The End (of Federalism) is Near

‘The South’ has, indeed, risen again.

Jul 31, 2025

We are now 6 months into the Trump Administration’s planned transition from a federal, constitutional republic back into a Neo-Confederacy based on ‘strong-man’ rule. The main focus to date has been the Project 2025 plan to tear-down the main pillars of our constitutional republic by taking-over and/or destroying federalism: the agencies, initiatives, and laws designed to support the public interest and the common good nationwide.

It is very, very important to understand this:

To the Neo-Confederate billionaire brain-trust and the brainwashed MAGA occultists now ascendant in the Trump ecosystem, the liberal state is a civilization-perverting abomination imposed by liberal elites since the original Confederates and their brutalist culture were ‘put-down’ in the Civil War.

These Neo-Confederates simply do not believe that ‘all men (and/or women) are created equal.’ They believe that it is both their right and duty to stop the plague of democratic ideas and governance.

And with their newfound power, they are quickly moving into the mode of ‘by any means necessary.’

So, make no mistake: This second Trump presidency is an existential threat to the democratic and civic institutions and norms we have built as a nation since the Civil War.

This second Trump term is about ending Federalism (and therefore democracy) as we know it, and as generations of Americans have fought to protect and expand it.
In place of Federalism built on democratic principles embedded in a Constitution, Donald Trump and his Neo-Confederate co-conspirators and enablers are singularly focused on installing one-man rule based around an imperial presidency.

Unfortunately, the Neo-Confederate plan to strip our governance back to pre- Civil War principles has been shockingly successful. Literally decades in the making, this rebellion is going better than even its most optimistic and extremist anti-federalists could have imagined.

Aided and Abetted by the Worst of US

The unexpected parachuting of Elon Musk and his tech-bro teams into the executive branch — as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — accelerated the demolition of our federal infrastructure beyond all prior experience and expectations.

The expectations were that Trump would initially sow chaos and dysfunction that could lead to further undermining support for ‘big government.’

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and the ultra-conservative Federalist Society legal institute had succeeded in packing the Supreme Court with radical anti-federalists who would accommodate a steady ‘remodeling’ of our governance towards the imperial presidency. The execution of the Project 2025 plan would be built around unprecedented assertions of executive power in the form of Executive Orders (EOs), and then by installing brutish consiglieri like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi to undermine the integrity and functioning of federal agencies and programs.

The anti-immigrant push would ramp-up most quickly and publicly of all of the administration’s early initiatives.

Accelerationism with a Heil of a Salute

But Musk’s sudden ‘irrationally exuberant’ bromance with Trump gave them an unexpected but extremely effective ‘accelerationist’ tool:

The technological capacity to actually commandeer the essential functions and infrastructure that supports Federalism and the development of democracy, and to quickly disable and/or to re-purpose these assets.

Musk broke down the doors and the code to enable an extremely rapid transition from ‘decommissioning’ Federalism by sowing chaos to commandeering Federalism’s roles and assets.

Taking control of these assets has meant being able to immediately convert them from their roles in providing for the public interest and the common good to accelerating the formation and installation of a Neo-Confederacy.

And the shock and awe of this take-over of both the Supreme Court and all of federal administrative and police power has been supported by militant MAGA intimidation of the Republican elected officials and now reinforced by the even more militant and lawless deployment of ICE and Homeland Security agents and thugs

This stunning development of the capacity to wage an all-out attack on Federalism has enabled what is now, indisputably, a new Civil War being fought by militantly political, thuggish, and extra-legal means.

The evidence is everywhere: including the ongoing dismantling of everything from FEMA, to the EPA, the Dept. of Education, Health and Human Services, the Veteran’s Administration health system, vaccine development, basic scientific research, the NLRB, Medicaid, and on and on.

This Neo-Confederate resurgence is about destroying the advancements that the idea of democracy has fueled in our modern history; and it is about reducing all of us to the general state of subsistence in healthcare, education, political and voting rights, and all of the rest that the original Confederacy stood for.

It’s not just democracy and federalism that are being disempowered. It is us. W

ICE and Homeland Security are adding tens of thousands of new recruits and hundreds of detention camps over the next months and years. Trump has ordered them deployed and unleashed to join his already unregulated and unaccountable police state militia throughout our country.

Already the Trump Administration has refused to be constrained by the fundamental democratic principle that distinguishes even a fledgling democracy from a ‘Banana Republic:’ Due Process of Law.

And the Supreme Court has green-lighted this in a series of unsigned and unexplained ‘emergency docket’ decisions.

Expect that this private militia army that President Donald Trump is assembling will be deployed to vastly expand the suppression of dissent and they continue building of the new Confederacy of States. This presidential militia will vastly expand the disappearance not only our federal and democratic institutions and laws, but of many more immigrants — and as many of the rest of us as they choose.

We Need to Become More of The People

The only thing that can effectively push back on all of this is us: We the People.

But that “we” has to grow exponentially and quickly.

This makes it incumbent upon every one of us to find ways to communicate to our neighbors and communities the dangers developing in every aspect of our lives and livelihoods.

We have to bring these dangers and concerns most urgently to our elected representatives. They need to know that you and I know what’s going on — and what’s at stake. And we need to bring this to the media and to our schools and all of the other public and civic organizations that we support and that support our communities.

All of these, except possibly, the NRA and citizen’s militias, are being defunded and de-legitimized.

All of these neighbors and potential allies need to hear from us continuously and with the intensely serious resolve necessary to the deadly serious assaults being waged on our Constitutional Republic — and on our very lives and livelihoods.

Jon Thinks Out Loud

Discussion about this post