Isn't it high time for our states and people to reclaim their separate sovereign powers and prerogatives under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution? 

The Constitution provides for a government of "mixed sovereignty" between Washington, D.C. and the states, with our national government's authority strictly limited to a short list of certain enumerated powers.  Per the Tenth Amendment "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Fearing the corrupting influence of concentrated political power, our Founders intentionally divided and distributed power among many different sources commonly known as a system of "checks and balances" and "separation of powers" within our representative form of self-government.  One example of that separation and a check on power is the structure of our federal system itself, which reserves a vast autonomous sphere of power to the states and people within.

For more than a century, Washington has persistently aggregated and centralized power unto itself by unconstitutionally encroaching upon the rights of the states and the people.  Now the Democrat party's radical "progressive" left is enacting federal legislation, promulgating regulations, and issuing executive orders intended to finally usurp what little power and sovereignty remain in the hands of our state governments and people.  Isn't it time for the states and the people to object to this unconstitutional takeover of our democratic republic?

Republican-controlled state and local governments must begin a full court press against the dictates of Washington. 

A nationwide coordinated effort rather than ad hoc defensive actions from a few Republican governors, state Legislatures, attorneys general, and local officials is required.  Republican officials and party members must go on the offensive in concert  not only to resist such illegitimate federal actions, but to claw back the rightful powers of the states and the people unconstitutionally usurped by the federal government.  Outright refusal to acknowledge or carry out unconstitutional federal mandates is one way to reassert authority vested in the states and citizenry.  Recently, one prominent Republican governor stood up for his state and constituents by clearly rebuffing our president's threat to renew the China virus lockdown if the people fail to kowtow to the ruling elite.  

Republicans and conservatives must take aggressive concerted action to resist this federal government's invalid acts against the rights of the people enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Constitution.  Why not convene an Emergency National Convention of elected Republican officials to determine the ways and means to organize and orchestrate a coordinated game plan for the states and people to reclaim their sovereign rights under the Tenth Amendment? 

Let the states and the people issue a declaration reclaiming their rights in a noble effort to save our Republic so that the American experiment in government "of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."  

Swift Tarbell III is a three-term Maine state representative (1976–82), assistant Republican leader of the Maine State House of Representatives (1978–82), and former deputy associate secretary of labor and deputy assistant secretary of commerce in the Reagan-Bush administrations (1985–1990).

Image via Pxhere.