This is a thought experiment, not a manifesto. I’m acting as a researcher here, following the data to see where it leads. More Americans are talking about full secession than at any point since the Civil War, and rather than clutching pearls about it, I wanted to examine what the numbers actually say would happen if the two dominant political coalitions each peacefully received exactly what they wanted.
The reason this conversation has moved from fringe fantasy to serious discussion deserves acknowledgment. Many people now believe the 2026 midterm elections will either be cancelled or nullified. This belief does not emerge from paranoia. It emerges from observation. Not once in recorded history has a fascist leader or their party been democratically elected and then democratically removed from power through standard means. The structural changes this administration has implemented follow a documented playbook that Trump did not write, and it’s meant to nullify and dismantle democratic safeguards that make elections matter.
Project 2025 was authored by conservative institutions that have planned single-party rule for decades. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts described the project’s goal as “institutionalizing Trumpism”¹ and declared that “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”² Republican-controlled legislatures have demonstrated remarkably little institutional resistance to any of it.
People are reasonably worried. And when people are reasonably worried, they start exploring alternatives.
So I followed the data. If peaceful full blown secession occurred and each side got exactly what they wanted, what would those two countries actually look like?
What follows is a best-case scenario for the two most powerful factions in American politics. There are many sides, but these are the ones currently holding substantial state power. Full implementation of stated agendas. No federal obstruction. No need for compromise. Two nations, finally free to build what they claim to want.
Upgrade to paidThe most important distinction between these two hypothetical countries is not which policies they would implement. Blue America under current Democratic leadership would expand healthcare access, raise minimum wages, invest in climate infrastructure, protect reproductive rights, and support organized labor. Red America would continue dangerous deregulation, refuse Medicaid expansion, eliminate minimum wage floors, ban abortion, and weaken workers’ rights. We know this because these are the policies each side already pursues at the state level.
The crucial difference is what happens when policies fail. Blue America retains functioning democracy: competitive elections, accessible voting, quality public education, free information flow. When something does not work, citizens can demand change and elected officials face accountability. The capacity to course-correct exists. Policy can evolve based on outcomes. Red America continues its trajectory of gerrymandering, voting restrictions, mass misinformation, and public education cuts. Even when policies produce catastrophic outcomes, citizens possess diminishing tools to demand change through democratic participation. One country can iterate. One country cannot.
The gap in life expectancy between the longest-lived and shortest-lived states has reached nine years, the largest in American history.³ Hawaiians can expect to live to 79.9 years. Mississippians can expect 70.9.⁴ Jennifer Karas Montez, a demographer at Syracuse University who has spent her career studying how state policies affect population health, found that this gap traces directly to policy choices. “The chances that an individual can live a long and healthy life appear to be increasingly tied to their state of residence and the policy choices made by governors and state legislators,” Montez said.⁵ Her research identified which policies matter most: healthcare access, environmental protection, labor standards including minimum wage, and civil rights protections. States that invest in these areas produce populations that live longer. States that run for-profit prisons, incarcerate at the highest rates on earth, strip workers of the right to organize, and override local democracy to keep wages down produce populations that die younger. Connecticut gained 9.6 years of life expectancy since 1959. Oklahoma gained only 4.7.⁶ Both states started at roughly the same place. They made different choices.
The consequences fall hardest on women and children. Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate stands at 40.7 deaths per 100,000 births. California’s is 10.1.⁷ A woman giving birth in Louisiana faces four times the risk of dying as a woman in California. Mississippi’s infant mortality rate is 8.94 per 1,000 live births. New Hampshire’s is 2.93.⁸ The CDC estimates that more than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable.⁹ California has built prevention systems. Louisiana has not.
Ten states still refuse to expand Medicaid despite the federal government covering 90 percent of the cost: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.¹⁰ In states that expanded coverage, the uninsured rate among low-income adults fell from 35 percent to 15 percent.¹¹ In states that refused, 1.4 million people currently fall into the coverage gap, earning too much for traditional Medicaid but too little for marketplace subsidies.¹² Texas has an uninsured rate among working-age adults of 23.6 percent. Massachusetts has 2.6 percent.¹³ Researchers estimate Medicaid expansion has saved 27,000 lives nationwide.¹⁴
Governor Gavin Newsom frames California’s approach in terms of concrete deliverables: “California is tackling the cost of health care head on. Under the California Blueprint, our state will be the first to achieve universal access to health care coverage.”¹⁵ Governor Tim Walz, a former teacher, put it more simply when explaining why Minnesota now provides free breakfast and lunch to all public school students regardless of family income: “The haves and the have-nots in the lunchroom is not a necessary thing. Just feed our children.”¹⁶ At the Democratic National Convention, Walz drew the contrast explicitly: “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”¹⁷
Compare this to what Republican governors say versus what actually happens. In November 2021, Governor Greg Abbott promised Texans: “I can guarantee the lights will stay on.”¹⁸ Two months later, with another winter storm approaching, Abbott reversed himself: “No one can guarantee there won’t be load shed events,” referring to planned blackouts.¹⁹ The Texas grid has failed repeatedly since his initial promise, and roughly 700 Texans died during the February 2021 collapse that Abbott blamed on everyone but himself.²⁰ Governor Ron DeSantis declared during his presidential campaign launch: “There’s not been a single book banned in the state of Florida.” PolitiFact rated this claim FALSE.²¹ PEN America documented 1,406 book ban cases in Florida school districts, and DeSantis’s own education department published a list showing roughly 300 books removed in a single school year.²²
The gun death data follows the same geography. Mississippi reports 29.4 firearm deaths per 100,000 residents. Massachusetts reports 3.7.²³ States that enacted gun safety legislation have dramatically lower death rates. States that removed restrictions have dramatically higher ones. California’s attorney general calculated that if other states reduced gun violence to California’s level, 140,000 additional Americans would be alive today.²⁴
Blue America controls roughly 70 percent of national GDP with roughly half the population.²⁵ An independent Red America would need to either raise taxes dramatically or cut services deeply to replace the federal subsidies currently flowing from blue states.
Peaceful secessions have happened throughout history, from Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce in 1993 to the Baltic states leaving the Soviet Union in 1991, so the mechanisms exist even if Americans have never used them.
So what does daily life actually look like in each country five years out?
Blue America has universal or near-universal healthcare coverage. Minimum wages sit at seventeen-twenty dollars and is perhaps tied to inflation. Workers have paid family leave. Kids eat breakfast and lunch at school regardless of family income. Power grids function because utilities answer to regulators instead of shareholders. Elections reflect what voters actually want because districts are drawn fairly and ballot access is protected. Housing costs remain brutal in major metros, homelessness persists, and plenty of policies fall short of their goals. But when something breaks, voters can remove the people responsible and try something else. The system learns.
Red America has medical debt as a leading cause of bankruptcy. Workers earn seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour with no path to organize for more. Women flee across state lines for reproductive healthcare or die because they couldn’t leave in time. Schools are defunded and stripped of books. Rolling blackouts hit every summer and winter because the grid was never fixed and nobody went to jail for the deaths. For-profit prisons warehouse a population incarcerated at rates that exceed any nation on earth. And when all of it fails, there is no mechanism to change leadership. The elections are gerrymandered beyond competition, the courts are captured, and the information environment tells everyone it’s California’s fault.
One country looks like a bustling modernized democracy working to take governance seriously while valuing human life. The other looks like Mississippi with F-16 Fighter Jets and school issued “Trump Bibles” that have pictures rather than words since reading is for liberals.
When California’s policies fail to deliver, Californians can vote for change, access accurate information about what went wrong, and hold officials accountable. When Texas policies fail and people die, Texans face the kind of voter suppression that gets countries placed under UN observation and EU member states stripped of voting rights. They face restricted ballot access, an underfunded education system that limits civic knowledge, and an information environment increasingly dominated by outlets that protect Republican leadership from accountability.
One country retains the ability to learn from its mistakes. One country has systematically dismantled the mechanisms that would allow its citizens to demand something better.
That is the real divergence. And it’s already underway.
I want to hear from you. Some will say this kind of analysis is exactly what America’s enemies want: division, fracture, the end of the union. Others will say that may be true, but the current situation is untenable and pretending otherwise helps no one. Sound off in the comments. And remember: this was an empirical exploration of what one outcome would look like, not a personal endorsement. I followed the data. We each decide what to do with it.
For a comprehensive guide to how blue states can build strategic autonomy through coordinated legal and fiscal action, protecting their populations while federal institutions undergo this degradation process, check out the Introduction to Soft Secession Booklet. It’s a fantastic primer for the system that uses every tool available to disempower fascists while avoiding potential dangers that accompany full secession https://theexistentialistrepublic.myshopify.com/products/intro-to-soft-secession
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