Spillover is empirically disproven AND disobedience sets a dangerous precedent that backfires.

That kind of state leverage allows for what Gerken and a colleague called uncooperative federalism, where “states use [their] regulatory power … to resist federal policy.” It’s an especially effective strategy in areas where the federal government lacks the ability to carry out policies itself, Gerken explained. With Obamacare, the federal government didn’t have the apparatus to run a fully federally funded system and needed the states to step in; not all cooperated. The Trump administration hasn’t always been able to enforce its immigration policy for the same reason: not enough actors to carry out the policy, and thus vulnerable to states that don’t cooperate.

For liberals, progressive federalism, as an idea, is a promising alternative to legislative setbacks at the national level. In the words of Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, cities can act as “urban labs” where programs that are “suffocated” in Congress “can be sent to grow.” While the Progressive Era of the early 20th century used the power of the federal government to enact social and economic reforms to lessen the negative effects of industrialization, today, progressive federalism takes advantage of decentralization and aims to use the power of state and local governments as tools against the Trump administration.

But using federalism as a model for legislative reform will require a much more serious, in-depth, and systematic endeavor to understand how differently states operate. Implementing real standardization would be impossible, but for scale and transferability purposes, states would need to present information in organized, uniform ways, so that those who aren’t as familiar with the governing and legislative process have a real shot at pushing for progressive reforms.

And even with the right infrastructure in place, pushing for more federalism can easily backfire. Federalism is an attractive idea when your party isn’t in power and you’re scrambling to figure out how not to see roll backs of legislation. As Harold Meyerson at the American Prospect pointed out, “the love of federalism is a sometime thing; its critics and champions switch places depending on who is in power at which level of government.”

But federalism itself is a long-term, nonpartisan endeavor. By pushing for more 10th Amendment rights in court, Gerken argues that opportunistic federalists looking for temporary political advantage may find they set a dangerous precedent that limits federal power in the long run.