Red-state rot: How GOP governors are handing power to the left



At first glance, outsiders might expect North Dakota to have already passed both school choice and a ban on pornography in public libraries. Republicans hold overwhelming majorities — 42-5 in the Senate and 83-11 in the House — and every statewide elected official is a Republican. Yet, Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong’s twin vetoes of both bills have forced conservatives to wait another two years to achieve these basic red-state goals. Warnings about Armstrong’s weakness came early and often.

SB 2307 could not be simpler. “A public library or a school district may not maintain in an area easily accessible to minors explicit sexual material,” the final amended text reads. Any sane person should support this standard. The definition of “explicit sexual material” mirrors language already used in other areas of law. The bill does not even ban the books outright — it merely restricts children’s access to sexually explicit material in publicly funded libraries.

Electing more governors like Kelly Armstrong will leave conservatives with nowhere to run.

Without enforcement, any law becomes meaningless. SB 2307 addresses this by requiring local prosecutors to investigate violations. Schools and libraries found out of compliance risk losing state funding.

Despite the bill’s straightforward intent, it barely passed — just 27-20 in the Senate and 49-45 in the House — with more than a third of Republicans joining Democrats to oppose it. Last week, to the shock of party officials, Armstrong vetoed the bill.

“I don’t pretend to know what the next literary masterpiece is going to be,” Armstrong wrote in his veto message. “But I know that I want it available in a library.” In parroting tired liberal straw-man talking points, Armstrong claimed he agreed with the concerns but dismissed the bill as a “misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship.”

According to Armstrong, limiting children’s access to sexually explicit material in taxpayer-funded libraries now qualifies as “censorship.”

The rest of Armstrong’s veto message trots out the usual excuses — warnings about frivolous lawsuits, handwringing over enforcement logistics, and complaints about oversight costs. But his main point could not be clearer: Armstrong opposes any effort to shield children from sexual content in public institutions.

Bought out by teachers’ unions

What can parents do when public schools flood classrooms with pornography? Send their kids to private school, of course. Unfortunately, Armstrong worked to block that option, too.

House Bill 1540 would have established Education Savings Accounts for private school students, giving them a chance to compete with just a fraction of the money state and federal governments pour into the public system. The bill passed the House 49-43 and the Senate 27-20 — the same narrow margins as the library porn bill.

In his veto message last week, Armstrong whined that public school students pay taxes, too, and griped that HB 1540 offered them nothing. Instead, he threw his support behind Senate Bill 2400, which turns school choice into another welfare program for the public education establishment. Most of the money under SB 2400 would flow straight to parents whose children already attend public schools.

But why would public school students need education savings accounts when their tuition already costs nothing? The entire school choice movement rests on a simple truth: Government pours massive sums into public education, and families need just a fraction of that money diverted to private options to have a real choice. In North Dakota, the average combined state and federal cost of public education hits about $13,778 per K-12 student. Yet under HB 1540, the proposed funding for education savings accounts ranged from only $1,100 to $4,000, depending on household income — all of it aimed at private school students.

The funding imbalance also explains the shortage of private schools across much of North Dakota. Armstrong cited the lack of private schools outside major cities as justification for pouring even more money into public schools. But with fairer funding, more private schools would emerge. In a duplicitous statement, Armstrong claimed he “strongly supports expanding school choice.” Yet, real expansion demands closing the funding gap — something Armstrong clearly opposes. His true allegiance lies with the teachers’ unions, not with parents seeking alternatives.

A pattern of reckless endorsements

The Senate bill Armstrong promoted also stuffs extra money into school lunch programs and ropes homeschooling parents into the scheme — despite the fact that North Dakota homeschoolers explicitly rejected involvement.

Conservatives had plenty of warning. Armstrong served in the leadership of the RINO Main Street Partnership during his time in Congress. Although North Dakota boasts a growing conservative bench, Trump’s premature endorsement last spring handed Armstrong the governorship in one reckless move.

If Trump keeps up his reckless endorsement habits, every deep-red state will soon struggle to pass even the most basic conservative priorities. Once Trump leaves office, Democrats won’t just revive Biden-era policies — they will escalate.

Deep-red states like North Dakota, immune from political swings in general elections, must become our last strongholds of freedom. Electing more governors like Kelly Armstrong will strip away that sanctuary and leave conservatives with nowhere to run.

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Kansas Republicans Plan Veto Override To Protect Adopting Families From Religious Discrimination

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-08-at-8.33.17 AM-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-08-at-8.33.17%5Cu202fAM-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson promised that Kelly's 'veto cannot stand.'

Red state, blue ballot: Dems use direct democracy to flip states



With 64-6 and 32-3 majorities in the South Dakota House and Senate, Republicans alone have the power to advance or block their agenda. Yet, Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden’s veto of a key initiative petition reform bill hands Democrats an opening to continue pushing their agenda through the state’s highly manipulated ballot initiative process.

In the Mount Rushmore State, the Democratic Party is slightly less popular than herpes, which forces progressives to rely on massive outside funding to place their proposals directly on the ballot. Although the electorate leans conservative, ballot measures are often complex and confusing — one reason the nation’s founders rejected direct democracy in favor of a representative system.

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions.

This is especially true when it comes to constitutional amendments. At the federal level, amending the Constitution requires approval from two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Yet at the state level, well-funded left-wing groups are trying to change constitutions with a simple 51% majority and carefully crafted ballot language — turning red states blue, one vote at a time.

A commonsense safeguard

Last year, liberal groups gathered enough signatures to place several controversial proposals on the South Dakota ballot: codifying abortion as a right, legalizing marijuana, and eliminating partisan primaries. Voters rejected all three, but these efforts reflect a growing trend. In other red states, similar campaigns have succeeded, using direct democracy to bypass conservative legislatures. Why continue to leave this pathway open — allowing progressives to rewrite the state’s constitution through tactics they could never achieve in the Capitol?

House Bill 1169 offered a commonsense safeguard. The bill would have required petition circulators to gather signatures from all 35 state Senate districts, totaling at least 5% of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. This district-level requirement would have supplemented the existing statewide threshold of 10%, already mandated by the state constitution.

Across the country, progressive groups are steering major policy questions directly to the ballot, often collecting most of their signatures from the most liberal population centers. In South Dakota, that means relying on Sioux Falls and Rapid City, rather than seeking broad statewide support.

“This bill would have finally given people in small towns and rural counties a voice in the petition process to amend our constitution,” House Speaker Jon Hansen (R) lamented after the governor’s veto. “If you live in a small, rural community, chances are you’ve never been approached by a petition circulator. That’s because most proposed constitutional amendments are placed on the ballot by paid circulators in Sioux Falls and Rapid City — without input from smaller communities. If you live in a small town, you rarely get a say in what amendments reach the ballot.”

The measure passed the House by a wide margin along party lines and cleared the Senate by a narrower 19-15 vote. Rhoden vetoed the bill earlier this week.

Absurd excuses

In his veto message, the governor hid behind concerns that the bill would not survive legal challenges. He suggested he supported the idea in principle but believed the measure would ultimately backfire — arguing it could empower, rather than restrain, well-funded special interests.

“The additional burden of collecting signatures from each of the 35 senatorial districts, each on a separate petition sheet, risks creating a system where only those with substantial financial resources can effectively undertake a statewide petition drive,” Rhoden wrote. “This undermines the bill's intent by putting South Dakotans at a disadvantage to dark money out-of-state groups.”

The argument is absurd. In a hypothetical scenario where rural districts lean as liberal as urban areas, Rhoden’s claim — that a uniform signature threshold across all districts would burden grassroots groups more than big-money interests — might hold water. In reality, South Dakota’s rural districts remain largely immune to left-wing campaigns. Passing HB 1169 would likely halt nearly all liberal petition efforts in the state.

That’s precisely why former state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, a Democrat from Sioux Falls, said he planned to launch a referendum to repeal the bill. “It will effectively end the constitutional amendment process initiated by citizens in South Dakota,” he warned.

That’s the point. Why would a Republican governor want to give the left a back door to influence state policy?

The idea that the bill would hinder conservative petitions doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, either. If a proposal has genuine conservative support, it should have no trouble passing through the Republican-controlled legislature. Conservatives only turn to the initiative process when liberal Republicans like Rhoden turn a supermajority trifecta into a uniparty circus.

Letting the left win

It’s astonishing how, across red states, only the Freedom Caucus seems willing to stop the left from using ballot initiatives to shift policy in purple and blue directions — just as it did in Alaska. In Missouri, GOP leadership has repeatedly dismissed Freedom Caucus efforts to rein in initiative petitions, even after the left used that very process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session earlier this year to address widespread petition fraud. But legislative leaders ignored his request and have been slow-walking reform legislation during the regular session.

This reluctance among Republican leaders to limit ballot initiatives reveals a troubling truth: Many of them quietly support certain left-wing goals but don’t want their fingerprints on the results. They’re fine with legalizing recreational marijuana, weary of the abortion fight, and unwilling to oppose Medicaid expansion.

By allowing Democrats to exploit the initiative process, these Republicans effectively outsource controversial policy changes to the ballot box — letting the left win while they avoid tough votes.

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The 4-letter word Trump must learn to love



It’s a four-letter word. It’s so powerful that our Founders had to weaken its authority from the original design, yet it remains rarely challenged. It’s the president’s most powerful leverage tool: the veto. If Trump wants to succeed in shrinking government where he failed in his first term, he must make this pen his constant companion — and let everyone in Congress know he’s ready to use it.

While a president doesn’t pass legislation or craft the actual budget signed into law, he controls all must-pass legislation by wielding the veto. He can block any budget or program reauthorization bill that lacks spending cuts and structural reforms. Since Reagan left office, only seven presidential vetoes have been successfully overridden. It’s rare for a critical number of a president’s own party — especially if they hold the majority — to defy their leader. That’s where Trump’s leverage lies and why the veto pen matters more than any Cabinet position.

Trump can simply make it clear that any reauthorization or appropriation bill lacking sufficient spending cuts and reforms will be vetoed.

Trump’s veto pen saw little action during his first administration, contributing to runaway spending. In fact, he used his veto pen less frequently than any president in the past 100 years. None of his 10 vetoes came in his first two years, when Republicans controlled Congress. This points to the problem and offers a framework for a more effective term.

The history behind the veto

If we had asked the framers of the Constitution, they would likely have admitted that their master plan might unravel for various reasons. However, they probably didn’t foresee the presidential veto pen becoming a weak tool for achieving Madison’s goal of “ambition ... made to counteract ambition,” meant to balance Congress' strong power.

Before proposing the veto override balance, the Founders worried that giving the president an absolute veto could shift too much power to the executive branch. During the June 4, 1787, debate, James Wilson and Alexander Hamilton proposed a veto power, but Benjamin Franklin argued that governors with veto power often used it for extortion. “No good law whatever could be passed without a private bargain with him,” Franklin complained. Roger Sherman also warned against “enabling any one man to stop the will of the whole,” doubting that “any one man could be found so far above all the rest in wisdom.”

The Convention debated the need for a veto override at length. Initially, framers passed a motion to set the override threshold at three-fourths of both houses of Congress. However, after Roger Sherman, Charles Pinckney, Hugh Williamson, and Elbridge Gerry raised concerns that this high threshold could grant too much power to the president and a small number of allies, the delegates agreed on a two-thirds threshold. They also rejected Madison’s proposal for a “council of revision,” which would have placed the veto in the hands of a joint council of the president and Supreme Court justices, choosing instead to vest this power solely in the president.

The Founders clearly saw the presidential veto as a potent tool, and many feared its abuse. They never anticipated that a president might be reluctant to use it.

Trump’s mandate — and leverage

Let’s be honest: Getting Trump’s priorities through the legislative process will be tedious without leveraging must-pass bills against a veto threat. Republicans will hold a slim three-seat majority in the House, built largely on liberal Republicans from California and New York.

Transformational policies, such as reducing legal immigration, downsizing government programs, overturning the vaccine liability shield, and ending birthright citizenship, would struggle to pass the House. Each targeted program has a constituency of Republicans likely to join Democrats in opposing cuts.

And that’s before facing the Senate, which is filled with RINOs who make House Republicans look like the Founding Fathers. Even on issues that unite Republicans, they’ll fall far short of the 60 votes needed to break a Democratic filibuster.

This is where “must-pass” bills come in. There will be a budget bill in the spring to complete this year’s appropriations and another next fall for fiscal year 2025. A debt ceiling bill will likely come up in late spring. The annual budget reconciliation bill, which can bypass the filibuster for budgetary items, offers a major opportunity. Additionally, an array of reauthorization bills will expire during Trump’s term.

Trump can simply make it clear that any reauthorization or appropriation bill lacking sufficient spending cuts and reforms will be vetoed. That leverage should be wielded and communicated early in the process. During the June 4, 1787, debate over the president’s check on Congress, James Wilson predicted the veto’s power would ensure it was “seldom” used, not because of its weakness but because Congress would avoid passing laws members knew the president would veto.

Benjamin Franklin disdained the veto power, seeing it as a form of extortion. Nevertheless, that’s the power a president holds. If Trump wields the veto pen, the success or failure of his two terms may hinge on this four-letter word that the Founders, with much trepidation, vested in one man.

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'A slap in the face': Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoes bill that would allow police to arrest illegal aliens



Arizona is beleaguered by illegal aliens and is now home to the number-one national hot spot for illegal border crossings. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data indicates migrant encounters in the Tucson sector were up 182.4% in the first four months of fiscal year 2024 over the same period last year, dwarfing the counts of other areas along the southern border.

Keen to tackle this problem, Republicans in the Arizona legislature passed Arizona Border Invasion Act, SB 1231, last month. The bill, greatly similar to the one ratified by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in December and recently permitted by a federal appeals court to go into effect, would make illegal border crossing a state crime and empower state and local police to arrest foreign nationals who steal into the Grand Canyon State.

By way of veto, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs killed this effort to clamp down on illegal immigration on Monday.

"This bill does not secure our border, will be harmful for communities and businesses in our state, and burdensome for law enforcement personnel and the state judicial system," Hobbs wrote in a letter to Senate President Warren Petersen. "Further, this bill presents significant constitutional concerns and would be certain to mire the State in costly and protracted litigation."

State Sen. Janae Shamp (R), the bill's sponsor, blasted Hobbs over her veto, saying, "Democrats are choosing to live in an alternate reality that ignores the facts. The facts are that illegal immigrants are crossing the border at a rate our state and our country cannot sustain. The facts are that border-related crimes are at an all-time high in our communities and are no longer safe."

"Our governor proudly vetoed the Arizona Border Invasion Act that would have given our law enforcement the tools to keep citizens like Laken [Riley] safe and alive," continued Shamp.

Contrary to Hobbs' suggestion that SB 1231 would have burdened law enforcement, Shamp underscored that the Arizona Sheriff’s Association "unanimously supported this bill."

"The legislature did its job to protect our citizens but Governor Hobbs failed to do hers. This veto is a slap in the face to our law enforcement, to victims of border-related crimes, and everyone else who will inevitably feel the wrath of this border invasion in one way or another," added Shamp.

Republican state Rep. Steve Montenegro, who sponsored a mirror bill of the legislation, suggested that Hobbs had turned her back on Arizonans and demonstrated with her veto that she's "siding w/Washington DC instead of Arizona families."

Hobbs' veto was alternatively celebrated by leftist and pro-migrant groups.

The activist group Living United for Change in Arizona called the legislature's February passage of the bill "undemocratic," then claimed it was "thrilled" over Hobbs' unilateral action.

"Today we thank Governor Hobbs for striking a major blow to Arizona Republicans' attempt to bring in a new era of anti-immigrant hate and legalized racial profiling to our state," LUCHA executive director Alejandra Gomez said in a statement. "Today is a reflection of the power of democracy and the power of people when they come together to fight against racism, hate, and just plain bad policy."

Under SB 1231, illegal entry would have been classified as a class 1 misdemeanor. If the illegal alien was previously convicted of illegal entry, they would be charged under the vetoed bill as a class 6 felony. The bill would have simplified matters for courts to send foreign nationals packing.

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