How Trump 2.0 will further divide America

With the Trump 2.0 administration coming to power, we’re about to see the most un-United States since perhaps the Civil War. That doesn’t mean there’s going to be armed conflict between states, but it does mean that the experience of crossing state borders is going to become more drastic than in recent memory.

Typically, being in another state doesn’t feel too different from a legal point of view. The traffic laws and speed limits might be a bit different or you might pay slightly different sales tax, but the changes across borders aren’t generally drastic. That’s largely because of a federal government that standardizes many aspects of life, including the freedoms Americans should expect in any part of the country.

But the conservative movement—and particularly the MAGA flavour that’s taken over the Republican Party—has always sought to attack the federal government and the protections that ensure those freedoms from state to state. If they can convince their own state to run things a different way, they don’t want the federal protections to get in the way.

We’ve seen this constantly throughout American history. So often, “states’ rights” will be invoked to justify a discriminatory policy. That is how conservatives celebrated the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade—as a victory for states’ rights. They wanted to outlaw abortion in states they control, and now they largely have.

But of course, conservatives don’t want other states’ freedoms to interfere with the restrictions they impose. That’s why we see Texas, for example, trying to figure out how to punish those who leave the state to get an abortion, as well as the doctors in other states who provide access to them. Conservatives want to impose their will on everyone—not just the states they control. They do, after all, call it Christian nationalism—not Christian federalism.

Such divides are already a tragic reality for many trans Americans, some of whom have become fugitives in their own country. The Supreme Court is poised to rule that states can ban gender-affirming care for youth—and we know that conservatives want to ban it for adults too, to say nothing of the other forms of discrimination they want to impose. It’s not just enough to flee states to access medically necessary care; as with abortion, states don’t want you to come back. Idaho, for example, wants to punish affirming parents for taking their trans kids to find care in other states.

It doesn’t require much imagination to predict how much worse it could get with the kinds of changes Trump and his administration have promised.

Consider healthcare. Some healthcare providers are worried they might not be able to administer vaccines if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becomes secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. States like Louisiana are already cracking down on how vaccines can be promoted to patients to protect them from infectious disease.

It’s not hard to imagine a timeline in which certain diseases come back in certain states, as we’ve already seen with measles. Could polio be next? Or what if bird flu becomes the next COVID? Rather than only thinking about special inoculations and boosters for international travel, there may be medical considerations just travelling from state to state. And of course, those diseases could easily spread out to vulnerable populations across the country who depend on herd immunity to protect them.

Education is another vulnerable area, with Trump and his lackeys Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy eager to completely eliminate the Department of Education. One of the important roles of that department is addressing civil rights violations in schools. With the rise of vouchers and the “school choice” movement giving more power and money to private, religious schools, we’re already seeing a new rise in segregation academies that only serve white students. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action is already making it harder for students of colour to access an education. And without any civil rights oversight, we could expect to see school segregation explode as if Brown v. Board of Education had never been decided.

That’s to say nothing of what is taught. We already know that some states are trying to ban any accurate teaching about the history of racism and slavery in our country or the existence of LGBTQ2S+ people. Instead, states like Oklahoma are trying to impose a Christian nationalist education by mandating that students of all religious backgrounds be taught the Bible and a false history of its influences on America’s founding. Like never before, we could see a generation of Americans growing up with vastly different understandings of the world itself based solely on geography.

That’s the depressing reality of conservatism: It’s dedicated entirely to lowering the standard of living for everyone but the uber-rich. Complaining about “big government” and “the administrative state” is really just complaining that there are too many protections interfering with taking advantage of people. In states under conservative control, they will take advantage of the abandoned oversight to turn back the clock on civilization itself.

That is the eternal question for the MAGA movement: When was America “great”? And of course, for whom? Conservatives seem dedicated to figuring out just how far back they can go—to hell with anyone who’s not a straight white cis Christian man. That’s the reality of what we can expect for the next four years under Trump 2.0.

So, to anyone outside the U.S. thinking of visiting: please carefully consider which state you’re travelling to and how safe you’ll be there. Our “laboratories of democracy” are going to be attempting some very dangerous experiments. My guess is there will increasingly be travel advisories with identity and health considerations for various states. And even those of us who live here will have to twink twice before we cross between states.