President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the Civil War era to bolster his presidency, from defending Confederate statues to applying Reconstruction-era statutes to prosecute protesters. Now, Kurt Andersen, the novelist and essayist known for works like Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses that examine American cultural and political trajectories, argues in his upcoming novel about the dissolution of the United States, The Breakup, that a literal civil war could be on the horizon — and that the country is already trapped in what he calls a dysfunctional union.

Writing for The New York Times on Sunday, Andersen pointed to escalating rhetoric from political figures as a warning sign. "Days after Charlie Kirk's assassination, then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reiterated her push for legally splitting up the country: 'I want a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it's no longer safe for any of us,'" he wrote. "Polls since 2021 by universities, YouGov and others have consistently found that a third or more of Americans said they expected a civil war during the next decade or so."

'Soft Secession' and 'Uncooperative Federalism'

Andersen characterized the nation's current condition not as an outright divorce but as something more insidious. "A national divorce — let alone a civil war — is, for now, the stuff of fiction," he wrote. "But while loose talk from rabble-rousers has distracted us, the nation has sunk, almost unnoticed, into an unspectacular yet profoundly strange new arrangement. It's not yet a divorce; it's more like a bitter, loveless marriage in which the parties stay technically but less and less enthusiastically united because splitting up is too complicated or dreadful or expensive."

He described this phenomenon as "uncooperative federalism" and "soft secession," citing actions by both Republican- and Democratic-led states that effectively override or sidestep federal authority — a dynamic that legal scholars have tracked for years across immigration, drug, and environmental policy.

On the Republican side, Andersen noted that "during the past two Democratic presidencies, many red states and counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, prohibiting their police forces from enforcing some federal gun regulations." He added that the term was a deliberate echo of Democratic sanctuary cities, which had similarly declined to enforce federal immigration policies.

Andersen also highlighted Texas Governor Greg Abbott's unilateral approach to immigration enforcement. "Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas took it upon himself to override federal immigration policy, deploying the National Guard to string the banks of the Rio Grande with coils of razor wire and ordering his troops to prevent federal border agents from helping migrants who got tangled in them," he wrote. "More than two dozen Republican governors endorsed the show of anti-federal strength."

Democratic-Led States Charting Their Own Course

Andersen observed that Democratic-led states and cities are engaging in parallel forms of soft secession during the Trump era. "Local police departments aren't cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement," he wrote. "Many states passed laws to shield residents from prosecution if they are charged elsewhere with facilitating abortions, and several have stockpiled abortifacients in case federal law or regulations make them hard to get."

He continued: "Various combinations of blue states have banded together to perform functions the federal government has abandoned or degraded: forming a climate alliance that participates in international forums the Trump administration won't attend, creating de facto regulatory agencies for cap-and-trade carbon markets, issuing medically legitimate childhood vaccination recommendations. A coalition of a couple dozen attorneys general has sued the administration over birthright citizenship, tariffs and denial of federal funds to Democratic-controlled states."

An Unsustainable Status Quo

Andersen ultimately framed the current arrangement as untenable. "We can't keep going this way," he wrote. "Escaping federal dysfunction and avoiding real hostilities over the long term will require some kind of radical shift. Perhaps states and regions could become much more independent."

He pointed to international models, including Spain's regional autonomous communities — a system established under the country's 1978 post-Franco constitution — "some of which collect nearly all the taxes their inhabitants pay and then forward a negotiated share to the national government," and Switzerland, "where cantons can divide or reconfigure and each one decides whether newcomers become Swiss citizens."

Andersen acknowledged that even such structural reforms might fall short. "Someday down the line we may decide we have no choice but to call it quits," he concluded. "If so, I hope we could follow the lead of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, whose 1993 breakup into two nations was so calm, it was called the Velvet Divorce, a kind of conscious national uncoupling. For our huge, heterogeneous country, it would be extremely difficult and painful. But in the long run, it might still be better for the kids."

Historian Timothy Snyder Echoes Concerns

Andersen is not alone in raising alarms about the nation's durability. In July, Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and author of On Tyranny and Bloodlands, similarly argued that America's continued existence cannot be taken for granted, pointing to the Trump administration's authoritarian tendencies.

"The fact that the U.S. exists and is celebrating 250 years doesn't mean that it'll exist in 5 years or 10 years or 15 years — states have a beginning and they have an end," Snyder said. "I think that the Trump people are much more likely to wreck the U.S. as an entity than they are to succeed in generating some kind of homogeneous tyranny from the Pacific to the Atlantic."