TN AG Skrmetti Speaks on Federalism for Constitution Day
Posted Sep 18, 2025
Last night, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti spoke to an overflow crowd of students and community members for Union's annual Constitution Day event. His topic was "The American Constitution and the Continuing Role of States." For the event, Dr. Sean Evans interview Skrmetti to get his take on several aspects of federalism.
Skrmetti started by answering questions about the Founder's views of federalism. He briefly spoke on the differences between the Federalist who favored a stronger national government and the Anti-Federalist who favored stronger states. Next, he discussed the constitutional basis for federalism. He spoke of how the Supremacy Clause meant that the federal government would be supreme and that the Constitution saw the federal government as one of enumerated powers. All other powers would be reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment.
However, federal power grew due to the Necessary and Proper Clause which expanded federal power beyond its strictly enumerated powers and the Commerce Clause as commerce became more interstate, rather than intrastate, as industrialization started. He talked about how Wickard v Filburn's (1942) aggregation principle basically meant that anything indirectly related to commerce was subject to Congressional regulation and removed a lot of power from states. The Fourteenth Amendment also authorized Congress to directly regulate states to protect civil rights, which increased its power. The Supreme Court also used the Fourteenth Amendment to slowly incorporate the Bill of Rights against the states, which led to more uniform rights across the nation.
He also spoke about how polarization is affecting federalism today. He said that all officials, national, state, and local, now run on national issues, which means there is less variation in states. Red states govern one way and blue sttes govern another. He also talked about how members of Congress are basically cheerleaders for their party and do whatever their president wants. Thus, they are not an effective check on the president. Moreover, many do not even see their job as legislation, but simply supporting their president or opposing the other party's president.
Dr. Evans then asked him about his time suing the Biden Administration and whether he had any migsgivings about Trump v CASA (2025) which limited federal courts from issuing injunctions against the federal government. he claimed that the Republican suits against Biden were different from Democratic suits against Trump. He said the the suits he and other Republican Attorney Generals filed dealt with violations of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) as Biden made law without Congressional authorization. He claimed that the Democrat AG suits against Trump are interfering with executive power, which makes it hard for government to do anything. This claim of executive power is controversial and depends on whether one accepts the unitary theory of the executive.
Dr. Evans' last question dealt with state interactions with cities and counties. Many scholars write about the red states, blue cities or blue states, red counties problem where the states takes away the discretion of cities and counties to have different policies from the state. He said that states create cities and counties and that they do not have the flexibility in the federal system that states are supposed to have.
Skrmetti then answered questions from the audience on various topics. When one student asked about how we can return to the Founder's understanding of federalism, Skrmetti said it starts with civics education so citizens will push federal officials to return to that system. Dr. Evans then asked if he thought students should take an American Government class. When he said yes, Dr. Evans plugged his Politics and Government class for the Spring semester. Skrmetti said he was glad he could endorse the class to laughter. He also said all colleges should require a class in American goverment before students graduate. His last question referred to the impending use of the national guard in Memphis. He said he could not really answer that question because they are still talking with the federal government about how federal and state forces will interact.