A-20 — Federalism and Presidential Coercion of States

Generalized Institutional Concern

The federal government can use funding, enforcement discretion, emergency authority, deployment powers, waivers, and regulatory pressure to coerce state or local governments for partisan or personal purposes.

Active Issues

• FED-002 — Selective or Retaliatory Federal Administration Against States
• FED-003 — Federal Funding, Waiver, and Approval Coercion of States
• FED-004 — Federal Displacement of State Functions

Prior Issue Numbers

These numbers were assigned during preliminary review but did not become separate proposals. They are listed only to explain gaps in the sequence.

• FED-001, FED-008 — Merged into FED-003 as disaster-aid, infrastructure-aid, waiver, approval, and grant-condition instruments of federal coercion.
• FED-007 — Merged into FED-002 as the investigation-and-audit application of selective or retaliatory federal administration against states.
• FED-005 — Merged into DOM-001 as domestic deployment over state objection.
• FED-006 — Merged into ELEC-014 as election-specific federal interference with state election administration; FED-004 retains the general federalism boundary.

Issue Boundaries

• FED-002 owns selective or retaliatory enforcement, investigation, audit, and administrative treatment directed at a state or locality because of its lawful policies or political alignment.
• FED-003 owns federal funding, grant conditions, disaster or infrastructure aid, waivers, approvals, and similar benefits used to compel state or local policy change without a sufficiently clear congressional command.

• FED-004 owns takeover, anti-commandeering, preemption, and displacement of state functions when neither funding coercion nor selective enforcement is the principal mechanism.

• Political-status boundary. District of Columbia statehood and the choice of Puerto Rico's final political status are outside ARRP's scope as substantive political decisions. A-20 may still address a separable federalism defect involving coercion, displacement of local functions, emergency or National Guard control, selective enforcement, grant conditions, or waiver authority when the remedy operates independently of any statehood or final-status choice.

Notes

FED-002 and FED-003 are active candidates after consolidation and initial source development. FED-004 remains an unresolved candidate. Vehicle selection remains pending.