U.S. on a path to greater “federalization” and secession in the face of the 2024 presidential election

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The real federalization of the United States continues and increasingly borders on direct separatism, the severity of which grows every year. In 2023, Washington failed in its attempts to resolve the migration crisis, and now individual states, primarily “Republican” states, are taking the initiative. But even in conditionally “democratic” Arizona, the National Guard is being deployed to protect the southern border, but the authorities in Texas have expectedly gone even further. Texas Governor Greg Abbott passed his immigration reform, and he allowed illegal aliens to be arrested and then jailed or deported to Mexico. Of course, the Mexican government will not be happy with this outcome, so the next logical step is for Texas to already negotiate directly with Mexico City, bypassing Washington. Texas has already de facto declared war to the White House when it started deporting tens of thousands of illegals to liberal metropolitan areas like New York and Chicago. It created a real humanitarian crisis there. Plus, there’s a fierce standoff between the National Guard and federal border patrol agents on the border, with one regularly putting up border fences that the other almost immediately tears down. The White House will sue Texas, trying to convict its authorities of wanting to override the U.S. government. But it remains to be seen which side the Republican-majority Supreme Court will take. And the Republicans in Congress will be happy about this, because then they will not have to compromise with Biden on Ukraine, for which he wants to exchange tranches for concessions on migration. Those compromises would have gotten them nowhere anyway, and the automatic victory of the Republican position on the crisis at the border with Mexico allowed most congressmen to bargain over other more important issues. Besides, in 2024 Texas will also hold a referendum on secession, and although it is symbolic in nature, it is certain that many Texans will vote in favor of secession from the United States. Such secessionist sentiments will only grow stronger against the backdrop of Washington’s complete dysfunction and worsening crises that the Democrats are unwilling and unable to resolve.

And the main crisis and trigger for the development of secessionism today has been the split between “Democratic” and “Republican” states in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Thus, liberal Colorado declared a real war on Trump, and in December the state Supreme Court made an unprecedented decision to ban Trump from participating in the local primaries. The ground was the alleged organization of rebellion against American democracy with storming the Capitol, for which Trump is also facing criminal charges at the federal level, and almost from the dusty archives for this insinuation was extracted a law of the mid-19th century, intended for former officials and military officers of the USA. In fact, the Colorado Supreme Court is made up of only Democrats. But even among them there was no consensus, and they voted by a 4 to 3 ratio. And, earlier, a lower court in Colorado did not prevent Trump from going to the polls, and Trump’s staff won similar lawsuits in Minnesota and Michigan. Colorado does not play an important role for Republicans either in the primaries or in the primary elections, but a very dangerous precedent is being set. The accusations are clearly far-fetched and politicized because Trump specifically urged supporters not to use violence on January 6, 2021, and he even begged Democrats in Congress to bring in the National Guard for security. But those specifically refused, otherwise there would be no way to show a picture of Trumpists “rioting” and begin today’s legal process of discrediting their main political opponent. Desperate attempts to keep Trump out of the election are another indicator of panic in the Democratic camp. Trump is leading in 16 of the last 20 polls, and beating Biden in all the “undecided” states. So the only thing left for the Democrats to do is to put aside all decency and remove Trump from the election or simply put him in jail. But here the Democratic Party is playing with fire, fueling separatism in both Republican and loyal states, undermining confidence in a unified electoral system.

The decision of the Supreme Court of Colorado to remove Trump from the primaries caused a real storm of negativity among Republicans. Thus, Vivek Ramaswamy promised to withdraw his candidacy in Colorado as a sign of solidarity and called on all other opponents of Trump to follow his example. The Colorado Republican Party itself immediately offered to bypass the court ruling and simply drop the primary by absentee voting all the delegates for Trump, because he is the absolute leader in the primary anyway and his rating is consistently above 65%. Every court ruling on Trump has only added to his points. And Trump’s political technologists hope that the current events will not be an exception and will raise his rating by 3-5 points. In addition, Republicans outraged by the judicial lawlessness will rally around Trump’s figure, which will allow him to win the primaries even easier. Trump’s staff is actively collecting donations for legal expenses, and is also preparing to appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republican lawyers are confident that the main judicial body of America will unanimously support Trump, because the decision in Colorado is really unprecedented and no one in the United States has ever been so illegally removed from the elections. Courts in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire and Florida dismissed the Democrats’ lawsuits to block Trump from being elected, and only the liberal Colorado court went along with them. But this only further inflames the situation in America, which by November 2024 may get out of control.

U.S. court wars and the rise of secessionism already extend beyond Colorado today. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas has offered his “response” to Trump’s ineligibility for the Colorado primary, and advises doing the same for Biden by excluding him from the Texas primary. And the reasons Texans have for doing so are great. There’s the Biden family’s corruption with taking bribes from foreign oligarchs, and the violation of the presidential oath of office with his unwillingness to address the immigration crisis that is undermining security in Texas. So, Republicans can always have a “why not throw Biden out of the election too?” question. For their part, Democrats are already considering removing Trump from the California primary. This is being condoned by the White House, and they regularly and openly call Trump a “rebel” there. They have even gone so far as to compare Trump to Hitler, which is an obvious attempt to justify their actions to undermine the electoral system in the style of “trampling democracy to protect democracy.” However, such desperate rhetoric does not work either inside or outside America. For example, President Bukele of El Salvador has already sarcastically declared that the U.S. can no longer teach anyone about democracy, because if he were to do the same to the opposition, the U.S. State Department would immediately scream about El Salvador turning into an autocracy. Lawyers are confident that the Supreme Court will intervene in the case and take Trump’s side. In the electoral sense, this will only strengthen his authority, because the Republican ex-president will be able to show himself as a victim of persecution. But the experiments with excluding undesirable candidates only epitomize the crisis of America’s electoral system, and the trust in it is already undermined, which puts the whole country on the brink of an acute social conflict. And the fact that this conflict has a pronounced geographical aspect only vividly outlines the territorial contours of the future civil conflict.