#soft secession

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

While the most visible sign of the administration’s war on Minnesota is ICE’s brutal and deadly occupation, it’s not the only way President Trump is attacking the state. As punishment for the crimes of having a diverse population, not voting for him in three elections straight, and having Tim Walz as governor, Trump has also stripped or withheld billions of dollars, attempting to starve the state of resources. Meanwhile, the state, like all others, continues to pay into the federal government’s coffers. Like many other blue states, Minnesota pays more to the federal government than it takes in. But why should the state continue to subsidize a government bent on destroying it? What if it just … didn’t?

A few other states have already floated this idea. Legislators in Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin introduced bills to withhold federal payments way back in June of last year. Those bills would authorize the state to withhold federal funding if the state determines that the federal government is delinquent in its funding. States would withhold federal taxes collected from state employees and stop repaying federal grants. A similar proposal in New York would allow the state to withhold federal taxes from state employee paychecks as well as an amount equivalent to any federal payments being withheld in violation of a court decision. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said his state might withhold some funds given Trump’s threats to slash billions in funds, but Newsom hasn’t specified what funds or how this would work. All of these proposals run into the same problem: How, if at all, can a state tell the federal government to pound sand when the taxman comes around?

[...]

There are any number of arguments that can be raised to justify not paying federal taxes, most of which tend to make you sound like a sovereign citizen, mumbling about how the Sixteenth Amendment isn’t real or paying taxes is an illegal search and seizure. Red states make a lot of noise about figuring out ways not to pay federal income tax to the tyrannical federal government, though maybe not so much these days. States have some limited power to resist federal demands thanks to the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine. This is grounded in the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers to the states, save those explicitly granted to the federal government by the Constitution. Under this doctrine, the federal government can’t commandeer states into administering federal mandates. The federal government can impose — and pay for and provide personnel and other resources for — federal regulations, but it can’t make states pony up for that.

The patchwork of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act is based on this doctrine. The Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius upheld some of the ACA but struck down the provision requiring states to accept Medicaid expansion, even though the federal government was providing substantial funding for states to do so. However, states could lose all their Medicaid funding if they didn’t take the expansion, and the court held that this was too coercive and was essentially commandeering states into following a federal mandate. States could therefore still voluntarily expand Medicaid and take federal funds to do it, but couldn’t be required to do so.

That doctrine may also be effective — well, presuming the Supreme Court actually follows its own past jurisprudence — in stopping the federal government from blocking funds to sanctuary jurisdictions. Immigration enforcement is entirely left to the federal government. Indeed, states are prohibited from making their own state-level immigration laws, which Florida found out earlier this year when the Supreme Court refused to entertain its request to overturn lower court decisions saying just that. If saying that the government can’t yank all Medicaid funding is too coercive — the conservative majority in Sebelius called it “a gun to the head” — then threatening to yank some vast unspecified pool of federal money to states that won’t participate in Trump’s war on immigrants is likely coercive as well.

The problem for Minnesota is that this doctrine is limited to attempts to condition funding on federal action. It provides no protection against the government just taking money away for no reason at all, which is basically what is happening right now. Trump has been slashing money left and right from blue states, something that is all the more maddening given that blue states subsidize red ones by a substantial margin. From 2018 to 2022, blue states paid in roughly 60 percent of federal tax receipts while getting 53 percent back.

[...] While normal paths might be foreclosed, there’s something else that remains: symbolic refusal and civil disobedience. One possible way is for the state to continue requiring taxpayers to still pay all federal taxes, but for the state to serve as a custodian of those funds, not passing them along to the administration. That would protect individual taxpayers from the wrath of the administration, possibly, as they wouldn’t be refusing to pay federal taxes as such. At root, this is what the other blue state proposals contemplate as well: An individual taxpayer isn’t put at risk because no individual taxpayer is refusing to pay their federal taxes. The state just isn’t passing those funds along. This method also can’t be attacked as a form of nullification. It doesn’t require the state to pass a law purporting to nullify any federal obligation or tax requirement. It isn’t a weird state sovereignty argument. It’s just a bank account move: the funds are here, and the federal government can have them once they stop illegally attacking the state financially and otherwise.

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

The only question Democratic Governors, Mayors, and County Presidents should be asking is this: When will we coordinate to enact our Soft Secession from the Federal Government? In August, journalist Christopher Armitage wrote an excellent piece titled “It’s Time For Americans To Start Talking About Soft Secession.” You can read it in full (linked below). Briefly, he summarizes the paradox of American federalism in 2025 as follows:

[“The same constitutional structure that allows red states to ban abortion permits blue states to stockpile abortion pills. The same Tenth Amendment that lets Texas deploy its National Guard to the border prevents Trump from commandeering state police for deportations.”]

In this piece I argue that we are far past the time to simply talk about soft secession. We must act upon it immediately. It is the moral, ethical, and yes legally right thing to do. The Federal government has ceased to function for the public good. It is currently shut down with no sign of reopening. Some 40 million Americans face starvation as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is suspended. Congress continues to funnel tax breaks to billionaires and weapons manufacturers. And Mike Johnson’s House has been in session for only 12 of the last 97 days. Thus, it is time for Democratic State and local governments to respond with soft secession by withholding federal taxes—and instead spend those funds on their own residents. This must continue until the Federal government can ensure it will uphold human rights and human dignity for all people in this country—as the Constitution obliges. But because the current Federal government cannot or will not fulfill its obligations to the American people, then we must say it clearly—it is time for Soft Secession.

What Is Soft Secession?

In a phrase: nonviolent noncooperation. Soft secession is when states and cities refuse to cooperate with a derelict or illegitimate federal government—not through violence or formal separation, but through the reassertion of local sovereignty. For example, States that protect abortion access even as the federal government refuses to act. Cities that deny ICE access to their property. States that pass stronger gun safety and minimum wage laws than federal standards. But the problem is, these are all still reactive measures—steps taken only after the harm done. We now need proactive soft secession: policies that anticipate and recognize federal failure and act before lives are lost or rights are stripped. Why should states have to wait for their residents to starve due to lack of SNAP funding, when they can act proactively to prevent the starvation in the first place? When Washington cannot or will not perform its basic obligations, states not only have the right but the sovereign duty to act. It is time for Democratic states to move from defensive posturing to proactive protection—to use their constitutional authority to safeguard their residents’ economic security and human rights with soft secession.

Mark Alfred at NOTUS:

President Donald Trump explicitly said his administration had been cutting and would continue to cut “popular Democrat programs” during the ongoing government shutdown, an admission that his administration was wielding its power to punish his opponents. “We’re only going to cut Democrat programs,” Trump said Thursday at a televised Cabinet meeting. “I hate to tell you, I guess that makes sense, but we’re only cutting Democrat programs. … We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly, because that’s the way it works.” The president did not share his definition of “Democrat programs,” but Trump and his allies have repeatedly suggested they’ll inflict pain on Democrats over their votes against government funding. Last week, the administration sought to strip billions of dollars’ worth of energy programs from Democratic-led states while leaving similar ones intact in Republican-led states.

“The shutdown has been, you know, pretty damaging. I mean, not yet, because it’s early, but it gets a little bit worse as it goes along, and we’ll be making cuts that will be permanent.” Trump said. “They wanted to do this, so we’ll give a little taste of their own medicine.” Red states are expected to feel the impact of some of the administration’s energy program cuts even if they avoid direct cuts to their programs. Some of the programs already targeted by the Trump administration have bipartisan support, with members urging the president directly to avoid making such cuts.

Clara Jeffrey at Mother Jones:

In 2013, venture capitalist Tim Draper launched a “Six Californias” ballot initiative. The upshot was that with some 40 million people, more than the population of the 20 smallest states combined, California was too big, too diverse, to be “efficiently” governed. So why not, Draper argued, break it up into six new “startups,” a.k.a. states? Instead of two senators, we erstwhile “Californians” would get 12.

Draper’s scheme was part of a long tradition—since California was admitted to the Union as part of the Compromise of 1850, there have been more than 220 proposals for it to divide or secede—but derided as a Silicon Valley ploy to create a libertarian deregulation zone. (Tellingly, the Bay Area state was to be named “Silicon Valley.”) And aside from the feasibility of making it happen, state and federal constitution-wise, people worried that it would cleave four rich populous states from two poorer rural states (fair) and weaken Democrats’ voting share in the Senate (in retrospect, nah). Draper’s measure gleaned valid signatures from some 753,000 people—more, it must be said, than the populations of America’s three smallest states—but in California, that wasn’t enough to get on the ballot. After the 2016 election, which put the anti-majoritarian provisions of the US Constitution very much front of mind, Draper came back with a simpler proposal—three Californias, or Cal 3. This initiative got enough signatures to head to voters, but the day before the 2018 ballots were to be printed, the state Supreme Court blocked the measure—what about things like existing water treaties, the justices worried—and Draper eventually gave up.

While his motives were murky, Draper tapped into something now excruciatingly felt. The assignment of two senators per state, no matter its population, was always a deeply flawed (and deeply racist) proposition. But the unfairness has only gotten more acute. As my colleague Ari Berman has noted: “In 1790, the country’s most populous state, Virginia, had 12 times as many people as its least populous, Delaware. Today, California has 67 times the population of Wyoming. Fifteen small states with 41 million people combined now routinely elect 30 GOP senators; California, with 39 million residents, is represented by only two Democrats.” The Golden State is the fourth-largest economy in the world but doesn’t have political clout proportional to its population, let alone to our status as a global cultural, technological, and agricultural juggernaut. In case it’s not obvious why I’m taking a leisurely drive down a byroad of California electoral history, let’s review some of the abuses and usurpations that President Donald Trump has visited upon us.

The most vicious of those abuses has been over immigration. On June 6, at the urging of his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, ICE escalated raids in California, hitting farms, factories, construction sites, and schools, separating families and detaining undocumented people, legal residents, and even citizens. Federal agents arrested and hospitalized David Huerta, the head of one of the state’s most powerful unions. When protests erupted, Trump jumped at the chance to federalize the National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes—something that hasn’t been done since LBJ acted to protect civil rights protesters from segregationists. Border czar Tom Homan threatened to arrest Newsom, which Trump agreed was a “great” idea. When a reporter asked for what crime, Trump responded that his “primary crime is running for governor” and called protesters “insurrectionists.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson chimed in that Newsom should be “tarred and feathered.” Then Trump sent Marines into LA. When California Sen. Alex Padilla—who was voted for by more Americans than 18 GOP senators combined—tried to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem questions at a press conference, federal officials knocked him down and cuffed him. One-quarter of California’s population are immigrants, and the continual attack on them—and anyone who is brown—is a moral injury that plays out in our streets and our feeds day after day after day.

But the direct assaults on California are by no means limited to raids and those protesting raids. Trump has dragged his feet about providing federal aid to address the devastation of LA’s wildfires, saying he’d release it only if we pass a voter-ID law; taken our own National Guard off fire lines; and made bizarre claims about sending us water for the fires from the Pacific Northwest. He’s canceled our car efficiency and emissions rules, attacked our renewable energy plan, and zeroed out federal money for rooftop solar and high-speed rail. He’s revoked federal grants to UCLA over spurious charges of antisemitism, then gave the school a list of demands, including a $1 billion settlement and the end of ­gender-affirming care in its hospitals. Amid all of that came Trump’s demand that Texas engage in midcycle redistricting to give the GOP five extra congressional seats that he says it’s “entitled to.” Newsom, both legitimately enraged and sensing an opportunity to help his presidential ambitions, has rallied California Democrats to mount a ballot initiative to temporarily set aside its nonpartisan redistricting commission and draw congressional maps to counterbalance Texas’ scheme.

We will vote on that initiative in November, and my bet is it will pass. But California, and the country, cannot await the outcome of the midterms to repel Trump’s siege on democracy. More drastic action is required. Unfortunately, especially as Trump berates generals and admirals on “the enemy within” and suggests they use US cities as “training grounds,” it’s all too easy to imagine a world where the commanders of California’s military bases are compelled to choose sides. (If you think such scenarios are out of the realm of possibility, ask yourself why he and Pushup Pete Hegseth have been purging the brass.) Our boundaries of oceans and mountains and deserts, our copious natural resources, and our technological prowess make a return to an independent California Republic more feasible than it might be for other states. But in advance, and hopefully in lieu, of that, it’s time to start applying our economic muscle.

[...] Unified action could further preserve what the federal government is destroying, law professors Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago) and Jon D. Michaels (UCLA) wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Blue states could create “large regional research consortia; re-create public-health and meteorology forecasting centers servicing member states; and finance pandemic planning.” (A proposal to do much of this is underway in Sacramento.) With the Justice Department doing little more than acting as Trump’s goon squad, states could also “mobilize interstate criminal task forces to track and prosecute corruption by politicians, ­lobbyists and government contractors (who invariably, when violating federal laws, run afoul of myriad state laws, too).” Ditto consumer and environmental investigations—the cost of which could be offset by fines, even as they lay the groundwork for federal prosecutions if America is ever restored to sanity.

But we need to be clear-eyed: Such a restoration may not come in time. So far, this year has been marked by a collective action problem. Media conglomerates, law firms, universities, banks, CEOs—too many powerful institutions and individuals have failed to meet the moment. This is why people all over the country, desperate for pushback against Trump’s autocracy, have embraced Newsom’s redistricting plan, whatever their broader opinions of him. With Trump provocatively sending troops into blue cities, and using recision and the shutdown to claw back congressionally appropriated funds from blue states, it’s time to turn the tables on him. Soft secession, powered by the presidential ambitions of multiple blue-state governors, could, should it come to that, be the proving ground of a new confederacy. Hopefully the threat of CalExit or a new Union will be enough. But that extreme measures might be necessary to ensure that American democracy shall not perish from the Earth is becoming more self-evident with every passing day.

I agree with this Mother Jones piece: it’s time for blue states to consider a soft secession.

See Also:

For Such A Time As This (Andra Watkins): Pain for Gain: Soft Secession and a Red Recession

Chris Armitage at The Existential Republic:

Behind closed doors, blue state leaders are planning. They’re war-gaming scenarios where federal agents show up and continue to transgress further and further past what is “legal.” Daily the courts are showing that that something is legal when Trump wants it to happen, and illegal when he doesn’t. How does a government function under these circumstance?

For many state Attorney Generals and Governors, the legal briefs are already drafted. The strategy sessions have been running since December. “We saw this coming, even though we hoped it wouldn’t,” former Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum told The 19th days after Trump’s inauguration. This is what American federalism looks like in 2025: Democratic governors holding emergency sessions on encrypted apps, attorneys general filing lawsuits within hours of executive orders, and state legislatures quietly passing laws that amount to nullification of federal mandates. Oregon is stockpiling abortion medication in secret warehouses. Illinois is exploring digital sovereignty. California has $76 billion in reserves and is deciding how to deploy it. Three sources on those daily Zoom calls between Democratic AGs say the same phrase keeps coming up, though nobody wants to say it publicly: soft secession.

Not the violent rupture of 1861, but something else entirely. Blue states building parallel systems, withholding cooperation, and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.

The infrastructure for this resistance already exists. Twenty-three Democratic attorneys general now gather on near-daily Zoom calls at 8 AM Pacific, which means the East Coast officials are already on their third coffee. They divide responsibilities and share templates for lawsuits they’ve been drafting since last spring. California Governor Gavin Newsom called state lawmakers into a special session later this year to protect the state’s progressive policies, while Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker launched Governors Safeguarding Democracy, seeking to unify state-based opposition to Trump’s agenda. Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, describes preparations so thorough that challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order required only to “cross the T’s, dot the I’s, press print, and file.”

[...]

This economic reality gives blue states leverage they’ve only begun to explore. California has accumulated $76 billion in reserves. The Bank of North Dakota, profitable every year since 1919, offers a model for state banking that could reduce federal dependence. When Trump threatened to cut funding from Maine over transgender sports policies, Governor Janet Mills had 22 other Democratic governors ready to stand with her, collectively representing the majority of America’s economic output.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey told MSNBC her state police would “absolutely not” help Trump’s deportation efforts. She’s not bluffing. In Printz v. United States (1997), Justice Scalia wrote that the federal government “cannot require states and localities to carry out its immigration policy.” The anti-commandeering doctrine, reinforced in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), means states can’t be forced to implement federal programs.

The legal foundation for soft secession was written by conservative justices who never imagined blue states would use it. Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken calls it “uncooperative federalism.” States don’t have to actively resist. They can simply refuse to help. And without state cooperation, much of the federal government’s agenda becomes unenforceable.

We’ve seen this playbook work before. Northern states’ personal liberty laws made the Fugitive Slave Act virtually unenforceable between 1780 and 1859, with only 330 slaves returned despite federal law. More recently, cannabis legalization has spread to 41 states despite federal prohibition, forcing Washington to essentially give up. When 25 states refused to implement REAL ID requirements starting in 2007, they delayed enforcement by nearly two decades.

A case in Washington state shows just how far this has gone. The state Attorney General is now seeking an injunction against Adams County Sheriff for cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, arguing he’s violating state law. The sheriff faces a choice: follow federal directives or state law. Increasingly, state officials are choosing their states.

Eight states have already enacted State Voting Rights Acts that exceed federal protections. Twenty-two states have implemented automatic voter registration. Colorado has created what election security experts call the gold standard: risk-limiting audits with paper ballot requirements. [...] Pritzker has his staff exploring how to force Apple and Google to disable location tracking for anyone crossing into Illinois for medical procedures, preventing any digital trail that could be subpoenaed. Multiple governors are studying whether they can legally deny federal agents access to state databases, airports, and even highways for immigration enforcement. The discussions, according to sources, have gone as far as evaluating state authority to close airspace to federal deportation flights. States are creating pharmaceutical stockpiles, climate agreements, immigration policies. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has secured 209 electoral votes. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s 11 states have reduced emissions by 50% while the federal government rolled back climate regulations. The U.S. Climate Alliance’s 24 governors represent 60% of the American economy.

California doesn’t wait for Washington anymore. Neither does New York. Or Illinois. They’re building functioning governmental systems that operate independently of federal authority. [...]

The phrase “soft secession” makes Democrats nervous. They prefer “resistance” or “federalism” or any other euphemism that doesn’t acknowledge what’s happening. But when democracy fails, when fair elections become impossible in certain states, when federal funds are withheld as political punishment, states don’t have many options left. The infrastructure is built. The legal precedents are established. The money is there. Blue states have spent two years sharpening these tools. Next week, the governors meet again. The agenda, according to three sources, includes a discussion of whether to coordinate state tax policy to offset federal cuts. As blue states prepare to deny federal agents access to their databases, their highways, maybe even their airspace, the soft secession isn’t coming. It’s here.

BLUEXIT, BABY!

From the August 18, 2025 essay: