The American Reformation

The founders built the United States as a country of many governments, with power divided across the states, the cities, and the counties. They did it so that no single seat of power could control all of it at once. That design still works, and most people have never been shown how. A state can refuse to enforce a federal directive it judges unlawful. It can build its own institutions and public systems outside federal control. It can prosecute a federal official who breaks state law, and no presidential pardon can undo a state conviction. Cities, counties, prosecutors, and ordinary citizens each hold part of this authority, and it has deep precedent, used by Americans across the political spectrum in every era. This book compiles years of Christopher Armitage's work as a journalist and an academic into a single framework for how states and local governments can respond to authoritarian capture of the federal government. It identifies the tools, documents the precedent behind each one, and shows how separate acts of refusal, construction, and prosecution combine into a response that works. The result is not a revolution but a reformation: a return to what the country's founding documents and ideals set out to achieve. Progress, human rights, and a government of the people, by the people, for the people.