate compacts, regional cooperation initiatives, and when necessary, you can employ litigation that protects state authority. The framers envision federalism as a vertical check and balancing system, creating multiple venues for citizen engagement and multiple laboratories for policy experimentation. So, you know, what's going on today in Washington and in the courts has, you know, altered it and maybe accelerated a lot of these dynamics, but they haven't really changed some of the fundamentals, I think, that are involved in federalism. But let's go back and look for a second at the history of federalism to see kind of where we've been and where we are.

[7:11](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=431) So, conventionally, when we think about the Constitution and the original sort of deal between the states and the federal government, we think of it in what's usually called a term of dual federalism with two separate sovereigns, the state sovereigns and the federal sovereigns with the federal one being limited to specified powers within the Constitution. And this really continued for a long time until we get what we call today usually a cooperative federalism term, and sometimes it feels very uncooperative, which we'll get to, but really cooperative is a good term because what it means in its strict definition is cooperating. Lots of programs suddenly in our current environment and for the last 90 years or so have really involved the two sovereigns operating together in particular spheres, intermingled spheres of activity. And that happened at the New Deal, basically beginning in 1933. Before that, there was a gradual evolution within the dual federalist environment, and one of the real inflection points was the Civil War, in which, of course, the South left. This left the Union with a lot of federal national responsibility to build up the army and build up a lot of infrastructure, both military and civil.

[8:41](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=521) And, of course, that wound down after the war, but not entirely. After the war, there was a steady growth of new federal responsibilities. They still didn't really cooperate with the states that much, but new federal responsibilities kept emerging. And also in cooperative federalism, there's really also another inflection point that kind of occurs at the Great Society. The original New Deal model was supercharged or adapted during the Great Society, when new federal responsibilities, federal roles, and federal funding mechanisms in particular became very prominent. So just to summarize that, what we might call the time after the Civil War, but up to the New Deal, is a time what we might call progressive federalism. There's still separation, but the federal government takes on new functions. Immigration, for the first time, really regulating interstate commerce and the railroads and the new technologies.

[9:42](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=582) There's a gradual weakening of restraints against federal operations, including the direct election of senators, the doubling of the income tax, and enforcing the Bill of Rights against the states. And then, again, to get us to the present day, bring us back to right now, we get to an era which some scholars have referred to as coercive federalism. The federal role at the beginning of the Great Society began to bypass the states, rather than giving money to the states and have the states distribute, which of course still happens, but they also would give it directly both to cities and to non-governmental organizations fighting poverty and so forth. And they'd also begin enforcing federal laws with new enforcement mechanisms like employment discrimination, for instance, bypassing state authorities over those kinds of things. And that also led to what some people call uncooperative federalism, where the federal role in various fields has continually been contested both politically and in the courts. And this is battles over funding restrictions, battles over block grants, mandates, regulation versus deregulation. And just generally speaking, basically, it kind of went up after the Great Society, kind of went down a little bit and kind of flatlined. It has been ever since the Nixon administration. So for the last 50 years, really, it's just been kind of a pendulum back and forth, both in the courts and in politics. Just to, so briefly, one thing to note about that, that's interesting, it may be relevant today, may not be, can think about it. Each of these three big breakpoints, 1861, 1933, and 1964, were all characterized, it's really 1965, but really were all characterized by trifecta majority control. Most states in the SCOTA and the Supreme Court kind of acquiesced to this, to these big political majorities with the presidency in both

[11:47](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=707) houses of Congress. There's usually a little bit of an overreach, a pullback, but it never goes back to baseline. The federal government has continually expanded, it's just kind of plateaued for the last few decades. Okay, so what happens today with uncooperative federalism, where states strategically use their authorities, their remaining authorities, to resist, reshape, or challenge federal priorities? This dynamic plays out across all kinds of different areas. In environmental policy, states have significant latitude in developing state implementation plans under the Clean Air Act, allowing them to tailor it to local conditions, and notably states like California will often have higher standards that they want to implement, not only in their state, but to try to use as a model to shape national environmental policy, often in a more restrictive fashion. With immigration enforcement, states choose various levels of cooperation with federal authorities based on the local priorities, and they are in the prior administration, there are some states that wanted to enforce immigration more, have a heavier immigration presence now, but the administration changed, obviously. There's other states that want to resist that and have less immigration enforcement, and are trying to carve out spaces for that. In healthcare, states use Medicaid waivers to reshape program implementation, both red and blue states innovating within the federal framework. Perhaps most strikingly in marijuana regulation, many states have legalized recreational marijuana, and about half the states now, I think, despite the fact that it's continued to have a federal prohibition.

[13:37](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=817) And that's a classic example of a true sort of uncooperative federalism, but at the same time, the only way this works is that they've negotiated a tacit agreement with federal law enforcement to not at least heavily enforce the federal laws within states that have engaged in legalization. So both conservative and Democratic states and Republican states deploy this approach depending on who controls the federal government, and they just kind of switch sides. It's almost like switching in football, where they go on one side of the field, the Federalist side of the field, at halftime, everybody goes, okay, now we're playing on the Federalist side. And then at halftime, they switch and the other team plays on that side. A lot of this is shaped by what's happened with the law, and in kind of interesting ways. And I'm just going to talk a little bit about the Roberts Court, although this started before with the Rehnquist Court.

[14:45](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=885) There are several key doctrines that you should pay attention to, because they're continuing to evolve and they affect these issues. One is the major questions doctrine that restricts administrative agencies' interpretive authority. Related to the Chevron doctrine, which has also been eliminated, which is also restricting states' interpretive authorities. Those were in, one was West Virginia versus EPA, the other was in Loper-Bright, the restricted Chevron deference. Again, that reduces the capacity of federal agencies to act. And note that I mentioned West Virginia versus EPA. That's a state. It's interpreted as an administrative law doctrine about what federal agencies can do, but you can also see it as a federalism case in which a state basically got its way versus a federal agency. Secondly, and this is more purely federalism principles, there's anti-commandeering, which prevents the federal government from taking over the state apparatus. It's got to cooperate with you. It can't commandeer you. Third, there's spending law clause limitations. It wants to control you through spending, but there are limits. And the NFIB versus Sebelius case, the Obamacare case, helped put some restrictions on the extent to which the federal government can use funding pressures to create policy changes in the states. And there's also, watch this space, for commerce clause changes. The commerce clause is a general basis for a lot of federal authorities.

[16:28](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=988) They haven't really restricted that yet. There's a lot of movement to try to do that in the Roberts court, but they certainly haven't expanded it. And then there's been some movements against it, again, also in that NFIB versus Sebelius case. There's still movement back and forth on preemption and whether federal law displaces state law in preemption, varied rulings on that. But overall, there's definitely a trend there to send things back to the states. And probably the most prominent situation is the case overturning Roe v. Wade, which is the Dobbs case, which returns abortion regulation primarily to the states and has produced a natural level of policy variation. That trend looks like it's going to continue in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's just by restricting the federal government, and then naturally the states come to fill the basis on that.

[17:33](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1053) Now, all of these contested things can be kind of confusing and troubling. I guess I look at them a little differently. I'm a former litigator. I view federalism tensions differently, I suppose, than a lot of academics do. And what appears as conflict actually, to me, reveals opportunity. Contested spaces offer room for creative advocacy, innovative solutions. Preemption battles emerge from doctrinal inconsistencies in determining when federal law displaces state law. This creates advocacy space for non-frivolous arguments on either side. So you can carve out places that aren't preempted, you can design sort of complementary policies that build on it, or you can just leverage the uncertainty in negotiations in case it's an uncertainty. Maybe they don't want to get into it. Maybe they're going to let you do things so they don't have to litigate about it. Conditional funding or unfunded mandates, these are troubling. I know that the federal government uses these all the time as leveraging tactics, but there are limits on them. And understanding those limits means understanding where your negotiating power is. Overall, some of the turmoil and dynamism in the judiciary is going to create competing precedents in different places, and that frequently allows for you to have reasonable disagreement. If they bring something up, there may well be cases that are on the other side, you know, and use that. These tensions in American federalism aren't bugs. They aren't new. They're features that are there to contest the space of governance

[19:35](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1175) between these sort of two sovereigns, and that's supposed to be negotiated, and supposed to ideally create innovation and adaptation. Now let's turn to what you're likely most interested in, practical tools and strategies for navigating this complex landscape that I've just outlined in order to achieve your policy goals. And you know that I'm a suburban dad because I put a wrench kit here in my slide deck. But anyway, our toolkit has five essential components. First, understanding federal agency structures and decision making, knowing where and how decisions are made. Second, strategic engagement with federal rulemaking to shape how laws are implemented. Third, maximizing federal funding flexibility to preserve state autonomy while accessing resources. Fourth, building effective intergovernmental relationships to overcome these institutional tensions.

[20:39](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1239) And fifth, strategic litigation when necessary to protect state interests. So we're going to explore each of these five in more detail. Let's start by talking about a federal agency structure. Obviously, each agency has somewhat different, and that's the whole point, is that you're going to need to study these agencies as you deal with them. But you know, they're not monoliths. They contain multiple decisions and influence pathways. I mean, it's very obvious in a hierarchical organization that it has a secretary at the top that sits in an office to say, like, I got to get in and see the secretary, okay? Well, that's one way, okay? But there's all kinds of other ways. And that going in to get the secretary might be hard, and it might not actually be the most effective way. You got to recognize the distinctions between political appointees and career staff. Political appointees, you know, nominally will set the broad policy direction, but career staff are in there on the day-to-day managing programs. And I would suggest you build relationships with both. The career staff provide continuity, so you're going to deal with them, but a lot of times you need to talk to the political staff at least to get sort of permission for the career staff to feel comfortable engaging with you. And I have to tell you, as a former political appointee, we can be fooled for a while. You can go around us, you can get the career staff, you can get work with that, but it never works forever. You know, it's like Lincoln said of the people. You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time.

[22:21](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1341) You can't fool all of the political appointees all the time. And so it's better to just work with them and have a sustainable thing that will then, even if they don't engage with you more on the day-to-day, they will allow and create space for the career staff to do it. And you also should understand more about the headquarters and the regional structure, which we'll get into a little bit more later, but most major agencies have regional offices that serve as crucial intermediaries between Washington and the states. And they also often work with an office, the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs or Intergovernmental Relations, that those are sort of key brokers for you in the state and local government to work with the agencies. And they often have some flexibility in interpreting and applying federal directives. And if you get them on their side, they can be kind of internal advocates within the bureaucracy for you. So that's good. You should use formal and informal processes. There's a regulatory process. There's notice and comment, all of that thing. There's requests for proposals and grants and schedules and so forth. There's also the informal process. Getting to know people, having stakeholder meetings, if they come and visit, trying to engage with them, getting to know them is very useful. Finally, you should recognize that the program staff and the legal staff usually have some different goals and different ideas.

[23:44](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1424) The legal staff is focused on the statutes and compliance, and the program staff is focused on outcomes and operations. Use them strategically. If you're a lawyer, you say, if you don't have the law on your side, argue the facts. If you don't have the facts, argue the law. Same thing is true here. We're actually talking about different people. So if you've got the law on your side, get your general counsel or the attorney general's office to talk to the Office of General Counsel. And then you kind of have a legal argument. Or you can talk about operations and efficiencies and accountability and evaluations with the program people. Whichever is working, try both, or whatever one's working well for you. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the formal rulemaking process, though. You know, there's different places in the rulemaking process for states to operate. It's particularly valuable when Congress passes legislation with broad language that's going to leave substantial interpretive authority. That's where you're really going to want to look and really have a team, I think, that would get ready to deal with those regs.

[24:59](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1499) You know, the formal process represents your most direct influence, but there's also going to be times when they're going to do meetings before the formal rule. Sometimes it'll be in an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking or they'll have comment periods. But sometimes they'll just have meetings and stakeholder meetings and part of the information gathering phase with the states. Get involved with it early and often would be my recommendation. Another one has to do, of course, with the money. You know, that's an opportunity. It's a constraint. It's the main leverage, ultimately, I think, in a lot of federal agencies use. Conditions attached to federal dollars can limit state discretion, but there's multiple strategies for getting flexibility. You got to master the art of waiver requests. Most federal grant programs include waiver provisions allowing states to seek exceptions from specific requirements. So figure out who's going to be granting those waivers and what that process is. And successful waivers typically align with the program's core purposes while proposing some alternative means. They have some robust evaluation components, and they reference successful approaches. This is a good place to correspond with your colleagues about what they're doing. You know, second, try to leverage any provisions for demonstration projects. Say, like, I'll do it as a demonstration. Give me the grant to do it. You know, again, if it looks like it's going to be successful, it will redound to your benefit and to the agency's benefit. The incentives in that case tend to be aligned. You know, you can try to strategically combine sort of various funds. Say, we have some other funding sources, and we'll be able to combine them. Look for opportunities to do that. You know, if you can find ways for a lot of programs to find alternate sources, ultimately, and just use this basically

[27:03](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1623) as seed money. A lot of programs, a lot of federal agencies like that, and you get a chance to demo it, make it work, work the kinks out, and then be able to run it on your own. Behind a lot of this are having effective relationships so that you can make these kinds of deals and negotiations. Let me mention again the federal regional offices. They're underutilized in a lot of cases. They're out there. They originally intended to work with the states very directly. Nixon was one of the ones who originally sort of developed the first regional office structure that's still operating today. You know, invite them to involve them with state planning process so they own it a little bit. They own your plan. This is how you get them kind of on your side. There's national associations here, National Governors Association, and so forth. You know, participate in policy committees within these organizations. Get involved with it. Look for cross-agency working group opportunities, and so on. You know, and maintain consistent and open communication channels. So your final opportunity here is, if none of that works particularly well, is of course to go to court. And this is where, you know, we see the true sort of spirit of uncooperative federalism in its full form is when, you know, basically if half the states are red and half states are blue, then, you know, half the states are always in court suing the administration. Okay, sometimes it seems like that, but, you know, that's inevitable. You know, there's going to be situations where you need to do it, and you're going to have to look at various things. You're going to have to look at the forum. You're going to have to look at whether you can get standing

[29:05](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1745) that basically finds some kind of injury, have like an argument. This is where program and policy people can be very valuable in saying, you know, how this hurts us. This costs us. That helps for the lawyers, helps develop a standing argument, get the right forum, you know, where the presidents are. You know, a lot of the reason that the states are all suing together is there's strength in numbers. There's, you know, a group. Sometimes it can be groupthink, but a lot of times two heads are better than one. If I want to mix my analogies, you know, having a whole group of people thinking about it can come up with a better strategy. You know, frame your federalism claims strategically. Courts respond differently to various arguments. Sometimes they're going to use procedural arguments from the administrative procedure act. Procedural irregularities in terms of how the guidance or the regulation was issued, so that might work. There's also a doctrine we call the clear statement doctrine, which argues that Congress hasn't clearly authorized the federal action, and that's kind of a minor league version of the major questions doctrine, which is where, again, unless Congress has clearly spoken, they're limited. But there's a sort of a general doctrine that that's built from, called the clear statement doctrine, that you find. If it's not obviously in the statute, well, make your argument that the federal agency can't do it. And those can kind of frequently persuade courts that are reluctant to sort of straight out rule that the federal government, they're after all federal courts, that the federal government went wrong, but they'll say, well, Congress wasn't clear enough, or something like that. Let's walk through a few case studies here, and to see how this all works out. Let's start with an environmental policy case study.

[31:09](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1869) When the EPA issued ozone standards, creating implementation challenges for western states, the unique western atmospheric conditions, Colorado engaged early. Technical consultations provided state-specific data on background ozone levels. This is mostly about, you know, Denver, you know, and proposed alternative implementation timelines. Rather than fighting the standards themselves, Colorado secured implementation flexibility that achieved environmental goals while accommodating the regional realities. Similarly, Minnesota developed an innovative watershed land of 10,000 lakes, right? Watershed approach to water quality protection that departed from traditional project-by-project permitting. By engaging the EPA regional officials early, demonstrating superior environmental outcomes, and building stakeholder support, Minnesota secured federal approval for an approach better suited to their local conditions. So that's an example of how states can work within the federal frameworks to achieve innovation while maintaining cooperative relationships.

[32:13](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1933) This, I know, was from HHS, was a little bit more contentious, but also generally it tended to work. You know, this Medicaid is a rich example of, as a laboratory of democracy and innovation. Indiana wanted to expand Medicaid coverage while maintaining market-based features and personal responsibility components that federal officials initially resisted. They eventually achieved that in their Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0. Similarly, Oregon got flexibility to fund its coordinated care organizations, which combined a variety of services and helped control costs. To look at education policy quickly, here's another one. New Hampshire's got authority to sort of innovate with having competency-based assessment systems as an alternative to the statewide standard testing systems that the ESSA implemented.

[33:19](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=1999) And Louisiana wanted to integrate more career education and academic material and, again, got permission to do that. So that shows how states can use implementation authority to reshape the federal programs. The last example I'll give is from the COVID era in emergency management. Washington, everybody had a crisis response. Washington state's pandemic response was pretty good, I think most people think. It unified command structure, it integrated the federal, local, and state officials, and it streamlined the resource deployment, I think, for better-than-average results. You'll also see that Florida does pretty well with disaster management. One of the reasons they do it is not just the experience that they have overall with hurricanes, but because they have year-round coordination with FEMA, Region 4. They do joint training exercises, they coordinate, they're ready to go when a hurricane hits pretty well because they maintain that intergovernmental affairs. To generalize, you look at some things. Proactive engagement before crises and deadlines, relationship building, framing the innovations in terms of shared goals, use data to back your proposals, show outcomes. That's going to help appeal. And be persistent and use different methods. All of those things are probably the right way to use these tools. I'd also add that even though we have a very polarized environment, all of these good examples as best practices, they frame the issues in structural rather than partisan times. State authority rather than liberal versus conservative, state versus federal, local versus. Emphasize practical implementation, same thing. Build the

[35:20](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=2120) bipartisan state coalitions, have some people that are politically aligned with the political officials on your side, sort of boosting you and basically validating you. Identify shared outcome goals, even though you disagree with the means, and focus on evidence and demonstration projects to build your case. So if you want to increase your federalism toolkit, there are some national associations training in intergovernmental relations. Federal agencies themselves have technical resources. There's academic centers and federalism research. You can go to federalism.org. That's a good place to keep up with what's going on in federalism. Communities of practice are there. I also recommend a couple other websites. The Center for Practical Federalism has a lot of sort of tips there, and they keep a federalism scorecard basically to show where states rank on various dimensions. So all of those are some tools that can be available to you. And with that, I will conclude that by just saying and repeating that federalism is an opportunity for you. And the more sort of trouble at the national level, in some ways, the more opportunity. It creates space for innovation and adaptation.

[36:43](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=2203) Having multiple authorities enables policy experimentation. Implementation discretion allows you to tailor to local needs. And even among mid-polarization, state leadership can flourish. And federalism's dynamic framework is designed to and does accommodate diverse approaches. With that, I thank you and I look forward to your questions.

**Unknown speaker**

[37:10](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=2230) Thank you very much, Professor Keckler. So we are opening now the Q&A session. Please drop your questions into the chat. I got two questions. I arrived directly to me as direct messages, which was a mistake. So I will cut and paste now. And there's another one that also I received as a direct message. So I've been starting. Okay, I am cutting and pasting that. But please feel free to drop your questions or comments and we will just start reading that. Okay, so those, that's the way the ones that arrived to my email, to my email, to my direct message. So I'm starting with one by Irvin.

**Charles Keckler**

[38:02](https://youtu.be/Y6rQL6jjN3A?t=2282) Say, how do constitutional crises resolve themselves? Yeah, well, that's a very theoretical question to some extent, although I suppose it's fair because it seems more and more practical every day that there's a constitutional crisis. So a constitutional crisis, you know, there's a legal and political dimension to any kind of constitutional crisis. So when we get something that is a sort of a political crisis, you know, we can sometimes solve it legally. If it's a political crisis between the branches and the courts, as long as they respect the ultimate judgment of the courts, then you can have that. Or if it's a sort of a legal defiance, then you can have a political resolution. I'll give you like an example, sort of like famous example that's maybe distant enough in time to feel comfortable. You know, there was a number of things, which the Alien Enemies Act has been in the news recently. So that was part and parcel of a series of laws that the Adams administration passed in the 1790s, including the Alien and Sedition Act, many of which people believed at the time and believe today were unconstitutional restrictions of free speech or constitutional rights. And ultimately, you know, the court

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