The Soft Secession: How States Are Joining Together to Escape Trump’s Grip
Facing federal paralysis and partisan weaponization, blue states are forming powerful alliances. From public health to climate, they are building their own future outside Washington’s reach.
By Brian Daitzman
No shots have been fired, yet the fracture is real. Across climate policy, fiscal negotiations, and public health, states are filling the void left by Washington. Millions of Americans now wonder why they are paying into a government that does not serve them, or whether the republic that once bound them together still exists in practice.
The United States is experiencing a soft secession: a durable reallocation of governing legitimacy from Washington to regional compacts, accelerated by structural underrepresentation and post-Rucho redistricting incentives.
I. The Soft Secession
Regional alliances rise as Washington falters. From the West Coast to the Northeast, states are knitting themselves into blocs tethered only by fraying threads of federal authority.
On September 3, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood alongside Oregon’s Tina Kotek and Washington’s Jay Inslee to launch the West Coast Health Alliance. Their pledge: to “uphold scientific integrity in public health” after years in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s credibility had eroded. Hawaii soon joined.
This was not theater.
It was governance: states claiming responsibilities once assumed to be federal. The precedent stretched back to COVID-19, when the West Coast formed a Scientific Safety Review Workgroup to double-check federal vaccine approvals, Northeastern governors pooled billions to buy PPE, and Midwestern states coordinated reopening schedules.
These were not acts of defiance. They were acts of competence. And competence, when Washington falters, becomes sovereignty by another name.
Soft secession does not declare itself.
No flags are lowered; no forts are seized. Instead, trust flows away from the federal center toward regional blocs.
II. The Pandemic Lesson — When Washington Failed
In April 2020, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker arranged to buy three million N95 masks. When the shipment reached the Port of New York, it was impounded.
Baker ultimately recovered just 1.2 million — flown in on the New England Patriots’ jet. “We lost to the federal government,” he admitted on television.
Other governors reported similar frustrations. Some shipments were redirected by FEMA; others vanished in vendor confusion. The result was the same: states realized they were competing not only with each other but with Washington itself.
At the same time, Jared Kushner publicly declared that the Strategic National Stockpile was “not supposed to be states’ stockpiles.” Within hours, the SNS website was edited to match his words.
For governors, the lesson was brutal. Delay meant death. The law of efficiency — act fast, act locally, act togethe r— became doctrine.
Within weeks, blocs were born. The Western States Pact coordinated reopening. Seven Northeastern states pooled billions to buy ventilators and masks. The Midwest announced its own compact.
These were not improvisations but rehearsals. The pandemic cracked the federal monopoly on public health, and the fissure widened. Once states learned they could step in for Washington, they began asking why they were paying so much for a government that delivered so little.
Soft secession had found its opening.
III. Taxation Without Representation — The Fiscal Fracture
The fiscal map sharpened the grievance.
Donor states — California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts—send far more to Washington than they get back.
By one estimate from the Rockefeller Institute, New York’s net outflow in 2019 was about $142 billion.
California’s in 2021–22 was roughly $83 billion. Meanwhile, states such as Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia remain net recipients.
The scale is staggering. Anti-hunger advocate Joel Berg estimates that ending hunger would cost about $25 billion a year.
HUD’s 2023 report counted 653,104 homeless Americans, a 12 percent increase from the year before. The Urban Institute estimates permanent housing would require $20–30 billion annually.
New York’s one-year outflow alone could exceed both programs’ combined annual costs. Instead, those dollars finance programs that donor states cannot reliably access: wildfire aid delayed, disaster relief politicized, public health undermined.
Consider a hypothetical commuter in New Jersey: she pays thousands in federal taxes each year while struggling to cover daycare. This hypothetical illustrates how donor-state dollars leave local budgets even as basic needs remain unmet.
Imagine a hypothetical low-wage worker in Mississippi: his access to healthcare depends on federal transfers that his state could not replace alone. This hypothetical shows how recipient-state livelihoods depend on donor flows.
The real-world consequences are visible.
Consider a hypothetical nurse in Mississippi, working in a small rural clinic that depends on federal Medicaid dollars to keep the doors open. Without those funds, the clinic could not survive.
Now imagine a hypothetical wildfire survivor in California, who loses her home and then waits more than a year for FEMA reimbursement. The aid eventually comes, but far too late to bridge the hardship.
Both hypotheticals illustrate the same imbalance: Blue states paying far more than they receive, red states deeply dependent on the flow. Real-world parallels exist in documented reports on rural hospital closures in the South and delayed FEMA reimbursements in California’s wildfire zones, but the scenarios here are presented to clarify the mechanism, not as direct quotations.
Representation compounds the fiscal gap. The House has been capped at 435 members since 1929. Each representative now speaks for an average of 761,000 constituents, nearly four times the 1910 ratio.
If scaled today, the chamber would hold about 1,600 lawmakers.
The missing lawmakers are invisible but consequential: districts too vast, voices too diluted, legitimacy stretched to breaking.
The Senate magnifies imbalance. Wyoming’s 580,000 residents enjoy the same two senators as California’s 39 million—a 70-to-1 disparity. In 2017, the GOP majority represented roughly 34 million fewer Americans than the Democratic caucus.
And redistricting has become weaponized.
The very word gerrymander dates to 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a contorted district likened to a salamander.
Both parties have drawn lines to entrench power, but in the modern era Republicans have led, particularly after their REDMAP strategy in 2010.
Wisconsin provides a stark case: in 2018, Republicans secured 63 of 99 Assembly seats while winning less than half the statewide vote.
When reformers turned to the courts, the Roberts Court closed the door.
In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the majority declared partisan gerrymandering beyond judicial reach.
Federal courts washed their hands.
Expert tools like Moon Duchin’s mathematical ensembles, designed to constrain extreme maps, were sidelined by legislatures intent on preserving advantage.
Sidebar: How Duchin’s Ensembles Work
Instead of one map, Duchin’s team generates tens of thousands of legally valid maps under state rules. The partisan balance of the enacted map is then compared to this “universe.” If the map lies at the extreme tail, it is marked as an outlier, signaling engineered advantage. Courts and commissions have used this method, but partisan legislatures often ignored it.
Then came escalation.
In 2025, Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw maps mid-decade to hand him more seats.
Redistricting had long been tied to the decennial census; doing it mid-cycle to shield a president from impeachment threats departed from established practice.
California and New York had taken the opposite path in earlier years, creating independent commissions to curb partisan control.
California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, established by voter initiatives in 2008 and 2010, continues to draw the state’s maps. New York’s commission, created by a 2014 constitutional amendment, deadlocked in 2022, and the legislature attempted to push through its own maps.
The state’s highest court struck those down as unconstitutional, reaffirming the principle of independent reform even as partisan pressures mounted.
Trump’s demand in Texas was something different altogether. By turning redistricting into a mid-cycle weapon to protect one man’s presidency, he crossed a line no independent body had ever contemplated.
His move initiated an arms race: Governor Gavin Newsom warned that California would respond in kind — “They want to steal five seats? We’ll match and secure more.”
Even Republicans in swing districts voiced alarm, fearing that such escalation would sacrifice blue-state GOP members who were essential to maintaining their national majority.
The missing lawmakers of representation magnify the fiscal imbalance.
Without expanding the chamber, donor states will continue to feel voiceless even as they underwrite the union.
IV. Sectionalism’s Long Arc — From Slavery to Social Policy
Sectionalism is America’s oldest fracture.
In the nineteenth century, Northeast and South clashed over tariffs and slavery. Compromisers like Henry Clay tried to hold the balance, but John C. Calhoun pressed nullification, and the Civil War settled the conflict only in part.
Reconstruction collapsed into Jim Crow. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored protections, only to see them gutted in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).
The method of exclusion evolves.
Interracial marriage bans gave way to fights over same-sex marriage.
Today, restrictions on transgender healthcare and drag performance carry the same freight. Tennessee’s 2023 drag ban was challenged and later entangled in federal appeals, leaving its status contested.
Republican leaders have long weaponized these divides.
Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America” nationalized campaigns and scorched compromise. George W. Bush’s surrogates mocked “latte liberals” and “sushi eaters.” Donald Trump stripped away euphemism.
He called them “Democrat states,” as if foreign.
He told governors to buy their own ventilators. He mocked California’s wildfires as a problem of “rakes.”
He denied California’s disaster aid and disputed Puerto Rico’s hurricane death toll. The message was clear: loyalty first — or you are less American.
The geography is stark.
In 2020, counties won by Joe Biden produced 71 percent of U.S. GDP, compared with 29 percent for Trump’s. The new sectional divide echoes the old: industrial Northeast, high-tech West Coast, and diverse metros on one side; rural, extractive, and agrarian states on the other.
Media mirrors sharpen the split.
On Fox, coastal cities become decadent caricatures; on MSNBC, rural states become authoritarian shorthand. Algorithms amplify resentment until Americans know one another less and despise one another more.
Nor is this drift uniquely American.
In Spain, Catalonia’s repeated pushes for autonomy reflect not only cultural nationalism but a fiscal grievance: Catalonia contributes more than it receives. In Canada, provinces in the West have long voiced resentment at “equalization payments” flowing eastward. In both cases, fiscal imbalance and representation gaps ignite sectionalism that constitutions struggle to contain.
Just as in America, the missing lawmakers in these federations are not individuals but institutional designs: representation that fails to match the population it claims to serve.
V. The Missing Lawmakers
Step into the House chamber and count the members: 435. That number has not changed since 1929, when the U.S. population was one-third its size.
Today each representative speaks for roughly 761,000 constituents—nearly four times the ratio in 1910. If the math of that earlier era were applied today, the chamber would have over 1,600 lawmakers. The missing lawmakers are invisible but consequential: diluted voices, bloated districts, legitimacy stretched to breaking.
The imbalance compounds. In the Senate, Wyoming’s 580,000 residents enjoy the same representation as California’s 39 million. Gerrymanders further warp outcomes. Regional blocs solidify. And Donald Trump has inflamed each tension, converting sectional grievance into governing strategy.
Yet none of this is destiny. Soft secession is a choice. America can expand the House, adopt ranked-choice voting, revive the Voting Rights Act, and treat state blocs not as symptoms of collapse but as laboratories of democracy.
The stakes are human. New York’s surplus could end hunger nationwide. California’s outflow could house the homeless. Yet billions depart donor states without reliable relief in return.
The missing lawmakers embody not just arithmetic but legitimacy itself. Step into the chamber and you can almost hear them—the ghostly echo of seats that should exist but don’t.
A republic that once grew to match its people now shrinks from them, frozen at 435 while its population has tripled. Those absent lawmakers haunt every debate, every grievance, every delayed relief check.
The question is not only whether the chamber will expand, but whether Americans themselves — denied their missing voices — will continue to believe they share a union worth saving.
Brian Daitzman is the Editor of The Intellectualist. Read the original article here.
Facts & Methods
This article draws on official state releases, federal census and HUD data, court decisions (Rucho v. Common Cause; Shelby County v. Holder), Brookings economic analysis, and investigative reporting (Politico, New York Times, WCVB Boston).
Hypotheticals are explicitly labeled (“Consider a hypothetical…” / “Imagine a hypothetical…”). They are used only to clarify mechanisms.
Every hypothetical is paired with a real, sourced example (e.g., Medicaid nurse, FEMA claimant).
All estimates (e.g., “about 1,600 lawmakers”) are flagged as approximations.
All motives and characterizations are either directly quoted or attributed to published reporting.
📖 References
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Jonathan Martin (Aug. 7, 2025). “Trump’s Redistricting Gambit Is Poison for Blue State Republicans.” Politico Magazine.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/07/redistricting-texas-california-blue-state-republicans-00496008California Governor’s Office (Sept. 3, 2025). “California, Oregon, and Washington Launch West Coast Health Alliance to Uphold Scientific Integrity in Public Health.”
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 | A guest post by
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Excellent and timely article. Secession whether “hard” or “soft” is coming. It is the only way out of our current nightmare. A rogue SCOTUS that has caused much of our present calamity has also cleared the way.
The Fourth Amendment, one of the original Bill of Rights, and a cornerstone of American liberty for 250 years has just been annulled without so much as an explanation by the rogue Supreme Court. It reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Among other things, it protects
• Your body and belongings: From being searched without legal justification.
• Your home and property: From being entered or taken without a warrant.
By legalizing racial and ethnic profiling, the Supreme Court has created two countries: white America where the 4th Amendment is still in effect and an America of color where it is not.
By doing so, they have also effectively nullified the 13th and 14th Amendments granting all citizens equal protection of the law.
If they can, without hesitation or explanation, cancel 3 critical Constitutional Amendments in one ruling, rest assured they will not find it difficult in the least to allow Trump a 3rd term by annulling the 22nd Amendment.
More importantly, they have essentially voided the Constitution as the basic legal foundation of the United States.
Thus, the Supreme Court ruling in Texas v White (1869) effectively outlawing secession by a State must also be considered null and void.
Secession, whether “soft” or “hard” is now a viable option to begin restoring us to a Constitutional Democracy from the fascist state we’ve become.
These articles and explanations ease a troubled mind about today’s politics. Rational thinking exists but remains inconsequential to too many.