"Do you think the federal government in the United States is taking away the freedoms and rights of the states?

"Why do you think the US federal government exerts such strong control over state governments?"

States do not have rights. Only persons have rights, and their agreements, which is what governments and institutions of all kinds are, cannot have rights nor authority other than those of the persons in agreement. In the contest between governments for power, at every scale, from the interactions of road pirates extorting sovereign persons, to war, it is not a removal of rights institutions cannot have, and sovereigns cannot lose, but oppression of free people by criminal gangs with force. Each sovereign person governs themselves with absolute and sole authority at all times. All of us more or less respect that same sovereignty of all other people, and are more or less lawful or criminal as a result. When a road pirate extorts the owner of a private conveyance by interfering in their right to travel, they do so by threatening the sovereign with deadly force, and it is that same threat the USG and Minnesota make, the first demanding to inflict oppressive violence on the populace of Minnesota, and the latter agreement of the populace of Minnesota to defend themselves from that violence.

Bigger gangs oppress smaller gangs, which is why gangs exist, because the individual sovereign is the smallest gang of all and cannot defend themselves from almost every gang of thugs intent on extorting them. Because criminals can corrupt institutions that can then extort individuals by force, governments progressively fail to serve the purpose sovereigns employ their mutual agreement to achieve, and become the worst threat of violence sovereigns face. Inevitably these agreements become so corrupted that threat can no longer be tolerated. Empires collapse, and peoples suffer outbursts of horrific violence as gangs of criminals squabble over wealth and power. Sir John Glubb showed that empires have a lifespan of ~250 years, and is being proved right again as the United States collapses into violence, financial fraud, and execrable corruption across every scale and it's geographical extent, just at it's 250th year of existence. Both Trump and Walz typify that corruption and fraud degrading the governments they rule, the institutions they corrupt, and desecrate the sovereignty of the populations they oppress.

The corruption of Walz has so degraded the government of Minnesota - not alone, but as the presently most powerful corruption in a long accumulation of corruption since that institution emerged - that the even more corrupt Trump of the even larger criminal gang has opportunity to exploit the weakness of Minnesota's government that corruption has caused. This is how empires succumb to their inevitable fate, as intraspecific squabbles hollow them from within and the criminals without seize the opportunity to plunder and pillage the wealth of the hapless populations bereft of their mutual defense their governments were intended to avail them, because their governments have been corrupted by criminals to plunder them instead. Only communities that endeavor to defend themselves from existential hazards at every hand, domestic and foreign, might survive, while the rest, incompetent to surmount their exigency, will die or be enslaved as captive plunder of the most violent gang victorious over it's competitors.

This is why I strive to gain productive capacity and the goodwill of my community, as financial assets but become bait to attract gangs of thugs to plunder what I cannot defend alone, but the goodwill of a community I strengthen with goods and services will defend me if it can defend itself. The serial plundering I have endured from wholly domestic criminals laid bare to me the reality this imperial collapse was imminent. Plundering me instead of defending me from plunder demonstrated it's terminal corruption that rendered it indefensible.

Thanks!