Trump Has Found a New Part of the Constitution to Abuse

New Republic -  It’s been a big year for the supremacy clause. The important but rarely newsworthy constitutional provision has found itself at the center of multiple major legal battles. In recent months, the Trump administration has leaned heavily on the clause to make extraordinary—and often dubious—claims about its own powers.

 The clause declares that the Constitution, as well as the federal laws “made in pursuance thereof” and treaties signed under it, “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” It further states that “judges in every state shall be bound thereby.” In other words, the supremacy clause does what its name suggests: It establishes that the Constitution is supreme over state legislatures and state courts, as is Congress when acting within its own spheres of authority.

 The Trump administration has taken a much more aggressive view of the clause, wielding it as a tool to bludgeon Democratic-led state governments into compliance with its own policy agenda or, more accurately, self-serving desires. Naturally, this is not how the Constitution is meant to operate. There are also signs that the administration’s overreach could backfire.

 The clause comes up most often in cases involving federal preemption. In short, when Congress enacts a constitutionally valid law, it narrows the states’ ability to regulate the same thing. A good example is environmental protection. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act limit states’ abilities to regulate some environmental issues while explicitly carving out other cases on which states can act. The Supreme Court has already heard a preemption case about climate litigation this term.