Collective State Action: Gaby Goldstein on fighting ICE, high drugs costs, and the electoral college

"We can use state power to move the country."

“The Supreme Court is a group of partisan hacks,” Gaby Goldstein tells me. She’s the founder and president of States Futures, co-founder of Sister District, a PhD in healthcare policy, regulatory attorney, and, as you can already tell, someone who knows how to get things done.

I wanted to talk to Gaby because she understands the structural problems at the heart of the myriad problems plaguing our country right now – and because she also understands potential solutions. I recently wrote about court reform as possible way forward. Another anecdote could be building power in the states, which is the focus of Gaby’s current work with State Futures.

Meaghan: What should we know about why state-level work is so important?

Gaby: States are in a moment of ascendancy in terms of their power over the issues that control our daily lives. Certainly, it’s hard to tear our eyes away from what this administration is doing, but the truth is that the state-level is where the rubber really hits the road on the issues on the policies that touch us every day.

Conservatives have known this for generations. They have invested generously in infrastructure to support candidates running for state office to incubate regressive ideas. Those ideas then metastasize across states and eventually move up to the national level.

Why are states ascending in terms of power right now? Two big reasons.

First, the federal government is disintegrating in front of our eyes when it comes to protective civil rights, regulatory standards and programs. Everything from clean drinking water standards to voting rights are being eviscerated. So, that makes states increasingly the venue where our rights are decided.

The other big reason is that the Supreme Court is a group of partisan hacks that makes decisions to further political outcomes that advantage the Republican Party and is completely unaligned with civil rights, with the protection of the environment, bodily autonomy rights for women and trans people, and more. The Supreme Court keeps turning these consequential issues back to the states. For example, the Dobbs decision turned whether you can have an abortion legally and safely back to states. So, the states are increasingly the venue where our rights have to be protected.

So, it’s more important than ever for us be organizing and mobilizing state legislators who share our values, who want to protect the environment, who want to protect bodily autonomy, and who want to expand civil rights, expand voting access, make it easier to vote. That’s what we’re doing at State Futures. We organize, we mobilize, we equip those policymakers, put them in community together, and help them collaborate both on policy and on creating visible solidarity against what is happening nationally.

Meaghan: Many Democrats are concerned about ICE. The federal government has a lot of discretion over immigration enforcement. What are some ways we can push back against ICE on the state and local level?

Gaby: We can push back. The world has been watching what’s happening at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where folks who’ve been detained by ICE and are being held at a for-profit facility held a hunger strike, a labor strike for weeks, to try to get visibility and improve the conditions at a facility. Last month, while visiting the facility U.S. Senator Andy Kim was pepper-sprayed.

This is an ICE facility operated by Geo Group, which is one of the biggest private prison companies in the United States. Hundreds of detainees participated in the strike, demanding ventilation and medical care.

From my perspective, what’s really important for folks to understand is that states have a lot of authority to regulate businesses and entities and facilities operating within the state. Every state has significant authority to regulate what is happening inside these ICE facilities. The good news is that some states are taking a lot of action.

State Futures recently released an issue brief outlining some of the creative, important bills that state legislatures are introducing and passing to address immigration detention facilities. We’re also tracking about 250 bills across the country in states across the country related to broader immigration and rule of law issues. Everyone can check out our tracker.

At least 12 states have banned 287 (g) agreements, which are formal agreements that delegate federal enforcement authority to state and local cops. Many more states have introduced those bills. States are also working to more closely regulate private detention facilities like Delaney Hall.

One very interesting idea proposed in New Jersey is that legislation could impose a 50% tax on the gross receipts of private immigrant detention facilities like Delaney Hall and redirect those proceeds to an immigrant protection fund for immigration services. Great idea.

States are also establishing rights and protections for people who are held at detention facilities, requiring meaningful language access, access to counsel, phone access. It’s also a really interesting and good strategy for states to think about is applying zoning land use health regulations to these detention facilities.

There are lots of ways to that states have to use their authority to stop these facilities from even being built or being built out, and then when they do exist, force more accountability and higher health and safety standards. They can give more authority to attorneys general and health departments and other state entities to inspect and conduct oversight. There are lots and lots of ways that states can and must use their authority to hold these facilities accountable. In general, there’s a lot of hope and inspiration to be had at the state level.

Meaghan: We all need hope right now. Can you talk more about any hopeful signs you see on the state level?

Gaby: One of the things that we are really excited about at State Futures is what I call collective state action. What if we applied the applied ideas about collective action at the state level? We can have groups of states come together and create a bigger firewall against what’s happening at the federal level than any individual state could have on its own.

I’ll just mention a couple of ways states can collaborate and pool resources that are very exciting. One is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Essentially this is an interstate compact. It’s an agreement among a group of states to all award their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the popular vote. And so, it’s designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationally is elected president, which, as we know, is not how the electoral college has worked out over several past elections, right? Many states have passed it. We’re inching closer to having enough states pass it that it would go into effect, but it’s an example of an interstate compact.

Another that I’m really a huge fan of is Array RX, which is a group purchasing arrangement for states to pool their vast purchasing power to drive down the cost of prescription drugs. It’s an incredibly successful program. It started in Washington State and Oregon. It’s still administered through those states’ health authorities. The state programs are able to negotiate much lower rates, and the savings for individual people in the program are pretty eyepopping. When Connecticut joined the average cost savings for people in Connecticut who enrolled, for free, was $200 a month per person. When states join together, they have more leveraging power.

The right has known for a very long time that state policy can shift national policy. One of the really important ways to do that is by having many states introduce and pass particular types of bills building the case state by state. Now, of course, the right is trying to do that in ways that we find abhorrent, by stripping away our rights and protections, and all the rest, but that’s another form of collective action, right? We can also use state power to move the country in a certain direction, toward equality, fairness, and hope.

You can hear more about Gaby’s work with State Futures here.