In 2014, years before he became the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida, Andrew Gillum was targeted by two gun-rights organizations, Florida Carry and the Second Amendment Foundation, which threatened to remove him from his post as Tallahassee city commissioner over a pair of local regulations prohibiting residents from shooting firearms in public parks. Despite the fact that these regulations, which were passed in 1957 and 1988, were no longer being enforced, the lobbyists argued that they violated a 2011 state law barring local governments from passing their own gun regulation ordinances. With the full weight of the National Rifle Association behind them, the gun groups sued the city of Tallahassee.

Facing personal fines of $5,000 and damages of up to $100,000 in addition to the threats to remove him from office—all for not officially removing the defunct laws from the books—Gillum defended his city in court. He did so without even the support of Tallahassee’s legal team, which was prevented by the same 2011 state law from supporting local legislators in such cases. In the midst of the lawsuit, he defined the stakes of the legal battle as a bid by red state governments to overturn the democratic will of blue cities: “It’s … about how these special interests and corporations, after getting their way with state government, are trying to intimidate and bully local communities by filing damaging lawsuits against officials like me.”

Gun control is just one of many areas where Gillum confronted intimidation tactics, first as city commissioner and then as mayor of Tallahassee. In Florida, cities are preempted by the state from raising their minimum wage, enacting paid sick days, restricting smoking in public areas, regulating the nutritional value of restaurant food, establishing public broadband networks, or regulating Uber and Airbnb. Ultimately, the court ruled in Tallahassee’s favor, but it left the firearms preemption law intact.

Tallahassee is hardly alone. Across the country, the past few years have witnessed a spike in state preemption of local authority—every state except one has at least one such law on the books and nearly three-quarters of states have three or more. In the past year alone, 19 new preemption laws were passed in different states. The effort has been quiet, but nonetheless coordinated and precise: In many states, particularly conservative ones, preemption law has rendered left-leaning local policy-making largely impotent. It has revealed yet another way Republicans have paralyzed government, while underscoring the need for progressives to win back not just Congress, but statehouses across the country.

For most of American history, preemption law was used differently. “Preemption was about aligning state and local law—making sure there were no inconsistencies,” says Kim Haddow, director of the Local Solutions Support Center, a national hub working to counter preemption. “It wasn’t used very often, and it was used by both Democrats and Republicans without much disparity.”