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Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Over the last 20 years, Republican-controlled states and their allies in the judiciary have built a new power infrastructure out of the latent potential of statehood. And now, as the Trump administration breaks norms — and often laws — in pursuit of a different America, there have been calls in blue states to fight back against federal power.
But what should the states do, and how? It’s not just resisting. Blue states are also building new alliances to take on some of the tasks that traditionally would have been federal responsibilities.
In a new essay in Mother Jones, Clara Jeffrey outlined some of the many tactics now at play to throw the states’ economic might around. It’s a set of maneuvers that could be tantamount to a “soft secession.”
To talk about what that could mean, we’re joined by Clara Jeffrey, editor in chief of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Welcome, Clara.
Clara Jeffrey: Thanks so much for having me, Alexis.
Alexis Madrigal: And we’re also joined by John Michaels, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and adviser to the dean on civic engagement. Welcome, Jon.
Jon Michaels: Thanks for having me.
Alexis Madrigal: So Clara, let’s just go straight to the name — “soft secession.” How do you define that?
Clara Jeffrey: Well, it’s defined not as a violent break like 1861, but another term for it is “noncooperative federalism.” Basically, it’s where states that are aligned in values and purpose team up to either defensively or offensively act in their own best interest — to protect their citizens, their values, their programs, their funding.
Alexis Madrigal: And who is actually arguing for this? Are there people out there aside from your essay, saying it’s time for soft secession? Are there Democratic politicians saying this, or is this more of a whisper-network thing?
Clara Jeffrey: I would say it’s more essayists, law professors — people who historically have probed this even before the Trump administration — but it’s also coming to the fore with people just searching for solutions, and also searching for a way to describe the things that are already happening. Like these vaccine compacts, or moves by blue-state attorneys general to mount a defensive wall against some of the worst Trump administration incursions, certainly around things like immigration raids and trying to roll back the rights of both citizens and residents.
Alexis Madrigal: Jon, as our law professor here on the show, I’m curious how you see this playing out in the legal community. Obviously, going back a long time to the very founding, this kind of state versus federal power has been an enormous issue in constitutional law and in many other areas. But things are different now, it feels like.
Jon Michaels: Yeah. I think the term “secession” invites a lot of curiosity, enthusiasm, and aversion. Its provocative nature is a conversation starter. But I think what — and I don’t want to speak for Ms. Jeffrey — but I think what we’re talking about here is decentralization. A reconfiguration of federal-state power.
As you alluded to, that’s happened at various points in our history — some quite productively, some quite problematically. The energy in this conversation is really about whether federal power, which is being mobilized against large segments of the American people and culture, can be recalibrated in a way that gives states and communities more authority and discretion to chart a different course.
If we want to get into the history, it’s very rich with examples that can be mined.
Alexis Madrigal: I mean, does it feel uncomfortable, Clara Jeffrey, to feel like you’re arguing for states’ rights? You know, this kind of long-time Republican position?
Clara Jeffrey: Right. There’s very much an irony there. Traditionally, in my lifetime, it’s been the Republican Party — particularly the far right wing — that invoked states’ rights, often to fend off desegregation.
So yes, it is a flipping of alliances on its head. And I think we’re seeing this play out more and more in real time at higher levels. Just last night, Gavin Newsom basically threatened to walk away from the Governors Association, which has been around for more than a hundred years. And JB Pritzker kind of did the same. They’re saying, “If you’re going to send troops into our state over our objections, in ways that we think are against the law, then we’re not going to be aligned with you in this compact of governors anymore.”
So once you start looking around for signs that there’s a grand reconsideration happening, you’ll see it everywhere.
Alexis Madrigal: Jon, tell us about the kind of legal infrastructure that’s in place here. Going all the way back, but also in the last twenty years — it feels like there’s been a new set of decisions and a new set of understandings in red states about how to resist federal government power that maybe now can be put in play for blue states?
Jon Michaels: I think it’s helpful to frame it that way, because it also points to one of the big challenges. Resistance and noncompliance are a lot easier when you’re not engaged in constructive state-building, when you’re not interested in ensuring that your institutions are well-funded, well-supported, and serving your community.
Obstruction — withdrawing from the governors’ union, or pulling back from cooperative federalism arrangements like healthcare or disability insurance — that’s fairly easy.
Trying to build an alternate infrastructure of support — for our universities, for under-resourced populations — that’s the challenge, and it speaks to the asymmetry here. When states have been noncompliant in the past, they were just putting their foot on the brake. Now, blue states are trying to put their foot on the brake, jump out of the car, and run uphill on their own power.
That’s why this infrastructure has to be built largely anew. It’s not impossible, but it’s different.
Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. Where my mind goes is the pandemic-era pacts, right? Those had flowered early in the pandemic. But did they actually get things done?
Clara Jeffrey: I think they did start to fall apart along the politics of various states and cities. But we are seeing new alliances, confederations — whatever you want to call them. The western states, along with Hawaii, have joined into a vaccine alliance. New England has done the same.
But I also want to point to a deeper issue: high-population states, California in particular. California has 67 times the population of Wyoming, but the same number of senators. Donald Trump would not be invading blue cities and blue states if there were no Electoral College. He would not risk alienating voters in those states, regardless of political persuasion, because there are just too many people.
We’re seeing some anti-democratic structures, built into the Constitution to appease slave states, become more and more anti-democratic. The unbalanced nature of that has only gotten worse over time. That’s a deeper problem coming to the fore.
Alexis Madrigal: People may remember over the years, there have been attempts to turn California into more than one state. There was the “Six Californias” ballot initiative in 2013, and variations of that afterward, but none of them made it forward. What you’re suggesting is not this, right?
Clara Jeffrey: I’m suggesting that people are starting to look at ways to both counter Trump policies and aggressions they see as unlawful and unfair, while also confronting the broader sense that the Senate and the Electoral College — particularly in combination — are deeply undemocratic.
Alexis Madrigal: You know, David writes: “This is political pornography for me. I love the idea of California seceding. I’d like to hear a practical step-by-step of how this could happen rather than just pie in the sky.”
David, we’re not going to talk about literal secession, but about building alternative infrastructures of governance. Jon, this is your work. What does that look like?
Jon Michaels: We could talk about practical policies. One component is collective will: focusing attention on reshaping our states, or clusters of states, so they remain resilient during economic deprivation — like when the federal government cuts funding.
Another is preserving and maintaining our resources so they’re not used for punitive purposes — like deploying National Guard men and women against our own residents.
If there’s real commitment here, we could start to build that alternative infrastructure. And to be clear, we’re not talking about going to the gun shop. This is what states can do constructively.
Alexis Madrigal: We’re talking with Jon Michaels, professor of law at UCLA School of Law and adviser to the dean on civic engagement. We’ve also got Clara Jeffrey, editor in chief of Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Her new piece in Mother Jones is “It’s Time for a Soft Secession.”
We’ll be back with more on the nuts and bolts of “soft secession” when we return.
