Republicans who run Washington have become the most aggressive centralizers of government in modern memory. They use that power to dictate to state and local leaders they once promised to liberate.
Federal grants to Oklahoma nonprofits, universities could be terminated
Consultant Danielle Drastata, with Accenture, detailed likely drastic changes to federal rules and regulations surrounding federal grants to private nonprofits, state agencies and higher education, and local governments.
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When I managed President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign against Sen. Mitt Romney in 2012, my Republican counterparts saw themselves as the defenders of federalism. They argued that Washington should get out of the way and let the states, as the laboratories of democracy, lead.
In their view, governors, not federal bureaucrats, knew best how to run their own programs. Republicans on the campaign trail recited the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment like biblical Scripture.
I disagreed with plenty of it then, but at least it was a coherent principle – and often appeared to be a sincere one. That party no longer exists.
The Republicans who run Washington today have become the most aggressive centralizers of governmental power in modern memory, and they are using that power to dictate to the very state and local leaders they once promised to liberate.
Trump’s government is running states, rather than liberating them
Start with the National Guard. Over the past year, President Donald Trump has deployed troops into American cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans, repeatedly over the objections of some governors who normally command those forces.
He federalized the California National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have already reined in some of these moves.
A party that once treated a governor’s authority as sacred now treats it as an inconvenience.
The same instinct drives the administration’s war on local immigration policy, where Washington insists that no city or state may set priorities that differ from the White House’s.
Sovereignty, it turns out, was only sacred when the other side held power.
The clearest example may be happening in Medicaid. Republicans used to preach the virtues of block grants, allowing state and local leaders the flexibility to design their own programs.
Now Republicans are not just overriding states, they are removing their power to govern themselves. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act handed Washington sweeping new authority to undermine how governors finance and design their Medicaid programs, capping the state-directed payments and provider taxes that legislatures of both parties have used for decades to fund care.
States are losing the ability to manage Medicare
Now, under Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has gone even further. Its new proposed rule reaches well beyond what Congress actually passed, extending federal caps and policy changes to payments the statute never touched.
CMS’ own analysis of the rule, proposed in May, puts the resulting cuts at more than half of $1 trillion over a decade – more than what the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the cuts resulting from the section of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the proposed rule purports to implement. That is an extreme version of micromanagement from Washington, DC.
Here is the part Republicans do not seem to comprehend. Or if they do, it’s a fact they don’t want their voters to hear: These cuts will fall hardest on red states.
The nonpartisan Hilltop Institute found that gutting provider taxes lands heaviest on the states most dependent on them, many of them deeply Republican stalwarts like Alabama, Mississippi and Utah.
Dr. Oz himself does seem to understand this as he accuses those governors of “legal money laundering.”
Look at Florida and Texas. The Center for American Progress projects that Florida alone faces billions of dollars in new uncompensated care costs, lost care for entire communities and tens of thousands of lost jobs. Texas, a state that opted not to expand Medicaid and whose public hospitals are funded largely by local property taxes, faces the same squeeze.
When Washington pulls back the federal matching funds, someone has to make up the difference.
Federal decisions make Republican governors’ jobs tougher
Governors will be left with two choices, both ugly: Gut the narrow safety net already limited to those who truly need it, or raise taxes, including local property taxes.
That leaves Trump’s own allies like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the president’s handpicked candidate for governor of Florida, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, in a lurch. If elected, Donalds will inherit a Medicaid system Washington has hollowed out, with far less freedom to fix it than any governor enjoyed back when Romney was campaigning on states’ rights.
Ironically, these Republicans have been long standing supporters of Trump, while Dr. Oz didn’t formally endorse him in the 2024 primary.
The party that once promised to free the states has become the party that commands them, and the loyal red states cheering it on will be the ones left paying the bill.
Jim Messina is a leading corporate and political adviser who masterminded President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and later served as White House deputy chief of staff. In 2013, he founded The Messina Group, providing strategic consulting to businesses globally.