It's actually both. It's a representative democracy whose representatives are drafted from a group of states who give up some of their independence in exchange for a collective military and a central government that regulates trade across borders to the benefit of all of us.
The states still maintain their own military forces in the form of the National Guard, but in times of war these units can be activated by the federal government to support the US military. So they do maintain some sovereignty in the sense that they have their own military forces, but nowhere near to the extent that the federal government asserts sovereignty here.
You can't really call any state in the US "Sovereign" when the federal government has the power that it does. But also it's nice to be able to travel to Arkansas and not have to worry about your actions that are legal in Washington being used to prosecute you in Arkansas.
Those things you describe are norms not law. States are legally sovereign and will be testing the ability of the Federal government to drive their behavior.
The people who will be controlling the direction of the country will be empathizing the states over the people.
Regardless of the state of elections, we’ll have a deeply conservative or reactionary judiciary for a generation to come. Elections have consequences.
States are not "sovereign". We don't have the Articles of Confederation anymore. States do have certain powers, but not as many as even e.g. Canadian provinces have.
The states still maintain their own military forces in the form of the National Guard, but in times of war these units can be activated by the federal government to support the US military. So they do maintain some sovereignty in the sense that they have their own military forces, but nowhere near to the extent that the federal government asserts sovereignty here.
You can't really call any state in the US "Sovereign" when the federal government has the power that it does. But also it's nice to be able to travel to Arkansas and not have to worry about your actions that are legal in Washington being used to prosecute you in Arkansas.