The people need to be confident that they can stand up to rogue and criminal federal officials, knowing that state and local officials will have their back. The public need to know that critical shortfalls in health care and education and emergency services are going to be backfilled by state and local governments while the shutdown persists.

What I'm seeing now is a bunch of city/state chuds working hand-in-glove with the Feds, while mayors and governors just throw up their hands and insist they can't act. Merkley's filibuster is fine on its face, but this isn't a fight any given Senator is in a position to win.

If Trump is pulling the plug on the CDC, we should see every blue state in the country stepping in to hire up all those officials that got let go and continuing the work regionally. If Trump is letting crypto-bros run rampant over the money supply, we should see state AGs hounding down Silicon Valley scammers and prosecuting crooks and criminals under local prohibitions on fraud, embezzlement, and corruption. If Trump's ICE agents are breaking into people's homes without a fucking warrant, the local Sheriffs and State Troopers need to find and arrest those agents and prosecute them for their crimes.

I don't see any of this. I see Dems making speeches and blustering, but backing down as soon as a Fed shows up with a mask and a gun to do highway robbery. If that's how the country is going to operate going forward, the very concept of law and order is dead and we're consigning ourselves to military dictatorship.