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My main goal is to convince people that federalism, which most people associate with conservatism, doesn’t have a political valence. Progressives have long ignored the many democratic benefits associated with federalism and localism because they associate decentralization with racism and parochialism. They look to the national government to protect racial minorities and dissenters. But this is not your father’s federalism. Because minorities can rule at the local level, states and local governments have become sites for empowering racial minorities and dissenters, the very groups that progressives believe have the most to fear from decentralization.

If there is a barrier to Trump resurrecting the massive deportations of the Bush and Obama years, though, it lies in the independence of local law enforcement. To override them is certainly possible. But it would require a vast expansion in federal power that, under any other circumstances, would be anathema to small-government conservatives worried about Washington overreach and rejecting the judgment of local police. The self-proclaimed law-and-order candidate would have to act against the wishes of police chiefs. Trump couldn’t persuade voters in those places to support his candidacy. How much punishment is he willing to inflict on them to ensure they assist in an unprecedented eviction of the American populace?

It's not far-fetched to suggest there is a "deep state" in Washington. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower looked at the nexus of the Pentagon and arms manufacturers and coined the phrase the "military-industrial complex." Today's observers also point to the collusion of corporate interests and D.C. power brokers as the true guiding hand in American politics.

The Trump White House already seems to be at war with what it would say is the "deep state:" thousands of federal government bureaucrats faced with the awkward reality of working for a president who campaigned loudly against Washington officialdom and promised to "drain the swamp" when in power. This week, almost 1,000 American diplomats signed a dissent memo against Trump's executive order on immigration, prompting White House press secretary Sean Spicer to icily declare that "career bureaucrats" can "either get with the program or they can go." And Trump's public spat with Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee who sought to defy his immigration order, ended with him firing Yates in an angry, chilling memo that claimed she "betrayed the Department of Justice."

The court ruled in favor of the Dynamex drivers, agreeing that they had been misclassified as independent contractors and are, in fact, employees. The ruling also concluded that employers could only classify as independent contractors those workers who meet the conditions laid out in the "ABC standard" established in other states:(a) that the worker is free from control and direction over performance of the work, both under the contract and in fact; (b) that the work provided is outside the usual course of the business for which the work is performed; and (c) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business (hence the ABC standard).

While some of these workers may be independent contractors by choice, others, like the Dynamex drivers, were forced into the classification by employers looking to save money. The National Employment Law Project estimates that employers can reduce payroll and other taxes by up to 30 percent by re-classifying employees. State-level studies on the issue, meanwhile, have uncovered extremely high misclassification rates—a series of audits in Ohio found that 47 percent of workers were misclassified. (This misclassification, not surprisingly, costs federal, state, and local governments hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues.)