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Notes -
Is Nullification on the Horizon?
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-condemns-president-bidens-illegal-rewrite-of-title-ix
Recently the Biden admin rewrote some regulations to encode gender identity in title IX. While this is stupid, it's not something that in itself seems likely to be a productive motte top level post. Ken Paxton sued the white house over it, but this is just the default assumption about federal administrative rules on culture war topics. No, what I'm getting at is the letter from Greg Abbott:
https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/O-BidenJoseph1.pdf
I guess telling the federal government to kick rocks back in January and getting away with it set a precedent- and, obviously, Joe Biden is not going to send the troops in to escort male athletes into the high school girl's locker room in an election year.
This obviously raises the question- are we on the cusp of an era where big state governors feel free to resist the federal government? Obviously, being combative with the Biden admin is a political winner for Greg Abbott. It's unclear what he'll use as a replacement for it in the likely event that Trump sits there next year; I don't think he thinks he can get away with bullying New or old Mexico but the strongman image requires something. And, of course, are Ron Desantis and Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul watching closely and learning? Will they resist Trump policies as brazenly(no, blue states have not denied federal forces the ability to operate, their examples of arguable nullification are more noncooperation than open defiance and resistance) as Abbott does Biden's, given that he's emboldened by a base which may not be pro-secession but is absolutely confident Texas would be fine if it did happen?
I think stuff like this is good, and I think red state governors should be encouraged to do more of it.
However, most of the big issues the country faces can’t be solved by red states. Immigration in particular is a federal issue. If the US government issues visas for a hundred million inhabitants of the third world to come to the US, Texas can’t do anything about it other than secede.
And I think people overestimate the will for secession, too. Most Texans are politically inactive and see themselves as Americans. They are not willing to risk any reduction in quality of life as a result of political change. An independent Texas would be a pariah state - the US would force all Western countries not to recognize it, so its passport would be worthless. Most smart and wealthy people would emigrate. The state would be sanctioned and embargoed into poverty.
A committed Democratic President can destroy states that nullify federal instruction without ever sending a single soldier in. They can instruct banks to make minor changes to who they do business with and how that would destroy their economies in months. They can pull funding for key infrastructure. They can stymie interstate commerce by claiming that Texas or whoever isn’t following the rules, which would destroy their economy further.
Red states could challenge this, but SCOTUS (even now with Kavanaugh and Barrett much more leftist than anticipated on every non-Tradcath issue) wouldn’t help them and cases would be tied up in legal wrangling for years, all the while anyone with any money or skills would emigrate.
I think a (the?) big elephant in the room with secession is that whichever side successfully cons the other side into jumping first keeps the Presidency for the next 50 years.* Get one of the Big Four states to bail, and suddenly there are 30 - 50 EC votes that your side never needs to worry about again. Now all of a sudden you get a massive leg up in domestic politics and implementing whatever pet domestic agenda you had in mind.
Right now, the echo of Lincoln still rings loudly in our years (the last American Civil War vet died in '56 and the last veteran bride just passed away in 2020). Every single President has been a combination of too much of a true believer in the American project and too much of a realpolitik pragmatist to give away a US state, even if there was internal support for it (there hasn't been.)
Ideologically, I think younger Americans (left and right) are less inclined to have a patriotism or nationalism towards their country as a motherland/fatherland. Some of them might see it merely as a tool to achieve their preferred policy ends (and indeed that's a common attitude towards government these days!) Combine that with an intense focus on maintaining domestic political power, a lack of pragmatic understanding** and a world where there is some native demand for a national divorce and I could see a future where a sitting President goes "besides millions of taxpayers, tens of thousands of servicemen, dozens of vital military installations, four or five different priceless natural resources, and one really nice vacation spot, what have those 40ish Electoral College votes ever done for us?" (Technically this even sort-of happened the first time; the feds did ~zip to stop secession until Lincoln took office.)
I'm not sure such a situation is likely per se, but I think it will be something that will be on the radar in the minds of future politicians in a way that it isn't of most currently serving ones.
An interesting barometer here is Brexit and the Scottish independence question. Obviously Brexit went through, and from what I can tell there's zero English interest in even something relatively mild (like sanctions) if Scotland actually votes to secede. I don't think that this rules out punitive actions or even military action against seceding states, but after a clear referenda I think it is politically trickier.
*In reality I suspect this is a mirage, actually, but a tempting one.
**I'm not actually sure if future governing generations will be worse at pragmatic understanding, to be clear. Certainly many younger people seem less pragmatically-minded, but I'm not sure that's ever been otherwise!
On the other hand, there's the Catalonian independence referendum that got declared illegal by Spain and people arrested for voting, while the rest of the EU gave zero fucks.
There's the ethnic cleansing of Artasakh, 200k people ran away. Russian peacekeepers lost iirc 10+ soldiers. Allegedly a few massacres too.
No one gives a fuck, somehow. Azeris are 'reliable allies'.
People only give a fuck if there's a lobby group.
Armenians have been staunch Russian allies for decades and are close to Iran, they were screwed over by their allies. On /r/europe the attitude is typically ‘it sucks, but that’s what you get for trusting Russia’.
They snubbed Russia in 2010s and tried to cozy up to the West. Also Russia is very much occupied at the moment, which is likely what let Azeris get away with the ethnic cleansing.
I have strong doubts Russians would have just eaten getting their troops killed like this if they weren't engaged in Ukraine.
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