The Undoing of the United States part IV

What just crossed my computer screen is that the Supreme Court will not block an aggressive Texas immigration law for now. The law empowers local officials to arrest and deport migrants who enter the United States without proper documentation. The Biden administration challenged the Texas law as an affront to federal power. Once again, we see that the current Supreme Court intends to return much of federal power to the states. 

Immigrants are welcome in New Mexico. This morning, I had a long conversation with a young woman born in Guatemala. She said moving to New Mexico was simple, for the government and the people were welcoming. Jokingly, she said that if Trump is reelected, she is moving back to Guatemala.

The transference of schooling back to the states should be easy, for traditionally, schools were local, reflecting the community and the desires of the parents, not the aims of the federal government. The No Child Left Behind bipartisan act of 2002, passed under the Presidency of George W. Bush, was a disaster because schools and teachers were forced to prepare students to pass national tests, teaching then was primarily geared to students passing federally mandated tests, which in many schools took months to do.

The transference of financial power to the states will be impossible for two reasons: Corporations want a strong federal government that determines their rules, not ten or fifteen regional entities with different rules, and Federal grants to state and local governments totaled $1.2 trillion (about $3,700 per person in the US), or 19 percent of all federal outlays, in 2022. For example, of the $11 billion of general revenue in New Mexico, the federal government contributed $3.1 billion or 28 percent. The economic dependence of the states on the federal government cannot be undone.