By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective
Less than a year into his second term, Donald Trump has launched an illegal and (as now) unfeasible mass deportation campaign—one that is tearing apart families, destabilize communities, and provoke mass resistance across the country.
He’s already begun deploying military force to enforce it.
The California National Guard has been deputized. Several Democrat-controlled cities are under threat of military occupation. And Trump’s administration is moving quickly to consolidate control over federal spending—using public money to reward allies, punish opposition, and fund his growing network of coercive agencies.
We think he’s overplayed his hand.
Authoritarian rule depends on fear, but fear alone can’t stabilize a society. To function, authoritarianism needs infrastructure. It needs jobs, logistics, paperwork, coordination. It needs people to show up and participate—to carry out orders, to staff the programs, to help make the unthinkable look routine.
Trump is relying on a kind of fiscal austerity—a politics of negative space—to suppress the alternatives and starve local capacity. But this strategy is weak and vulnerable. His agenda only works if there’s nothing else on offer.
Blue Bonds are the counter-offer.
Blue Bonds are routine municipal bonds, paired with a bold, public campaign to provision care, public employment, and reconstruction directly without waiting for permission from Washington. Jobs that communities want. Projects that rebuild trust. Wages that sustain families. A future in which people want to participate.
Instead of asking if these bonds are “creditworthy,” we flip the script. We demand that the Federal Reserve receive them—just like it already receives Treasury bonds and backs coercive public infrastructure without blinking.
This is not a financial trick. It’s a political strategy.
Blue Bonds make visible what austerity tries to hide: we already have the people, the projects, and the know-how to build a better world. What we lack is federal recognition and support. By demanding that recognition—not as a favor, but as a public right—we expose just how hollow Trump’s grip on power really is.
Authoritarians rule through fear, but they can’t govern that way forever. You don’t build loyalty or legitimacy by threatening people. You build it by showing up with care, with resources, and with good public work.
Blue Bonds do that—and they do it in a way that no speech or protest alone can.
Leaders in California such as Governor Gavin Newsom and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas have recently floated the idea of withholding tens of billions in annual federal tax dollars as a means of resisting Trump’s executive tyranny and austerity. We affirm the impulse to vociferously politicize state money. Democrat-controlled states should be thinking big.
A California-led tax revolt, however, is a misguided half-measure. The Federal government hardly needs California’s tax dollars in order to spend and legal and operational realities would very likely obstruct such an action. Ultimately, California ought to utilize Blue Bonds to create a legal and genuinely productive circuit of credit in order take care of its communities and environs.
In the face of mass deportation, military overreach, and illegal fiscal retaliation against cities and states, Blue Bonds offer a peaceful, legal way to shift the balance of power. They don’t fight authoritarianism on its terms. They show that the emperor has no clothes—that authoritarians cannot actually sustain the work of public life without consent, participation, and public provision.
We are in a test of coordination. Trump is betting that he can consolidate power by cutting off air to everyone else.
Let’s prove him wrong. Let’s fund jobs, not jails. Let’s rebuild communities, not tear them apart. Let’s issue Blue Bonds to save the union once more.
Let’s make democratic public life irresistible.
