Russia and Secession

 Secession is unconstitutional. See Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868)

Rachel Kleinfeld at The Hill:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is far from the only politician interested in secession, which has been discussed by the Wyoming GOP chairman and is already part of the Texas GOP platform.

While the right is more vocal, a national breakup is not its dream alone. A June 2021 survey by Bright Line Watch found about a third of the country supported a split. Their ranks include more than half of Southern Republicans, but also 41 percent of Democrats in California and the Pacific Northwest, and 34 percent of heartland independents.

....

Whatever America was left would have a rump military. As the most populous state, California supplies the largest number of U.S. service members, but Texas and other Southern states provide the bulk of the military force. The South hosts a disproportionate number of bases. Who would get what? However things were split, the winners would be China and Russia, which would face a hobbled United States.

Perhaps that is why Russia has been the biggest supporter of secession talk in the United States. Californians who wanted out might be surprised that one of the Republican operatives leading the referendum had deep, longstanding ties to Russia and returned to live there before California’s referendum was even complete. The most popular Texas secession page on Facebook was created not by Lone Star defenders but Russian trolls.

The Kremlin has supported secessionist efforts worldwide to weaken democracies — from the Catalans in Spain to Scottish independence. In 2016, it sponsored a conference for global secessionist movements — including Texas, California and Puerto Rico.

Secession

The Texas GOP has adopted a platform calling for a public vote on secession.

Moscow must be happy.

Upon request by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), NewKnowledge reviewed an expansive data set of social media posts and metadata provided toSSCI by Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet, plus a set of related data from additional platforms.The data sets were provided by the three primary platforms to serve as evidence for aninvestigation into the Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations. 

 The Internet Research Agency has been implicated in the promotion of secessionist and insurrectionist movements in several countries; there is no sowing of division quite so pronounced as attempting to create a literal territorial split. In Europe, this took the form of involvement in Brexit and Catalonian independence efforts. In the United States, it was #Texit and #Calexit, as well as active support for the Bundy ranch and Malheur Reserve standoffs.

The vote in favor of Brexit, which happened on June 23, 2016, was subsequently used by the IRA to promote its Texas Secession initiatives. Brexit narratives were shared on the Instagram account @rebeltexas as a justification for #Texit, as well as on @_americafirst_and @mericanfury to encourage American isolationism and a retreat from involvement in global affairs. The Facebook Page Heart of Texas posted about secession with some regularity, and coordinated real-world pro-secession demonstrations across the state using Facebook Events. 

Secession, Rebellion, and the Disqualification Clause

 Section 3 of the  14th Amendment:

No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

 Drew Knight at KHOU-TV:

On Tuesday, Rep. Kyle Biedermann (R-Fredericksburg) said that he is committed to authoring legislation in the 2021 legislative session that will give Texans a vote to allow the state to secede from the U.S.

"The federal government is out of control and does not represent the values of Texans," he wrote on Facebook. "That is why I am committing to file legislation this session that will allow a referendum to give Texans a vote for the State of Texas to reassert its status as an independent nation."

Oyez describes Texas v. White:

In a 5-to-3 decision, the Court held that Texas did indeed have the right to bring suit. The Court held that Texas had remained a state, despite joining the Confederate States of America and its being under military rule at the time of the decision. The Court further held that individual states could not unilaterally secede from the Union and that the acts of the insurgent Texas legislature--even if ratified by a majority of Texans--were "absolutely null." Even during the period of rebellion, however, the Court found that Texas continued to be a state.

 

Secession, Russia, and Useful Idiots

Casey Michel reports at Politico:

On a sunny late September day, a trio of tourists gathered on Moscow’s Red Square. Well-dressed, carrying a Russian flag, the visitors bunched in front of the Kremlin’s walls to snap a selfie. Like so many others before, the man taking the photo, Louis Marinelli, took to his Twitter account, and shared the shot for the world.

But Marinelli wasn’t your average American tourist, and neither were his friends. That weekend, Marinelli was ensconced in a conference room in the capital, where he delivered a speech for an unusual cause: the secession of California from the United States. “As not only a representative of the nation of California, but also as the founder and the leader of the independence movement as recognized by the state of California itself, it is my honor to speak on behalf of my people at this conference on the right of self-determination,” Marinelli told his audience. “Our campaign exists to explain why we should free ourselves from the shackles of statehood, and instead embrace the freedoms of nationhood.”
...
It would be easy to dismiss all this as nonsense driven by publicity-hungry amateurs, but people who know the Russian political playbook say winking at these fringe movements—and even giving them a boost—is a part of a very real strategy. Not only is this a way of puffing Russia’s domestic claims at turmoil in the U.S., but it fits firmly within the Kremlin’s modus operandi of cultivating fringe groups in the West—including, most especially, those who would fracture the United States in a reprise of the Soviet Union’s demise, over a quarter-century later.

Sharon Bernstein reports at Reuters:

Trump's election gave a huge boost to the quixotic campaign to remove California from the United States called Yes California, run by a former conservative turned progressive who now lives in Russia.

Dubbed "Calexit" by pundits comparing the effort to "Brexit" - Britain's vote to withdraw from the European Union - Yes California's email list jumped from fewer than 2,500 before the election to 115,069 currently, the group's president, Louis Marinelli, said in a telephone interview.

Marinelli, who moved to Yekaterinburg, about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) east of Moscow, in September and has lived in Russia on and off for several years, said he became disenchanted with the United States after difficulties arose with the immigration process for his Russian-born wife.

Federalism, Secession, and Privacy

Federalism remains much in the news. Though states cannot secede from the Union, it is possible (albeit difficult) for a group of localities to secede from an existing state to form a new one.  At NPR.org, Alan Greenblatt writes about an election that will happen soon:

There's a big race right now to become the 51st state.

Forget traditional contenders like Puerto Rico. In several existing states, residents of less populous areas are hoping to create new states of their own.

Citizens in 11 mostly northeastern Colorado counties are among them. They'll vote on Nov. 5 whether to break off and form their own state. Many are unhappy about liberal state legislation they believe reflects the values of the Denver-Boulder corridor, but not their part of the world.

"We're rarely listened to when it comes to legislation," says Butch White, the mayor of Ault. "I'm sure the vote will pass in Weld County quite easily."

The Colorado counties aren't alone. There's been occasional talk of secession at various times in recent decades, but now the idea is showing signs of taking root across the map.

There is talk about and sometimes movement toward secession in several states. These are locally motivated startups, but they share some themes in common.

People in mostly conservative areas feel isolated living in states controlled by Democrats. Rural residents, in particular, believe their values are given no respect in capitols now completely dominated by urban and suburban interests.

Secession may be part of the same impulse that leads states to sue or otherwise try to block or nullify federal laws they don't like. People are losing respect for institutions that don't reflect their preferences and would prefer, to the extent possible, to extricate themselves from them.

The New York Times reports that states are playing their traditional role as laboratories of democracy.  Unlike the federal Constitution, some state constitutions contain explicit protections for privacy.  The issue remains hot:

State legislatures around the country, facing growing public concern about the collection and trade of personal data, have rushed to propose a series of privacy laws, from limiting how schools can collect student data to deciding whether the police need a warrant to track cellphone locations.

Over two dozen privacy laws have passed this year in more than 10 states, in places as different as Oklahoma and California. Many lawmakers say that news reports of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency have led to more support for the bills among constituents. And in some cases, the state lawmakers say, they have felt compelled to act because of the stalemate in Washington on legislation to strengthen privacy laws.

“Congress is obviously not interested in updating those things or protecting privacy,” said Jonathan Stickland, a Republican state representative in Texas. “If they’re not going to do it, states have to do it.”
...
“It can be counterproductive to have multiple states addressing the same issue, especially with online privacy, which can be national or an international issue,” said Michael D. Hintze, chief privacy counsel at Microsoft, who added that at times it can create “burdensome compliance.” For companies, it helps that state measures are limited in their scope by a federal law that prevents states from interfering with interstate commerce
.

Secession?

Secession? In 2004, after President Bush won 51% of the vote, a small number of disgruntled progressives gave some fleeting thought to seceding from the Union, perhaps to join Canada.



In 2012, after President Obama won 51% of the vote, a few on the right are thinking the same thing. Voice of America reports:



At the time of liberal secession rumbles, Michael C. Dorf wrote that "it is settled law that the Constitution does not permit unilateral secession: A state or group of states cannot simply leave the Union over the objections of the national government. However, the arguments that led to this settled understanding are hardly unassailable, and the Constitution is probably best read as permitting the mutually agreed upon departure of one or more states."

Polls show that most oppose the secession of their own states, and those who say that support it are probably just venting their unhappiness with the central government. At USA Today, law professor Glenn Reynolds writes:

So what's a solution? Let the central government do the things that only central governments can do -- national defense, regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic warfare with one another, protection of basic civil rights -- and then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues. Don't like the way things are run where you are? Move to a province that's more to your taste. Meanwhile, approaches that work in individual provinces can, after some experimentation, be adopted by the central government, thus lowering the risk of adopting untested policies at the national level. You get the benefits of secession without seceding.

Sound good? It should. It's called federalism, and it's the approach chosen by the United States when it adopted the Constitution in 1789. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

It's a nice plan. Beats secession. Maybe we should give it another try