We Need to Talk About Soft Secession

[Metaphorical]

From a recent article.

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Let’s look at the landscape we are operating from. The federal government isn’t functioning, and Republicans refuse to govern in good faith. They obstruct, defund, and dismantle. Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block, and federal agents can now racially profile, assault and abduct, citizen or not. SCOTUS has given Republicans carte blanche to ignore any law or precedent. Meanwhile, blue states send billions more to Washington than they get back, essentially funding their own destruction.
our states have the constitutional authority to refuse authoritarianism and build functioning governments. Here’s how we can make them use that authority.

The solution doesn’t require leaving the union or violence. The anti-commandeering principle, upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court in cases like Printz v. United States and Murphy v. NCAA, means states cannot be forced to enforce federal law. Red states have used this for years on guns and abortion, and now blue states need to deploy it for human rights, social safety nets, and stable functioning governance.

The model already works. When the federal government mandated REAL ID requirements in 2005, 25 states simply refused to implement them. The program stalled for nearly two decades because the federal government couldn’t enforce it without state cooperation. When the federal government classified cannabis as illegal, states legalized it anyway. Today 41 states have some form of legal cannabis despite federal prohibition. The federal government backed down because enforcement became impossible. Between 1780 and 1859, northern states passed personal liberty laws that made the Fugitive Slave Act virtually unenforceable, with only 330 slaves returned despite federal law. More recently, nearly half of U.S. counties have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, refusing to enforce federal gun regulations.https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-soft-secession

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-soft-secession

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Note: I suspect that a soft secession is only a waypoint to a hard secession down the road. After 250 years, the Federal model is breaking apart at the seams (mostly regional) and we are facing the reality that in all too many cases, land DOES vote, at least along the tacit assumption that large landholders are typically the very wealthy.