The novel and untested approach has been introduced by Democratic lawmakers in at least four states.
Democratic legislators mostly in blue states are attempting to fight back against Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold funding from their states with bills that aim to give the federal government a taste of its own medicine.
The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure.
These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.
Honestly, we need to dissolve the union at this point. It’s just common sense.
Look, it’s time for a reality check. When a nation’s political culture becomes this dysfunctional, there’s no bringing it back, not without some massive bloody civil war that leaves millions dead. What they don’t teach you in school is that every written law or constitution is ultimately meaningless. The Constitution does not enforce itself and neither does any law. They all require a certain amount of good-faith interpretation. It is always possible to come up with a strained bad-faith interpretation of any law that will allow you to do whatever you want. But in a healthy political system, this doesn’t happen. Both sides practice restraint and realize that their overreach will be answered by overreach on the other side.
But if you lose that? The nation is effectively shattered. The United States, as a functioning democracy, is already dead. It’s zombie corpse is just limping along. The president is openly defying the laws passed by Congress. The Supreme Court is openly corrupt, openly partisan, and ignoring the plain language of the constitution. It’s all just might makes right now, and both parties view the other as fundamentally wicked and illegitimate.
Once your politics have decayed this much, there is no bringing it back. We need to peacefully dissolve the United States. Will it be easy? No. But we also shouldn’t let one of our core national character flaws - American exceptionalism, blind us to the possibilities that exist. Plenty of nations have peacefully dissolved before. And they find ways to negotiate the hard issues like dividing assets, debts, obligations, military forces, etc. This has been done before, and it can be done again.
When this comes up, the “umm aktually” crowd also comes out of the woodwork. They’ll point out that there’s no actual constitutional mechanism to do this. These people are blind or have been asleep the last six months. You would think they would learn by now that all it takes to do something is that there not be anyone there to stop you.
We should grant all 50 states full independence. Just disband the existing federal government entirely. Let the states then come back together in whatever new nation or nations they want to form. How can this be done legally? Simple. Someone just needs to run for president on the platform of national dissolution, saying, “I’ll grant all 50 states independence. I’ll fire every federal employee, and I will not use any military force to stop all the states from seceding.” And then they get elected and simply do that. Congress or SCOTUS can complain all they want; it won’t matter. That candidate if elected would have an overwhelming political mandate, and there would be no way to stop them. Some may whine that it’s unconstitutional, but who cares? It’s pretty obvious by now that the Constitution is broken, obsolete, and no longer worth respecting. We’re walking away from that broken obsolete piece of trash. We can do better.
I’m in.
Because you’re right. Once Pandora’s Box is open, that’s it.
The Constitution has been nullified by not being adhered to. Our branches and Congress have ceded their power to what is effectively a king. Our Supreme Court justices have been proven to have taken bribes and are passing rulings completely in opposition to the Constitution without providing reasoning. The bar for president has been lowered to gutter-level. And a significant portion of our populace has been radicalized by lies from propaganda networks.
It’s over. There is no coming back from this. You can’t legislate your way back to reality because we’ll never have the numbers necessary in Congress to make it happen and the president has been given the powers of a king.
It’s balkanization for the Un-united States or total collapse across the board as we all cling to each other as we drown. I’m voting for balkanization.
I know it’s something that’s going to take people a lot of time to wrap their minds around, but the United States as we’ve always known it is over. This is what happens when you let conservatives have too much power.
There’s a word for that - divided.
Also, +1 for dissolving the Union. We had a good run, it’s over.
It need not even be over permanently. Many nations have come together, broken apart, just to come back together again in the future. Look at how many times China has gone through that cycle. Look at German dissolution and reunification. I imagine some time apart would do the nation and its various political factions a lot of good. And probably in a generation or two, a movement would likely develop to try to bring things back together again. The idea of united America isn’t going anywhere. But our present form of government just isn’t what is needed to produce that unity. The Constitution is a collection of compromises meant to satisfy the needs of the 1780s. Perhaps in the 2080s, a new attempt can be made, a new set of compromises forged, and the nation rebuilt. If nothing else, an EU-style customs and open boarder union between the states would likely be implemented even from the time of first dissolution.
Well, the US as we know it is over. I’d certainly never trust having a federal government with as much power as it does currently again, reunited or no.
So true. What we are experiencing now is the “new normal”, and electing Joe Biden proved that we can’t restore sanity just by voting a democrat in office. Every time we get a conservative from now on, we should expect more of this wacky Trumpian bullshit, even if Trump isn’t at the helm.
There are, as you said, only two way of actually fixing the problem. All-out civil war, which nobody really wants and may not culminate in actually winning, or untethering ourselves from the minority party currently running the failed state by seceding, preferably peacefully. That presents it’s own unique challenges and problems, but it’s by far a better solution than continuing to course correct the sinking ship like we are now. We will only drown with the captain and his crew of morons who intend to go down with the ship.