Woodrow Wilson, in his pre-presidential role as a political scientist and professor, observed that, in the United States, Washington does not govern local communities. Rather, “they govern themselves.” Historically, local municipalities and school boards have raised and spent funds procured through local taxes in response to the needs and preferences of local voters. In a true Tocquevillian sense, the empowerment of American localities has been intrinsically more participative, from funding infrastructure to school boards to zoning changes. Democrats are now set on changing the balance of power between Pennsylvania Avenue and Main Street through legislation and regulation. In recent years, not only has the size of the federal government increased, but its reach is now extending into municipalities and other local spheres to influence their activity. Federal assistance to cities and states has traditionally helped fulfill their core functions, but Democrats today are going further. They are starting to use federal infrastructure and community development funds as levers to change local regulations deemed flawed and discriminatory. These include policies aimed at solving housing shortage problems and racial segregation. While one can agree with some of the goals of such initiatives, there is still grave reason for concern about the strings being attached to these federal grants. One can think of the idea of these new-era “contingent” grants as a sort of “disparate impact-based approach” to federal grant-making, premised on the idea that select local policies...