Defending against federal threats

To call this an unprecedented time is a profound understatement. This is the emergency our founders were worried about and our federal checks and balances are in serious question.

But what can we do at the state level?

Fight against federal over-reach in the courts and in our laws. 

Our attorney general is a great defense and both he and the governor have done fantastic work challenging Trump’s illegal actions. We need to keep funding those efforts, and make sure our laws go as far as they can to protect our values. An example of that is the recent legislative change preventing out-of-state national guard from deploying here without the governor’s authority.

Keep watch always. 

If Trump federalizes the National Guard, invents a crisis, and deploys them in Seattle, he is allowed to do that. And ICE can operate here. But nothing prevents Washington from mobilizing our own people, who can shadow every single move federal forces make, record their conduct, and hold the individuals who commit crimes in the name of law accountable.

Keith prosecuted war criminals for the United Nations. He knows that atrocities almost exclusively occur in the shadows. Holding the light to the individuals marching around and violating human rights is our best defense.

Keep Washington a great place to live and protect our vulnerable.

Authoritarianism can best take root in a time of crisis. Without Italy and Germany’s financial straits in the 1930s, we might never have seen fascism there. Washington isn’t in a state of crisis. But federal funding is being cut–vital things like Medicaid, CDC, disaster relief, even funding for roads and bridges. We have to do the work–and yes, all of us will need to share the burden–of making sure we don’t let intentional federal neglect create crises here.