Carpe Momentum: The Fight for Local Sovereignty in an Era of American Decline

As Washington exports deregulation and decay, communities across America are asserting their right to govern for life, safety, and a livable future.

Increasingly, the world refuses American products, not because of protectionism or tariffs, but because of quality. Many U.S. goods simply do not meet the higher health and safety standards of other nations. European Union law has banned the import and sale of chlorine-washed poultry since 1997 and hormone-treated beef since the late 1980s. South Korea maintains strict residue limits, rejecting U.S. beef from cattle over 30 months and imposing zero‑tolerance on certain veterinary drugs. EU rules prohibit the washing of “Class A” eggs to preserve the natural cuticle, which European regulators believe protects against contamination. Even high-profile consumer products like Tesla’s Cybertruck are deemed too unsafe for foreign roads. What passes muster in America is often deemed unacceptable elsewhere.

This isn’t just a trade issue, it’s a mirror. A reflection of how far the United States has fallen in its commitment to public safety, consumer protections, and regulatory integrity. And while Washington demands the world lower its standards to accommodate this decline, another movement is quietly taking root: communities standing up and saying no. Not in foreign capitals, but in local councils, Indigenous territories, and small-town assemblies. This is reclamation, rather than nationalism. A revival of the fundamental right to govern ourselves in defense of life, safety, and the public good.

Trump’s trade doctrine, cloaked in populist bluster, is not about lifting American workers. It’s about protecting American multinationals. The administration’s strategy is to strongarm trading partners into weakening their environmental, safety, and health protections so that substandard U.S. goods can flood foreign markets. Unsafe vehicles, chemically treated meat, and deregulated consumer goods that would never pass inspection in the EU or Japan are being marketed globally as symbols of “freedom.” But it’s not freedom, it’s rot.

Kevin Hassett, Trump’s economic mouthpiece, says it out loud. The U.S. wants mutual recognition agreements where if a product is legal in America, no matter how dangerous, it should be legal to sell abroad. The message is clear: rather than improve our standards, we will pressure you to lower yours. And if you resist? Tariffs. Trade wars. Smear campaigns.

What federal regulators routinely fail to do is set zero-tolerance limits for industrial harm. Instead of declaring certain activities off-limits when they pose clear threats to health or the environment, the U.S. regulatory system typically permits pollution, chemical exposure, and risk, so long as it remains below an approved threshold. These “ceilings of harm” are calibrated not to protect the public, but to accommodate industry. It’s a model built not on prevention, but on calculated damage, acceptable harm.

But the resistance isn’t only international. It’s local. Because Americans, too, are living under this agenda of deregulation and decline, and many are fighting back.

The federal government has become a conduit for corporate power, stripping communities of the ability to protect themselves. Preemption laws block cities from banning harmful pesticides. States override townships that reject oil and gas infrastructure. Corporate power prevents localities from labeling GMO food or requiring broadband neutrality. Even when communities act to safeguard public health, the higher authority steps in to say: “You can’t.”

But there is another tradition in American law—older than the commerce clause, deeper than the party system. The right of local self-government. As outlined in the peer-reviewed study A Phoenix from the Ashes, communities retain the constitutional power to expand rights. They cannot infringe on fundamental rights, such as the right to equal protection under the law, but they can protect and enlarge those rights within their jurisdiction. It's important to distinguish between fundamental rights that protect human dignity and equality, and legally constructed privileges like the Second Amendment, which can be reasonably regulated without violating constitutional principles.

The 10th Amendment reserves undelegated powers to the states, or the people. The 9th affirms that the enumeration of certain rights does not mean others do not exist. Taken together, these form the quiet scaffolding of a democratic rebellion.

1. Pass Local Bills of Rights Municipal charters and ordinances can codify rights to clean air and water, ecological protection, fair labor, digital privacy, and more. They can also assert community authority to enact reasonable gun safety regulations such as prohibiting firearms in public parks or near schools when state and federal governments fail to act. Likewise, local laws can recognize the right to shelter on public lands, affirming the dignity and survival of unhoused residents in defiance of hostile anti-homeless ordinances. These aren’t symbolic. They’re tools. They provide legal standing for residents to challenge state or federal actions that infringe on those rights.

2. Enact Corporate Accountability Laws
Communities can bar corporations from contributing to local elections, from monopolizing water and broadband systems, or from operating extractive industries that violate local environmental standards.

3. Declare Sanctuary for Humans and Nature
Local laws can protect undocumented immigrants by refusing cooperation with ICE. Others have declared rivers or forests to have legal personhood, blocking industrial projects that threaten their health. These approaches have survived legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Ecuador, and New Zealand.

4. Demilitarize Local Institutions
Towns can prohibit their police departments from participating in federal surveillance programs, refuse military-grade equipment transfers, and ban joint training exercises with federal agencies like DHS or DEA. This is both a Fourth Amendment issue and a moral one.

5. Defend Democratic Process
Communities can require publicly funded elections, mandate paper ballots for transparency, and use open-source voting software to build trust. Crucially, this does not mean rejecting mail-in voting, states like Oregon have proven that vote-by-mail systems can be secure, accessible, and highly successful. Civilian oversight boards with subpoena power can also investigate law enforcement abuses and ensure electoral accountability.

These laws work best when passed through direct democracy ballot initiatives, public assemblies, and home rule charters. The goal is not to secede from the union but to remind it what the union was meant to be: a federation of communities united by rights, not subordinated by force.

When Trump’s negotiators demand that foreign nations accept our lowest standards, they are exporting not goods—but governance philosophy. Deregulation as destiny. Authoritarianism wrapped in red, white, and blue. But if the federal government fails to safeguard life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, communities must reclaim the right to do so.

This is repair, not rebellion. It’s taking action locally when our federal representatives are not or will not. It is not resistance for the sake of defiance, but governance for the sake of survival.

We don’t have to eat poison because the FDA says it’s fine. We don’t have to be surveilled because the NSA finds it convenient. We don’t have to sell our rivers to Nestlé or welcome unsafe vehicles into our neighborhoods.

The Constitution begins with We the People. While Trump challenges the sovereignty of states like California, it is time we assert our own, at the local level, through self-government, higher standards, and moral clarity. The moment we remember that is the moment this empire of lowered expectations begins to fall.

And from the ashes, something better can rise.