For the Republic
← Command Center / 📄 Article / 2026-02-13

The Parking Spot: How Federalism Became America's Oldest Political Weapon

Draft Complete — Pending Author Review

Outline

4/10
outline.md

Article Outline

Working Title

The Parking Spot: How Federalism Became America's Oldest Political Weapon

Target Length

~1,500 words

Structural Overview

The article opens in the dissonance of a single moment -- JD Vance, a Yale Law graduate from the "states' rights" party, claiming federal agents have "absolute immunity" from state prosecution -- and widens outward into a 230-year structural pattern. The reader's journey moves from "wait, that can't be right" through "oh, it's always been this way" to "so what do we actually do with that?" The emotional arc is: cognitive whiplash, then recognition, then the uncomfortable question of whether the Constitution's most celebrated structural feature has always been a convenient fiction -- and whether naming it honestly is the first step toward making it real.

Hook (~150-200 words)

Opens with: JD Vance's "absolute immunity" claim -- a Yale Law-trained Vice President, from the political party that built its modern identity on "states' rights," asserting that federal agents have absolute immunity from state criminal prosecution after two American citizens were killed in Minneapolis. Drop the reader into the dissonance before explaining it. The words coming out of his mouth are the opposite of fifty years of his party's constitutional vocabulary. And across the aisle, blue-state attorneys general are filing Tenth Amendment lawsuits -- the amendment that was the conservative movement's sacred text for decades. Purpose: The hook works because the reversal is visceral and immediate. You don't need to understand constitutional law to feel the cognitive whiplash. Two dead Americans, a VP claiming absolute federal power, and everyone is speaking the other side's lines. Leads into: A brief beat of context -- this isn't just Vance, it's happening at scale -- before pivoting to the framework that explains why none of it is surprising.

Nobody Believes in a Parking Spot (~250-300 words)

Argument beat: Introduce the framework explicitly and early. Federalism is not a constitutional philosophy held by anyone consistently. It is a parking spot -- occupied when you need it, vacated when you don't. Whoever holds federal power discovers the necessity of federal supremacy. Whoever lacks it discovers the beauty of state sovereignty. The metaphor does specific mechanical work: nobody defends a parking spot on principle. You defend it because your car is there. Drive away, and you couldn't care less who takes it next. That's the Tenth Amendment. Cite Bulman-Pozen's "partisan federalism" framework (Harvard Law Review, 2014) in plain language: federalism has always functioned as partisan opposition channeled through constitutional structure. Key evidence/examples: The 85%/83% polling mirror on mandatory local ICE cooperation -- near-perfect partisan symmetry, perfectly inverted, almost entirely devoid of overlap. Minnesota AG Ellison citing the Tenth Amendment. Red states mandating cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, eliminating the local discretion Republicans championed for decades. Carnegie Endowment's Cuellar: "The script has flipped 180 degrees." Relationship to thesis: This is the conceptual engine of the entire piece. Everything after this section applies the framework or pressure-tests it. Transition to next section: "But this isn't a 2025 invention." The pattern has been running for 230 years.

The 230-Year Hustle (~250-300 words)

Argument beat: Compress the historical sweep to show the parking spot has never been parked in permanently by any faction. The thesis isn't "Republicans are hypocrites" -- it's that every faction in American history has done exactly what the current one is doing. The Tenth Amendment is the constitutional argument of whoever doesn't control Washington. Key evidence/examples: Move through the key historical compressions efficiently -- each one a sentence or two, not a paragraph:

  • Jefferson and Madison invented states' rights as the weapon of the opposition party with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798).
  • The antebellum South demanded states' rights for themselves and federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act on Northern states -- simultaneously. Northern states passed "personal liberty laws" forbidding state officials from cooperating with federal slave catchers, using the same non-cooperation mechanism blue states deploy today.
  • Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to override Southern state resistance at Little Rock -- federal supremacy asserted by a Republican president.
  • Republican AGs under Obama sued the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds over the ACA and environmental regulation.
  • Now: the same party asserts absolute federal supremacy on immigration. Relationship to thesis: Establishes that the pattern is structural, not partisan. Every era, whoever lacks federal power discovers constitutional virtue in state sovereignty. This is not a bug. It may be a feature. Transition to next section: "There is, however, one genuinely strong objection to the parking spot thesis." Pivot to the steelman.

But Immigration Really Is Different -- Until It Isn't (~300-350 words)

Argument beat: Grant the strongest counterargument honestly and at length, then show precisely where it breaks down. Immigration is constitutionally different. The plenary power doctrine is 135 years of continuous Supreme Court precedent. Congress has "plenary and unqualified power" over immigration. A Republican who championed states' rights on health care and now champions federal supremacy on immigration may be drawing a constitutionally defensible distinction. The anti-commandeering doctrine (Printz, Murphy) means states can't be forced to enforce federal law, but it doesn't give states a right to actively obstruct federal operations. This is real. Acknowledge it. Key evidence/examples: Then show the crack: plenary power supports federal authority over immigration policy -- but it does not create "absolute immunity" for federal agents who kill American citizens (rejected across the entire ideological spectrum, from Lawfare to the Volokh Conspiracy's "absolutely ridiculous"). It does not override anti-commandeering. It does not authorize punishing resistant states by withholding unrelated federal funding. And most importantly -- it does not explain the SAVE Act (federal mandates on state election administration), Indiana redistricting (where 21 Republicans defied their own president on federalism grounds, Sen. Deery vowing to fight federal "bullying" with his "last breath"), or conditioning Title I education funding on DEI compliance. None of those implicate plenary immigration power. Counterargument engagement: This is the section that does the steelman work. The move is: "You're right about immigration. Now explain the SAVE Act." The counterargument is strongest when confined to immigration. The moment you widen the lens, the "immigration is constitutionally different" defense collapses -- because the same politicians making the distinction are not confining themselves to immigration. They are asserting federal supremacy across the board, which is exactly what the parking spot thesis predicts. Relationship to thesis: Strengthens the framework by showing it survives its hardest test. The concession makes the thesis more credible, not less. Transition: Brief acknowledgment that principled federalists do exist -- Deery, Somin, Barnett -- but they are consistently outvoted and abandoned by their own parties the moment federal power is at stake. The existence of principled individuals does not change the structural pattern.

The Bigger Picture (~150-200 words)

The zoom-out: The value of the parking spot framework isn't "look at these hypocrites." It's a permanent lens for evaluating every future federalism argument. The next time any politician invokes "states' rights" or "federal supremacy," the question is no longer "is this constitutionally correct?" The question is: "Would this person's position change if the other party controlled Washington?" If the answer is yes -- and for most political actors, for 230 years, the answer has been yes -- then you're not witnessing a constitutional argument. You're watching someone park. Connection to recurring themes: Democratic erosion -- the danger of treating the Constitution's structural features as rhetorical weapons rather than governing commitments. The exhausted majority -- the people who sense the game is rigged but can't name the mechanism. Naming it is the first step.

Close (~100-150 words)

Landing: The article ends on the genuinely uncomfortable question the framework raises: if federalism is just a weapon, can it be made into something more? Or is the honest answer that we've always been playing musical chairs with the Constitution? The thin but genuine thread of hope: naming the dynamic honestly is the precondition for changing it. The existence of people like Deery and Somin -- principled federalists who hold the line against their own parties -- proves the principle isn't dead, only outnumbered. The fight is to make them the rule rather than the exception. Emotional register: Not triumphant, not despairing. Clear-eyed, a little uncomfortable, and ultimately challenging -- it puts the question back on the reader. Hope/agency element: Once you see the parking spot, you can't unsee it. And the next time someone tells you they believe in states' rights or federal supremacy, you'll know which question to ask. That's the beginning of holding them accountable -- and maybe, eventually, holding the principle itself to a higher standard than anyone in 230 years has managed.

Architecture Notes

Tone: The article should feel like a structural revelation, not a partisan dunk. The corpus favors "I'm describing what you are" over "I'm enjoying hurting you." The key emotional move is recognition -- the reader should feel like they're seeing a pattern that was always there but never named. Think of the "strong man" vs. "strongman" compression from the corpus: the parking spot metaphor should do similar work, packing a complex dynamic into language so tight the reader can reuse it.

The metaphor must land early and do continuous work. Unlike the Enshittification piece (which introduces the concept and then applies it domain by domain), this article introduces the framework and then pressure-tests it -- the historical sweep proves it, the steelman challenges it, and the close asks what to do with it. The metaphor needs to be vivid enough in its first appearance that it carries through without re-explanation.

The steelman section is the article's credibility center. This is where center-right readers will decide whether to trust the framework or dismiss it. The plenary power concession must feel genuine, not perfunctory. The draft writer should spend real words granting that immigration is constitutionally different before executing the pivot ("Now explain the SAVE Act"). The Deery example is crucial here -- a Republican fighting his own president on federalism grounds is the proof that the principle and the weapon coexist, and that the weapon usually wins.

Historical sweep must be compressed, not leisurely. The corpus handles history as rapid pattern-compression, not survey course. Each historical example should be 1-2 sentences max. The Fugitive Slave Act parallel -- Northern states forbidding state officials from cooperating with federal slave catchers, the structural ancestor of modern sanctuary policies -- is the most powerful compression and should get slightly more space. But deploy it for structural parallel, not moral equivalence. Make that distinction explicit.

Avoid the "both sides" trap. The structural argument (everyone does it) could read as false equivalence. The draft must acknowledge that while the pattern is bipartisan, the current application -- federal agents killing American citizens, the VP claiming absolute immunity, punitive enforcement targeting politically hostile states -- represents a qualitative escalation. The mechanism is the same; the stakes are not. One sentence acknowledging this is sufficient; more than that and the article loses its structural clarity.

The close must earn its hope. The analytical framework is so effective at demolishing principled federalism that it risks leaving the reader with nowhere to go. The hope is thin but real: naming the game is the precondition for changing it. Don't oversell this. The voice guide says hope should be "earned by the analysis, not tacked on as a feel-good coda."

Personal voice moments: The draft writer should consider one brief moment of editorializing transparency (the corpus uses "I'm going to editorialize here" or "Here's the conflict in me"), perhaps in the steelman section -- something like acknowledging that the parking spot metaphor is deliberately reductive, because the constitutional reality it describes has been obscured by exactly the kind of complexity that lets politicians hide their inconsistencies. Turn the limitation into a feature.