AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
For weeks now, the news has been dominated by President Donald Trump's executive orders and the big changes he's trying to make, but there are a lot of changes the president can't make at the federal level. On a whole host of issues, President Trump needs help from state governments to enact change. And we're going to look at two states with two different approaches - Florida and Illinois. NPR's Larry Kaplow, an editor with our states team, is here to get us started. Hi, Larry.
LARRY KAPLOW, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So what role do states play in helping or hindering a president's agenda?
KAPLOW: Right. Well, state powers were really baked into the U.S. Constitution from the beginning, and we're seeing how they exercise those powers now. Take Trump's call for mass deportations. There aren't enough federal agents to carry those out in the numbers that he's seeking. They need help from sheriffs and police departments, but the federal government can't order local law enforcement to do that. State governments, though, and governors can pass laws that compel local law enforcement to assist in things like detentions and immigration enforcement, and they can pass laws that ban cities from having sanctuary laws that limit what local law enforcement can do to assist federal agents. We're also seeing democratic states pass laws that protect cities' sanctuary laws. I'll point out that most state legislatures are controlled by one party or the other, and they're going in those different directions.
RASCOE: And we're going to hear from a couple of states now, starting with Mawa Iqbal of Illinois from member station WBEZ.
MAWA IQBAL, BYLINE: In Illinois, lawmakers haven't been shy about their disdain for President Donald Trump. During a budget address last month, Democratic Governor JB Pritzker compared Trump's recent executive orders to the end of democracy in pre-war Germany.
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JB PRITZKER: The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn't arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame. I'm watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now.
IQBAL: In the legislature, Democrats have passed resolutions condemning the Trump White House for rolling back DEI measures and for pardoning those connected to the January 6 riots. Republicans walked out of one raucous session, and Democratic House Speaker Chris Welch blasted them.
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CHRIS WELCH: They should be here to speak out against fascism. We cannot be silent. We must rise up. Speak up. Speak out.
IQBAL: The resolutions are symbolic, but Democrats are planning to spend more money on DEI initiatives in education, even though Trump has threatened federal funding cuts. They're looking to strengthen sanctuary policies, and even to fund a health care program for adults and seniors without legal status in the U.S.
Steven Schwinn is a constitutional law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, and he says these are areas where states can really assert themselves.
STEVEN SCHWINN: Protecting rights in state law and in the state Constitution as Illinois has done, those are the right moves for legislators and public officials who oppose Trump policies.
IQBAL: Trump lost Illinois by over 11 percentage points, and Democrats have a supermajority in the legislature. That's in contrast to nearby, more evenly split states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, where lawmakers and some governors have been more cautious about taking on Trump policies or even favored them. In Illinois, the Republicans are in the super minority and say the state's budget is already headed to a $3 billion deficit because of democratic spending. State Representative Blaine Wilhour called their DEI initiatives in schools Marxist ideology.
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BLAINE WILHOUR: It's fueled division, punished excellence and weakened our schools. And now the people in charge of our education system - unelected bureaucrats - think they can just ignore this directive. They think that they can just do whatever they want. We'll see. Paging President Trump, we have a problem in Illinois.
IQBAL: And now we turn to my colleague Regan McCarthy in the Capitol building in Tallahassee for what's happening in Florida.
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REGAN MCCARTHY, BYLINE: The busy legislative session is just getting underway here, where we're not far from the big body of water the state's Republican lawmakers are no longer calling the Gulf of Mexico.
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JOE GRUTERS: The name has changed. It's now the Gulf of America.
MCCARTHY: Republican State Senator Joe Gruters is behind a bill he says will align Florida with an executive order from the Trump administration by renaming the Gulf in state law and in future materials purchased by schools.
GRUTERS: Listen, we want our kids to have the correct names of everything moving forward, and so this is just a way to do that.
MCCARTHY: And that's just one of the bills Florida's Republican-controlled legislature has brought up recently, as political players jockey to show their support and loyalty to President Donald Trump and his administration's agenda. There's also a measure to pave the way for Trump to build a presidential library in the state. Another bill would block local governments from adding fluoride to public water - something Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. previously pushed for. Then there's legislation recently passed in Florida to crack down on illegal immigration.
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GRUTERS: This bill was always from the get-go to work with the president, President Trump, his executive orders to push his agenda. At the end of the day, he deserves credit for all of this.
MCCARTHY: That's Gruters again, a longtime supporter of Trump - something Republican state Senator Randy Fine says can pay off in Florida.
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RANDY FINE: Now I showed tonight what loyalty to Donald Trump meant.
MCCARTHY: Senator Fine is running with the president's support in a special election for the congressional seat left open when Trump tapped then-representative Mike Waltz to be his National Security adviser. Fine made his statement to his colleagues on the Senate floor just after winning the Republican primary for the seat. He's widely expected to clinch the special election in April.
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FINE: My reward for that loyalty is I'm going to Congress.
MCCARTHY: Trump's endorsement weighs heavily in the state, but certainly not for every Floridian.
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MCCARTHY: Earlier this year, hundreds of people gathered at the State Capitol, shouting and waving signs to protest the president and his administration. Among them was 19-year-old Florida State University student Madalyn Propst. She disagrees with the president's recent executive orders.
MADALYN PROPST: Yeah, I'm hoping he gets impeached for the unconstitutionality of his actions. But if I do have to do this for four years, so be it.
MCCARTHY: Democrats have pushed back against Florida's Republican supermajority, saying time during the state's 60-day session would be better spent on issues like housing costs and skyrocketing property insurance rates.
RASCOE: That was Regan McCarthy of member station WFSU and Mawa Iqbal of WBEZ. And Larry Kaplow of NPR's states team is still with us. Larry, two very different ends of the spectrum there from Florida and Illinois. Is that typical?
KAPLOW: It really is. In the South, you've got Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, others doing what Florida is doing. On the Democratic side, like Illinois, you have Connecticut, Maryland, California taking staunchly different Democratic approaches. And as we heard, people in some of these states are speaking up for themselves, going to state capitols and protesting on the direction they want to see.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Larry Kaplow. Thanks very much.
KAPLOW: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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