What borders should a red-state federation choose after a civil war?

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For years, I’ve predicted where the borders of a federation of red states would be located if the red states peacefully secede. Only 7% of Americans think fedgov should attack if a state secedes. Our map for that is below. It assumes that state governments choose which federation to join, and whether to allow state lines to be relocated.

But if there were to be a full-scale civil war anyway, what territory should the red states seek to conquer and permanently hold? Whether the red state federation is a federation of republics or authoritarian, either way, it would be a bad idea to conquer the whole US because we need a place to deport people to. It has to be a place with enough population to employ or give welfare to everyone we deport. Canada & Mexico can’t accept that many people. After a full-scale war, the GOP will be fed up with Dems. They’ll be looking for a way to prevent the country from being destroyed by them again. One way to accomplish this is to deport large numbers of Dems, especially from blue states that we wish to make into red states.

Colorado’s central location makes it the most attractive blue state to force into the red-state federation. Probably New Mexico and Minnesota as well. This reduces the length of our borders. It means cheap missiles can’t reach our population centers, and we have a bit of warning for mid-range missiles & drones.

Our proposed borders below are super-imposed on county-by-county results of the 2024 presidential election.

We’d take a lot of the red rural counties from blue states if they’re contiguous with our federation, such as eastern WA, eastern OR, eastern CA, downstate Illinois, etc.

We’d take ports such as Coos Bay in southwestern Oregon, maybe Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia, and perhaps even Puerto Penasco, Mexico, just south of Arizona on the Bay of California.

We’d take swing states such as Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the DC metro area).

Would it be worthwhile to deport millions of Dems from Chicagoland & Milwaukee just so that these states would be red states? Chicagoland is the fourth-largest metro area in the US with a population of 9M. Or should they just be walled off as separate blue states? Would Atlanta be walled off or deported? It turns out that none of these is necessary, since IL, WI & GA would be red after a voluntary migration caused by "reconstruction" conservative policies that cause libs to flee. Read on to find out how.

We'd donate Detroit and Ann Arbor Michigan (University of Michigan) to Canada, which is just across the river.

Our proposed post-conflict borders are shown above. Manitoba is as blue as Minnesota, but it only has 1.3M residents. Wouldn’t take a lot of deportations to make it and western Ontario into a red state. Each federal riding (district) has about 96k residents there (see map above). About 117k in Ontario and BC. Only four ridings lean Dem in Manitoba outside of Winnipeg. Almost all of Ontario’s population is between Michigan & NY. We could really shorten our land borders and get access to a lot of minerals & forest if we take three ridings in western Ontario. We'd only take four Dem ridings of northern British Columbia to get the port at Prince Rupert, which has connection to Alberta via highway, rail, and a future pipeline. Each of the "territories" of Canada have less than 45k residents, so they're worthwhile for minerals, and to prevent rivals from making port along the Arctic.

Oregon is not very blue and not very populated, so it would only take half a million voter deportations to make it a red state. There are major ports at Portland on the mighty Columbia River and in SW Washington state on the Pacific. Oregon could support a much larger population if developed. Oregon’s 2024 presidential election had 1.24M votes for Kamala, 0.92M for Trump. Colorado: 1.73M Kamala, 1.38M Trump. NM: 0.48M Kamala, 0.42M Trump. MN: 1.66M Kamala, 1.52M Trump. Adding these 4 states together, the difference in votes is only 0.87M. All the other states we propose to join the federation voted for Trump or are Canadian except Illinois, which had a difference in votes of 0.61M.

To achieve such small numbers, perhaps voluntary migrations would be adequate, after these blue states were forced into the red-state federation. Red-state citizenship wouldn’t be bestowed upon “recent” US naturalizations anyway, which would reduce the number of Democrat voters there. It’s unclear how far back “recent” would be defined for any one red state, but the conquering force could make it go quite far back for families in these states. Each red state could define its own citizenship and residency requirements if the federation is a loose federation.

Typically, 13% of Americans change their residence each year, although most moves are not to another state. Six states in the deep South were polled, and only 30% to 40% of Dems said they’d stay in the state after a National Divorce, and only 20% to 30% of liberals. 20% of Trump voters said they’d move to a conservative state that secedes if their state doesn’t. We’ve calculated that migrations in both directions after a peaceful National Divorce that splits the US population in half would cause the red states to become far redder: voters who lean GOP would be twice as numerous as voters who lean Dem. Plus, after a National Divorce, blue states and red states might provide incentives for them to relocate from the red-state federation to the blue-state country(s).

The resulting borders are not much longer than the US had with Canada & Mexico. The best way to keep the number of illegals low is to penalize employers, landlords, etc who harbor them, and to require e-Verify at every contact a person has with government.

Whether voluntary migrations are adequate depends on how conservative a state needs to be to satisfy the federation membership requirements. How much influence would a purple state have over the other members of the red-state federation? Not much. We’ve proposed that the central government of the federation only have authority over defense research & development & procurement, coordinating state militaries & intelligence & counter-intelligence, foreign policy, tariffs, resolving disputes between member states, etc. States could decide to allow visa-less travel (or even residency) throughout the federation, or they might restrict those rights to groups of states.

So maybe we don’t need to force any migration, even in the blue states such as Colorado that we force into the union, as long as we leave the coasts out of our union. The coasts will have enough territory, housing, population, and businesses to employ and house the Leftists who voluntarily emigrate from our federation, and enough population to serve as a large source of conservatives to immigrate to our federation. Southern leftists could move to the warm climate of southwestern California, Puerto Rico, or southern Maryland southeast of Washington DC. This is enough territory for them because emigrants from the red-state federation will generally prefer to live in an urban environment.

The important conclusion of this thought experiment is that the blue states in the interior of North America are not very blue, and could become red states with voluntary migration, if they were forced to join a federation of red states, and forced to accept enough conservative policies that would cause libs to flee, such as banning marijuana, abortion, and most immigration.

It's amazing how much less border gore we get if we can force these states into our federation. I mean the borders are a lot shorter than under the peaceful map at the top of this essay. But is there an easier way other than civil war? What about an embargo? Threat of embargo forced RI & NC to ratify the Constitution in 1789-1791, thereby joining the new union created by the Constitution.

Bills in State Legislatures Need Your Help

The most important bill of the year is under mortal threat. It passed the Texas House but looks like it might be gutted in a Texas Senate committee.

Texans, just click a button to help the Texas Sovereignty Act pass intact!

See this X post for links: https://x.com/tomgglass/status/1923919082232987723

Louisiana sovereignty bills that might ease the transition to independence

Get on the email list of Free Louisiana to learn how Louisianans can take action now to help 3 great bills that passed out of House committees but haven’t gotten a vote on the House floor yet. Or at least follow them on X or on Facebook.

Split Washington State?

Instead of a 51st state, state rep. Rob Chase introduced the Win-Win Act to make Washington state into two autonomous regions in one state. HB 2085 was introduced a few days before the legislative session ended, to get conversation started for next year. https://robchase.houserepublicans.wa.gov/2025/04/24/instead-of-a-51st-state-chase-introduces-the-win-win-act-to-create-two-autonomous-regions/

It proposes what we proposed in 2018, which we based on prior proposals to create autonomous regions for state governance in NY (movement is called New Amsterdam movement).