Between 2017 and 2020, the Mississippi Department of Human Services squandered nearly a quarter of its federal block grant under the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program on kickbacks, phantom services, and vanity projects for retired football players. In the summer of 2021, twenty-six states — all Republican-led — cut short their participation in the federal programs that expanded unemployment insurance in response to the pandemic; five of those states then extended benefits to workers who were fired or quit because they refused to abide by a workplace vaccine mandate. Earlier this fall, governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas made headlines by shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and to the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.

The common thread running through these episodes (aside from the sleaze and cruelty) is the peculiar logic of contemporary US federalism. State governments, especially those under GOP control, are actively legislating against the material and expressed interests of their residents. They use and abuse their discretion under “shared” programs like TANF to punish the poor and line their own pockets. They refuse federal dollars (extended unemployment, Medicaid expansion, disaster relief) for no better reason than to make a thin political point. And they squander state resources on political grandstanding for national audiences and national donors.

They have become, as Jacob Grumbach’s brilliant new book puts it, “laboratories against democracy.”