In the Disunited States, Conflict and Uncertainty Rule – Time to Come Home

In the U.S. these are days of dread. The air is filled with uncertainty. What comes next? Who can tell?

The states increasingly divide, signified by the gerrymandering wars. Texas redistricts to eliminate Democratic congressional seats. California responds with a plan to eliminate Republican seats. Red states including Ohio, Missouri, Florida and Indiana, and blue states including Virginia and New York, may follow suit. Computer-driven gerrymandering has distorted redistricting for years. This takes it to a new level.

Trump sends troops into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and threatens to send them to Chicago. He illustrates this with his graphic post on his Truth Social network evoking the movie “Apocalypse Now.” “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. . . Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi threatens legal action against public officials who uphold sanctuary status for immigrants. “Individuals operating under color of law, using their position to obstruct federal immigration enforcement efforts and facilitating or inducing illegal immigration (in other words anything tied to sanctuary status – my note)may be subject to criminal charges,” she writes in an August letter to Washington Governor Bob Ferguson. He shoots back, “You seem to believe that cavalierly citing criminal statutes and personally threatening me, a democratically elected governor, will result in compromising the values of my state. Never.”

The Bondi letter sets up the prospect of seeing local and state officials perp walked by federal law enforcement agents for upholding state laws and policies limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement. Truly a way to intensify divisions.

Kirk – A pretext for war?

To this clash between the states, and between state and federal governments, is added another vast uncertainty, threats to war on an ill-defined left following last week’s killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Elon Musk, posts that “the Left is the party of murder” and adds “if they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die.” Says Steven Bannon, “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the political war . . . We are at war in this country and you have to have steely resolve.” Alex Jones echoes him. “We’re at war.”
All this even as the motivations of the prime suspect, Tyler Robinson, are as yet uncertain. Nonetheless, Republicans and rightist voices are insistent that he did it because he is a leftist. It is as if Charlie Kirk’s death is a convenient pretext for a war they want anyway. And what form does this war exactly take? More killings of Democratic leaders such as the June assassination of Minnesota Statehouse Representative Melissa Hortman? Because violence begets violence, nobody should celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk.

Another reason is that violence gives cover to political repression, as presidential advisor Steven Miller makes clear. “The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven is that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence, and we are going to do that.” He threatened racketeering and terrorism charges for a variety of actions, some of which seem to be in the area of free speech such as calling people fascists. Will organizing peaceful protests and nonviolent civil disobedience be rebranded as “terrorism?”

Perhaps the most over-the-top call for repression came from far-right influencer Laura Loomer who posted on X, “I do want President Trump to be the ‘dictator’ the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they pretend we are.”

And what is the “left” here? Miller, Loomer, Trump and much of the right seems to conflate the left with standard Democratic Party institutions and donors. That is fed by the lack of political awareness and sophistication in U.S. politics, where corporate liberals can be held in the same camp as people who genuinely advocate for systemic change in society. So far, institutions that lean toward corporate liberalism, such as law firms, universities and much of the Democratic Party, have been notably weak in their response to Trump. So some will be genuinely intimidated by this. And Trump and his minions practice winning by intimidation, only backing down when meeting resistance.

That seems to be playing out in Chicago, where resistance by city government and people, as well as Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzger, appears to have averted the threatened deployment, at least for now. Instead Trump is targeting Memphis and the more amenable Republican governor of Tennessee. Meanwhile a federal judge rules that Trump violated posse comitatus restrictions in California, which bar use of troops in law enforcement except under genuine emergency conditions. LA troop numbers are down from 5,000 to 300 while the ruling is put on hold pending appeal.

A certain haphazard, shoot-from-the-hip aspect to Trump Administration actions suggests its own inability to truly consolidate authoritarian rule. Trump’s actions seem more opportunistic than strategic. A troop deployment to DC is triggered by an attempted carjacking and beating of DOGE staffer “Big Balls.” A threat to deploy troops to Chicago, with a flaming Truth Social meme, is apparently backed off by state and local resistance. A troop deployment to Los Angeles is sharply cut back after an unfavorable court ruling. All kinds of threats to “dismantle the left” are spurred by the killing of Charlie Kirk. We will have to see what that really means, or whether it is simply bloviation. Trump and his administration may simply be too disorganized and incompetent to pull off the authoritarian consolidation people fear. The key point is that where he meets resistance, he seems to pull back. Bullies are like that.

Soft secession?

When Trump was reelected in 2024, I had a gut feeling that his drive for power and domination would intensify already deep fractures in this country, causing some form of national breakup. Not necessarily an all-out civil war or formal splitting of the U.S. 1861-style. But what many are now calling soft secession, in which states withdraw cooperation from the federal government, and even deny federal authority, to act on their own in a practical devolution of power.

Some are even calling for blue states, which tend to contribute more to the federal budget than they get back, to withhold tax payments. Though since employers and self-employed pay directly to the IRS, it is difficult to see how that could happen. And since much of that imbalance is in the form of social transfer payments, do we really want to cut off old, disabled and poor people in the red states? It seems lacking in compassion. That said, legislation has been introduced in Connecticut, New York, Maryland and Wisconsin to withhold federal tax payments in proportion to funding illegally withheld by the federal government. They could potentially hold back payments by their own employees.

What seems more likely, and it is already happening, is states banding together in alliances to fill holes left by the federal government. The West Coast Health Alliance of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii has formed to cover the gaps left by the RFK Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services. The West Coast states already cooperate on climate, another area being eviscerated by the Trump Administration. But will this ramp up to more direct noncooperation with federal authority?

I have long written about the centrifugal tendencies in the U.S., and the surprisingly large minorities in favor of some sort of separation. I link key articles here. In response I often hear back that the real divisions in the U.S. are urban-rural. As true as that is, states are large aggregations of political power. Blue states tend to have greater urban majorities, while red states tend to be more rural. In times when Democrats rule, the strongest contingent in support of separation is Southern Republicans. In times when Republicans rule, that flips to West Coast Democrats. That is what we’re seeing now. Things are dividing along state lines.

Will there be a time when it moves to a more serious level, when states outright deny federal authority? With Supreme Court review of lower federal court rulings that have overwhelmingly gone against Trump executive orders, two vital dangers rise.

The first is that the Court, despite its rightist supermajority, upholds the lower court judgements and Trump refuses to comply, setting up a constitutional crisis. In this he would walk in the steps of his hero, Andrew Jackson, who refused a Supreme Court order to stop the Cherokee Tribe from being driven down the Trail of Tears. Then states would have cover to say that Trump is violating the law, so they can deny his authority, setting up a state-federal clash with unpredictable consequences.

The second is that the Court will side with the president in such odious ways that states will find it unbearable and seek ways to assert their own power. It is not easy to imagine such circumstances, but in a situation where divisions are intensifying, what is unimaginable can quickly turn into the actual. If the deployment of federal troops to a blue state city results in violence, or if arrests of local and state officials are ordered, events could quickly escalate.

Political system at an impasse

To go back to where I started, all these developments leave us in a state of uncertainty about the future of the United States. Will the states even remain united? Will we find our divisions so irreconcilable that we choose to form new alignments and go our separate ways? Many say we should, that our cultural canyons have grown so wide there is no way to bring the U.S. together. Whether we should separate or not, the more immediate question is whether we can hold together.

It is certainly true that our divisions have made it impossible to solve critical challenges facing the country, ranging from health care costs to increasing wealth inequality to the housing crisis to deteriorating economic conditions afflicting large swathes of the U.S. landscape. Above all, to mount a response to the climate crisis that scales to the challenge. Divided into separate units, at least some of us could begin to resolve those problems.

In my own view, the federal system as we have known it has reached an impasse. Though many normal functions of government continue to function, and we can be thankful for that, the prospects are poor for really dealing with our intensifying social, economic and environmental crises at the federal level. If we hit a serious economic downturn, as seems increasingly likely with inept Trump economic policies, this inability to respond to challenges is going to push things to the breaking point.

Coming home to build centers of power

In any event, the clear direction in the face of uncertainty is to build centers of progressive power where we can, in cities and inner ring suburbs, and states where metropolitan majorities can attain legislative majorities and executive power. It is time to develop and advance a progressive program at these levels that can potentially advance to the national level. Among the key planks:

• Public banking to take control of the money and invest in our own future.

• Progressive taxation to fund needed agendas.

• Social housing to resolve the affordability crisis.

• Universal health care coverage.

• Mass efforts to bring down carbon emissions that promote energy efficiency, public transit and other alternatives to the automobile, and rapid transition to renewable energy.

• Local and bioregional food security, an increasing issue in an overheated climate.

• Universal basic income to deal with employment losses to AI.

• Free college and vocational training.

• Creation of worker coops, especially those creating circular economies that turn wastes into feedstocks.

We don’t know where things are going at the national level. It is impossible to know with this level of uncertainty. But we can create certainties in and for the communities where we live by building people power for progressive change. As important as it is to resist, and we must, we must also move to set the agenda, and not be simply reactive.

A long period of conflict and division

In my gut, I sense we are in for a long period of national division, from 5-10 years, when conflict will rule the scene and forms of soft secession may indeed take place. Perhaps even formal separation. If Democrats come back into power in DC in 2026, only narrow congressional majorities are likely due to the anti-democratic bias of the Constitution which favors minority government. Even if Democrats also take the White House in 2028, the Supreme Court will still be tilted hard right. And Republicans and the right will do all they can to throw monkeywrenches into the process.

Meanwhile, national Democrats heavily influenced by their funder and donor networks cannot be expected to forward progressive reform at anywhere close to the necessary level. The failure of Democratic congressional leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, two New York Democratic politicians, to so far endorse progressive Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral run tells us all we need to know. In my homebase of Seattle, most of the elected Democratic leadership has endorsed developer-friendly Mayor Bruce Harrell in his reelection bid against genuine progressive Katie Wilson. That includes Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal, recent chair of the Democratic Progressive Caucus.

The future will be made in cities and states where people move beyond standard party politics to build a grassroots progressive base and agenda. The impetus will be clear. With the intensification of economic, social and environmental challenges, somebody is going to have to respond. It will be us in the places we call home. The political system of the U.S. has reached an apparent dead end. It can no longer solve problems. It is too conflict-ridden and divided. It may completely fall apart. We don’t know. But in the midst of this uncertainty is a certainty that, whatever the future, political change begins at home in our communities through gaining power in state and local governments. That is where to concentrate our efforts, to build a future where we really do begin to resolve our multiple crises.

At some point what we call the United States might come back together in a different form with a much changed political system. My sense is that is the only way it will. Then progressive reforms we model at local and state levels can spread more widely. But for now, it is too disunited and that will remain the case even after Trump is gone. It is time to come home and build a better future in the places where we live.

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