Comment by jjcm
8 hours ago
It's fascinating the country-ification happening with the US states as the political divide between the state level and federal level political perspectives grows wider. Much like California, Illinois plays a global scale when looked at in isolation (though at a smaller level than California). Its 1.14T GDP puts it around #20 worldwide for GDP when compared to other countries (just behind Saudi Arabia).
It'll be interesting to see what other states follow suit.
Massachusetts just signed an agreement with Denmark [1] covering several things. From their press release:
> Today, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey welcomed a delegation from Denmark for a series of meetings focused on strengthening the scientific, technological and commercial ties between Massachusetts and Denmark. During the visit, Governor Healey and Denmark’s Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen signed an economic partnership agreement, committing to work together to grow their leadership in life sciences, health care, biomanufacturing, advanced manufacturing, robotics and artificial intelligence.
This is an interesting one..
Negotiating treaties is the exclusive authority of POTUS but approving them is the US Senate's job.
"Committing to work together" is probably vague enough that it's not meaningful but "signed an economic partnership" with a foreign ambassador is pretty explicit.
I wonder how they're going to make this one work.
It's actually a crime for unauthorized officials to negotiate with countries directly to influence disputes, under the Logan act.
Going backdoor with Denmark to make "unrelated agreements" (wink-wink) at the same time as the Greenland dispute is just a cheap way to get around that.
* Note that this doesn't mean I agree with the Logan act, but it's pretty obvious what is happening.
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California set this precedent roughly a decade ago [0] with no challenge. It will stand.
Subnational diplomacy is the norm in most federations, hence why GOP led Iowa [1] and Montana [2] lobbied in favor of India with Trump leading to the current trade deal [3].
[0] - https://calmatters.org/environment/2017/11/gov-jerry-brown-t...
[1] - https://governor.iowa.gov/press-release/2025-09-07/gov-reyno...
[2] - https://www.daines.senate.gov/2026/01/20/daines-travels-to-i...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/us-trade-chief-says-indi...
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One of Russia's two big fantasies: the breakup of NATO and the balkanization of the US.
It’s going to lead to balkanization, and it seems at this point to be basically intentional.
Increasing federal power is what is going to lead to balkanization. Now that the 10th amendment is null and void the executive and federal government have nearly limitless power, particularly through expanded interpretation of the commerce clause, we find ourselves in a hell where we teeter between two extremes who badly both need to get into power to not be dominated by the other.
Allowing states to differ wildly was what let bygones be bygones, but no we can't have that anymore, everything nowadays seems to need to be imposed on everyone via 190,000 pages of federal regulations and 300,000 federal laws.
> Allowing states to differ wildly was what let bygones be bygones,
I'm not convinced this was ever a thing. A good example is Bleeding Kansas (something every elementary student in the state is taught about, or used to be), in which Missourians flooded the state to influence elections and intimidate free-staters in hopes of creating another slave state (it's still a minor point of rivalry to this day). Point being, during the lead up to the civil war we had states trying to control the politics of other states
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> Increasing federal power is what is going to lead to balkanization
lmao imagine opening with that and expecting anyone to take you seriously.
and im not even passing a judgement call on whether or not federal power is good, nor am i saying there's only one potential cause of balkanization.
but, lmao
Honestly, as someone who strongly believes in federalism and hates what our country turned into over the 20th century, I hope the trend continues. The federal government was never meant to have as much power as it took on during the FDR administration, and it's high time we reversed some of the affronts to the Constitution that happened back then. Hopefully things like this can be the first step.
Yes but the quiet part out loud is that rewinding FDR unwinds the 'switch in time that saved 9' which reverse the SCOTUS decisions that ultimately allow the EPA, most applications of the NFA/GCA (gun control), civil rights act as it pertain to intrastate business, controlled substance act as it pertains to intrastate trade, most functions of regulatory agencies, etc.
So while your comment might be acceptable on face, if you actually explain what it means you will be damned for it.
Blue states combined are the second largest economy in the world, just ahead of China (3rd) but behind the US in totality. California alone is the fourth largest economy. Their economy would be worth about ~$15T. Combining resources is simply good policy imho.
It will be interesting to see exactly where Texas decides to come down if there really was a split in the US. I have to imagine they would want to follow the rich blue states rather than be stuck footing the bill for Arkansas and Mississippi.
I guess they probably just try to become their own country, like they already did once anyway.
Texas is red (rural and suburban) with big dots of blue (urban).
If worse comes to worst, Texans will be fighting ourselves first.
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They need to team up and petition to be annexed as Canada's 11th province.