Dixie Can Be Tricksy

Across the United States of America, progressivists are now huddled together, conspiring to overthrow the national government… at least in their respective states. Within encrypted chat groups accessed by invitation only, a growing confederation of blue-state Democrats are laying the groundwork for what they call “soft secession.”

A month after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election of 2024, officials in Democrat-majority states began to confer with one another about doomsday scenarios in which President Trump – as a lame duck with nothing to lose and an axe to grind over what he views as 2020’s “rigged” election – would overstep the Constitution to impose his will on the country. Governors and attorneys general of these states therefore discussed ways to weaponize state policy and jurisprudence in order to thwart the national government and assert state sovereignty. Though these officials’ identities are yet undisclosed, we can fairly guess the cabal’s members, which we will call the Blue Crew, whose existence blogger Chris Armitage brought to public attention through Substack on August 18th, 2025.

Counselor Cheyenne Hunt explains the Blue Crew’s rationale for its conspiracy against the national government as a matter of economics. Some states remit more taxes to the national government than they receive in benefits, whilst other states on net receive more benefits than they remit in taxes. It so happens that many of these net “giver” states are blue, and net “taker” states are red. If these blue giver states were to withhold their tax remissions, or obstructively to delay them, then the national government could be starved into submission and would have to forego any attempts to overextend itself in these resistant states.

Armitage lists some specifics for this leverage. New York State remits $300 billion to the national government, which is $142.6 billion more than it receives as in grants and subsidies. Massachusetts in turn remits $4,846 per capita more than it receives from Uncle Sam. In contrast, John S. Kernan identifies Alaska, Kentucky and West Virginia as taker states, all three deep red. If the Climate Alliance’s 22 member states (five of whom predominate red) and 2 protectorates were to band together in opposition to the national government, they would leverage roughly 60% of the U.S. economy.

State economic leverage over the national government could go well beyond the tax remissions. The national government relies on state databases for things like the census, postal routes and juror lists. States could defiantly withhold or complicate the national government’s access to these databases. Several of the national government’s financial instrumentalities are also partially under state control, such as the state-chartered banks which operate the Automated Clearing House (ACH), responsible for payroll to U.S. agencies as well as payouts to citizen recipients such as direct disbursements from Social Security. Though precedents like McCullogh v. Maryland (17 U.S. 316, 1817) prevent taxation of federal entities in-state, confederated states determined and emboldened to defy the national government may be able in other ways to interfere with such entities. Maybe that amounts just to low-level harassment of the entities’ officers in the way the New York City Police Department tows the United Nations diplomats’ vehicles, knowing well that the diplomats enjoy immunity from parking and moving violations.

On the jurisprudential front, attorneys general are crafting innovative legal theories and arguments to pre-empt the national government within their states and to justify their defiance thereof. They are exchanging templates for pleadings and motions, and keeping “brief banks” – paperwork which can be submitted to courts in support of state interests. Counselor Mike Baker cites that during President Trump’s first term (2017 – 2021), Democratic attorneys general enjoyed an 83% success rate for the 130+ multistate lawsuits filed against the national government.

Ironically enough, some of the proposed legalistic rebellions against the national government are simply states assuming functions which progressivists have traditionally favored as the national government’s exclusive purview, such as preventing illegal entry into the USA. Back in January 2024, liberals balked at Texas fortifying its southern border against migrant caravans which President Joe Biden’s administration was not interdicting, or doing so very ineffectively. Now liberals are happily realizing that federalism’s proverbial ball is in their court. Maybe California will use its $76 billion in reserves to usurp the national government’s monopoly on fiat money by circulating exclusively intrastate a competing currency which proves more resistant to inflation.

Soft secession is the term which the Blue Crew prefers to describe the multifaceted measures under discussion. Undoubtedly that must bring to mind harder forms of secession, given that supposedly in December 2024 the conspirators discussed hypothetical resistance to unsolicited federal troops deployed to their jurisdictions. Such deployments soon transcended the hypothetical to become poignant fact. On June 7th, 2025, President Trump activated the National Guard against the anti-ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) rally occurring in Los Angeles, CA, over Democratic Mayor Karen Bass’ objections. On August 14th, 2025, Trump deployed the National Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to displace the homeless (so they could be homeless, but elsewhere) in Washington DC, against Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser’s wishes. Currently Trump threatens to send the National Guard unsolicited to Chicago, supposedly to “fight crime,” despite Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pleas to the contrary. Sooner than the Blue Crew expects, it may come time forcefully to remind the national government of the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.

Tall Order versus Short Memory

Secession is a tall order, given that it inherently disrupts society, and for that reason it ought not be pursued capriciously. The Blue Crew must have some idea of the extensive arrangements which would have to be made (i.e., surveys of realty, population, referendums, transfer and/or compensation of national assets intrastate, etc.) to streamline secession for both the national government and the break-away states. If the Blue Crew’s discussions now span nine months and include daily Zoom chats across multiple time zones as Chris Armitage intimates, hopefully the Blue Crew realizes that secession at best (that is, uncontested by the national government) would take a while and could not be reversed overnight the moment the USA elects the next Democratic president.

The nagging concern, therefore, is the Blue Crew’s sincerity in its revolt against the national government, whether by the term secession or something milder. Currently Oregon is stockpiling pills of mifepristone (to induce abortions) in undivulged warehouses out of concern about a national ban on abortions. Oregon does this in solidarity with the sentiment of “My body, my choice,” but only four years ago, Oregon recognized no such choice when it mandated the C0vid vaccination on forty-two plaintiffs (Johnson v. Brown, 3:21-cv-1494-SI, D. Ore., 2021), whose trepidations turned out to be validated. Two months ago, New York Governor Kathy Hochul testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee about the importance of due process vis-à-vis migrants detained by ICE. Of course she is correct on that point, but Governor Hochul’s appreciation for due process is a recent development. Two years ago, she was happy forcibly quarantining New Yorkers under mere suspicion of infection by C0vid, only afterwards to offer them “due process” to petition the courts for redress of what could have been a baseless detention of unlimited duration (Borrello v. Hochul, 2023 NY Slip Op. 05834).

The foregoing examples demonstrate that if a blue state government now contemplates weaponizing state policy against what it perceives as the current administration’s unconstitutional overreach, then such state should realize that not long ago its own policy was weaponized against many of its citizens. Even short memory can recall some of the aforementioned abuses. If a given blue state realizes the injustice of a nationwide majority (49.8% who voted for Donald Trump in 2024) unduly infringing on the minority (48.3% who voted for the Democrat opponent, Kamala Harris), then one hopes that such state would be more solicitous and protective of its own partisan minorities.

To that end, since the Blue Crew is war-gaming various scenarios, it is worthwhile to consider how a given blue state could protect its own partisan minorities had the Democrats won the presidency in 2024. For example, as a campaign promise Kamala Harris had proposed recommending to Congress a ban on “assault” weapons. Such legislation’s details are unknowable, but maybe it would have featured a provision retroactively criminalizing possession of certain firearms, in flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause (Art. I § 9, cl. 3). To make this hypothetical less abstract, let’s say that the blue state in question is Delaware. The Harris administration demands the surrender of all civilian firearms in Delaware which violate this new statute. Hold-outs will be fined $500 per week, with levies imposed on their assets after $2000 in arrears. When the Harris administration’s “Gun Tzar” demands the list and location of such scofflaws’ assets (which may not have already been declared to the U.S. government as on tax filings for the Internal Revenue Service), Delaware could simply refuse. When the Gun Tzar sends trenchcoated g-men to Delaware to sleuth the scofflaws’ assets, maybe Delaware police quietly tow the spooks’ vehicles for parking violations.

Obviously it is a jarring proposition that Delaware (viz.) thwart enforcement of a national statute, the objective of which Delaware wholeheartedly supports. Yet as long as the extreme of secession is on the table, it is crucial that a given blue state start thinking differently about its sovereignty in relation to the national government. The mentality may still be characterized as “us versus them,” but secession is only viable if the us means all of Delaware’s citizens, even those who belong to unfavored constituencies.

A New Paradigm

Though modern talk of secession may make Democrats “nervous” (Armitage, August 18th, ¶ 26), such talk is nothing new. After their disappointments over 2020’s presidential election and J/6 (infra), Republicans bandied around the phrase “national divorce” and openly mused on secession. Progressivists and their sympathizers in politics and journalism vilified such musings at the time. Now these progressivists have moved full circle and find themselves uncomfortably play-testing secession under digital cover.

The main problem with the concept of secession as progressivists and conservatives discuss it is that they approach it by way of the same power-centric paradigm. Chris Armitage’s article of August 23rd, 2025, exhibits this mindset as he vengefully suggests, “They wanted mass deportations. We can deport them from a functioning economy” (my italicizations), after detailing the tactics by which blue states can malinger to shirk their federal obligations. By examining this issue through analogy to “national divorce,” Armitage’s technical suggestions amount to coaching a wayward spouse on how to commit adultery more successfully. Inevitably it leads to the other side (i.e., the national government) play-testing ways to coerce control and compliance, like an overbearing husband who hires private investigators to surveil the wife whom he (wrongly) suspects of adultery. Seemingly no one has stopped to think that maybe the spouses should just learn to treat each other better and repair their relationship. Let me explain.

Since at least 2016, the USA has lurched from one rebellion to another, oscillating every four years. Not rebellion in the armed sense but rather defined as “resistance to or defiance of any authority, control or tradition.” In 2017, the movement in defiance of Trump’s presidency even dubbed itself Resist and started on the very day of Trump’s inauguration. The Resist Movement staged multitudinous protests across the USA during Trump’s first presidency, but as Molly Ball recounted in her Time Magazine article of February 4th, 2021, the movement’s most impactful action may have been the one which it refrained from taking. Namely, refraining from protests (which always run the risk of turning violent) during the period when 2020’s presidential votes were being tabulated and certified.

The next protests came during the Stop the Steal Rally in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021 (“J/6”). On that day, Congress was to certify 2020’s electoral results from all fifty states and territories. Instead, protesters disrupted the congressional proceedings – in some instances, with violence, theft and vandalism – since they disputed the election’s integrity. The progressivist establishment demonized Trump as a sore loser agitating the rabble, forgetting that just four years earlier his Democrat opponent from 2016, Hillary Clinton, had also taken to agitating her base against the newly elected president.

Fast forward to 2025, and Americans are storming and torching Tesla dealerships in insurrection against the national government whilst clandestinely plotting secession. Swinging from rebellion to rebellion every four years is ruining any semblance of national unity which the USA ever had. If half the country fears for its lifestyle and livelihood every four years based on who controls the national government, then that government has far too much power!

As the USA again contemplates national divorce, now recrudesced as secession, it is vital that the national government be divested of all undue powers as soon as practicable. The strictest boundaries should confine the national government only to those functions which the U.S. Constitution enumerates, according to the narrowest interpretation.

Progressivists often worry – and legitimately – about money’s baleful influence in politics, such as corporate contributions to Political Action Committees (PACs) permitted by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). The best way to reduce money in politics is to strip government down to the barest essentials, so there is less pie over which interest groups compete.

Translated into policy, progressivists who are worried (legitimately or otherwise) that the Trump-controlled Department of Education (DoE) will impose Christian nationalism on schools, should abolish (yes, not just defund but outright abolish) the DoE so that this agency can never be weaponized against Americans. The U.S. Constitution enumerates no such agency, so decommission it immediately. Education falls under the states’ purview, and historically most of our brightest Americans (e.g., Thomas Edison, Robert Oppenheimer, Thurgood Marshall, etc.) were educated long before the DoE came into existence in 1980 as a cabinet-level agency.

Similarly, progressivists dislike how the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy issued numerous deregulations to interests supportive of Trump’s candidacy. The best protection against such abuses is simply to abolish these agencies. The agencies’ abolishment means no lobbyists from the special interests, commandeering the national government via campaign contributions, nor capturing the regulators by way of post-administration job offers. Lands held in trust by the U.S. government – such as national parks – can be partially sold or quitclaimed to the respective states. Now, instead of lobbyists for shale fracking having to court only EPA Commissioner Lee Zeldin for lucrative concessions, some lands of Yellowstone National Park are administered by a commission established by the states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. This means that there are more hurdles to surmount for such lobbyists.

These few ideas hardly scratch the surface of the scale-back possible at the national level, but the reader now has an impression of the philosophy underpinning the national government’s reduction. Years ago, U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ-R) said that “A government that is big enough to give you what you want is big enough to take it all away,” and we see it now every four years, to our country’s shame and detriment. Instead of a country divorced blue from red, hopefully reconciliation is possible, but only if we abandon the paradigm of half the country forcing its values on the other half at every election.