President Joe Biden is raising serious constitutional questions by dashing off polarizing, drastic executive orders and establishing political offices and oversight committees entirely beyond the authority granted to him. In doing so, he’s undermining the consent of the governed and the Constitution ’s separation of powers.

This imperial style of presidency isn’t new, nor is the trend of federal-level consolidation of power within vast, unaccountable regulatory and military agencies. What is new, however, at least to the contemporary political landscape, is that the states are exercising their power to push back.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have repeatedly curtailed the power of federal agencies and elevated the authority of both Congress and the states and the citizens they represent. In addition, ballot initiatives are springing up across the nation to address topics such as abortion, parental rights, school choice, crime , and election integrity. And the bold visions of several governors mean gubernatorial races bear greater significance.

State politics cannot be ignored any longer — not even by Biden.

This return of politics to the states is a return, in some ways, to the Founders’ original design. The top-heavy “ pen and phone ” model adopted by the Obama White House and reimplemented by Biden and his administration is precisely the sort of centralized politics the Founders sought to avoid.

In fact, the threat of consolidated power prompted James Madison to write one of the more moving and well-known passages from the Federalist Papers in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” Madison wrote , describing the importance of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches counteracting one another.

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [as the separation of powers] should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” he continued.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

In this letter, Madison was arguing for greater national unity — but he presupposed the states as the basic political entity. The states weren’t the vestigial organs of the federal government as they are today. They were sovereign and deeply hostile to a federal usurpation of power.

Madison also argued for national unity under a federal government by pointing out that the United States’s decentralized structure could, if stewarded correctly, serve to protect a federal union from itself. The Founding-era structure that divided power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, supported by a robust republic of states, was an impressive safeguard against tyranny.

There are several plausible explanations for why America has fallen into the very trap of which Madison warned. Even scholars who share political beliefs disagree on the historical particulars.

But the cost of the states having surrendered their sovereignty is obvious. Now, there are few means for citizens to oblige the government to control itself, and the result is a federal government that keeps taking more power for itself to rule the governed, even when such rule alienates children from their parents or citizens from their God-given rights.

But the American political experiment endures despite such abuse. We can still vote, and our votes still matter — and at the state level, they matter more now than they have in the recent past.

Abortion is on the ballot, of course. But so are parents’ rights, economic liberties, safety, self-governance, and more. We’re being offered a chance to participate in a model of politics that prioritizes the states and the consent of those within them.

This election cycle, we have a chance to make our voices heard on the matters that press most closely to our hearts and homes. This election cycle, we united states can oblige the government once again to control itself.

Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.