The news this past week, that the Idaho legislature and passed and the governor had signed a bill forbidding interstate travel to obtain an abortion, followed by the decision of a rogue right wing lunatic Trump judge in Amarillo making overturning the FDA approval 20 years ago of Mifepristone, effectively attempting to end medication abortion nationwide,brings into sharp focus a process that has been going on for several years. This is approaching the point where, if Trump returns to office in 2024 with Republican control of the Senate (a strong possibility, given the Senate map and the fact Democrats are the majority of those up for re-election) andthe House, the plan can be brought to fruition.
It is no less than a recreation of The Confederacy, without an armed conflict, and with reactionary control extended nation-wide.
Look at the following:
Back last July, 2022, in response to a lawsuit brought by the Republican state attorneys general in Texas and Louisiana, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden Administration from changing a key element of federal immigration policy. What makes the case interesting is it was just the latest victory for red states, supported by Trump-appointed judges, successfully engaging in a multi-front attack to seize control of national policy even though a Democrat was in the White House and at the time controlled the House and Senate.
Since then, with Republicans having again taken the majority in the House of Representatives, the red states are moving social policy sharply to the right on issues ranging from abortion to LGBTQ rights and classroom censorship. At the same time, using the power of redistricting and overwhelming majorities in the state legislatures they they control, they are working to hobble the ability of their own largest metro areas to set a different course as they have destroyed representation by Democrats of those large cities by slicing them up into parts of surrounding districts controlled by Republicans, effectively disfranchising the progressive urban populations in their states.
Increasingly, using the federal courts and the state legislatures they control, the MAGA Republican right are creating a nation inside a nation, a Red America that operates on rules and policies that radically diverge from the rest of the country more than almost any previous era since the post-Civil War period when the South began defining their ultimate victory despite having lost the civil war, using the “separate but equal doctrine” that became known as “Jim Crow” to defeat the 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional amendments passed nationally to ensure equality for the freed slaves.
As well as working to create a separate Red America, the MAGA Republicans also seek to bend the blue states to their political will. The Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade was the result of a case built around a Mississippi law created specifically to challenge Roe and provide the Supreme Court that is now controlled by a radical right supermajority with the opportunity to overturn the decision. Late Friday, a Trump-appointed judge issued a decision overturning the power of the FDA to approve drugs, with a decision in a case brought by anti-abortion legal activists specifically in Amarillo because they knew this radical anti-abortion judge would deal with the case. Judge Kacsmaryk’s nationwide injunction rescinds FDAs approval of Mifepristone nationwide, including in states where abortion is still legal and without exception for the mother’s health, rape, or incest.
The decision is an attempt to impose a national ban on abortion despite the fact that the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision said that abortion policy was a state matter to be decided in individual states. Kacsmaryk even brought back in full force the 1873 Comstock Law that prohibits advertising or mailing anything, including information, that prevents conception or produces an abortion. Using this law gets around the milestone decision of Griswold v. Connecticut rendered by the Warren Court in 1965, which overturned Connecticut’s “little Comstock law,” while leaving the federal law in place though unenforced for the past 58 years
These events are the result of a long-term movement to recreate a modern Confederacy within the borders of the United States, and then to make the cultural priorities of the GOP’s predominantly White Christian electoral base the controlling law in the non-Confederate states.
The goal is to win a new civil war without resorting to armed conflict, and to insure the political dominance of the rebel Confederacy.
While this appears to be culturally-driven, its financing comes from extremely wealthy individuals whose wealth is founded on the older economy based on resource extraction. Thus red state legislatures act against climate change proposals, promote further use of fossil fuels, and oppose environmental regulations such as emissions standards.
Blue states are more heavily exposed to the big demographic, cultural and economic forces that are reshaping American life; red states are less exposed, and where they are, those changes are occurring overwhelmingly on their large metropolitan areas, which have become “blue jewels” in a sea of surrounding red. These changes are seen by the GOP and their primarily-white voter base as threatening their declining political power. Thus the Democratic cities like Austin, Houston or Atlanta are a target for Republicans who control the state government to pass “pre-emption” laws; not only are the Republican legislatures redistricting the cities to deny them political representation at all, there are moves like what is happening in Texas and Tennessee to limit the size of local government and limit the policy choices over which those governments have control. The Texas state legislature has passed a law allowing the state to intervene in local political decisions in Houston - the largest and bluest city in the state.
GOP state legislatures are resorting to increasingly overbearing and indefensible power plays to hold off the rising tides of opposition resulting from their descent into reactionary rule.
On every issue from gun ownership and religious affiliation to participation - or lack thereof - in the 21st century information economy, most red states are diverging more sharply from the experience in blue states while becoming more similar between themselves.
The difference between the 25 red states that voted for Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, compared to the rest of the company shows the difference of the two Americas in sharp terms.. At a time when the immigrant share of the total US population is nearing its all-time high, 19 of the Trump states rank at the bottom 25 states in share of population composed of immigrants. While the overall share of the population that are college graduates is rising, 20 of these states are in the bottom 25 for the share of population holding at least a four-year college degree. The 25 Trump states, by contrast, fall into the top half when states are ranked by the share of population that are White Evangelical Christians or who own guns.
In economic structure as well, the red states are rooted in the powerhouse industries of the 20th century than their blue counterparts, and have less of their economy involved in the information-age industries that generate the greatest economic output. 23 states Trump won rank in the top 26 states emitting the most carbon from their energy sector per dollar of economic output. In contrast, 18 Trump states rank in the bottom half for share of the workforce employed in technology jobs.
Housing costs and taxes are generally lower in the red states, but with high-wage, high-value information-age jobs concentrating more in blue states, only three red states with large energy extraction industries - Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming - have median wages that equal the average of all the blue states. The gross domestic product per person and the median household income are now both 25% greater in blue states than in red.
Blue and Red states are divided as regards where people live. Three-fifths of residents in blue states live in core urban counties and inner suburbs, with less than one-third in the least urban areas. Red states are almost the mirror image: almost three-fifths of residents live in the least urban regions with less than one-third in core urban counties and inner suburbs.
The most urban counties are the most Democratic-leaning parts of red states; the least urban places are the most Republican-leaning parts of blue states. If the most urban places are removed from the red total and the most rural places from the blue. the gap in total economic output widens further: the blue state contribution to total US GNP is 75% bigger than the red.
The real threat in the red state effort to set their own course and impose their values nationwide is a challenge to underlying national cohesion. Red states are testing how much divergence the fundamental national cohesion can take before it unravels.
To a far greater extent than earlier, control of state government now aligns with a states’ preferences in presidential elections. Republicans control all the state legislature in all of the 25 states that voted twice for Trump. Republicans also control the governorship in 21 of the Trump states, with only Louisiana, Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina dividing executive from legislative power.
Of the 25 Trump states, 21 have already moved to restrict abortion access since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. The same 21 Trump states have passed laws denying rights to the transgender community. The same 21 have passed laws since 2021 restricting how public school teachers can discuss issues of race, gender or sexual orientation, while making it easier for critics to ban books from school libraries. These same states are also the majority of states that have passed legislation making it more difficult to vote following Trump’s Big Lie.
Seen as a whole, red states’ drive to set their own rules represents the broadest effort to carve out a separate sphere of influence since the fierce resistance to reconstruction after the Civil War that led to Jim Crow segregation; these states are displaying a greater separatist impulse today than the South did then.
Blue states have moved forcefully to defend and expand many liberties now under siege in red states. But congressional Republicans have already introduced proposals that would apply the red state rules across the entire nation; while they have little chance of becoming law so long as Democrats control the Senate, the new social order red states are now creating offers the best preview of what Republicans will try to impose on all states the next time they achieve unified control of the White House and Congress in Washington.
Vote like your life depends on it.
Because it does.
You can support That’s Another Fine Mess with a paid subscription for only $7/month or $70/year, saving $14. Your support with a paid subscription - now that my partner is gone and the financial situation here has changed - will be deeply appreciated.
Comments are for paid subscribers.
You have put all of this together very well Tom. And it ought to scare the hell out of everyone. We all need to get active politically in whatever capacity you are capable of. The youth vote is going to be so important in the next elections. The red states are making it harder for them to vote just like they have the minorities. At least one of them won’t accept a student ID card but will accept a gun registration card. That a good example of who they want and don’t want to vote. It is going to take all of us to educate, motivate and help everyone to vote, and vote Democratic so we can take our declining freedoms back from the Republican fascists. They have tipped over the first domino and the the rest are going down fast unless we stop them.
A final thrust of the flying fickle finger of fate - the Democrats MUST find better leadership with a better grasp of strategic thinking. Howard Dean had a plan to elect Democrats in as many state governments as possible, and the "leadership" took that money and used it on the Obama national campaign - perhaps a good tactical decision, but strategically it was what led to what we have now.