April / May / June 2023 Issue | | Rhetorically, conservatives love to defend localities against an overweening state. In practice, GOP governors like Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Asa Hutchinson, and Brian Kemp have been burnishing their potential presidential candidacies by oppressing liberal-leaning municipalities in their states. From blocking electric vehicle charging stations to banning books and “diversity” talk in schools, DeSantis and company are overturning decisions by local officials that they don’t like. All the while, they’re catering to their corporate backers and rural conservative voters to build momentum for 2024.
Fortunately, as Washington Monthly editor Will Norris writes in the latest issue, President Joe Biden has figured out two ways to liberate blue cities while also advancing his administration’s policy goals and disarming his future challengers. The first is through spending bills. In the past, Washington funneled nearly all funds for things like infrastructure and disaster relief through the states, where governors and state legislatures would have final say on how such funds are spent. Greg Abbott, for instance, deprived Houston of up to $1 billion in aid after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, instead sending the money to outlying and largely white communities. By contrast, the big spending bills Biden has signed—on infrastructure, green energy, and COVID-19 relief—target far larger portions of their funding to local governments than any federal legislation in generations. “Spending priorities in Washington seldom change so dramatically and quickly,” Norris writes. “Yet the mainstream press has almost completely missed this shift.”
The second way Biden is empowering localities is by stepping up antitrust enforcement—and thereby beginning to undo four decades of Washington green-lighting the growth of oligopolistic corporations that put smaller locally owned companies out of business. That consolidation has gutted the economies of smaller towns and cities. It’s been especially damaging to local news outlets, whose purchase and plunder by hedge funds, Steven Waldman notes in this issue, have measurably diminished the ability of local communities to function democratically.
Republican governors like DeSantis have benefitted politically from crushing local initiatives in their states. But, as Monthly Editor-in-Chief Paul Glastris notes, it could be a problem nationally if one of those aspirants wins the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Polls consistently show that voters trust local government more than the state or federal.
But it's only a vulnerability if Biden exploits it. And so far, curiously, his administration has kept its pro-locality accomplishments quiet. “And so,” Glastris writes, “we have a situation in which Republicans talk glowingly about local control even as they undermine it, and Democrats stay silent about local control even as they strengthen it.” If Biden wants to win in 2024, that ought to change.
You can find the stories by Will Norris, Steven Waldman, and Paul Glastris, along with the rest of the Monthly’s April/May/June issue, here and below.
Enjoy the issue!
Washington Monthly Editors | | COVER STORY
How a mild-mannered law professor became the architect of a scheme to overturn a presidential election. By Garrett Epps | | FEATURES
New College, a small public liberal arts school the Florida governor wants to overhaul, already scores well on the Washington Monthly’s college list—and on U.S. News’s, too. By Aalia Thomas
The president’s quiet effort to free municipalities from the despotism of GOP governors. By Will Norris
Should the president and vice president both die, you’d think we’d have a well-considered plan to reconstitute the government. In fact, we don’t. By Jean Parvin Bordewich
Four years ago, lawmakers recreated an in-house agency to advise them on science and technology issues. Taxpayers are already benefiting. By Rob Wolfe
Washington has the tools. It’s time to use them. By Steven Waldman
Ranked-choice voting brings numerous benefits and one downside: It requires voters to spend more time with the ballot. Vote by mail gives them that time. By Alexandra Sharp | | BOOKS
Woodrow Wilson’s wife had extraordinary influence. Then he suffered a debilitating stroke. By Sara Bhatia
How a group of conspiratorial far-right business tycoons in the 1950s and ‘60s helped lay the groundwork for the MAGA movement decades later. By Jacob Heilbrunn
A new biography of Daniel Webster argues that the Antebellum statesman forged a civic nationalist vision that has held America together. If only it were true. By Colin Woodard
Monopolistic hospital systems now dominate the economies of many cities—and shape public policy far beyond the scope of medicine. By Brian Alexander | | Support the Washington Monthly Help us stay ahead of the game when it comes to the big ideas that will make or break the fortunes of American liberalism in 2023 and beyond. Please consider making a donation or subscribing to our print magazine. © 2023 Washington Monthly, wholly owned by Washington Monthly Corporation, a District of Columbia 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Washington Monthly trademark is registered in U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. | | 1200 18th Street NW, Suite 330 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: 202-955-9010 Fax: 202-955-9011 | | | | | | |
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