What to Do When They Arrest Your Governor

The Trump administration has served grand jury subpoenas to six Minnesota offices, including those of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.¹ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche posted that he's focused on stopping Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey "by whatever means necessary" and called it "not a threat" but "a promise."² When asked whether his border czar should arrest Gavin Newsom, Trump said he would if he were Tom Homan.³ This is where we are.

So what happens if they actually do it? What happens if federal agents arrest Tim Walz and some Trump loyalist shows up in Saint Paul claiming to run Minnesota?

Here's what we can count on: you can't run Minnesota without Minnesotans.

The legal framework says state constitutional succession activates automatically and Peggy Flanagan becomes governor.⁴ But legal frameworks only matter if institutions enforce them, and the Supreme Court has this administration's back. We can't count on federal courts to save us. We can count on something more fundamental.

If they arrest Walz, they might try to install someone. Maybe a federal appointee, maybe a friendly state legislator willing to play along. That person would claim to be the legitimate governor. But Peggy Flanagan would already hold the office under the Minnesota Constitution's succession provisions.⁴ So Minnesota would have two people claiming to be governor, and every state employee would face a choice.

A governor is one person at the top of a pyramid built from tens of thousands of people who actually make the state work. Budget analysts move money. IT administrators control system access. Procurement officers process contracts. Facilities managers control building access. HR staff run payroll. These people took oaths to the state of Minnesota and its constitution, not to whoever the White House prefers.

Do they take orders from Peggy Flanagan, who holds office under the state constitution? Or do they take orders from whoever showed up with a federal escort and a piece of paper from the White House?

If they choose Flanagan, the federal appointee can hold press conferences, issue directives, sit in the governor's office. But directives that nobody follows are just words; an office with no functioning government behind it is just a room.

The president can't personally run Minnesota's Medicaid system or issue driver's licenses or maintain state highways. He needs the people who do those things to cooperate. If they don't, he has two options: replace all of them, which takes years and requires expertise he doesn't have, or give up.

This dynamic has played out before. Catalonia failed in 2017 because civil servants largely complied with Madrid's takeover.⁵ The regional government declared independence, but the people who processed paperwork and ran databases followed instructions from the central government, and the declaration became meaningless.⁵ Catalan leadership never called for civil disobedience; many pro-independence officials kept their positions by cooperating with Madrid.⁶ The lesson cuts both ways: compliance made the takeover work; non-compliance is what could have stopped it.

Trump can order Walz arrested. Who would stop him? He can claim legal authority to install a replacement, get the Supreme Court to bless the whole operation. What he cannot do is force ten thousand state employees to take orders from someone they don't recognize as their boss.

That's the leverage; courts help when they help, but non-cooperation is something no court ruling can take away.

This only works if people understand it before the crisis hits. If state employees know that Peggy Flanagan becomes their constitutional governor the moment Walz can't serve, they can make that choice clearly. If they're confused about who has authority, if they're scared, if they think cooperation is their only option, the moment passes.

So we talk about this openly. We make sure everyone knows their lieutenant governor's name and face. We make sure state employees understand that following state constitutional law is their job, not rebellion. We make sure the people who actually run state government understand that they have more power than they think, and that using it is as simple as following the chain of command they've always followed.

But non-cooperation is only the first layer. We need all three.

Uncooperative federalism means we don't help anything: state employees follow state leadership, state resources don't assist federal overreach. That's what we've been talking about.

Soft secession means we create amazing policy funded at the state level: universal healthcare, universal childcare, and replacements for SSI, funded through public banking, municipal broadband, public housing, public utilities, public grocery stores, and other non-tax revenue streams. States that build these programs make the federal government irrelevant and take power away from them.

Oppositional federalism means we pass laws that actively help us rein in a tyrannical federal government. Three pieces of model legislation, all based on existing or previously proposed law:

A Bribe is a Bribe Act

- State law that makes corruption a criminal offense with common-sense definitions

- Take money for official favors, whether you're a CEO or a U.S. Senator, and the state prosecutes you

- Federal corruption law is dead; the Supreme Court spent fifteen years gutting it, and taking money for favors is now mostly legal under federal statute

- Presidential pardons only reach federal crimes; state crimes exist in a completely separate system, and the founders built it that way; no one has ever undone it

- New York has used this exact power for a century through the Martin Act: exposed Madoff, extracted billions from Wall Street while federal regulators watched⁷

- The mechanisms exist and the precedent is established; this applies existing enforcement tools directly to corruption

- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UQMZ-uGU8citRIml1lYu_r_7ZYmurtc8/view?usp=sharing

State Fiscal Sovereignty Act

- A trigger law for election protection

- If the federal government crosses specific red lines in interfering with elections, member states order all employers to divert federal tax withholdings to a constitutional compliance escrow account

- Based on trigger law mechanisms used for Roe v. Wade and tax escrow legislation Republicans proposed under Obama

- The triggers are narrow and explicit: refusing to count legitimately certified electoral votes, counting illegitimate ones, an incumbent refusing to leave office, or federal agents seizing voting equipment and intimidating election officials

- These aren't policy disagreements; they're constitutional violations so blatant that even a Supreme Court decision blessing them wouldn't make compliance acceptable

- One state doing this gets crushed; ten states holding a third of federal revenue is a negotiation, not a lawsuit; the compact structure ensures no state acts alone

- The money isn't seized, it's held; the moment the federal government complies, the funds release

- The leverage exists; it's just never been organized

- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pv1P1l_k3f13yEpQuTH1iZdNFBsyLUVT/view?usp=sharing

Corporate Benefit Accountability Act

- We already means test food stamps and disability; if you have too much money, you don't qualify for public assistance; this applies the same principle to corporations

- If you have money for campaign contributions and PACs, you don't need our tax dollars; you're doing fine

- This reaches everyone because it conditions benefits, not incorporation; doesn't matter where you filed your paperwork

- Nobody is forced to do anything; decline the benefit and spend whatever you want; that's why the legal challenge fails: voluntary conditions on voluntary benefits

- Taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing corporate lobbyists with their hard-earned money; if a company is spending millions on political influence, that's their choice, but they can do it on their own dime

- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CN8jugl7WvRvTzjuvAiGC09pYnBbjYXB/view?usp=sharing

Most of us aren't state employees. Our job is to push our state and local governments to have the most productive legislative sessions in American history. Contact officials daily and rotate methods: email, phone, social media, letters, showing up. Schedule meetings with city and state reps to educate them on policy. Volunteer for candidates willing to fight back and tell them explicitly that if someone comes into the race ready to do better, we'll support them instead. Provide mutual aid in our communities and give people educational materials. Go door to door with information on good public policy and the local representatives' stances on it. Help people connect with ways to get involved.

We do this for years and we get to have a free and fair modern democracy. It will get uglier before it gets better, but building solidarity just won't happen quickly, so we have to acknowledge our situation and get after it.

I've put together free resources on all of this: trifolds on soft secession, model legislation, guides to contacting representatives. They're available at BuyMeACoffee.com/TheER. You can buy the Oppositional Federalism and Soft Secession booklets at TheExistentialistRepublic.com along with pro-democracy merch.

The Trump administration wants us to feel helpless. They want us to believe that federal power is unstoppable, that opposition is futile, that if they come for our governors we have no choice but to accept whoever they install.

They're wrong. They can take the governor. They can't take the government. Not unless we let them.

References

1. Associated Press. (2026, January 20). DOJ subpoenas Minnesota Gov. Walz and other officials in obstruction investigation. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/doj-subpoenas-minnesota-gov-walz-and-other-officials-in-obstruction-investigation

2. Blanche, T. [@DAGToddBlanche]. (2026, January 15). ICE operates in thousands of counties without incident [Post]. X. https://x.com/DAGToddBlanche/status/2011620198751597028

3. Doocy, P. (2025, June 9). Trump gives blunt response to Newsom daring Homan to arrest him: 'I would.' Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-gives-blunt-response-newsom-daring-homan-arrest-him-i-would

4. Minnesota Constitution, art. V, § 5; Minnesota Statutes § 4.06. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/constitution/ ; https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/2023/cite/4.06

5. UK House of Commons Library. (2018). Catalan independence (Research Briefing CBP-8976). https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8976/CBP-8976.pdf

6. Gonzalez, R. (2018, May 14). Effects of article 155 intervention in Catalonia: 259 fired, 7 in exile, 9 in prison. El Nacional. https://www.elnacional.cat/en/news/effects-article-155-intervention-catalonia_269739_102.html

7. Zacks, E. (2011). The Martin Act: Expanding the regulatory reach of the New York Attorney General. Brooklyn Law Review, 76(4), 1451-1488.

8. Bebchuk, L. A., & Hirst, S. (2019). The specter of the giant three. Boston University Law Review, 99, 721-741.