There’s tons of past examples.

Examples of uncooperative federalism abound. For example, red states and blue states alike objected to some of the PATRIOT Act’s expansive surveillance and detention rules as an attack on civil liberties. Rather than just complaining, they instructed their officials not to collect or share certain information with the feds unless the actions accorded with the states’ constitutions. Or consider marijuana. Federal dependence on the states is so pronounced in criminal law that Vanderbilt law professor Robert Mikos has argued that states can “nullify” federal marijuana law by withdrawing enforcement resources. Colorado and Washington have already done so. These changes may be entrenched enough that even Jeff Sessions’s marijuana-hostile Department of Justice won’t be able to change the equation. On other occasions, states have avoided a head-on confrontation with the feds and instead waged wars of attrition. For example, consider the response to the No Child Left Behind Act, perhaps the centerpiece of George W. Bush’s domestic policy. States accepted the federal grant money, but slow-walked reforms and often fudged testing standards. Their recalcitrance won out: The Bush Administration gave up and granted states so many waivers that they effectively gutted the federal program. The war has continued with the Obama Administration, which has struggled to rope states and localities into cooperating with its education agenda.