A one-way national divorce: Anarchy for them, coercion for us

Imagine the Confederates attacking Fort Sumter in April 1861 and Abraham Lincoln negotiating terms of separation instead of mustering troops. We would be two separate countries. In a limited but real sense, we now live in two countries anyway — because Donald Trump has ceded ground to blue-state mobs.

States like Minnesota, working in tandem with local politicians to obstruct a basic federal function — protecting national sovereignty — are latter-day Confederates. Blue states claim the power to nullify federal immigration enforcement inside their borders. That raises a question no one in Washington wants to answer: If blue states can thwart national sovereignty to protect illegal aliens, why can’t red states remove them?

Blue jurisdictions unify behind the proposition of protecting illegal aliens. Red jurisdictions rarely unify behind protecting Americans from political persecution.

This fight doesn’t hinge on Minneapolis or the specific riots that ended with two anti-ICE agitators dead. It reflects a sustained, coordinated campaign across blue cities: street militants, local Democrats, and friendly judges working in concert to shut down immigration enforcement. The activists don’t negotiate over “rules of engagement.” They aim to ban enforcement itself, at least anywhere Democrats hold power. Blue states now run a neo-Confederacy against one of the few legitimate functions of national government.

Now look at what happens on the other side of the divide. Some weak-kneed Republicans — James Comer of Kentucky among them — float the idea that Trump should leave blue cities to stew in their own sanctuary mess, as if the locals will eventually revolt. That fantasy collapses on contact with reality. Worse, ceding sovereignty to blue states hasn’t even produced more deportations in red states.

Courts have enjoined nearly every state statute that tries to treat illegal presence as a state crime. If red states attempted full-spectrum crackdowns under a Democrat president, the same judicial buzz saw would cut them down.

The result: Democrats can block federal law regardless of who sits in the White House, while red states can’t protect themselves when Democrats run the executive branch.

That asymmetry flows from something simple and ugly: Republicans don’t believe their own promises the way Democrats believe theirs. Republicans talk problems to death. Democrats build institutions.

Democrats staff agencies, cultivate prosecutors, and train judges to pursue a shared mission. Republicans often appoint people who treat their “mission” as career management and donor service.

Democrats built parallel systems designed to frustrate immigration enforcement under an opposing president. Conservatives in red states built little beyond press releases and campaign slogans.

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Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere have effectively executed the state interposition James Madison described in Federalist 46.

“The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices … would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments,” Madison wrote. “And where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.”

So the first step is to stir public “disquietude.” Then teach “repugnance” toward federal action. Encourage refusal to cooperate with “officers of the Union.” Then use the governor, legislature, and adjacent states “in unison” to create obstacles so severe that the federal government hesitates to enforce the law.

Blue states have followed that script with discipline. They align the branches. They coordinate the message. They deploy local officials to deny cooperation. They rely on judges in blue jurisdictions to shred the Immigration and Nationality Act, even when Congress tried to limit judicial interference, and they order illegal aliens released from custody.

The political class says the quiet part out loud. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) invoked Fort Sumter to describe his interposition against the federal government. Mayor Jacob Frey (D) declared that Minneapolis “does not, and will not, enforce federal immigration law.” Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner threatened to “hunt down” ICE agents he believes violated civil liberties, calling them “wannabe Nazis,” and promised to identify them and pursue them.

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Blue jurisdictions unify behind the proposition of protecting illegal aliens. Red jurisdictions rarely unify behind the proposition of protecting Americans from political persecution. Where did red-state leaders stand when the Biden Justice Department went after pro-lifers for praying outside abortion clinics? Where did they stand when federal authorities treated ordinary citizens like criminals for walking through the Capitol after barriers and rope lines moved?

Democrats now operate by a new rulebook: anarchy for their people, coercion for ours.

Republicans still operate as if the old system can save them. Even when a red-state leader shows spine, he often stands alone — without a legislature willing to act, without an attorney general willing to litigate, without courts willing to defend state interests.

Watching blue states succeed at sabotaging immigration enforcement under Trump should alarm everyone. A darker problem looms: the next Democrat Justice Department won’t limit itself to immigration. When it turns its machinery against Americans again, red states won’t have Madison’s “in unison” design ready to defend their citizens. They will prove as impotent against federal coercion as they have been against the importation of millions of illegal aliens.

Americans now live like second-class citizens while illegal aliens enjoy first-class protection — because the party that claims to represent Americans has failed at the most basic task of representation: fighting to win.