The Soft Secession: How States Are Joining Together to Escape Trump's Grip

By Brian Daitzman

No shots have been fired, yet the fracture is real. Across climate policy, fiscal negotiations, and public health, states are filling the void left by Washington. Millions of Americans now wonder why they are paying into a government that does not serve them, or whether the republic that once bound them together still exists in practice.

The United States is experiencing a soft secession: a durable reallocation of governing legitimacy from Washington to regional compacts, accelerated by structural underrepresentation and post-Rucho redistricting incentives.

I. The Soft Secession
Regional alliances rise as Washington falters. From the West Coast to the Northeast, states are knitting themselves into blocs tethered only by fraying threads of federal authority.

On September 3, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood alongside Oregon’s Tina Kotek and Washington’s Jay Inslee to launch the West Coast Health Alliance. Their pledge: to “uphold scientific integrity in public health” after years in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s credibility had eroded. Hawaii soon joined.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/the-soft-secession-how-states-are

Bob Ferguson is Washington's governor having taken over for Inslee in January.