Last month, New York Governor Kathy Hochul stood alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a press conference in Manhattan. The purpose: to announce $7.25 million in new legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children and to reaffirm a state law barring local police from formal cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The event was an illustration of a broader pattern in modern American federalism: a governor using her office’s visibility, funding authority, and legal tools to push back against perceived federal overreach or abuses of power.
The American governorship today is marked by expansive authority and institutional flexibility. Governors possess formal powers to appoint officials and direct agencies, informal powers of leverage and persuasion, and the practical advantage of being able to act quickly, unilaterally, and visibly. As I explain in a new article, these considerable gubernatorial powers represent an indispensable component of any effort to push back against presidential overreach.
The mechanisms of today’s oppositional gubernatorial administration blend old and new. Governors can deploy the bully pulpit to shape public opinion and alter the president’s calculus; wield market power over procurement, contracting, hiring, and investment; use control over state agencies to decline to cooperate with, or to affirmatively stymie, federal programs; coordinate with other governors in multistate coalitions that amplify resistance through collective action and litigation; and, without using force themselves, assert commander-in-chief and law enforcement powers in ways that dissuade federal officials from reckless acts.
Gubernatorial opposition is neither legally unlimited nor an unmitigated good. Pushback that conflicts with federal law, seeks to regulate the federal government directly, or discriminates against federal actors is ripe for judicial challenge, and opposition could itself lead to careless decisions or state-level overreach. Most significantly, the same capacity that fuels some governors’ opposition can fuel other governors’ support of a president’s authoritarian efforts. In the long term, we may wish to revisit whether such strong chief executives, federal and state, reflect a desirable allocation of power. But in the near term, gubernatorial friction is a powerful and often necessary component of meaningful state pushback.
Sources of Gubernatorial Power and Duty
Both our system of federalism and state constitutions position governors to take the lead on their residents’ welfare. It is a basic premise of federalism — and of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people any powers not constitutionally delegated to the national government — that states retain governing authority over their residents and remain the day-to-day regulators of public health and welfare. These “police powers” do not belong to the federal government, which by design has limited powers. This point can be overstated — modern federal power scarcely feels limited — but bounded central power and a reserve of state autonomy remain central to federalism.
And to act effectively, states need a leader. The governor, as chief executive, is the most plausible actor to fill that role, able to act with the dispatch and efficacy to respond to crises, as leadership after natural disasters and during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates. Importantly, gubernatorial power will not always be deployed benevolently; certain governors’ resistance to racial integration in the mid-twentieth century provides a sharp reminder. (I explore this dynamic, and the problematic potential for what I call complicit gubernatorial administration, further in the full article.) But when the question is focused on state actors’ institutional capacities to resist national excess, governors stand out as well positioned for leadership and rapid response.
State constitutions reinforce this role. Though governors were initially mere figureheads, waves of constitutional revision have transformed the office into the state’s executive leader, imbuing governors with the executive power (often the “supreme” or “chief” executive power), the duty to faithfully execute the laws, and commander-in-chief authority, along with express powers such as appointment and removal. Practically speaking, a governor is the most visible leader of each state and its de facto decisionmaker and spokesperson — gubernatorial administration is most states’ primary mode of operation, especially on urgent matters.
Mechanisms of Gubernatorial Power
Governors today have a variety of mechanisms available to push back against federal overreach. Specifics vary by state, but the overarching picture is one of gubernatorial capability.
The Bully (vs. Bully) Pulpit
Governors have a state’s most potent platform to express oppositional plans — the state equivalent of the “bully pulpit,” a term coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to describe his use of office to shape public opinion. Governors’ expression carries weight independently and complements their other pushback mechanisms. Sometimes the optics around an oppositional action matter as much as the action itself, because they can change the federal government’s cost calculus and make a dubious federal action less appealing.
Public speeches are not the only channel available. Governors can cultivate audiences on social media, podcasts, or targeted appearances before specialized groups — leveraging their platform to shape public opinion and, in turn, raise the cost of unwanted presidential action.
Oppositional State Administration
Governors can also use their direction of state agencies to exert pushback. Most mildly, they can direct agencies to fill federal voids as the Trump administration withdraws funding and services — through new state vaccine initiatives, responses to tariff- and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)-related hardship, and steps to protect abortion services and patient data.
Exerting more opposition, governors can direct agencies to decline voluntary cooperation with federal efforts that run against residents’ interests or state law. Leading examples arise in immigration, law enforcement, and election administration. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger issued a January 2026 executive order terminating an agreement to cooperate with federal civil immigration enforcement, and New York’s August 2026 law restricting local police from entering formal cooperation agreements with ICE under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act follows the same logic, as does guidance directing officials to refuse ICE requests for non-public information absent a judicial warrant. Governors have also been part of state refusals to share voter lists with the Department of Justice and of litigation against the sharing of patient Medicaid data with ICE.
The most muscular form of oppositional administration involves affirmative steps to impede federal overreach. Directives targeting federal officials specifically would be on thin legal footing, but they need not do so. Governors could impose ordinary regulatory or tax burdens on temporary residents, including federal actors, or exclude entities violating court orders from state-provided services like utilities. They could also potentially require disclosure from private entities to deter federal overreach — for instance, requiring disclosure by private contractors who are transporting people against their will on or through state property — much as states already impose disclosure requirements on entities doing business with the state.
Defiant Market Participation
Another mechanism stems from the state’s role as market participant — a large-scale procurer of goods and services and a major employer. On the hiring side, governors have established initiatives to rehire fired federal employees or forbid hiring January 6 protestors or ICE employees.
The state’s role as purchaser and contractor is an even more potent tool. Chief executives have long set contracting rules that advance policy values, from the racial integration of federal troops to state divestment from oppressive regimes. California Governor Gavin Newsom drew national attention when he announced in 2023 that California would not do business with Walgreens after the pharmacy agreed not to sell mifepristone in certain red states. Today, governors may be able to direct administrators not to contract with, or purchase from, firms that do business with ICE, and could bar state grant funds from reaching such entities — avoiding direct regulation of the federal government while incentivizing businesses to weigh their dealings with ICE more carefully. State agencies also have wide leeway in setting contract terms, from civil-liberties protections to bans on sharing residents’ private data with the federal government, allowing governors to tailor terms to state priorities that diverge from federal ones.
Interstate “Pooling” of Resources and Powers
Governors can lead efforts to combine resources and authority across states, increasing participating states’ collective clout. Some arrangements offer financial benefits: states may lend each other funds or collectively negotiate prices, as the Reproductive Freedom Alliance (a coalition of 23 governors) did in stockpiling abortion medication, and as the Governors Public Health Alliance (14 governors plus Guam) may do regarding vaccines. Other collaboration extends beyond finances: states can share expertise and plan collectively — drafting “playbooks” for election- and immigration-related emergencies, as groups such as Governors Safeguarding Democracy have done — and can band together to facilitate litigation, particularly where it centers on questions of executive power or the governor’s role in a federal scheme such as the National Guard.
Handle with Care: Defensive Force
One final mechanism is particularly delicate: under state constitutions, every governor is commander-in-chief of state military forces. Governors also typically have power to direct state law enforcement — powers that expand during declared emergencies. Governors should wield this authority carefully, lest it escalate conflict rather than protect residents. But it can check federal overreach in several ways.
First, governors can deploy state forces to keep the peace against disruptive displays of federal force. ICE deployments and incidents such as Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota have raised the specter of wider violence; by calling on state forces, including the National Guard where not federalized, governors can help contain it. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued an executive order after the shooting of Renée Good directing the Guard to “coordinate and support public safety.”
Second, governors can use state forces to protect state property or exclude unauthorized federal officials from sensitive areas — for example, if officials sought warrantless access to ballot-tabulation spaces. Locked rooms and armed guards do not make a federal seizure impossible, but they raise its cost and deter more casual federal action.
Third, governors can invoke defensive state forces expressively. Even without aggressive action, a clear signal that state forces stand behind residents and property shifts federal officials’ calculus, conveying that the state is no easy target.
Federal Pushback
Gubernatorial opposition is neither legally unlimited nor normatively ideal. The federal government has been litigious in reaction to state pushback and is likely to challenge oppositional state administration as preempted or as violating intergovernmental immunity, arguing that a state is directly regulating or discriminating against the federal government.
Governors can tailor their opposition to mitigate these problems. Intergovernmental immunity challenges have often failed where states applied a policy generally — like a minimum wage law covering both state and federal actors. State constitutional separation of powers may also constrain a governor’s ability to act without legislative authorization, and some purchasing decisions may raise contract concerns. But governors and their counsel can likely navigate these pitfalls by grounding action in existing state authority and remaining mindful of contract obligations.
Ultimately, it is not the law but politics and policy that form gubernatorial opposition’s greatest headwinds. Governors may avoid or underdo opposition for fear of political reprisal or fiscal revenge; the Trump administration has often threatened to retaliate against non-compliant states by cutting federal funding or sending in federal agents. Such threats are sometimes unlawful, but they may still cow rational governors seeking to avoid conflict.
The opposite problem, in which governors themselves overreach, may be worse still. Governors might overstep legal limits or individual rights, or might throw their weight behind the president. The same characteristics that make governors worthy opponents of an overreaching president can make them his powerful accomplices, letting an authoritarian-minded president achieve more with state allies than alone. Legal action offers partial reassurance, because governors who assist presidential overreach are more likely to be violating federal or state rights than those who oppose it. Still, as the article discusses further, some federally aligned gubernatorial administration is built into our system — it is the downside that makes gubernatorial opposition possible.
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In the long term, our system would benefit from reflection on whether today’s super-strong state and federal chief executives are desirable. There may be sounder ways to balance efficacy, expediency, accountability, and representation. In the short term, however, the most potent actor to oppose a strong federal chief executive will often be a strong state chief executive, and governors have multiple tools with which to meet the moment.
