The governor who takes them on smartly and boldly would be the front runner for president in an instant. Ignore every ruling that can't be supported by the constitution, and dare them to do something about it.
>and dare them to do something about it.
Well, that depends. - The President can order the Texas National Guard to take the governor into custody and the Federal courts can handcuff the Texas legislature as well.
To stand up to that threat, the Governor must have high US Armed Forces officers & commanders - who are the officers in the Texas National Guard - willing to disregard their oaths to the Federal Officials & willfully disobey Federal orders.
In addition, he would have to have the near total willingness of all state and local police forces to resist federal officers with lethal force.
In short, what I am saying is that he must have the preconditions needed for armed secession in place and THAT is nearly impossible these days.
Of course it would not come to that - The state would back down just like George Wallace did in the face of National Guard troops in Alabama.
The only things that he could do when push comes to shove is play political capital.
Whatever happened to the Arizona governor? Never hear about her anymore.
Did they get to her?
Did she back down?
Is she being ignored?
This parallels my own view precisely.
It is long past time for the several states to quit knuckling under, subserviently, to the feds.
I can easily imagine the federal government's retaliating by cutting off Medicare and Social Security payments to the citizens of those states that do not meekly comply with tyrranical regulations.
The obvious rejoinder to that would be for those states to make it a felony for any employer to withhold Medicare or Social Security taxes--and perhaps even Federal Withholding taxes also--from employees' paychecks.
The feds would find it exceedingly difficult to get along normally, amid such wide-scale defiance...