Who gets federal property and military bases? Who pays Social Security and Medicare? What currency would New Hampshire use? Would I need a passport to drive to Boston?
Then comes the question that wrecks almost every tidy national-divorce map: what happens to the people inside the new country who don’t want to leave?
If Texas can escape Washington because Texans dislike being governed by people in California and New York, why can’t Austin escape Texas? If conservative eastern Oregon can leave liberal Oregon, can a liberal town in eastern Oregon stay behind? If California leaves America, can conservative California counties leave California?
Keep applying the principle and you don’t get two countries. You get hundreds.
That’s because America isn’t actually divided into two nations sitting neatly beside each other. The fault lines run through states, counties, neighborhoods and families. Cities vote differently from the countryside. College towns differ from surrounding counties. Plenty of families can barely make it through Thanksgiving dinner.
There is no border you can draw around that.
Which is why the part of this that worries me isn’t whether New Hampshire starts printing passports.
It’s the idea underneath it.
Democracy requires losing sometimes. You can hate the president, despise Congress, sue the government, organize against it and spend four years trying to throw the bastards out.
That’s the deal.
Something more serious happens when losing an election makes us wonder whether we still want to live in the same country as the people who won.
Texas nationalism and New Hampshire libertarianism came from very different places. Democrats in California can arrive at the same destination from the opposite direction.
The danger isn’t that America will suddenly split in two.
It’s that more of us are beginning to think divorce sounds easier than living with each other.
Bibliography
1. • Republican Party of Texas. 2026 Republican Party of Texas Platform. Official party documents adopted at the June 2026 convention. https://texasgop.org/official-documents-2/
2. • New Hampshire General Court. CACR 32, 2022, relating to independence. Bill text, sponsors and House vote. https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/bill_docket.aspx?lsr=2243&sortoption=&sy=2022&txtbillnumber=CACR32&txtsessionyear=2022
3. • New Hampshire General Court. CACR 20, 2024, relating to declaring independence from the United States of America. https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/bill_status.aspx?lsr=2792&sortoption=&sy=2024&txtsessionyear=2024
4. • New Hampshire General Court. HB 1441, 2026, establishing a commission to study New Hampshire exerting its sovereign state rights. https://gc.nh.gov/house/legislation/billinfo.aspx?id=1935&sy=
5. • Laird, Zach. InDepthNH/Patch. “Proposal For NH To Secede From The United States Praised, But Mostly Condemned.” August 21, 2026. https://patch.com/new-hampshire/manchester-nh/proposal-nh-secede-united-states-praised-mostly-condemned
6. • Free State Project. Statement of Intent and organizational materials. https://www.fsp.org/learn/statement-of-intent/
7. • Laird, Zach. InDepthNH/Patch. August 21, 2026. Reporting on Carla Gericke, NH Exit and the partisan swings in enthusiasm for secession. https://patch.com/new-hampshire/manchester-nh/proposal-nh-secede-united-states-praised-mostly-condemned
8. • Orth, Taylor, and Carl Bialik. YouGov. “How Many Americans Want Their State to Secede—and What They Would Want to Happen Next.” February 11, 2026. Survey of 26,590 U.S. adults. https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54090-how-many-americans-want-their-state-to-secede
9. • Republican Party of Texas. 2026 Republican Party of Texas Platform. Planks concerning nullification, sovereignty and an independence referendum. https://texasgop.org/official-documents-2/