A new kind of civil war is here — and this is the only way to fight back

Don’t despair as authoritarianism marches around us. There is a thing that comes next. And it may come soon, as the realization spreads that blue states contributethe lion’s share of resources funding Trump’s mad theater of destruction.

As democrat leaders consider how best to respond to a president’s unprecedented and unconstitutional efforts to harm them, they hold more cards than Trump realizes.

The truth behind the ruse

By now everyone knows that Donald Trump is planning to deploy military tanks and armed troops to occupy democrat-controlled cities under one of two party lines: to “fight crime,” or to round up “illegals.” But what some analysts have warned about since Januaryis becoming clearer by the day: these reasons are pretextual. As ICE and the national guard round up migrant farm workers, food delivery men, and people who run stop signs, those arrests are building the scaffolding to let Trump stay in power and out of prison beyond 2028.

Governors in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Missouri and other red states are dispatching their own National Guard troops to support Trump's “crackdown on crime” outside their own borders, despite these states governing cities with murder rates twice as high as DC’s. Given that they govern the worst per capita violent crime rates in the country, these self-proclaimed ‘states rights’ championsobviously don’t give a damn about that as they prepare to invade their sovereign neighbors.

Trump, Vance and Stephen Miller are now explicitly threatening domestic political opponents—Democrat run states and cities— with military occupation. That is the real reason behind the big beautiful bill that funded the world’s largest police state. That is the real purpose behind $45 billion to build new concentration camps, and a 265% increase in ICE’s detention budget. Stephen Miller just admitted as much on Fox News, saying, “The Democrat Party…is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

So there we have it. Democrats have been Trump’s true ‘enemy within’ all along. Democrats are the intended beneficiaries of illegal occupying forces, concentration camps, and tank-mounted rifles in the streets. If this doesn’t sound like a red declaration of civil war against half the nation, nothing does.

Trump now has a domestic military force funded with a budget 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system, where 155,933 inmates are currently incarcerated, some of them for life. Trump is now spending more on ICE than most nations spend on their entire military budgets. When the concentration camps are built, it’s not hard to piece out who will fill them.

Blue states may soon stop paying for Trump’s incompetent cruelty

Democrat leaders are responding to an unprecedented situation, where a US president is literally attacking them for partisan reasons. Acting outside the scope of his Art. II powers, Trump is also withholding billions of dollars in previously appropriated fundingfor services and programs blue states have paid into and relyon. He’s also trying to dictate state law by withholding federal funding from states with policies he disagrees with, like DEI, climate programs, and “sanctuary” policies for undocumented but otherwise law abiding immigrants. Although several funding freezes have been halted by federal courts, a Trump-packed high court has reversed most of those rulings.

The good news is that blue states hold far more resources than red states. If they decide to give Trump a taste of his own unconstitutional medicine by withholding, escrowing, or otherwise diverting federal tax dollars, fighting fire with fire, Trump’s vindictive plans could backfire.

The concept of blue states as federal donor states and red states as federal welfare states is gaining traction. Chris Armitage writes in his brilliant essay, ‘It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About Soft Secession:’ “Currently, Massachusetts sends $4,846 more per capita to the federal government than it gets back. New Jersey and Washington are in the same position, bleeding thousands per person annually. Over five years, New York alone contributed $142.6 billion more than it received. Meanwhile, red states pocket $1.24 for every dollar they send to Washington. Blue states are essentially paying red states to undermine democracy.”

Awareness of this funding disparity is spreading like fossil-fueled wildfires. Democrat led states have already introduced legislation to allow states to withhold their own federal taxes if the federal government unconstitutionally refuses to fund them.

Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin have already introduced bills that would allow them to withhold federal payments if the federal government is delinquent in fundingthem, and California and Washington are not far behind. Democrat leaders could also pass legislation and ordinances instructing state and municipal employees to alter their federal withholding forms to cut off federal revenue; they could also encourage residents statewide to withhold their federal taxes, or put them into escrow.

As Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs expand, comptroller creativity will spread.

Soft secession may be unavoidable

Congress controls the purse under the Sixteenth Amendment. Under the Supremacy Clause, any state law designed to obstruct federal tax collection likely would be unconstitutional. But consider that Trump and his supporters have already lit the Constitution on fire by withholding hundreds of billions of dollars Congress previously appropriated for education, health, climate, foreign aid, medical research and social services. Consider that Trump’s unilateral passage of tariffs is also unconstitutional. Ditto the deployment of armed forces against unarmedcitizens. Why should blue states stand on constitutional ceremony when the Trump-packed Supreme Court refuses to?

This essay is not written lightly. It’s a dramatic paradigm shift reflecting a house divided, and with it long held assumptions about federalism, including taxation. Democrats pay disproportionate taxes because we assume it will promote the greater good. But when our resources are used not to help the common man, but to maim him, we must examine those assumptions.

Tim Snyder writes poignantly, “It is one thing to believe that federal taxes are worthwhile because they are being spent to redress inequalities in health care or education. It is another to watch the federal government spread disease and ignorance. It is one thing to pay taxes every year, in the knowledge that eventually the power in the White House will change every four or eight. It is another to be confronted with a president who talks about third terms. It is one thing to believe that the Constitution will ultimately preserve the country. It is another to recognize that those in power scorn it.”

A new kind of civil war is here, but Democrats did not invite it. When our backs are against the wall, facing the firing squad of a rogue president, complicit party, and corrupt high court determined to destroy us, we must act in our own self-interest. Freedom and our nation’s survival depend on it.

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Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.