# The American Divorce



## JamesG

This is a political fiction story about the United States in the 2020s.

The characters are fictional with composites in certain cases.
Presidents 45, 46 & 47 aren't named because they are very much who they are yet everyone else is made up.

It's a 12 part story.
(I'm a Brit so spellings will be off in places too)


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## JamesG

*The Years of Lead*


America’s Years of Lead, the decade of political violence across the United States which took place in the second decade of the Twentieth Century, began during 2020 itself where there was nationwide demonstration, unrest and attacks launched against protesters. The following year started with an invasion of Congress by protesters with an entirely different motivation to those who’d torn parts of the country apart by rioting the year before. Fears of further unrest seemed to have been false with a relatively quiet remainder of ‘21 and a calm start to ‘22 too. That all changed come the early Summer though.

Up in Washington state, a short trial commenced of a congressman who’d been forced to resign from office the year before due to sexual assault allegations. He’d denied them and, with his day in court, was found innocent. Tom March wasn’t believed to be innocent by so many Americans though. The Republican benefited from political connections that he had aplenty. Demonstrations took place in the aftermath where revelations came that March had used them to get off. In Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia – neither city having been where the trail took place nor where March had represented a portion of the state in Congress – the protests fast turned ugly with general unrest and property damage. Events of ‘20 elsewhere in the nation repeated themselves in the Pacific North–West: there were calls across social media by certain business owners, requests amplified by troublemakers, for armed volunteers to come and assist in the protection of private property. That call was answered. Tragedy soon struck with lives lost. All of that was played out across national and international news. Weeks later, on the opposite site of the country, saw another avoidable situation spiral out of control where a far greater loss of life occurred and the implications were even more intense. Two Caucasian NYPD officers shot a young African-American in the Brooklyn locale of Bedford–Stuyvesant. An immediate strong response came from residents, one which the NYPD matched. Blame was on both sides in New York City. That didn’t matter much in the end though when first Bed–Stuy, then later Brownsville & Crown Heights also in Brooklyn, were torn apart by rioting. The NYPD were in a recoverable position within a few hours with reinforcements arriving and a thunderstorm bringing about a downpour likely to keep a lot of people off the streets. Yet, the lights then went out.

A lightning strike in Upstate New York did what it shouldn’t have been able to and knocked out power across not just the Big Apple but throughout many states too. The Bronx, Harlem, Queens, further portions of Brooklyn and then a good chunk of Manhattan beyond Harlem all erupted in violence. It was a hot Summer’s evening. The rioting in Brooklyn had been all over the news and social media both. The NYPD were seen by so many as in the wrong. The streets filled with people who couldn’t find the police to take their frustrations out on in the end. Instead, they began to undertake criminal damage, start looting and assaulting fellow New Yorkers. With the power out, a lot of people took advantage. FDNY vehicles were attacked when they sought to rescue trapped people and also begin to combat some of the raging fires. Businesses were raped across the city where people stormed in, took what they wanted and left behind ruin. Professional and amateur journalists documented and livestreamed too so much of the unrest with claims that the criminality was instead about fighting injustice. A struggle to get the power back on went on throughout the following morning. It was eventually restored in New York City just after dawn. By that point, there were dozens left dead, fires continued to rage and huge chunks of the city had been smashed up. The power outage had affected more than just the Big Apple though. It went dark across much of New England, down into New Jersey and also over into significant portions of Pennsylvania too. Violence was witnessed in urban areas throughout them. What was also seen, especially in the early hours of the following morning, was an influx of armed volunteers. They came (uninvited) to protect property and also life. Right-wing militia groups avoided the major urban areas of the Big Apple, Newark, Boston etc., yet were seen throughout suburban areas. They were organised and intimidating. In North Jersey and also near Scranton in Pennsylvania, militia members and alleged criminals exchanged gunshots with five lives lost.

The United States was lead at that time by the 46th President. He was an old man, in office for more than a year and a half. While not necessarily hated by Republicans and those on the right, the Democratic incumbent was not respected by them. Other Americans of the opposite political orientation tried to keep the faith with him yet found that difficult. He was in the White House when the well-established _Roe v. Wade_ was overturned by a conservative US Supreme Court. The expressed outrage of the 46th President at that crushing of abortion rights came with pleas by him for the American people to respect the courts and the rule of law. As Republican-led states used the Supreme Court through 2022 to move forward with other right-wing agendas, he was regarded by so many as doing nothing, even giving his tacit support to that. His competency, his mental abilities as an ageing man were questioned by so many. He was regarded in plentiful quarters as an ineffectual ventriloquist's dummy for his so-called ‘handlers’… with no one being quite sure exactly who those people were though. A media performance of his in the aftermath of the shooting death of the Attorney General of Montana (who’d been trying to combat the growing armed militia presence up there in the Inland North–West) was damn painful to watch. The 46th President thought it best to address the nation following that assassination that occurred the day after three FBI agents were slain in a Pennsylvania gunfight also when combatting illegal militias. He failed to assure the nation of his ability to rule & see the law enforced, so said many detractors, and was also incapable of leading. While not technically the head of his party going into that year’s November elections, he was the face of the Democrats for the disaster which were the midterm elections. The Republicans took the US House and also re-established their control of the Senate. A bad time had been predicted for the Democrats and that was seen when the Republicans made their majorities 233-205 and 51-49.

The idea of a left-aligned armed militia had been dismissed for several years as right-wing lies. It was supposed to never happen, nothing but a Republican racist dog-whistle. Before 2022, those on the left with access to weapons were organising though and during the elections that November, they made themselves known. Their stated mission where they were seen was to protect Democratic voters. Here and then, in only certain parts of the country, various armed groups turned up. They obeyed the law. The law didn’t always obey itself though in dealings with them though. In Portland, the largest city in Oregon which had seen so much unrest in ‘20, a militia outfit calling itself ‘the Resistance’ showed up. Laughed off they were (it was said they’d been watching too many _Star Wars_ films) but out they came with weapons to stop Democrats being attacked with vehicles or shot at. That happened the day afterwards where out-of-state right-aligned gunmen struck. Gunfire was returned. That was all played out for the world to see on millions of screens. What wasn’t was what happened a month later at Camp David. Within the confines of the presidential retreat in Maryland, the 46th President had a ‘mild’ stroke. That was hushed up and the public weren’t told. Naturally, that attempt at secrecy failed. The news did leak. Questions were asked and accusations made concerned the full truth of the matter following those revelations. Was the president actually in a worse state than the White House had been forced to reveal? He made a live appearance, one which was worse than any seen beforehand. The man was clearly in no fit state to govern. It was regarded as cruel by those supposed handlers to have him make an appearance. Republicans and Democrats alike, despite admitting they were thinking the same thing, believed he shouldn’t be in the White House. It was there he was on the evening of February 14th when he had a second stroke. There was nothing mild about that one. Air-lifted by Marine One to Bethesda, the 46th President would die there at Walter Reed hospital early the following morning. With all leaks remarkably contained leaks, it was his vice president, the new 47th President, who released news of his demise soon afterwards in a live broadcast from DC where she, standing alongside cabinet members, and the Supreme Court’s chief justice presiding, was sworn into her new office.

Unpopular was what the new president was. No immediate bounce of public support, a rally-around-the-flag moment came. The new president, the nation’s first female and second ‘of color’, was unliked before she took office and that only increased as she tried to govern. The funeral of her predecessor took place and he rapidly moved into the forgotten stage for so many Americans. As to the 47th President, she was constantly in the public eye and rather embattled. She fought with Congress over a pick for a new vice president and then also faced a Supreme Court vacancy (the liberal justice Annabelle Kaufman had an untimely death due to a traffic accident) that the Republicans made very clear they wouldn’t allow her to fill either post. Taking her case to the American people didn’t work because she didn’t have many Democrats behind her. Of course, she was better than a Republican in the White House, but they wanted her gone at the next election. Having assumed office with less than two years left of her predecessor’s term remaining, the 47th President was eligible – subject to electoral success – to remain in the White House for almost ten years! The cry of ‘Hell, No’ to such a notion was coast-to-coast. In the meantime, there was an eight member Supreme Court and a continuous vice presidential vacancy. The public refused to warm to her and her presidency was quite the mess. 2023 was also a year of not just that change in White House occupancy but also significant further political violence where the Years of Lead really got into their stride.​
*​
Senator Fay Frye was in DC when her husband and son were murdered back in Illinois. White supremacists broke into the senator’s family home within the state she represented to purposely kill them while she was absent and make those brutal slayings committed for all of the world to see when they were livestreamed over the internet. The big social media giants had rather extreme AI-driven measures to stop such events being broadcast on their platforms but the target audience for the killers wasn’t usually active on _Facebook_, _YouTube_ etc. Across the dark-web, fellow neo-Nazis, who’d been promised quite the show, were able to watch the torture-killing of Frye’s family. She was Caucasian with an African-American husband and a biracial son: those who were involved in the whole thing took extreme exception to what they deemed miscegenation. Comments while the broadcast was being made which detailed the horrific murders encouraged and gave instructions to those who attacked the Fryes. One viewer, a teen off in distant California, found herself wholly disgusted by what she was seeing and at once moved to see action taken to stop it. Her efforts from home to try and contact the authorities were too little, too late to stop the end-game from being played out in suburban Springfield. The killers would flee before the police arrived. Joint efforts by the FBI and the Secret Service – assisting at presidential direction – to track down the killers and others involved too would bring some success in that endeavour but the senator's family were still dead. Clips of the murders popped up on social media platforms through the following years. Frye resigned from the Senate a month later – the governor appointing a fellow Democrat ahead of a 2024 special election – and would move to Canada where other members of her family lived. Her husband and child had been slain not just because of race but also politics: the gleeful killers had spoken of her ‘woke agenda’ and ‘liberal tyranny’ when they did what they did.

Shots were fired against the Republican speaker of the lower house of the North Carolina state legislature. Joe Glover escaped an assassination attempt in Raleigh with he and Republicans nationwide blaming that effort to kill him upon the Far Left. Politically, North Carolina was a battleground state, one of the Purple ones within seas of Blue & Red, and Glover had been intensely involved in recent political disputes there leading up to the shots being fired against him right outside the state’s Capitol Building. Neither state nor federal investigations were able to identify those who had been behind the shooting. Glover’s allies suggested a cover-up; political opponents hinted at a set-up with Glover having never been in any actual danger. Days after that incident, there was an explosion down in Alabama. A car bomb thoroughly destroyed the private vehicle of a federal judge on the outskirts of Birmingham. Alberto Ramos escaped alive but badly hurt while one of the US Marshals assigned to aid in the physical protection of judges such as Ramos in the heightened political environment was left killed. Ramos would die several days later despite strenuous efforts to save him. Presidential comments and remarks from national senior political figures attempted to calm matters when it came to the attempts on the lives of both Glover and Ramos. Progress with either case didn’t get very far though. Suspicions lingered that Glover might just have something to do with what happened in Raleigh as a game to further his own career while as to Ramos, it was considered by investigators that the bombing might be less about politics and something to do with one of the various criminal cases he had overseen down in Alabama instead. The news agenda moved on from both events too when, in July, there was a shooting in St. Louis.

Missouri was a Red state though within was the Democratic-dominated city of St. Louis and then just over the Tennessee River lay the very Blue state of Illinois. Republicans were on top in the political make-up of Missouri yet St. Louis was a wholly different matter. Representing that city at a federal level in DC was Congresswoman LaTanya Gaines. A young African-American woman, she had joined with the anti-racism marches in St. Louis after the Frye family killings. Long before that, Gaines had a national profile. She was a hate figure for so many Republicans with the nation’s right firmly against her. They deemed her a trouble-maker, a race-baiter and un-American. Gaines was back in her home district, meeting constituents at an organised event, when she was shot dead by a gunman who tried to make a run for it afterwards. Gaines had a terrible relationship with the St. Louis Metro Police yet regardless of that, officers involved reacted with professionalism rather than political grievances. They caught and detained the gunman to see him ready to face justice for the murder. More than a decade had passed since the last serious attempt had been made to kill a federally-elected politician in the United States – an Arizona congresswoman – despite a lot of violent politic rhetoric directed towards those in Congress: in comparison, over in the ‘peaceful’ UK, three MPs had been murdered in the previous dozen years. Gaines had faced death threats before but someone had finally gone through with one of those. The young man arrested was a neo-Nazi who was affiliated to the group behind the Frye family slayings. He confessed with pride to Gaines’ murder. Despite pleas from influential community figures, as well as national politicians, St. Louis erupted into violence afterwards. There was unrest over in Metro East too, over the river in nearby suburban portions of Illinois a-joining the city. Gangs of youths started rioting the same night up in Chicago too. Right-wing media outlets called the unrest ‘race riots’ where the allegation made was the African-Americans were attacking Caucasians. The issue was far more complicated than that with a lot of the violence, especially what was seen in Chicago, aimed against the police too. Militia members, armed as well as adorned with identifying markings, were afterwards observed on camera allegedly protecting property across Missouri and also over in portions of Illinois (outside of Chicago though). From Jefferson City, where the Missouri state government was located, there was little criticism of that; there was outrage in Springfield with the Governor of Illinois promising action against militias.

Off-year elections were held in late 2023. There were a handful of gubernatorial races, contests for a few state legislatures, many mayoral races and also two special elections for US House seats representing a district in Georgia as well as the vacant Missouri one. Both the Democrats and Republicans alike sought to continue what each had done – with varying degrees of success – in securing their political positions in their heartlands while moving into new territory politically if possible. The midterm elections the year before had seen so many states go either Deep Blue or Deep Red. Redistricting and gerrymandering following the last national census had seen that occur though not much of that played into the ‘23 races. Instead, there were efforts to restrict voters from casting their ballots for the ‘wrong’ candidate via intimidation of various means. In addition, lies were told aplenty. Kentucky and Louisiana were both Red states with incumbent Democratic governors which the Republicans targeted well in addition to making sure that they retained controlled of the governor’s mansion in Mississippi… the latter not much of a challenge was there. The special election in Georgia was a for a seat vacated by a Democrat who’d resigned from Congress while gravely-ill. In October, during the last stages of those races as well as others, the 47th President travelled to the South down from DC. She’d been invited to help with several of the campaigns. Other national political figures who were preparing for races the following year wouldn’t want her near their campaigns yet she was requested by Democrats in Georgia, Florida and Louisiana for theirs.

She spoke in Atlanta before a crowd of Democrats to urge them to help do their best to get the party’s candidate elected to the US House despite all the Republican efforts in Georgia to see that district end up in their hands. Onwards she went to Florida afterwards with a stop made first in the booming city of Jacksonville. The mayoral incumbency was held by a Republican but the challenging Democrat was really making a good run at achieving victory there. Next was a stop in Tampa to assist in another mayoral race before the plan was for the presidential convoy to fly to Louisiana to aid in the gubernatorial race over there. Moments into her beginning a speech at an indoor event within the confines of the Florida city, a man rushed forward with a handgun. He raised that weapon, one which should never have been in the same building as the President of the United States, but never got the chance to fire it. Secret Service agents dived upon their protectee while another shot the would-be assassin dead. The whole thing was broadcast live to the nation. Carried out of the event location, leaving panicked scenes behind, the 47th President was put on Marine One and flown to the nearby MacDill AFB. She wouldn’t finish what she started in Tampa though did, against many expectations, completed her scheduled appearances in New Orleans & Baton Rouge when flown on to Louisiana. Twice the usual number of Secret Service agents were on the ground at those events. With the young man dead, there was no one to question and indict for the failed assassination attempt. His whole life was taken apart by investigators though seeking motivation, possible co-conspirators and also to discover how he got that weapon into the Tampa event. Arrests would be made in the aftermath of several members of a Florida-based militia organisation including a security officer at that event too whom no one had previously identified as having fascist sympathies like that gunman had had. There had been a full-scale conspiracy to see the American president dead.

The Republicans won all three of those gubernatorial races the following month and also that US House seat in Georgia too: the Missouri one was retained by the Democrats. Mayoral races for the Democrats were reasonably successful and they also secured strong majorities within the state legislatures of New Jersey & Virginia to allow for their dominance in such Blue states as them. No rally-around-the-flag polling boost came for the president after that failed attempt to see her killed. Her legitimacy had been questioned all year in some quarters yet, while the majority of Americans did respect that, she was still generally unliked no matter what their partisan leaning. Comments made by her concerning June images of left-wing militia members (legally) carrying arms in several portions of the country where they protected demonstrators didn’t go down well at all among loud, activist Democrats: the hatred she had for those ‘Gun Clubs’ was immense and very apparent. She would need such people to gain her party’s nomination but when she spoke from the White House in such a negative manner about them, even more than she did about right-wing ones, that angered those who didn’t like her at all. The 47th President was opposed to all militias, all political violence yet those dead set against her taking the fight to the Republicans the following year had already decided ahead of those comments that she wasn’t for them: what she said just reinforced that. They had their hearts with challengers seeking to take the presidency away from her. Centralist-minded Democrats followed the dedicated activists throughout 2023 in moving away from her. Primary season approached rapidly. As the incumbent, the 47th President _expected_ zero, or maybe only token, opposition to the party’s nomination. That didn’t happen at all.​
*​
Shadow campaigns by potential Democratic candidates for the White House had ran throughout 2023. With a sitting incumbent for their party, put there on the back of the death of her predecessor, there had been a lot of hesitancy to challenge the 47th President. Pressure from the national DNC kept some challengers in check while others were weary of a negative backlash. The time to act grew shorter as ‘24 approached though with desperation finally setting in. Fate intervened in stopping one challenger finally making their move: the day following that attempted assassination down in Orlando had been pencilled-in by one of them to take the step into the unknown. Lack of public sympathy afterwards curtailed many doubts and further behind the scenes moves were made. PACs were up and running with shadow lobbying taking places. Briefings were made to media contacts by candidates of their exasperation at the situation. The off-year elections, with the correctly anticipated Democratic bad showing occurring, were what finally gave challengers the excuse they were looking for. They jumped in, several of them one after another, using that poor excuse of her failure to be an election winner as their reason for seeking to take the party nomination from her for the following year’s presidential election. No-hope, minor & perennial candidates had emerged before November ‘23 though six ‘big- shots’ were in the race before the month was out. The sitting Governor of Nevada, a former US Secretary of State, a retired ambassador, two congressmen and a serving senator challenged the 47th President. The last one was the recently-elected Sean Walsh from out of Pennsylvania. A noted progressive with a major following of young activists behind him who could make a lot of noise, yet also with his own background in the ability to separately raise money to go alongside their enthusiasm was as much a strong candidate as Governor Wendy Suárez was too. Suárez and Walsh made similar announcements where they strongly criticised not just the inability of the sitting incumbent to rule and also win elections but most of her presidential policies. She hadn’t reversed the intensely controversial ‘Remain in Mexico’ immigration issue, done anything meaningful to tackle climate change, been inactive on social justice matters and so on.

Late-arranged Democratic presidential debates happened early in the new year, not long before primary season opened. Those challengers, one of whom (an Illinois congressman) dropped out, had waited very late and so the timescale was condensed. Walsh was declared the winner of the debates by the media with opponents contesting that. His campaign used that bounce they got there to win the Iowa Caucuses. The victory was tight and in second place wasn’t the 47th President but instead it was Suárez. The humiliation of coming third should have been enough to see the incumbent off many thought, yet that didn’t happen. She went on to win the New Hampshire Primary the following week with Walsh taking second spot there. Pundits made bold predictions that after New Hampshire, where they said that the challengers to the incumbent were toast: that was partially borne out by other candidates except Suárez & Walsh dropping out when their money ran out. It was Nevada then South Carolina next up in the Democratic calendar. Walsh won both races with Suárez coming second out in her home state and a close third in South Carolina. Walsh had won three out of four early races. Super Tuesday, when many contests nationwide would happen at once, loomed ahead. Money and support flocked to Walsh. Projections seen by the 47th President and her campaign team showed her winning only two, three at the most of the Super Tuesday races. That summary was leaked with Walsh-friendly outlets projecting him completing his ‘demolition derby’ against her. In an announcement made from the White House on the Sunday evening, the 47th President swallowed all of her pride and declared she was leaving the race. Jaws dropped nationwide. It was unheard of for a sitting president not to fight for re-election, not since the 36th President back in 1968. Nonetheless, it happened. Suárez and Walsh were left to fight it out, a contest which over the next few months Walsh won handily. Suárez gave him a good fight, taking states in the West despite the early defeat in her native Nevada, but it was all his in the end.

The Democrats had their party convention in late July up in Chicago. Walsh, the presumptive nominee after his successful primary run, had a vice presidential candidate ready to announce the night before the convention started as per the recent tradition. Elliot Carter, a former Governor of Colorado, had been supposedly vetted. A scandal broke that night with images of Carter circulating online in a comprising series of positions in the bed of a married couple. Walsh dropped him like a stone. He didn’t fight for Carter once the understanding came to his campaign that that wasn’t a Republican dirty trick but one done by his own party. There were those who wanted Carter off the ticket and were prepared to do what they did… with the worry they would do worse if they didn’t get what they wanted. In an emergency, with the backing of the DNC and a lot of the party establishment, Walsh rushed with a second pick. Cicely Blair Padley (another African-American candidate chosen because Walsh knew there was bad feeling about him getting rid of the woman of color who was 47th President) was selected. A long-tern congresswoman from out of California, who’d served for the previous few years as Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, Padley was a compromise choice. It blew commentators out of the water. She hit the ground running though and didn’t disappoint in showing what she was made of and how she could boost the Walsh campaign. The policy platform for Walsh was finalised at the convention. It was significantly progressive, far more than any previous one in recent history. Walsh’s primary race talking points were all there though there was some concern expressed from past dedicated supporters that the party establishment had watered some of them down somewhat. The fight between the activist base and the establishment within the Democrats was a _forever war_ with neither ready to let up. Immigration & criminal justice reform, restoring _Roe v. Wade_, statehood for DC & Puerto Rico, near-universal healthcare & partial student debt forgiveness, labor reform & ‘fair’ housing, electoral reform… the list went on and on with those big ticket items. There was too though a lot of less dramatic stuff on what Walsh ran with. His push for ‘kitchen table issues’, what Americans were talking about in the home and not online, was there too in abundance.

Ahead of Election Day, there were incidents of political violence which occurred during the late Summer and the Fall of 2024. An IED – a bomb in a rucksack – was tossed into a congressional race campaign headquarters within a strip-mall outside of Madison, Wisconsin. The blast killed five, injured three times as many more and was terrifying for so many innocents caught up in it all. An unheard of Far Left group claimed responsibility for the terrorist outrage though the Republicans and their media allies focused blame upon the Democrats. Across in neighbouring Michigan not a week later came the shooting death of a Democratic candidate for a US House seat in that Mid–West state. Harper MacCormick was running a no-hope campaign and had little party backing as they threw resources elsewhere. He was a self-declared democratic socialist who’d been the focus of Republican attack ads when Walsh had praised his efforts to fight for the people of Michigan. Killed by close-range shots to the back of the head in an execution-style murder right in the middle of the street, in broad daylight too, the McCormick assassination was yet another outrage. Politicians across the partisan divide condemned his death yet blamed those on the other for it happening. Death threats, serious ones too, were made to candidates all across the country with them being taken seriously in deed in light of what had previously happened to Gaines and then the MacCormick assassination. Moreover, the Wisconsin attack highlighted the issue of threats to their lives that non-candidates, those being staff and supporters, also faced in the harsh partisan environment as well. Other news reports nationwide during the approach to the election covered the public displays put on my militia members. There were far more right-wing militias than those from the left yet the latter received a lot more attention than their numbers deserved. The Gun Clubs so denounced by the 47th President had spokespeople who defended their actions and a lot of that resonated with sections of the Democrat’s base of national support. Walsh walked a fine line in being against them but not too openly opposed. Republicans watched that circus and used it to their advantage. The militia on the right wasn’t generally aligned with their party either yet there were fewer minefields to walk through when media questions came about those militia being active. The Second Amendment issue was one where plenty of their candidates and incumbents were comfortable arguing from whereas many Democrats tied themselves in knots.

Governor Laura Holloway was the Republican candidate for the presidency. Out of Missouri, she had gained national prominence on the right for her position on the rioting and accusations of left-wing militia involvement in that across her state during 2023 following the killings of the Frye family and then the murder of Congresswoman Gaines. Holloway would go down in history as one of the ‘last of the Barronites’. The man himself, the former 45th President, was in the ground after a death from natural causes in early 2022. Barronites nationwide had mourned and also moved on. She hadn’t though. Her admiration for him and his legacy was given secondary preference when she went up against Walsh for the White House though. It was social issues, the matters which divided America, which she ran on. Going further than others in her party would have liked, Holloway sought to divide the country even more. She saw that as her path to victory with seemingly no care about the consequences. This brought her into conflict with certain sections of her party. Moderates were trying to re-establish themselves without the fear of Barronite political attacks against them and considered Holloway to not be a candidate who could help them in their own Senate, House and gubernatorial races. A few of those disputes spilled out into the open. That all did the Holloway campaign serious damage. Party unity was exposed as a lie. Voters looked at it all and considered that when it came to Election Day, they might put their mark next to the Republican candidate for non-presidential races yet perhaps Holloway wasn’t right for the White House? Even a Democrat being in there didn’t matter that much to a lot of voters when the Republicans had control of the two chambers in Congress. The Holloway campaign didn’t take that line of thinking seriously – doubting the intelligence of the voter – though smarter operatives working for other Republican races did. The way the wind was blowing was appreciated and action to prepare for that outcome was taken.

Seven swing states were identified for the presidential race: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The campaigns of Holloway and Walsh didn’t need to win them all but sought to gain as many as possible. The Electoral College meant that the votes from them counted more than others and where they would be added to already ‘safe’ (baring an upset) states elsewhere. On November 5th 2024, voters in Georgia and Wisconsin opted for the Republicans over the Democrats. Nonetheless, in the other five swing states, including Walsh’s home state, those all went for the Democrats: Arizona & Michigan heavily too. The victory in North Carolina for Walsh was damn close (the Democrats lost the gubernatorial race there) yet he would have won the White House even without its sixteen Electoral College votes. Taking that state was just icing on the cake though. Holloway had done pretty bad too. The figure of 293-245 overall gave lie to the true situation: it was a far better Electoral College result than seen back in 2020 yet with a lower popular vote number. Strong turnout in some places (swing states / battlegrounds) had came alongside very poor showing elsewhere (in safe Red states). The Barronites were finished after Holloway’s presidential race where she had driven the vote down. Elsewhere though, the Democrats and Republicans had other results to look at. In the Senate races, the Republicans took previous Democratic seats in Montana, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin: that saw the seat total there end up at 55-45 in their favour. Control of the US House was also improved though not by a significant amount for the Republicans. There was a lot of ‘churn’. Both parties lost incumbents to the other side. What was seen back in ‘22 was expanded upon where across many Blue & Red states, the other side was squeezed either to the very margins or completely out. Holloway had sought to divide the country yet wasn’t really responsible for that. Instead, that was other politicians on both sides of the partisan divide, with their media allies in it for the ratings, involved in pulling the country apart for their own longer-term benefits. To assume leadership over that mess, over a country where political violence had brought about America’s Years of Lead, would come Walsh as the 48th President beginning in January 2025.


*2024 US Presidential Election*​Democrats – 293
Arizona (11), California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine * (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), * Nebraska * (1), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), North Carolina (16), Oregon (8), Pennsylvania (19), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12)
Republicans – 245
Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Florida (30), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), * Maine * (1), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (4), Nebraska * (4), North Dakota (3), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (40), Utah (6), West Virginia (4), Wisconsin (10), Wyoming (3)


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## Hang on Sloopy

JamesG said:


> Democrats – 293
> Arizona (11), California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine * (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), * Nebraska * (1), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), North Carolina (16), Oregon (8), Pennsylvania (19), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12)
> 
> Republicans – 245
> Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Florida (30), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), * Maine * (1), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (4), Nebraska * (4), North Dakota (3), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (40), Utah (6), West Virginia (4), Wisconsin (10), Wyoming (3)


Welcome. Could you explain your OP in a paragraph in your own words

There is a lot of ADHD at this place and I don't think too many will read it........Thanky and have fun


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## JamesG

Hang on sloopy said:


> Welcome. Could you explain your OP in a paragraph in your own words
> 
> There is a lot of ADHD at this place and I don't think too many will read it........Thanky and have fun


Sorry, took me a few minutes to understand what you meant. That is just information, in fact I shouldn't have included it in a separate message. I'm going to delete that message and stick it as an add-on with my OP.
Thank you.


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## JamesG

*Betrayal*


Sean Walsh had won the 2024 US Presidential Election yet his coattails for fellow Democrats were painfully light for his party. In the West – across the Pacific Coast states and inland to Arizona & Colorado – the Democrats had won US House seats aplenty from the Republicans with similar victories in Illinois, Virginia and parts of the North–East too. However, the Republics had taken districts across the Mid–West and down into the South too: Democrat incumbents had been knocked off aplenty in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. Republican control of the US House was expanded in the aftermath. They also further consolidated their vice-like hold on the Senate with those four victories. November ‘24 had been awful for the Democrats nationally apart from re-securing the White House. Their candidate won big and kept the Republican’s one out. With both chambers in Congress in Republican hands though, that meant that Walsh’s campaign promises were all for nothing. The outrageous obstructionist Republican agenda would continue. Walsh couldn’t do as he wanted to where he wished to set the social agenda for the country and bring about that real change that he, his supporters & so much of the country desired. More than that, to govern in any meaningful way, he would have to _work with_ the Republicans too.

Chief among them was the man many in the media deemed (before and after Walsh’s election) to be ‘America’s real president’: Senator Bill Green out of Oklahoma. The Senate Majority Leader had held the reins of power when both the 46th & 47th Presidents spent their short times in office. He wasn’t about to give that up when someone like Walsh was elected. As befitting his power and status, he forced the president-elect to come to see him, on his ground, after the election. The red lines were made clear by Green on what he would allow the incoming administration to achieve and what he, working with House Speaker Ken Fraser too, wouldn’t. Walsh spoke of a bipartisan agenda to get things done but Green was only interested in his own agenda. If Walsh didn’t understand all of the power that Green had with that meeting, he soon did in the lead-up to the inauguration. Cabinet picks selected by the president-elect were stymied by Green. He had more than enough votes to see that only those he was willing to accept would get Senate approval. Walsh did try to fight that, lost quickly, and soon gave in. By the time his inauguration came around and his Cabinet members were starting to be sworn in through January / February ‘25, the entire nation was in no doubt that Green hadn’t lost his title. Walsh was going to have to do what he was told where the nation’s legislative agenda was entirely in the hands of a different president to the one who’d been elected to the White House.

The voters who’d put Walsh in office and his supporters post-election weren’t fools. Green and the Republicans revelled in their power. Of course they were going to exercise that. However, Walsh was expected to make more of a fight of it than he did. It was hoped for that he would fight for everything with them yet he caved in early and hard though. Deflated like a burst balloon, the quitting was a cause of anger by those who’d put him in the White House. They watched him work with the Republicans and saw his administration doing the bidding of Green. The nomination of a replacement Supreme Court justice was a case in point. Just as he had done with keeping the last president from appointing a vice president for two years, Green had made sure that she wouldn’t fill that vacancy on the nation’s highest court either. Nominees hadn’t been even given hearings, let alone voted down. Early in 2025, Walsh met with Green and Fraser and presented a set of options for a nominee to fill the vacancy. They rejected his and Green supplied a list of his own. That list was leaked by an angry White House staffer – identified and fired in the aftermath – to the media. Democrats were in uproar. The Republican’s choices were all right-wingers with a few dressed up as liberals but still conservatives underneath. Walsh made a statement where he defended the character of those judges on that list. His polling negatives would sink after that. Nonetheless, he moved forward with one of the choices. Kevin Singleton was from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He was a liberal though not someone highly regarded in Democratic circles. They called him a jellyfish (no backbone) and knew exactly why the Republicans had allowed Walsh to run with him. When officially nominated and then given hearings, Singleton went through them with ease before a Senate vote saw him afterwards sworn in. Only five Democrats in the Senate voted with the Republicans on the Singleton nomination. Walsh’s popularity continued to sink among his previous supporters when a financial scandal engulfed his recently-appointed Treasury Secretary. Months into the job, the former Wall Street hedge fund manager – how his appointment had driven Democrats mad! – looked clearly guilty once revelations were unloaded in a flurry of years of straight-up theft. Walsh defended him. The Republicans, who’d allowed Walsh to put him there only at their say-so, turned on him with glee: they were talking of impeaching the secretary ahead of him resigning. It had been a thorough disaster for Walsh. He had run for senator then president as an outsider fighting the establishment, exposing corruption too, and then been caught on the wrong side of the argument when allegations engulfed one of his Cabinet. Worse than the jellyfish and then Walsh’s treasury secretary was the refusal by the new president to veto a bitterly-contested immigration bill which came out of Congress. Part of that was legislation against Sanctuary Cities too. It was expected that Walsh would override that bill yet he did nothing and allowed the law to come into play, all so as to not rock the boat with the Republicans.

2025 was a year where the United States returned to overseas military action in the Middle East. First it was Algeria where Islamic fundamentalists seeking to topple the regime faced American air power. Bombs and missiles rained down upon enemies of the United States during a sudden, messy revolution in that country. Innocent lives were lost and the job wasn’t done in the end too when the Black Flag of the Caliphate ended up being raised in Algiers. In France and Italy, there was a political backlash against their government’s involvement yet Walsh was focused on the domestic fall-out he himself had to face. Anti-war protests took place across the country. Those supporters of his who had put him in office were front and centre in the marches against his administration. There was unrest with some of the marches too where violence occurred. The biggest protests were in the West too where the howls of betrayal were the loudest: those on the marches didn’t give a damn about the geo-political need for the bombing, just the images of dead children that reached America. Walsh took criticism from the left for launching the campaign and then from the right when it failed. The Republicans had backed the mission but turned on Walsh without blinking once it all went wrong. They had restricted what he could do at every stage yet washed their hands of blame when it all went wrong. More covert and less intense American military action took place in Egypt later in the year. There were revolutionaries there too, though with less of a world-destroying outlook as seen in Algeria. Nonetheless, the fear was that Egypt would end up like Algeria too. That thinking was in the Walsh Administration and among regional allies such as those in Tel Aviv as well. Work was done with the Israelis to combat the situation in Egypt to favour that of both Washington and Tel Aviv. Revelations of what was going on that in cooperation terms, less so images from the ground, brought forth further anger towards Walsh from those who’d put him in office. Israel was the devil as far as so many Democrats, especially the most loudest ones, were concerned. Anti-Israel marches took place across the United States. Walsh condemned them due to the anti-Semitic tone of so much of the protesting, only alienating him more from what had been his base twelve months beforehand.

Further international events had a negative effect upon the presidency of Walsh too. The UK Government in London lost patience with illegal pro-independence activity up in Scotland. A long-running, bitter dispute erupted with members of the devolved government in Edinburgh pushing for a unilateral declaration of independence. The Scottish Government, led by the nationalist SNP, wasn’t prepared to break the law on that yet the First Minister was voted out of office in a no confidence motion with those seeking to take things forward without London’s approval gaining power. The UK Prime Minister, a populist Conservative looking for a fight, shut down the Scottish Government. Devolved power was ended after an emergency vote in the House of Commons. A new post of Secretary of State for the Union was created where a minister got a promotion with the entire Scottish brief. Legal action was undertaken by Scottish nationalists but the rule of UK Parliament was supreme. Ahead of that judicial failure, there were street protests across Scotland with violent unrest seen. Further protests, from non-Scots seeking to battle the Conservatives, took place across England too with additional trouble witnessed. The Walsh Administration was draw into that dispute. Efforts were made to not upset an ally because the Scottish nationalists were in the wrong, but that didn’t cut it. Once again, Walsh could do no right as far as his domestic audience was concerned. Independence-supporting Americans, who’d taken up the Scottish cause, demanded that Walsh ‘do something’. He called for calm and for UK laws to be obeyed. The sit-ins, civil disobedience and other tactics of the protesters in Scotland (shown by the US media to an interested audience) were copied in certain instances during the protests within the United States against US-Israeli actions in Egypt. Just like with Scotland, it all changed nothing yet it was embraced with enthusiasm by those involved. A change of presidency in Russia, and then naval stand-offs between the US Navy and the Chinese in the South China Sea where conflict was threatened also occurred during the busy 2025. Walsh was distracted by those foreign events and also fighting enemies at home from both sides who wanted their input to matter on all of that.

Walsh faced that Summer a legislative conflict with the House Minority Leader. Mary Beth Rosen was a congresswoman from Arizona. The Republicans had pushed the Democrats back to far below two hundred seats and so considered the agenda to be theirs to set. Rosen fought back against that repeatedly, doing what she considered best for her party and country. Her activities came into conflict with Walsh’s bipartisan approach to dealing with a hostile majority in Congress with the Republicans. With the two of them, it was more of a clash of personalities rather than politics: they had different ideas of how best to deal with their joint enemy in the form of Green rather than anything serious about the future of the nation. At a meeting up at Camp David, where Rosen was there alongside other Democrats, an argument over policy approach went nuclear. The two got into a shouting match and Walsh ended up demanding that Rosen leave Camp David. Vice President Padley spoke with Rosen when back in DC but there was no calming the situation. Rosen went public with her dispute with Walsh. She said what she felt needed to be said, what others had been saying in private but not public. The Republicans loved it. The internal war within the Democratic Party was back on! Rosen had more standing than others who’d fallen out with Walsh before had. She couldn’t be silenced nor ignored. She spoke for so many Democrats when she called out Walsh’s betrayal of everything that he had campaigned for only the year beforehand when he went along with whatever Green & the Republicans demanded of him. Democrats in Congress across the states in the West stood by her though, due to establishment party-plays in the East, she would leave her post before the year was out. Rosen remained not to be silenced though was sidelined in the end… long after doing all the damage she could though.​
*​
Throughout the 2024 elections, the media and politicians alike had spoken of Blue states, Red states & Purple states. The United States was apparently divided into those three categories where all that matter was what colour each state was. Of course, within each of them, they were a mix of different communities and political outlooks. Moreover, they were also full of individual people. Nonetheless, unlike any election cycle beforehand, that election year headlined by the Holloway–vs.–Walsh fight ingrained upon many people from coast-to-coast the idea that the nation was divided in such a way. ‘Those people’ who lived over ‘there’ were different, they were the enemy. The Red–vs.–Blue divide intensified post-election. America was ripping itself apart where those social differences became everything. No longer was shared history important: was seemed to define everything was belonging to one tribe or the other with the identifier being the colour which the media decided that a particular state had. In every way possible, that growing division down the fault lines of the nation was something that those interested in short-term immediate gains – be that power, influence or money – sought to make even more extreme.

It had been the issue of so-called state’s rights that had seen the federal abortion laws brought tumbling down. State’s rights was something talked about extensively throughout the Years of Lead which were the 2020s in America. When certain Republican-led states took cases to the US Supreme Court on other matters of social policy which they no longer wished to be bound by, they had some success. Holloway’s presidential run was something done on the back of her actions as Governor of Missouri where she fought for what she said was the rights of Missourians to tell DC, and also those _damn troublemakers_ over in Illinois too, to bugger off. Missouri and others, Deep Red states such as Georgia & Wyoming especially, weren’t always successful not even with a conservative-minded Supreme Court. Regardless, they continued with their crusades. Blue states joined in too. Maryland, Oregon and then also California were busy throughout ‘24 & ‘25 where Democrats did what the Republicans had done in affirming the rights of their states to do as they wished on a range of social issues. It was popular within many states though not so elsewhere. Both sides of the partisan divide took criticism from supposed friends for what they did with the defences of whataboutism used not convincing many who warned that in the long run, it would do no good. America’s culture wars beyond the state-level clogged up the federal courts too. There was forum-shopping done where those seeking to change what they didn’t like going through particular circuits. The Fifth & Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals were friendly to conservatives while liberals liked the Second & Ninth. Judges within knew what was happening and many refused. Others played along though where their ideological leanings came into play.

Georgia ejected the media network _CNN_ from that state during 2025. President Walsh, like so many others, protested against the attack on democracy which was that Deep Red state silencing an unfriendly outlet. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court agreed when the matter was taken to that state that Georgia had the right to shut down the _CNN_ offices and place restrictions on media activities in the ‘interests of public safety’ due to allegations that ‘lies’ harmed Georgians. Other Red states followed suit with further left-wing media networks getting the same treatment. The example set with Georgia was copied by California: the activities of journalists from _Newsmax_ and _OAN_ were curtailed by state law in a decision upheld by the nation’s highest court. Illinois, Virginia and Oregon would later put their own restrictions on those right-wing media outlets and also go after _Fox News_ too. It was all a matter of ensuring public safety, so said those behind the laws targeting hostile media. Of course, those networks would still broadcaster into the states from where their employees were subject to legal restrictions so the action wasn’t as severe as it could have been. The Governor of California refused Walsh’s plea not to do what he did and that was the beginnings of a major feud between the two of them. More criticism came California’s way, and towards those other Blue states that followed the lead set, yet they didn’t go back on what they had done. The Republicans had played dirty first and such was their response to that. Where first it was television broadcasters (a declining business), everyone knew that the next stage in that would be going after newspapers and the New Media that was the online world. Non-media businesses also began to change & adapt in the new political environment where state lines started to really matter. Certain companies, those on the left with a social conscience apparently in their DNA, and right-leaning ones with CEOs angry at the activist left, moved to withdraw their services from out of selected states. The decline in interstate commerce, even at a negligible level, was unprecedented when it came to political spats. Making money was supposed to trump everything. Employee safety issues, penalty taxes and also customer activism helped make that all happen though.

Disputes between Blue and Red states were plentiful though towards the end of 2025, there was a high-profile one between California and Indiana. The left and the right argued that their side was in the right. This fallout, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, but where Indiana was refused a hearing by the justices, was about the extradition request made for one woman. Bree Davis – born in Indiana, a resident of California – was wanted by Indiana state authorities for breaking state law there in organising pro-choice rallies among Indiana residents. She had done so while in California where her internet activism (which had previously got her plenty of attention) had done more work than she could by having visited her home state. California refused to send her to Indiana. The conservative justices on the Supreme Court didn’t think that Indiana had any standing in that where there was a lot of doubt on the validity of that state law against pro-choice activism there. The matter thrust not just Davis into the national spotlight but also the freshman congresswoman she had recently married: Davis’s wife, whose home district was in the liberal bastion of the Bay Area, would be a name on everyone’s lips come the following year. Separately, a joint case brought by Kentucky, Tennessee & West Virginia in concert was heard by the Supreme Court. That trio of Red states sought to limit the activities of federal agents from the ATF within their states. Walsh’s attorney general had them all over the Appalachians seeking to locate, disarm and arrest militia members whom the Department of Justice alleged were behind a multitude of federal crimes. The three states wanted to curtail what the ATF was doing. It was seen as overreach and action taken against state citizens which their governors asserted were innocent of the allegations made. The justices found there in favour of the federal government. Defeated those governors were but deflated they weren’t. Further battles down the line were sought by them where the purpose was to challenge federal power more than fight for any particular issue no matter what they might say different.

The off-year elections in 2025 saw the Democrats regain the Virginia governorship. Walsh campaigned for his party’s candidate in that contest and when doing so, the 48th President faced protests against him. Young activists who’d put him in power came out to march against him in Arlington and down in Richmond too. The right-wing media was all over that and the Republicans were gleeful. Virginia, a Blue state, was back in Democratic hands though after that election. A special election for a US House seat took place that same November too. The Republicans and the Democrats battled it out in a highly competitive Michigan district following the demise of a Democratic incumbent. When his party was victorious in holding on, Walsh and his allies proclaimed that that success in Purple state was down to his influence. Allies of his were increasing short the further westwards across the country travelled. First the Middle Eastern bombing campaigns and then the issue with former House Minority Leader Rosen did Walsh a ton of damage in the Democratic heartlands that the Blue states in the West had become. So many of the leading figures from Colorado to Hawaii, from Arizona to Washington state and from Oregon to New Mexico had no desire to be part of anything involving their fellow Democrat who was the incumbent in the White House. After Rosen lost her leadership role in Congress, Democrats there began organising themselves. They had their own groupings, member-only caucus’, with a growing network of senators and representatives. Not all joined, but the pressure was on those who held office in the West to join. In response to media comments and also attacks from party establishment figures, the defence of such organising was that those Democrats sought only to defend the interests of their constituents.

Walsh had resigned from his position as a Pennsylvania senator two weeks after becoming president-elect. He had four years left on his term at that point. A special election to fill the seat on a semi-permanent basis (for another two years) was pencilled in by the Governor of Pennsylvania for late 2026 though he made an interim appointment in the form of Phil Zenger. Zenger was a previous state treasurer and regarded as trustworthy by the governor with the new senator expressing no desire to serve until that ‘26 election. No one expected that Zenger would make the impact that he had when he had that national platform that the US Senate gave him. The man defied expectations of both the man who appointed him and the one he replaced too. And those were negative, not positive. Walsh cut any public ties with her fellow Democrat and so too did countless other Democrats in Congress. Zenger was – in short – a nut. There was no indication ahead of time that he would make such outlandish statements, tell as many lies as he did nor insult voters across the nation. Zenger did all of that. Name-calling was seemingly his favourite pastime and chief among the targets of his public ire were ‘Red staters’. It wasn’t the state governments with them who he called dumb, racists etc. but the people there. Those were people whom the Democrats wanted to vote for them down the line yet Zenger went on the attack against them. That did bring him some support from those on the far left who shared his combative outlook yet there weren’t many of them. Gaining national attention in that, Zenger also went after Republican voters in Pennsylvania too. He ignited social divides in the Purple state which Pennsylvania was at that time. Before ‘25 was out, Democrats across the party were calling for Zenger to resign. The same demand was made upon the governor too with the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ running a front page opinion piece demanding his resignation for that massive error of judgement in scheduling an election two years down the line as well as picking Zenger. Zenger stayed where he was though, taking being a nut with a public platform as far as he could to further alienate one portion of the country from the other.​
*​
Through the first portion of Walsh’s term, across 2025 and into ‘26 too, the political violence which had beset the nation under his predecessor continued. A nail bomb exploded upon a crowd of women marching in Los Angeles where they demonstrated against abortion laws elsewhere in the nation. Three were left dead with seventeen more wounded by the nails, nuts & bolts and mini razor blades packed within the home-made bomb. When months later a second protest was held in the same city, where marchers came out against their president’s Middle Eastern air campaigns, the LAPD discovered a discarded explosive device ahead of time. Investigations in a joint federal/state task force uncovered a ‘pro-life’ terror group, who had a bi-coastal reach too. The same people had thrown a backpack bomb into an Essex County abortion clinic beforehand. Arrests were made in California and New Jersey both. The dead and wounded in California, whose numbers would have easily been tragically added to if that second device weeks later had done as it was meant to, were memorialised by the state’s governor. He used the opportunity to take California down that road of asserting its rights as a state to defend its citizens and act in the name of public safety for the greater good. California copied what Red states such as Missouri had done in flexing its muscles to deal with what the governor and the state legislature in Sacramento deemed a threat. California banned membership of named groups & organisations and also powers were granted to stop ‘outsiders’ from entering California if they were deemed a threat to public safety. It went beyond militias to outlaw motorcycle gangs as well. That law was challenged by the Republicans yet also some Democrats too who considered it an outrage. It was upheld though, giving the Governor of California quite the immense power.

Up in Portland, protests against Walsh bombing Egypt turned violent. As seemed to be the case every time, demonstrations in that Oregon city resulted in major unrest with rioting, looting and arson seen. Ordinary citizens of Portland got no rest from it. The reputation of a city to visit to protest there and trash it was nationwide. Armed militiamen, claiming they represented ‘the Resistance’ were out to protect the demonstrators: vehicle-ramming attacks and gunshots had been seen before. In August 2025, one of the most destructive periods of violence was seen across Portland with damage stretching outside of the city itself too. State Representative Nick Hartley – a member of Oregon’s legislative lower chamber – did what he often did and was scathing in criticism of it all. He was one of the minority Republicans within that body with his district far from the violence hit urban areas of the state yet still claimed he was speaking for all of Oregon. A day after making his latest round of negative remarks, he was shot dead. Left-wing Gun Clubs organised as part of the Resistance denied responsibility when unfounded allegations were thrown their way. Investigators narrowed in upon a group known as the People’s Revolutionaries. They were a Far Left violent offshoot that had no dealings with the mainstream protest groups. Right-wing media tied them to those others though where they didn’t miss the opportunity to make that link. Federal agents, supported by Oregon state authorities, sought to take down the People’s Revolutionaries and make arrests. There were gun battles before the FBI and state troopers could get involved though. Throughout the eastern half of Oregon, and Washington too, plus across in both Idaho & Montana as well, that area of America known as the Inland North–West was a hotbed of militia activity throughout the Years of Lead. Gunmen with an autonomous group allied to the larger so-called Free Americans (nationwide, militia were affiliating to them) sought to kill off People’s Revolutionaries members first because Hartley was favoured by them before his murder. Isolated shootings took place across Oregon and Idaho for several weeks with half a dozen eventual deaths seen. Federal forces had little later impact, just like their investigations had gotten nowhere following that 2022 assassination of Montana’s state AG. The right-leaning militia across the Inland North–West had too many friends with power and influence.

Entirely separate from any larger umbrella alliance was the American Insurgent Army. They were a terror organisation, not a militia. The AIA started out small with less then ten members in three cells spread in various parts of the nation. When the Department of Justice finally got the AIA on their radar, there was a struggle to understand what such people were all about and what they stood for. Neither left nor right they were with no burning desire to recruit new members either. A few did join, all former US Armed Forces personnel with extensive overseas service backgrounds and a desire to see the destruction of the federal government. In a briefing given to Walsh about FBI activities in trying to combat AIA weapons thefts from state national guard armouries, he was told they were anarchist inclined. That made sense when the AIA made its ‘debut’. They set off a huge bomb at the Glynco federal facility in Georgia. More than a hundred different agencies used the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre there. Two bombers, both ex-US Army veterans hell bent on bringing down the United States Government, backed a truck up against a cafeteria. Security personnel fired on them but the altogether wilful negligence of them and colleagues ahead of that doomed thirty-one people to their deaths. The perpetrators escaped while left behind them dead personnel from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Marshals Service, the US Forest Service, the US Park Police and others too. That terror strike drew extensive further federal attention towards the AIA. Congressional figures were briefed upon the group though many considered what they heard to be contradictory and even false. They wanted to know more and they also wanted more to be done to destroy that terror group too. A shooting at a high school in North Carolina occurred the next day where the nation was gripped with images of terrified school children running for their lives from a classmate and that knocked the AIA off the media agenda in the immediate aftermath.

Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz was the congresswoman who was married to the activist Bree Davis at the centre of the 2025 Indiana–vs.–California legal spat. A young Latina, MRQ was a big deal. Her wife’s actions brought her to a wider audience yet from the moment she’d entered Congress, her presence had been felt there. She was a progressive, a democratic socialist with outspoken views of hers shared nationwide. That brought detractors and opponents yet those were fights which MRQ seemed to relish. She was a big deal online where she – in opposition to others like her – worked with the social media companies rather that seeking to fight them. Her whole life was documented online and through social media she connected with supporters nationwide. MRQ used her platform to combat political opponents aplenty. Once elected at the end of ‘24, there was immediate talk of her running for the White House the next election… whether or not Walsh was in the running too. An orphan born in California to a Mexican migrant mother, the story of MRQ’s childhood was well-known. She was open about the illegal status of her mother. The tale of how MRQ was adopted when a newborn was also well-known. Her adoptive parents avoided the limelight with the two of them busy with their academic careers instead of living in the public eye as increasing MRQ did. Professor Dante Rodríguez worked at the University of California, Berkeley and it was there that he was murdered in January ‘26. He was getting in his private vehicle to go home when he noticed a $50 bill under the windscreen wiper. Intrigued, he leaned across to remove it. While still and presenting a fine target, a gunman almost a mile way, up high and using an old war trick to achieve what he did, blew most of the head off his target. Professor Rodríguez was killed not because of his politics but those of his daughter’s. A camera crew with _NBC_ in DC caught live images of MRQ being told her father’s death and chose to air those. MRQ had already faced a torrent of abuse from political opponents, even deep fake porn widely shared to depict her negatively, yet the satisfaction on show from so many when they responded to her father’s death was extraordinarily cruel. It was as if in the minds of many that she and her father deserved what happened to their family because of her politics.

Tit-for-tat murders of celebrities with well-publicised politics occurred in the two following months. Chris ‘Kit Carson’ Lanyard, a comedian who made many appearances on _Saturday Night Live_ and other left-wing shows, was shot dead in New York. No immediate suspects were uncovered by the NYPD nor the FBI when they were brought in to help. Montgomery Browne was slain in Philadelphia six weeks later. Browne was a noted right-wing stand-up comedian (and occasional television star plus singer) who found work where others who shared his politics might not. Signing autographs down in Pennsylvania’s biggest city, he was stabbed in the chest repeatedly before a bodyguard could get in the way. The suspect was arrested and charged with his murder with the young man telling everyone who asked that he did that to avenge the slaying of Lanyard up in the Big Apple. Making conservatives cry was what he also said was a motivation for his actions. Such insanity defied all sense to so many people yet the murders of the two of them were celebrated within online spheres by political opponents of each. Senator Zenger spoke at the murder scene in Philadelphia hours after that happened. Cameras rushed to get the best positions, knowing what he had to say would be certainly something. He didn’t disappoint. There was ongoing controversy at that time within Pennsylvania concerning a proposed anti-abortion law which Zenger had been stoking the fires off: he’d said that it would bring ‘civil war’ to the state if the Republicans in the state legislative tried to ram it through. Browne deserved what he got when stabbed to death, Zenger declared, because he was a Republican voter from Red state America. The got him banned from _Twitter_, where he had been so prolific beforehand. In addition, fellow Democrats in the Senate denounced him for such a terrible thing to say and – through gritted teeth – joined with the Republicans in voting for his official censure. The man was to be out of the Senate in less than a year yet his trouble-making wasn’t over. He had public comment on what happened down in Arkansas and then in Indiana too through April ‘26.

A Caucasian police officer in Pine Bluff shot an unarmed African-American motorist. The small Arkansas city was majority Black with most of the police department too being African-American. There were protests there in the heart of the Red state that was Arkansas though through the actions of the Pine Bluff mayor, major unrest was averted despite efforts to encourage it from outsiders such as Zenger and online figures. Evansville was different. Again, an unarmed African-American was killed by a White policeman. This incident in Indiana was caught on camera and widely shared online. There were unorganised protests in that city in southern Indiana before the next night saw better organisation behind a demonstration in the far larger Indianapolis. Expecting trouble, the state authorities cracked down hard on that before Indiana’s biggest city could become (in the words of the state governor) ‘another Portland’. Images of riot police backed up by hastily called-up national guardsmen engaging mobs of protesters on the streets of Indianapolis were widely broadcast. Walsh addressed the nation from the White House where he declared that the killings of those unarmed Black men in Pine Bluff and Evansville were a national tragedy. He shared the pain of all Americans at those senseless, needless deaths, so he said. What he didn’t do was to attack the police departments in Arkansas & Indiana nor criticise the response made to protests in Indianapolis. Democrats nationwide wanted him to do that, to take a public stand against such injustices like he had done when he was running for president. When he didn’t, others did and those who did joining in the long-standing chorus of claims of betrayal from the man who they’d elected as their 48th President. Approval ratings for Walsh by Easter, months before crucial midterms, had his numbers down in the thirties! Like his predecessor, his former allies in his party had turned on him and Walsh was far from the man whom they wanted to see run again in 2028.​


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## JamesG

*Two Americas*


The midterms of 2026 saw all of the US House, a third of the Senate, dozens of gubernatorial and plentiful state & local races take place nationwide. Threats to candidates, campaign staff and voters too saw a noticeable increase in the presence of security around the election. That brought about plentiful adverse comment to claim the elections were being held in a climate of fear and also allegations that in certain instances, the ‘security’ was there to frighten voters rather than protect them. Days before the November election, the Secret Service uncovered a serious plot in-play to assassinate House Speaker Fraser. He was seeking (assured) re-election in his home district up in Wisconsin and there were people out to kill him. FBI agents assisted the Secret Service in making arrests and seized a lot of weaponry from a Far Left group. On Election Day itself, two Democratic poll workers were shot at ahead of their arrival to monitor a polling station in a rural district of Michigan where their party’s candidate stood little chance. Each survived unharmed but found themselves faced with unconcerned and unhelpful state troopers who questioned whether the whole thing really happened. US House seats across the nation went uncontested in a high number of cases. Incumbents in entirely safe districts faced zero opposition, not even from token candidates. Many state-level candidates below governor / lieutenant-governor position were also uncontested. The Democrats and Republicans alike entirely abandoned the idea of many contests where they didn’t even run paper candidates: their focus was in places where they believed they stood a chance of winning rather than ‘wasting’ efforts. That affront to democracy had been increasing throughout the years alongside the continuation of both parties working together to lock-out _anyone else_ where possible from getting on the ballot. Facing some criticism, excuses were made that it was dangerous to run candidates in certain races due to fears of political violence yet that was a flimsy attempt at deflecting blame in the vast majority of those cases. In reality, opposing parties just gave up ahead of time.

The gubernatorial and US Senate races in Pennsylvania gained serious national media coverage. Zenger had done what he had said he wouldn’t do when appointed to fill the seat vacated by Walsh and run in the Democratic primary earlier that year. The DNC had thrown considerable effort at making sure that his primary challenger (the former Mayor of Allentown) defeated him there. Rather than go away quietly, Zenger stayed in the public eye with his outrageous, provocative behaviour where he spread lies & disinformation while also directing insults at everyone possible. He received cheers from some sections of his party though for on-air live abuse directed against a _OAN_ interviewer: Zenger called him the c-word and a hell of a lot of Americans agreed. Zenger had done plentiful damage in the primary to his opponent and when she went up against the Republican nominee on Election Day, the Senate race in Pennsylvania was won by the latter. Republican victories in the state were extensive too. They took the governor’s mansion and also control of the state legislature. ‘Reform’ of the state’s abortion laws was top of the agenda for those on the Republican side, just as Zenger had promised they would try to ram through. Whether his other prediction that his home state would descend into civil war would come true was something considered much more unlikely. Michigan, another Purple state, saw its gubernatorial race won by the Democrats who also held on – just – to the senate seat up for contention there. National party effort was heavily directed at Michigan with Georgia suffering from a lack of outside assistance for the Democrats there. The DNC had written off their chances of holding that seat and that was proved correct with a major swing to the Republicans achieved. On a very good night for them in Senate races, they too took the second competitive seat up in New Hampshire to add to their already held first one. Along with retaining their one in Maine, the Republicans found themselves a good position up there in New England. No governors nor congressmen could get elected yet they had three senators. With two new senators, it was an election where the Republicans moved to a majority of 58-42. It was a damn good night for Senate Majority Leader Green yet he would have liked to have seen Michigan, maybe even Minnesota, won as well with the idea of a ‘sweet sixty’ and a filibuster-proof supermajority talked up beforehand as possible.

The Democrats remained in the minority in the US House yet they managed to make a net gain of three seats in the midterms. The majority held by the Republicans was still extensive though. Churn was seen again with almost twenty incumbents from both parties falling to challengers, leaving just that minor overall change at the end of all the drama. The Democrats expanded their hold over districts in Blue states, the Republicans placed a further grip within Red states and Purple state seats were bitterly fought for. Among the incumbents to lose was Claire Gunnarsson up in Minnesota. Her suburban district outside of the Twin Cities fell to the Republicans who threw everything at that contest. The four-term Gunnarsson considered the loss to be more than just one for her. She spoke at length in the aftermath to a _MSNBC_ reporter where she detailed Republican dirty tricks and also her fears for Minnesota in the future. The victory her opponent won wasn’t one she accredited to him though. Instead, Gunnarsson said that President Walsh was responsible for that. He had to go, the beaten congresswoman claimed, before he dragged the entire party down. Asked to expand upon that remark, Gunnarsson explained that she believed Walsh should be primaried if he chose to contest the next election for the Democrats. If not, he would hand the White House over to the Republicans. The man was incompetent and had spent his entire presidency betraying those who had put him in office. There was negative reaction from other Democrats afterwards yet that was far less intense than might have been expected beforehand. Gunnarsson was regarded as correct far and wide across the party of which she and Walsh were members: the president was an election liability.

The victorious senatorial candidate for the Republicans in Georgia was an African-American. He joined three more – one each from Georgia, South Carolina and Texas – in the Senate along with four Hispanics too (from Florida, North Carolina & Texas). Further minority candidates won US House races to join others already in Congress for the party. Along with a good number of female candidates too, the Republicans continued their 2020s trend of demographic changes within their party’s elected members. Of course, they were far behind the Democrats and still considered ‘old, white and male’ but that was changing. The New Republicans continued to gain office. They were conservative and that was what mattered to so many of their voters: more than skin colour, gender or even sexual orientation. Democratic counters were that the Republicans had put up tokens and it was also said from extreme voices on the left that many of the New Republicans were race traitors. Senator Edward Roberts, elected in Texas in 2024, was called an ‘uncle Tom’ online and also to his face at times. He had presidential ambitions, an idea laughed at in many quarters yet something seen less and less outlandish as the decade went on. Conservative voters who put Republicans in office cared in fewer cases than before about the ethnicity of the candidates: just that they could win and stick to their principles. Minorities were a big Republican voting bloc too with it noted that a lot of them took part in ‘pork barrel voting’ where they understood that electing Republicans to join the majorities in Congress would benefit their districts… at the expense of elsewhere. Such truths aggravated many Democrats who got all bent out of shape at that rather than seeking to effectively combat what was happening. It was easier for many to get angry and write off those who voted against them instead of working to change things. At the same time, the Republicans couldn’t repeat that everywhere. Holloway’s rhetoric in the ‘24 presidential campaign had lost the Republicans their low numbers of minority voters in vast portions of America. In the West and across other Blue states, that wouldn’t be forgiven for a long time indeed.

Plentiful Democrats in the West had faced primary challenges in the lead-up to the 2026 midterms where they were regarded as Blue Dogs or Corporate Democrats by party members and activists. In Colorado and Oregon, the incumbent Democrat governors had been beaten in their primary contests by grass-roots challengers with less money on-hand yet who beat them decisively. The Governor of Arizona also lost to a primary challenger while her counterpart in Nevada just about held on but was forced to ‘re-evaluate’ their expressed policies. In US House races, especially through California yet also in other Blue states in the West too, there was a major change made where progressive & democratic socialist challengers seized the agenda. They established themselves as the strongest force within the Democrats all across the West. Like what was seen in Nevada, a large number of incumbents adapted to that new environment rather than lose their districts. Corporate donations were rejected and progressive agendas exponentiated by candidates. When it came to Election Day, the Republicans expected to reap the rewards of opposition infighting yet found very little of that at all. They lost seats everywhere, making the situation from the ‘22 & ‘24 elections even worse for their presence across those Blue states. In the Blue states, they had no senators and their US House representation went down, down and down. Only two Republicans were left standing in Arizona with that repeated up in Colorado: they were left with zero representation in Nevada & New Mexico. There was only the lone congressman up in Oregon and two in Washington state, with that trio from the rural eastern regions of each state too. The Republicans were also left with only six in the whole of California. The Democrats beat each other on an anti-Walsh message – he was regarded as pure establishment, as opposed to the outsider he ran as in ‘24 – and defeated the Republicans heavily on regionalism, pro-West message that just wasn’t ‘got’ elsewhere in the nation.

Once the midterms were over with, commentators examined in more detail what was happening in the Blue states in the West. The unsaid platforms that so many candidates ran on was a quasi-nationalistic one yet with a focus on what was deemed ‘West America’ rather than the United States as a whole. The nationalism in a regional outlook was there in the manner of a special status that California and the others had. It was noted that figures as diverse as the Governor of California (as establishment as they came) and democratic socialists such as MRQ in the Bay Area were onboard with all of that. There was rejection of the DNC and how it sought to dominate party candidates. Former House Minority Leader Rosen worked with other adherents to the notion that the West was _different_ from the rest of the country and her organisational skills were put to quite the use. There was a middle finger given to Walsh by her in that where the matter was personal though it was something else too: that feeling that the West was somewhat exceptional, and should be treated as such. Arguments were put forth from observers and commentators that there was actually Two Americas after the midterms. The country wasn’t split into Red and Blue, so that point went, but rather the East and the West. Such an idea was widely dismissed among many of those – primarily those outside of the West – who heard it. Such a thing was mocked as stupid. They said that there was no feeling in the West that they were from a different America to everyone else. Proponents of the theory were called Republican stooges or just plain dumb. No indication was seen by the majority that there was anything odd going on beyond power plays from the governor’s mansion in Sacramento and also Rosen’s anger. West America didn’t exist they said, just Blue states over there who were part of a whole.​
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If there were Two Americas in the mid 2020s, then most of the people in the United States would have regarded the split as between liberal America and conservative America, between the Blue states and the Red states. Those were where the fault lines lay in the public arena where seemingly everything – socially, economically, culturally etc. – was divisive. Those who publicised the idea of two different countries spoke of a future divorce between them due to the complete set of ‘irreconcilable differences’ which poisoned relations throughout the nation. During his time in the Senate, Zenger sought to add to those divisions from that platform he had there while doing the same thing, but from the right, there was Holly Turner at _Fox News_. She had her own nightly show and used that to spew hatred across America. The target was left-wingers and liberals with Turner doing it with style, substance and a never-ending approach for making conservatives angry. The culture wars which raged across America fed by people such as Zenger and Turner were multi-faceted and never-ending. There was nothing that was off-limits, nothing that could be turned into the newest fight to be had. Everything was about Them and Us, and how to make everyone mad at the other.

Sports and cultural boycotts took place throughout the nation. Businesses sought to avoid trouble where they could yet were increasingly driven to taken sides as well. It was endless. The desire to keep the fight going didn’t cease. There were too many people with too much at stake for a ceasefire to be called. Demonising their enemies was how the cultural warriors retained the power and influence that they had. Hollywood movies, television shows, internet sites etc. were all driven by divides too where one side avoided what was regarded as serving the motivations of the other when it came to entertainment as well. Deep fakes rocked the country with clever lies being told about what politicians and public figures didn’t actually say or do yet everyone could hear or see them apparently doing that. Institutions such as the US Armed Forces, once the greatest of all modern melting pots for Americans, was dragged into scandal after scandal where there were efforts made to politicise and split it too. The military tried its damn hardest to stay out of politics yet that was a losing game for those in uniform who found themselves an easy target for outside attacks on them. Sexual assault allegations had long been weaponised in American culture and there was in increase in the severity of allegations made against leading figures during the mid 2020s. Headlines were what people remembered and those came with the drip-drip fashion of allegations going on for some time. When later so many of those detailed smears were proved entirely false, the damage to the lives and careers of those involved was already done.

President Walsh was supposed to have been the man to unite America. His election campaign where he had first defeated his fellow Democrat incumbent before then beating that Barronite opponent for the Republicans was meant to bring the country together. All his presidency did was to witness the nation driven further apart though. Working across the aisle with a bipartisan agenda had given the Republicans everything that they had wanted and left Walsh’s fellow Democrats fuming. The disputes in Congress were even more dramatic outside and across the nation where that betrayal by Walsh was presented to the public. Opinion polls depicted a continuous downwards decline for Walsh, even during the off-year elections in late 2025 where the Democrats strung together a series of good victories. Other candidates in electoral races, and especially in ‘26, made it clear that they didn’t want anything to do with Walsh when they were fighting for office. He wasn’t invited to campaign on behalf of fellow Democrats all across America. Even in Democratic heartlands such as California, Walsh wasn’t welcome. He was a liability, rather than an asset for his party. The public appearances made by Walsh grew fewer as his presidency went onwards. He appeared less and less beyond the White House, preferring to stay there. When he did travel, he would be met with protests against him. Left-wingers would turn out in numbers that the right could only dream of attaining to put on a strong showing of opposition. While those people were protesting against Walsh, they weren’t voting for Democratic candidates. Across the party, that was well understood. Allies through Blue states in the East walked away from him as time went on rather than go down with him.

Chinese economic woes had a negative effect upon the American economy, starting especially at the beginning of 2027. The troubles in China with debt and a resources crisis were felt globally though Americans concentrated on their own situation rather than worrying about elsewhere. The knock-on effect from what was going on over on the other side of the Pacific was immediate and also out of all proportion. There was a crash on Wall Street and the ripples were widespread with inflation and soaring fuel prices. Americans blamed their president for that. Part of the reason for the China mess was the blockage of the Suez Canal starting in November ‘26. Europe was left hurting more than the United States by that yet the global economy was all intertwined. Terrorists actions by Egyptian revolutionaries saw that artery for worldwide trade shut down leading to job loses in American manufacturing months down the line: such was the way of the world. The loss of confidence on the global markets that saw the NYSE drop so frightfully one afternoon in January ‘27 had many wide-ranging effects though none of those were linked to what happened in the Black Sea a month later. A trio of US Navy warships were engaged with a non-lethal weapon when approaching the Russian coastline yet still far inside international waters. An energy beam fired from an undetermined source struck the cruiser & two destroyers to leave them dead in the water. The news was quickly leaked out of the Pentagon. Walsh gave a statement that he aimed to calm nerves and to show American strength. Only the opposite was done. Russia meanwhile claimed innocence. The following month saw the _Washington Post_ newspaper release in print and online a series of leaked diplomatic communiques between DC and Tel Aviv. Those concerned the air campaign against Egypt two years beforehand and recent events with regards to the Suez attacks. Israel forced Walsh into action: he was told that if the United States didn’t strike, Israel would with that outcome surely being a wholly regional conflict. Israel was as unpopular as could be among the left across America. Those revelations of how Walsh had been effectively blackmailed into action did neither Tel Aviv nor the 48th President any favours. A good portion of the conservative right defended Israel (while criticising Walsh too in quite the easy double standard) to make that issue, like everything else that was happening at that time internationally, another conflict between the two opposing sides within America.

Domestically, the security situation nationwide with regard to political violence drove what was planned to be a bipartisan solution to combat that. Senators and governors, working with the Secretary of Homeland Security, who had a good relationship with Congress, aimed to do what was necessary to bring the Years of Lead to an end if they could. The aims were significant. An expansion and professionalisation of the Federal Protective Service (it relied heavily on private security contractors) was meant to occur to help protect American democracy from those seeking to end it via bullets. ‘Homeland Security agents’ belonging to the newer, larger FPS were envisioned to work with the FBI and the Marshals Service. Once figures such as Turner, Zenger and what were in so many ways nothing more than provocateurs began presenting all of this to the public, the undertaking was doomed though. No way was it going to be acceptable to those on the extremes of the left nor the right either. Politicians and their families would continue to face violence and so too voters. Just as that all fell apart, Walsh came under fire for what occurred up in Michigan. Different federal agents, those ones with ICE, conducted a major sweep through portions of Detroit seeking criminals with undocumented immigration status. The US Supreme Court had days beforehand flatly rejected an effort led by Michigan’s governor to maintain statewide protected areas for illegals where federal law brought in by the Republicans on that was challenged. Images which came out of Detroit where those agents met not just resistance within minority communities yet also from impromptu gatherings of protesters organising in flash-mob fashion hurt Walsh. He had become the face of federal overreach in so many eyes across the divides of America where he was actually for a change – not in a good way – managing to unite people. The Homeland Security expansion argument was lost for good after Detroit despite the two matters being entirely separate.

Flooding along the Lower Mississippi took place in April 2027. It was widespread with communities in four states – Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi & Tennessee – being heavily affected. Lives were lost as homes were washed away. The Mississippi River was an American river yet across portions of the nation, in sections of Blue states, the floods were looked upon as happening to those in Red states. They deserved it became an attitude expressed among many. In July, Hurricane Eleanor struck Texas before Hurricane Leonard at the end of August made landfall across the width of Florida. Those major Atlantic hurricanes did immense damage and took many lives. Once more, it was Red states affected by them. Global climate shifts were blamed for those disastrous weather events yet the Mississippi was long prone to flooding and hurricanes were always going to come. Republicans had long been behind what was regarded as climate change denial, even regarded as taking active measures to stop mitigating events: many Democrats painted themselves as global defenders through their climate change policy positions. Thus when those events happened, to be played out across the media for the whole country to be seen, there were easily defined battlelines over which shots could be exchanged. Voters in those Red states were said to have brought that upon themselves by voting how they had done. To hear such things said from fellow Americans about events beyond their control causing such heartache and grief was enraging for those on the receiving end of that. Certain smug Democrats behind such remarks became the face of _all_ Democrats. The weather became a feature of the war for the soul of the Two Americas.​
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Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Young had moved to work with Senate Majority Leader Green on the matter of expanding security protection for political figures due to attempts on the lives of Members of Congress from both parties during the first half of 2027. Young, the senior senator from New York was in usual times an implacable enemy of Green, with special anger directed against him for how he had wound her fellow Democrat in the form of President Walsh around his little finger. Nonetheless, the recognition that bipartisan fighting was in part due to what happened forced the two of them to try and strike a deal. Forces beyond their control eventually scuppered that but the effort was made there. Thomas Jefferson Leary was thrown head first out of a three-storey window in Spokane, Washington state. The Republican congressman representing one of the few district in his party’s hands in the West survived the defenestration though would spend the rest of his life in a coma. Responsibility for his attempted murder was gleefully claimed by an anarcho-communist group operating within the Pacific North–West / Inland North–West region who been engaged in armed clashes with right-wing militia. It all linked back to the previous Hartley murder. Further shooting incidents occurred afterwards with Idaho state troopers discovering a couple of days later the bodies of four members of that Marxist-Leninist vanguardist group bound together with bullet wounds to the head in a shallow grave. Miguel Hernandez, a Democratic congressman out of New Mexico, was assassinated in Georgetown, within the confines of DC, not long afterwards. Hernandez was stabbed and garrotted in a motel room where he had checked in under a false name for a sexual liaison. Investigators couldn’t pin down an exact political motive but there was no belief that the killing was a random event either. Members of Congress from all parties felt dangerously exposed to attacks on them and their families and sought a solution to provide them with adequate protection. In the end, without a federal agreement, both the DNC and then later the opposition RNC would seek to gain security clearance from the Departments of Justice & Homeland Security for private contractors to provide protection where the national parties would arrange for and pay for that.

That civil war threatened by the disgraced ex-Senator Zenger in Pennsylvania seemingly was lit off once the new state legislature was in-place along with the new governor too. From out of the State Capitol came anti-abortion legislation where lawmakers set to take Pennsylvania down the same road that Red states across the nation had gone on. Online statements were made by a group calling themselves the PA Guardians where they issued menacing warnings of what would happen. Bills were introduced regardless with a move made in haste to see them sent to the governor. One of the co-sponsors out of the state senate was shot at with him and his wife left badly injured in an attack within Harrisburg. Governor Dwight Norris, a man who’d expressed his own presidential ambitions for the 2028 election, made it clear that he intended to see the law desired by what he claimed was the majority of the state’s residences go through. His daughter vanished from the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg the evening after Norris made that statewide speech. She was lured into a meeting arranged through an internet chat group and then kidnapped by the PA Guardians. Walsh hurried along the Justice Department in sending FBI agents and US Marshals to Pennsylvania. It took ten days before the fourteen year-old Norris child was discovered. She was alive yet in a bad state when held in a basement below a house in a run-down portion of Philadelphia. Five members of that Far Left militia group were charged with her kidnapping, torture and rape. The allegations of the latter injustice committed against the governor’s daughter caught the national media attention more than anything else. How, Turner asked on _Fox News_, could a group claiming to act for the rights of women do that to a teenage girl? Counter-allegations came that the PA Guardians were a front and that they were stooges for the right. There were gunshots directed towards the private home of one of the leading Democrats in the state legislature who had opposed the anti-abortion bill and also the fire-bombing of (the empty) home of another. The two Democrats had spoke out against the kidnapping for the horror that that was yet none the less faced those attacks against their homes from those who determined that they were in league with the PA Guardians. As to that group, many members afterwards either left or went into hiding with intentions of reforming at a later date: there were comments from several, leaked to the media, continuing the claim that the kidnapping was nothing to do with them and it was all a set-up.

Further nationwide political violence continued. A journalist from _CNN_ was shot and killed while filming a report on the ongoing violence in the Inland North–West. _CNN_, later followed by other media organisations, decided afterwards to no longer sent reporters to Idaho & Montana as well as the eastern portions of Oregon & Washington state. It was dangerous up there for the media. _Newsmax_ had a news van racked by gunfire when travelling through Colorado Springs. The journalist involved, channel anchors and Republican commentators would claim that the attack on the _Newsmax_ team was a left-wing attack seeking to force them out of Colorado. Far Left activists were blamed too for the fire which saw the complete destruction of the State Capitol building in Jefferson City come June 2027. That small city was the capital of Missouri, where Governor Holloway retained her domestic seat to keep a national platform despite so much of the Republican Party continuing to move away from her Barronite positions. The fire entirely engulfed the historic building in record time with fire safety measures, in addition to pre-emptive security efforts, having no effect. Holloway would rage against the attack. She would also act by calling out the state’s national guardsmen for security duties statewide as well as having state troopers sent to the Mississippi River to ‘shut down the border’ with Illinois. That border she spoke of was the state line with Illinois. Holloway’s instructions were to stop the alleged arsonists fleeing back into Illinois where she claimed they had come from. Interstate traffic across the many bridges came to a halt with that. The Governor of Illinois was furious and savaged Holloway through national broadcasts: one Illinois congressman claimed that the arson was staged because Holloway wanted her ‘burning of the _Reichstag_’ moment. Walsh got involved and so did Congress. Demands were made that Holloway open up access – it was unconstitutional to shut access – with counter-demands issued that Illinois ‘stop sending agitators’ into Missouri. Though no national guardsmen were involved, Walsh had the Pentagon federalise them to stop Holloway from having them involved. Holloway was unable to respond and would back down in the end when faced with US Marshals sent moving to open up the bridges again. Her efforts to ‘seal the border’ were already fruitless because, as shown by several successful attempts by citizen journalists out of Illinois, if they wanted to enter Missouri, they would just travel via Iowa or Kentucky. Behind-the-scenes pressure exerted on Holloway from fellow Republicans also mattered a great deal in ending the whole drama too.

Domestic terrorism against federal targets occurred as well. In broad daylight one afternoon in DC, armed drones flew low over the middle of the city towards the White House. Witnesses would call them missiles, and say so to the media, but they were drones. Three of them converged from different directions towards the building in which Walsh was. He was practically carried down into a bunker by the Secret Service. Up above, weapons engaged those inbound drones. Short-range missile defences hit two of them with a third crashing by itself when his with a burst of directed electro-magnetic energy. The burning wreckage from those downed drones was broadcast live on several news channels with earlier footage shown of the flights of two of them. That drone hit by the EM pulse (which no comment was made upon by official sources) went by the Washington Monument with iconic footage of that being replayed across America and around the world too. Troops on the streets of the national capital and then fighter jets up above would be a regular feature for the following week. No word came on who was responsible with the Walsh Administration keeping tight-lipped. That lead to more questions, including those of whether the US Government actually had any idea as to who was responsible. The day that the security situation was lessened and the middle of DC opened up saw a second attack take place. That one was far more successful. Once again, just like they had done in Georgia the year before, the nascent AIA got a truck bomb where they shouldn’t. It detonated outside of the FBI headquarters when disguised as a military vehicle. The Hoover Building would remain standing but the damage to it and neighbouring structures was immense. Sixteen deaths would occur with only a handful being federal employees. Arguably, the AIA had failed in their DC attacks where their drones then their bomb had done little really. That was in terms of actual death and destruction inflicted though. In the manner of making a statement of intent and ability, they certainly did so. Media outlets broke the story afterwards that the little-known American Insurgent Army was behind the attacks against DC. Everyone nationwide wanted to know who they were and how they were going to be combatted. Questions were asked too, coming out of Congress especially, as to how they were going to be stopped and why earlier efforts to target them had seemingly met utter failure.

The AIA was a terror group with a few dedicated cell members. Politicians and media commentators would tie them in with the militias active nationwide yet the AIA (like the PA Guardians and other terrorists) were entirely different. The militias had ranks of gunmen/gunwomen and didn’t at all hide in the shadows. Where they could, they operated out in the open with no concern about their activities being monitored. In certain instances, state authorities looked the other way. On orders from DC, federal authorities played the same game too where it was decided back in DC that to make a move against them would end in bloodshed. In much of liberal America, there was a misconception of the militias with them all being assumed to be racists, inbred and pretty dumb too; conservative America saw the right-wing militia as patriots and focused a lot on the very few left-wing groups. Few on either side in the Two Americas fully understood the militias. They certainly didn’t know about the mass of training, the organisation and the weaponry on-hand either. Free America-affiliated militias had ‘technicals’ (armed vehicles) and drones too. Several of the left-wing groups saw themselves as urban guerrillas and were armed with plastic explosives as well as having a good grasp of urban combat due to wartime service abroad. California moved against right-wing militias operating in the north of that state. State troopers and national guardsmen pushed them out, over into neighbouring states in the inland North–West, though various incidents that eventually saw nine deaths before it was all resolved. From out of Sacramento, the message of public safety was issued when attention was on what happened up there in the Redwoods. Columbus in Georgia was rocked by violence committed against Georgia state police officers and federal agents too when attacked by Far Left gunmen. The militia elements involved were disorganised and on the run soon enough when Georgia’s governor refused to see militia active and so went as far as she would to eliminate them. In Blue states, Red states and Purple states too, 2027 was the ‘Year of the Militia’. There were incidents in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, West Virginia and Wisconsin that attracted national attention. Questions were asked as to how such elements had been allowed to grow into what they had become. Responses came that the example had been set in the Inland North–West where for so long both state & federal authorities had allowed the violence up there to get out of control.

Left-wing militias were generally split into three groups. There were the urban guerrilla outfits of entirely independent character. They had a lot of presence and gained media attention yet didn’t make anywhere near the impact they were given the credit for by opposing right-wing media outlets who linked them to the Resistance, Antifa and generally the loudest Democrat at that time. The _Vaqueros_ were a Hispanic group active in the South–West who recruited former military personnel. They were largely rural in character and also didn’t achieve much despite a lot of negative outside attention. What they did do, unlike urban groups, was show up when the cameras were rolling in the face to ‘threats to their communities’. Large numbers of Hispanic members openly carrying weapons where the laws allowed that set off the rages of many but it was all perfectly legal. What the _Vaqueros_ did was protect demonstrators rather than attack the authorities to seek conflict as the urban guerrillas wanted to. They also stayed near to their communities. Finally, there was the Black Liberation Army. The name upset many, hence the decision to use it behind the founders of that group who wanted a strong reaction. They sought to anger opposition yet also knew that their brazen activities would attract recruits. Many of them came from the African-American members of the various left-wing Gun Clubs who found that the urban guerrilla set-ups were all talk and no action. The BLA showed it was all about action. They tracked down and murdered that Indiana policeman who’d killed that black motorist in Evansville. Marches in support of his killers took place across the nation where there were majority African-American populations – in Baltimore, Oakland, St. Louis, Philadelphia etc. – without regard for state government feelings on the matter. DC also saw a big turn out of members. Police efforts to remove illegally-carried weapons where local ordinances declared them to be gun-free zones brought strong responses. Deaths and injuries occurred. The right and left both criticised the BLA though came at that from different angles. What was strongly opposed was the apparent ability of the BLA to take part in a race war. Provocateurs talked up the possibility of that with the BLA making such a strong showing out on the streets with their numbers and also that gunning down of an alleged racists murderer who hid behind his policeman’s shield too. In one way, the BLA united the Two Americas even.​


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## JamesG

*Black Swans*


_CBS Evening News_ would break what would be deemed _the_ story of the decade. The leaker from the White House picked _CBS_ because that network wasn’t anywhere near as partisan as others on the left & right were. She decided that her selection would treat the story in the manner in which she wanted to see it presented to the world. _CBS_ worked fast (and secretly) to confirm the details of what they were given, all while fearful that another network or media outlet would scoop them. The online publication _Politico_ was chasing the same story – from a different leaker – yet _CBS_ beat them to the punch. Early in September 2027, popular host of the evening programme Debbie Parsons revealed allegations concerning President Walsh’s extra-martial affair with a senior White House official. _CBS_ had evidence to that effect, otherwise the story never would have run, and presented that in the broadcast. The woman with whom the 48th President was said to be having sexual relations with at both the White House and Camp David over a period of five months was Charlotte Lloyd. She was the Deputy Homeland Security Advisor, an appointed official whose role was more important that usual due to her titular boss having been absent from his duties since the start of the year with a fight underway against pancreatic cancer. Pictures of Lloyd were released: she was previously an unknown figure. The whole country, soon the whole world too, quickly knew everything about the thirty-three year-old ‘girlfriend’ of Walsh. Her picture and video footage of her pre-scandal was everywhere.

Walsh’s official spokesperson’s first comment on the revelations was to neither confirm nor deny it. Her boss hadn’t given her proper instructions as to how to reply to the incoming allegations and she fluffed the response. That reply was all the confirmation that everyone needed. _CBS_ had already released a lot of evidence and the White House wasn’t denying that there had been a relationship between Walsh and Lloyd, nor that it was still going on too. _Everyone_ had something to say about the private life of Walsh. From politicians to commentators to ordinary citizens, it was all that anyone could talk about. Walsh’s spokesperson would resign the following day, claiming her boss made her job impossible, but that was of little significance when first _Fox News_ and then moments later _MSNBC_ (each claiming an exclusive) ran the story that the First Lady had moved out of the White House. She went with the two children of theirs, heading back to her parent’s house in Pennsylvania. The media circus around that was extraordinary. So too was the furore where the entire media sought out Lloyd. She was nowhere to be found though. There were no more trips over to the White House for her nor could she be found at her office. The acting presidential spokesperson would be forced into denying that Lloyd was staying at the White House when multiple allegations were made that she was there with Walsh. _CNN_ and _The Hill_ both would secure interviews with former staffers who’d been with Walsh when he was a senator for Pennsylvania where each claimed to have had affairs with him while working for under him.

Parsons got that interview with Lloyd, something that other hosts at different networks would have literately killed for. Meeting at the _CBS_ studios up in New York, the president’s girlfriend stated that her affair with Walsh had been something that she had ended a month previous. She confirmed that she had left her job as the Deputy HSA and that was her decision after Walsh Administration pressure upon her. Parsons asked the details of what had happened with Walsh and Lloyd with the latter revealing that to an immense global audience watching the much hyped interview. With her boss in the hospital, Lloyd had spent a great deal of time with the president when briefing him, often during the early hours due to when news of events arrived, concerning security incidents across the nations. Bomb attacks, gunfire etc. had consumed their meetings. There were many late nights too where they discussed the terrible situation on the US-Mexican border, including the multiple instances of the Mexican Drug War spilling over into the streets of El Paso. They had grown close. Lloyd confessed that she had made the first move to engage in relations with Walsh while in full knowledge that he was a married man with children. She asked for Parsons and the country to forgive her. Nonetheless, she excused her actions by claiming that the president and his wife were leading separate lives at that point. She wouldn’t discuss details of her break-up with Walsh, claiming that was private no matter how hard Parsons pushed her to reveal all, and also claimed that she had no idea that others knew of their affair nor that it ended under threat of being revealed as it ultimately was. Her career in government service was over, Lloyd confessed, and so too was her reputation gone forever. Parsons’ final question was to whether Lloyd was still in love with Walsh: Lloyd said that she never had been because it had never been that type of affair.

Republicans and the _entire_ right across the United States had denounced Walsh from the beginning when the news broke about his affair. There were comments made that he had betrayed his country by acting in such a manner while in office. He had neglected his presidential duties, so they said, and imperilled the nation by what he had gotten up to. The high-minded attitude was never going to convince everyone yet that interview which Lloyd gave sealed the deal for the Republicans. They had something to work with when she spoke out rather than remaining hidden away. Action was taken to make sure that the scandal didn’t fade away and that only gain could come from it. Congressional inquiries were announced with senators on the Republican-led ethics committee arranging for hearings. Lloyd was a government employee and had confessed on television that her liaisons with Walsh had taken place in the White House. Testimony from them was also demanded from named administration officials as well as the Secret Service too. From out of the US House, there came remarks that they were looking to impeach Walsh. Few Democrats came out to defend Walsh, even when they were disgusted with the attitude taken by the Republicans to make it all some sort of moral crusade. Walsh had lost their support long before the affair revelations and so the Republicans were allowed to feast on him. Terrified of having her sex life combed over in open session by senators, Lloyd cut a deal with the Senate Judicial Committee to tell them everything that they wanted in private. Her lawyers had made that arrangement by claiming that if not, she would Plead The Fifth but they could do nothing when the transcripts of her confessions to Senate-appointed investigators were leaked to the media. With all of that out in the open, the clamour for impeachment became incandescent. House Speaker Fraser let it go ahead, seeking to damage the Democrats rather than really get anywhere in seeing the removal from office of Walsh as many of his fellow Republicans wanted. He knew that that was going to be impossible. There could still be a lot of damage done to the enemy though.

Before the scandal erupted and impeachment proceedings began, Walsh had been the presumptive nominee for the Democrats in the next presidential election. Former Senator Zenger and incumbent DC Mayor Rochelle Nelson had each declared their candidacy to challenge him yet no one else (beyond near-invisible no-hoper perennial candidates) had moved to. The situation of four years beforehand had been repeated during September/October 2027 where shadow campaigns from Democrats seeking the right moment to make a move were underway. Walsh himself had primaried the 47th President and only done so when the time was deemed right. The revelations of what Walsh had been up to followed by a wave of resignations coming from Walsh Administration staffers ahead of them being called before Congress was regarded by potential challengers as enough of a justification for them to jump into the race. Two major candidates announced that they (just like Nelson & Zenger) would be challenging Walsh for the party’s nomination. Senator Patrick O’Shea out of Massachusetts and New Jersey’s Governor Stephanie Kirk entered the primary contest. Each of them were centralist Democrats with good reputations and certainly having more of a shot at beating Walsh than the weak Nelson nor the disgraced Zenger. Nonetheless, many commentators believed that for either of them to be the Democrats’ candidate in November ‘28 would see them crushed: they wouldn’t be able to bring the country with them as Walsh had done when he had won the presidency. Potential candidates who hadn’t announced, yet who were suspected to be eyeing up a shot at the nomination, had attention focused upon them.

In the US House, an impeachment vote against Walsh went through on a simple majority following party lines. Commentators and legal scholars argued furiously over whether Walsh having a sexual affair with a subordinate was an impeachable offence but the Republican majority voted to send the matter to the US Senate where there would be a trial of Walsh. The upper chamber took up the matter and proceedings against the 48th President moved forward with the charge of ‘high crimes & misdemeanours’. There the Republicans had a strong majority too yet it was wasn’t anywhere bear enough for the two-thirds majority needed to convict and thus remove Walsh. Senate Majority Leader Green and his colleagues knew that. Yet, the Republicans still went through with the impeachment while undertaking the pantomime that they were seeking to have Democratic senators join with them in the end. Moreover, impeaching a Democratic president, any one of them for any reason, had been a Republican goal for a while. Impeachment failed. Not a single Democrat sided with the Republicans once all was said and done. It was the end of October by that point and Walsh emerged from where it was said he was hiding in the White House – he’d made hardly any public appearances since that _CBS_ story broke what was said afterwards to be one of the first black swans of the 2028 presidential race – to speak live to the country. He declared that he didn’t intend to seek the Democratic nomination for the following year’s election. Walsh would serve out his term and then leave office come January ‘29. With that done, there would be other contenders joining Kirk, Nelson, O’Shea & Zenger seeking to replace him.​
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Senator Jennifer Young, the New Yorker who was the Senate Minority Leader, had been anticipated as a candidate for the Democratic nomination when it had become apparent that there were further candidates waiting to jump in once the impeachment of Walsh was over with. Everything seemed to be set up for her to make a run with a belief that she could better connect with swing voters across the battleground Purple states better than any other candidate in the race. Young had felt stabbed in the back by O’Shea making his announcement in the middle of those hearings when she thought she had had his support. Regardless, she had thought she could beat him. Then came the _ABC_ story about the how Young had whipped fellow senators in-line to make sure they all voted against impeachment as part of a _quid pro quo_ to get Walsh to announce he would stand down. _ABC_ could prove that too with there being evidence that Young had struck that deal with Walsh. She therefore didn’t announce the widely-expected presidential run of hers when that all came out. Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz did. MRQ made her announcement online, rather than at rallies or public events like the other candidates from her party, where she made simultaneous broadcasts live from her home across the major social media platforms including the new & trendy _Clipper_ too. A well-known Democrat like Young, though more to the left of the older woman, MRQ was said by commentators to only have joined the contest after the Senate Majority Leader was forced out and thus she could jump in. MRQ wasn’t the only democratic socialist in the race – Nelson was arguably even further to the left while Zenger had his own niche positioning as a provocateur – but she certainly had more of a following. MRQ was supported coast-to-coast, across Blue, Red & Purple states. There was an explosion of support for her from Democrats who were left ecstatic at the thought of her being their next president. Backers of Kirk and O’Shea tried to talk them down by claiming that MRQ would be smashed across conservative portions of America and, even if she somehow won the White House, the Republicans in Congress would retain the real power. MRQ’s devotees refused to listen. A golden future lay ahead of the country as far as they were concerned with the young Latina running for president.

The Democratic debates were late starting once again, but when they got underway starting at the very end of November, they were highly-anticipated and came with a massive audience. Zenger caused a stink. The candidates were asked by the _PBS_ moderator to comment upon violent events nationwide preceding the debate held in Chicago. There had been attacks by right-wing militia against state troopers in Washington state leading to three deaths and also shots fired against a Republican congressman in Ohio: no injuries there but a lot of drama for the media. Kirk, MRQ, Nelson & O’Shea (called upon in alphabetical order) all made the expected statements that everyone thought was adequate for such a situation. Calm was called for, demands were made for the rule of law to be followed and denouncements of violence were issued. From Zenger, there was only hatred on show for Republican politicians and the Red state voters too. Clips of the faces pulled by other candidates when hearing that went out though what got more nation attention was MRQ’s response to Zenger where she berated him for his words. She was the only superstar on that stage and the only one who actually managed to shut him up so thoroughly, so convincingly with her retorts to his outrageous remarks. Her supporters said she looked presidential, that she would have that national appeal. When the first debate moved on, O’Shea foundered when talking social policy. He was more unpopular than he ever would have considered himself and the mess he made of things only added to that. The rich, privileged scion of a well-established political family, O’Shea was reaching beyond himself in trying to get anywhere beyond Massachusetts. Nelson didn’t mess up but failed to find her voice on the national stage. It was Kirk who really stood out as another potential president alongside MRQ. Before her 2025 gubernatorial win, she’d been Mayor of Newark. In the face of state and national opposition, from fellow Democrats and the Republicans, she’d built a Public Safety Department to replace the city’s police & fire departments. Members were cross-trained and focused on protecting citizens rather than locking them up. Talking about plans to do that in New Jersey, across the nation too, her passion for it came across as good as her arguments. Yet, that superstar that was MRQ still dominated the debate and it was the considered opinion of commentators afterwards that she had won it. When she spoke of her vision for America, that set hearts racing among so many Democrats nationwide. How they wanted her as their next president!

Walsh in 2024 had won the Democratic nomination by following the traditional route: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Super Tuesday and so on. Technical problems with several of those races, disputes over the relevance of such an order and arguments over the biased weighed delegate system had affected that contest like the ‘20 race too. Back in ‘26, when it was still believed that Walsh would run again as the incumbent without serious challenge, the DNC had agreed to change the primary contest system. There had been legal challenges out of Iowa due to it losing its first place and also various other disputes, but the system for an entirely different primary system was in-place for the unexpected set of candidates in the ‘28 race to take part in. A last minute DNC attempt to revert to the traditional route blew up in a storm and so the new method was continued with. There were five set days for primary elections with either ten/eleven contests to take place four/five weeks apart. Ten states would hold primary contests with a one-vote-for-one-vote system: delegates, superdelegates and all that other baloney was gone. California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania & Texas as the five biggest population states were each spread across the five primary contest days, with four of those days also having an eleventh individual of set of contests for Democrats Abroad, DC, Puerto Rico and US territories in the Caribbean & Pacific. Further Democratic debates happened in early ‘28. Nelson dropped out when it was clear she was getting nowhere. MRQ retained in the lead in the opinion polls with Kirk remaining a strong second. The Democrats made a big deal out of their two leading female candidates for the presidential nomination being also a Latina and an African-American. O’Shea and Zenger both stayed in the race though fell increasingly into irrelevance when all eyes were on the two women far out ahead of them. Late January arrived and the first primary day occurred. Contests took place in Blue states such as Nevada, Oregon and Virginia as well as Red states such as Florida, Georgia & Indiana: Purple state Michigan was also in the running. Zenger ended up with the expected no victories while O’Shea would win just Connecticut. Kirk took Delaware, South Dakota & Virginia. Michigan went heavily for MRQ and she also won big victories in the other five states (and Democrats Abroad) including that Texas win. Multiple pundits called the whole race for her after that first day. Kirk stood a fine chance of making a comeback with the numbers available to do that but all eyes were on MRQ to be the winner come June.

The Republican presidential nomination process had started long before the Democrats made a repeat of their late start. Back in the middle of 2027, before only a very few political watchers had heard the name Charlotte Lloyd, they’d been starting the process of selecting a candidate. Walsh was considered the likely opposing candidate thought there had been some thinking at the RNC that maybe he might be primaried due to his unpopularity. There were a dozen major candidates during ‘27, long before debates and primaries (following the Iowa to New Hampshire and so on route) started. Norris was considered an early favourite but then his daughter was kidnapped and violated along with Pennsylvania being hit with all of that abortion violence. Erika Cook and Jerry Stokes were strong early runners. They were two governors, from Florida and Wisconsin respectively, yet neither seemed to have the ‘magic’ regarded as being enough to truly excite Republican voters. Senator Majority Leader Green made comments on the race that supported neither of them and that was seen by many as damaging their campaigns: if ‘America’s real president’ had no support for them, how could they really progress forward? Cook took the hint and backed out though Stokes refused to go nowhere. Roberts’ star shone bright due the impeachment proceedings against Walsh. Green gave him the nod to make a presidential run with figures such as Cook and even defeated ‘24 candidate Holloway moving to show support too despite her history of minority-bashing. Long before ‘27 was out, the Texan senator was seeing so much of his party establishment fall in line behind him. Stokes and other lesser-known challengers intended to fight him for the Republican nomination but they didn’t have the magic that Roberts was said to have. As an African-American, non-official Democratic attack lines against Roberts stated that the party of alleged racists that was the Republicans would never vote for him and he was only being put forward as tokenism when Kirk & MRQ were leading the race for the Democrats. Only a fool would stick with that attack after watching how Roberts would excite crowds of the base yet in the next instance win over independents in battleground states with the strength of his argument about the America he wanted to build with them. He criss-crossed the country, speaking in Red and Purple states, with an abundance of donations flooding his way and endorsements coming in ahead of the primaries starting.

In 2028, Roberts won the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. Stokes was left far behind him in each with lightweight candidates left falling by the wayside. In South Carolina, Roberts won by a margin of victory of forty-five points: Stokes was slaughtered down there. On Super Tuesday, Roberts won all but one contest that day. Stokes left the race. He was being humiliated and could no longer stay in the race with no money and the _shame_ of such major defeats. Commentators noted the campaign which Roberts ran not just against Stokes but how he was regarded as already fighting the battle against whom his team considered the likely Democratic candidate in the form of MRQ. He spent a lot more time up in the North–East than thought necessary where he met with crowds of supporters but also went out talking to independents too. Visits made to North Carolina and Pennsylvania due to their Purple state status were made early in the campaign, long before the Republican primaries were held there. When on the attack, MRQ was the name on his lips rather than Stokes. He had a big anti-socialist message that went down well indeed in those states. When in North Carolina, Roberts made an appearance alongside the statewide popular former senator David Mitchell. They spoke in the Democratic-bastion that was Raleigh with even stern Republican critics admitting that the two of them put on a good show there on what was traditionally unfriendly ground. Threats were made to Roberts when he was in North Carolina. Statements released online BLA called the leading Republican candidate a ‘race traitor’ and promised him a ‘bloody demise’. He stayed for a further night in North Carolina – delaying a trip to Florida – and made it clear that he remained there meeting voters despite that threat: it was a threat that the BLA were feared to be capable of acting on after showing their deadly capability in once more shooting an alleged racist cop, the latest incident being in Cleveland. Secret Service agents had replaced the private security contractors assigned by the RNC, leaving him well protected, but Roberts wanted to show open defiance to such people. As to race for the party nomination, Stokes walked away from Super Tuesday leaving Roberts as his party’s presumptive nominee come early March. All spending was able to be redirected away towards the November election long before the Democrats’ candidates could think of doing the same thing.

The second and third rounds of Democratic voting were won by MRQ too. Huge numbers of primary voters came out for her with big achievements for her campaign down in Texas. That Red state, like Florida before it, was full of Democrats who voted for her in the primaries knowing that in the general election the wouldn’t get as much of a say. O’Shea dropped out of the race though Kirk, and the angry Zenger (he would rant about a fixed primary, smashing Big Tech bias against him etc.), remained fighting it out for what was clearly going to be MRQ’s. Kirk had a couple of victories, including that of her home state New Jersey and also the previously-Purple but now-Blue Minnesota too. Those meant little overall though when MRQ ran her close in them as well as getting the big numbers in the ones which she won: Pennsylvania went for MRQ and Kirk really needed that win. In addition, DC and Puerto Rico went for MRQ with Nelson campaigning in DC as a surrogate for MRQ after endorsing her. The mayor would also do the same in Maryland as well with her help there in African-American communities tilting the balance for MRQ over Kirk when that state voted in the third primary stage. Nelson was one of many, many surrogates that went out and addressed rallies on behalf of MRQ. The leading candidate herself barely left the West. The significant green component of her policy platform was something that MRQ backed up with action. She didn’t criss-cross the country as ‘a polluter’ no matter what those who said that was crazy thought about it. Those who spoke on her behalf at rallies helped her campaign but she also did major online events to talk with supporters directly too. MRQ was much more comfortable online. As to surrogates, there was an addition after the third primary contest in the form of Vice President Padley. With no presidential ambitions of her own, Padley came out strong for MRQ. She (like Nelson) helped with gaining the African-American vote which Kirk chased strongly. Iowa and Ohio both didn’t hold primaries recognised by the DNC. Both refused to play by the new rules. Unofficially, Kirk won them both and she really could have done with the numbers that came out of Ohio to try and catch up with. Kirk threw a lot at New York. Opinion polls ahead of the fourth round of voting, where Colorado & Illinois were also in contention, put Kirk and MRQ neck and neck for New York. The endorsement of Young was sought and Kirk had hoped to gain that so she could, maybe, stay in the race. Then, the night beforehand, Young endorsed Kirk. The Governor of New Jersey’s campaign got that late boost with feelings that if New York could be won, then the whole race might be just turned around… maybe.​
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Stephanie Kirk would win the New York Primary, beating Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz by just two points. While it was a big achievement for her, the narrow victory meant nothing overall. MRQ won seven other contests that same day – Colorado and Virginia among others – and had run up a huge vote tally. Campaign number-crunchers with the Kirk campaign knew that their candidate would have to win eight of the final ten races by a significant margin, and among them that would need a truly massive win in California: home ground for MRQ. Young’s endorsement might have tipped the balance but not by enough. New York’s lieutenant-governor had also been an active surrogate for MRQ and he was damn popular there. As to the endorsement for Kirk, the Senate Minority Leader had broken her earlier public neutrality (in private she’d always been for Kirk) and came out for the governor due to the terrifying belief that her and many establishment Democrats had by the middle of the primary race that MRQ was going to win the nomination. The thought had been that she was a flash-in-a-pan, that once primary voters of a moderate persuasion got voting in large numbers, they wouldn’t cast their votes for the radical that was MRQ and instead go for the sensible, dependable Kirk. MRQ’s democratic socialism was feared to be frightening to swing voters, independents and especially the moderate Republicans the Democrats would need to win the presidency. An MRQ victory was regarded as being something to certainly hand the White House over to the Republicans. In the fifth & final round of voting, in early June 2028, MRQ won her home state. She secured other big victories too, eventually winning the largest number of votes overall throughout the entire contest by seventeen points. Kirk conceded early, before all the final votes were counted in California. She’d done exceedingly well but just not good enough when MRQ had all of that momentum behind her and kept on defying expectations. Vice President Padley made many California appearances as a campaign surrogate for MRQ. President Walsh demanded that she cease doing so, as he had done when she had done in earlier rounds of voting, but she took no notice of him. The woman affectionately known as ‘America’s grandmother’, someone so many Democrats wouldn’t have minded seeing as an interim president had the Republicans managed to successfully impeach Walsh, broke entirely with him. She believed that the United States needed what MRQ had on offer in terms of her policy platform and so set out to help get her elected no matter what Walsh said that she and others in his administration couldn’t do. As to the Democratic Party establishment, they’d waited too late to anything and, by virtue of that new primary system, gave the contest to MRQ.

Democrats in Utah voted in the fifth round of primary contests. Usually, those there in that Red state were conservative-minded yet they voted overwhelmingly for MRQ. Utah was in the West and fast growing state. Salt Lake City had always been a strong bastion of support for the Democrats. Yet, in 2028, across the whole state there was a massive turnout. Establishment parts of the Democratic Party didn’t just worry about the socialist message of MRQ but also her Western focus. It was that that secured Utah for MRQ in the primary held there. Supporters who gathered together to watch an online post-victory speech by MRQ were attacked when at an outdoor gathering in Salt Lake City. Shots were fired at hundreds of young devotees of the congresswoman and then Molotov Cocktails were thrown too. Seven deaths and almost two dozen serious injuries occurred. Militia with the Free Americans were blamed for that attack while at the same time they made a show of themselves throughout states spread across the West – even California in the face of legal restrictions against their gatherings – in a clear effort to intimidate voters. In Washington state, which voted in the fourth round of the Democratic race, heavily for MRQ too, shots were fired back at militia members, killing a woman among them, with the culprits being Resistance members. That large and threatening organisation was mocked among extreme quarters of the Far Left for being all mouth and no trousers: that ceased after the shooting near Walla Walla. Having won his party’s nomination early on, Roberts was first out of the starting blocks on the national campaign against the Democrats. His campaign had an immense wealth to it, the majority of that in extensive corporate donations. There was open spending across the nation though the most money was directed towards Purple states. Dark money also flowed and was used to make underhand attacks against the Democrats too. The Republicans held their national convention early, almost at the beginning of July. The RNC believed that that would give them an advantage. At the event held in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mitchell was unveiled as Roberts’ vice presidential pick. As a Caucasian male, the pick was surprising in some quarters as it was thought that the Republicans would find a woman to run with Roberts yet in many other ways it wasn’t that surprising. The Republicans had changed dramatically in demographic terms throughout the 2020s but a white man was still felt necessary by many to be on the ticket less a certain section of voters stay at home. Mitchell was an early contender, long before the primaries, and did have some of a following too. After Charlotte, Roberts and Mitchell went on the campaign trail. They started criss-crossing the nation with their early start in that effort. It was truly believed among them and the Republican establishment that the contest was theirs when they were faced by the dynamic yet ultimately-flawed MRQ.

At the Democratic National Convention, MRQ unveiled her vice-presidential pick. It was André Anderson who she went with, the young African-American man who was New York’s lieutenant-governor. Anderson had previously been the public advocate for the Big Apple and had used that platform there in the nation’s largest city to get to Albany. A gubernatorial run was what many people had thought that he might try in his home state during 2030 but instead he ran alongside MRQ for the vice presidency. That made Mitchell the only Caucasian male of four top-tier presidential & vice presidential candidates: something quite amazing, many agreed. As to Anderson, MRQ knew that the DNC didn’t back her pick there but she had branched out on her own. The convention was in Phoenix with that booming Arizona city full of Democrats either in the MRQ camp fully or quietly gravely concerned that she was going to lose them the election. The support she had wasn’t considered the ‘right sort’ by so many establishment figures. After the convention, MRQ went back on the campaign trail. She did do some event appearances, all exclusively in the West, though retained the earlier method of events being on the internet. Those were big, coordinated events. At her home in Walnut Creek, MRQ would go out over _Clipper_, _Facebook_, _Instagram_, _TikTok_, _Twitter_ and _YouTube_ to a national and global audiences. Her family would appear online with her: her activist wife Bree Davis and their two young twins in the form of Daniela & Reuben. Big celebrity stars, long-standing friends of MRQ such as the Hollywood actor Riley Drew and the singer Teyo, would show up too. MRQ had surrogates making campaign appearances and Anderson was immensely busy, but she stayed generally at home. As to campaign finances, like she had done in her congressional races, MRQ refused to take corporate cash for her presidential bid. The DNC took the money she wouldn’t and used it to aid her but in a manner which MRQ could say she didn’t want. Individual donations, small ones yet also large ones from rich backers (Teyo handed over a million dollars), publicly funded her campaign. Continued pressure remained upon MRQ following the convention to travel through the Purple states, even shore up support in Blue states that the DNC had concerns about when either Roberts or Mitchell made visits to them defying usual expectations, but MRQ did what she claimed was the best. Her connection with voters came online and she had surrogates out there. There was also the issue of her not wanting to be a polluter… something that the DNC Chair remarked didn’t seem to cause her an issue when she had those surrogates flying about everywhere!

Commentators had called the revelations about Walsh’s affair a Black Swan event. Several more stunning events that would come from seemingly nowhere, yet could be understood in reflection, occurred during the final months of the presidential election in 2028. Democrats were affected by them on the face of it with the Republicans seemingly uninvolved. The first was the early September (the first anniversary of the exposing of Walsh’s affair) bomb attack in Nebraska. Anderson flew into that state to make a ‘pit-stop speech’ while travelling between the Purple states of Michigan and Minnesota. Nebraska, like Maine, split its Electoral College votes and at least one, maybe even two if things went very well for the Democrats, were up for grabs in that Red state. An organised appearance was made after Anderson’s plane arrived where he spoke to an invited crowd just outside of Eppley Airport. He just began what he had to say when there was an immense explosion. The American Insurgent Army struck again with the Omaha Bomb being bigger than their one in DC the year before. How they got it into the event in the face of Secret Service protection would become a later scandal: they really shouldn’t have been able to get away with that. Forty-five deaths – men, women & children – occurred along with as many serious injuries. Anderson was among them. New York’s lieutenant-governor and the Democrat’s vice presidential pick for an election two months down the line was air-lifted out of the urban park and flown to the city’s main hospital. He was unconscious during that helicopter flight and would be placed in a medically-induced coma due to the scale of his injuries. Images out of Omaha gripped the nation. So many kids had been hurt there with shocking scenes broadcast. News on Anderson first said that he was dead with networks such as _CNN_, _Fox News_ and _MSNBC_ claiming that as fact when he clearly wasn’t. MRQ would make a video statement that night where she told the country of her shock and grief at the terrorist attack in Omaha. She denounced the AIA – something everyone, left and right, did – and also said that with there being hope that Anderson would live, he would remain on the ticket with her for the general election. A leak the next day of ‘suggested’ names put by the DNC to MRQ as possible replacement candidates went out, annoying many including her: she stuck with Anderson no matter what. Vigils for him and the other wounded victims of the Omaha Bombing, plus memorial ceremonies for the dead, would take place aplenty and throughout the nation.

A week after the attempted assassination of Anderson, MRQ attended the first presidential debate with Roberts. It was held in Denver and so she travelled to Colorado by rail. In one of the many questions put to them both, the issue of the latest Chinese threatening moves towards Taiwan was raised. Roberts gave a statesmanlike approach talking of the United States combating aggression to secure international peace. MRQ refused to take that approach where the talk was of possible war. She was a pacifist and had marched against Walsh’s air campaigns in the Middle East, and so had no intention of saying anything like what her Republican opponent did no matter what establishment Democrats wanted of her. Her response ruled out American military action unless the United States itself was attacked. Asked to clarify, forced to, she affirmed that should China attack Taiwan and US diplomacy at her direction failed to stop conflict, she wouldn’t take America to war. That played right into the Republican’s hands. Their overt and covert messaging – the latter being a ton of black propaganda – had been that MRQ was unfit to lead the nation and maintain America’s place in the world. She gave them all that they could want with her own words. Democrats were far from happy and among them was Maddie Chen. A Taiwanese national with joint American citizenship, Chen was a young woman who loved both of her homelands. Chen had reverted back to the V-Blogging that had first made her name in certain Democratic circles after having failed to win a primary contest for a New York congressional seat. She had a good following and had been active throughout the campaign online. Her criticism of MRQ had grown as the party’s presidential candidate went further and further left, more than Chen thought was survivable in election terms. In her mind, Chen had already given up on MRQ’s chances. There was vitriol from Chen in the aftermath of what MRQ said about Taiwan and those comments went beyond her usual following, even viral. Chen then received a private communication. It was a document dump. Shocked but not so thoroughly as she didn’t know what to do, Chen moved to at least try and confirm what she was given before she put it out in public. It appeared to check out and so, still mad at MRQ, Chen made that public. The documentation was proof that MRQ hadn’t been born in the United States and therefore wasn’t eligible for the presidency. ‘Birther’ talk had followed MRQ throughout her entire political career (smashed by California civil cases) and those deniable Republican attack ads online had made the same claim. However, Chen’s allegations had some substance to them. The V-Blogger wouldn’t backtrack on any of it all, even when savaged by previous supporters, and stuck by what she had put out into the public arena with detailed claims to assert that MRQ couldn’t legally become the 49th President. As to the candidate herself and her team, they brushed off Chen’s claims and were joined in that by the rest of the Democratic Party too. A Republican play was suspected there where a dupe had been used to make that late smear.

The third Black Swan, what would be to many an October Surprise in the 2028 presidential election, was the murder of Teyo in Miami Beach. Teyo was born Malik Sanchez: he was bi-racial with African-American and Hispanic heritage. Aged twenty-nine when he died, he was a global superstar with a dedicated following in a lot of ways tied to not just his music. Teyo had invented the Swagg genre, something that imitators wouldn’t copy well enough. He was a self-declared pan-sexual as well as a democratic socialist like his friend MRQ. Teyo didn’t live the life his financial circumstances would have allowed him to. There was no mansion, no private jet nor no bling. He gave the vast majority of his money away to good causes. That substantial donation to MRQ’s presidential campaign had come the same day that a charity in Miami (his hometown) for homeless, LGBTQ youth had received twice that amount. Advisers and music industry figures cringed at the giveaways of not just cash but his music itself. Just as Riley Drew – real name Garth Boreman – had done where that actor had been a major celebrity backer for MRQ, Teyo had acted as a campaign surrogate for her. However, he was in Florida the day he was shot not stumping for her but instead helping to promote his latest album: _Hometown Blues_. When visiting a radio station in Miami Beach, he was signing autographs and posing for cell-phone pictures when a young man pushed a small-calibre pistol against his lower back. Two bullets went into Teyo. He died right there in the corridor he was shot in, long before any help could reach him. The assassin made a run for it. There would be an immense manhunt for him by Miami-Dade Police Department officers, one which would later see Florida state troopers involved too. The news of the slaying of Teyo stunned the nation. It personally hit MRQ harder than the death of her father had done though that wasn’t something she made public. Out there in California, she believed that Teyo had been killed because of his politics. That made sense to her and it did to most Americans too. Those on the left and the right would agree that his outspoken politics had seen Teyo shot to death. The truth of the matter was that it was a personal issue but that was unrevealed throughout the rest of ‘28. Even if such a truth had come out, it wouldn’t have mattered. Senator Jorge Vargas, a Republican running for re-election there in Florida, had some unkind things to say about Teyo. He was generally an unkind figure so that wasn’t all that surprising. What would be though was the reaction across Florida by voters towards him personally and also the presidential race. Less than two weeks after the murder of Teyo, Americans went to the polls.​


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## JamesG

*Theft*


Just as they had done in previous US presidential elections, there were international observers present when Americans went to the polls. Several news outlets and online provocateurs made a big deal out of that in the lead-up to Election Day, trying to inflame tensions and make out as if it was an unusual thing. Cooperation was given to the few hundred observers, and they did witness some scenes where there was voter intimidation and also certain other irregularities. Poll watchers from both parties were all over the place, spread far wider in greater numbers than overseas observers could ever be and there were claims made that they witnessed fraud and voting theft too. Whether there was any substance to those allegations was long argued about afterwards. The invited international attendees and the domestic busybodies were there where Americans were voting alongside uniformed state-level paramilitary personnel. State troopers and members of recognised State Defence Forces (SDF) were sent out on duty during the voting. In the years leading up to the 2028 election, throughout the horrors of political violence unleashed during the Years of Lead, states without a SDF or a previously small one expanded heavily in their domestic capabilities where they trained & equipped volunteers to act to help defend their states from unrest. Each state had its own National Guard but the SDF was used by them for purely internal roles without the mass of heavy weaponry nor deployable capability like national guardsmen. Armed and working to ensure that there was no trouble, there were complaints in many places that the SDF units were actually an intimidating force themselves. Those complaints mostly came from Democratic voters in Red states where there had previously been ‘incidents’ involving SDF personnel. The unprecedented security effort nationwide made sure that the day itself passed without violence. There were still fears of gun and bomb attacks on voters and also candidates yet on November 7th it was a remarkable peaceful day. Millions of voters went out in person to vote though there had been postal ballots already completed and was also some internet voting. That was something subject to intense debate about fraud concerns yet was certainly a very popular method of voting for so many Americans.

Depending upon the point of view of those asked, there were as many as five or as few as two swing states for the 2028 election. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin were regarded by many as being battlegrounds where the winner of them couldn’t be accurately predicted before the election yet at the same time others would argue that all three of them were ‘safe’ for one side or the other: Michigan & Minnesota for the Democrats and Wisconsin for the Republicans. Everyone could agree that North Carolina and Pennsylvania were certainly swing states. The two of them had gone for the Democrats in the ‘24 election and should Holloway have had won them instead of Walsh, she would have won the White House. There were outliers in the form of a select few other states that were said to be in-play too. Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire were safe Blue states, so said detractors of the idea that they were possible swing states, and the same argument was made about the Red state which was Florida. Into the recognised swing states – Michigan, North Carolina & Pennsylvania – the two presidential campaigns threw everything that they could. Edward Roberts and David Mitchell spent a significant amount of time within that trio while Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz had surrogates visit them on her behalf as well as making arranged internet appearances targeted at each state for supporters & voters there. The online campaign to win them frustrated fellow Democrats who urged her to make visits in-person. Her talk about sticking to her environmental principles drove the DNC and senior figures to distraction. Only at the end of October did MRQ finally do so. She went to the funeral for Teyo down in Florida and then flew up to Greensboro on a low-carbon flight. MRQ spoke there in North Carolina and met with adoring devotees. Then she jumped on the train, making a fuss about using mass public transit. An Amtrak service took her to Philadelphia (via DC) first before she made a second Pennsylvania appearance in Pittsburgh. Toledo in Ohio, on the edge of Michigan, was connected by Amtrak and so MRQ changed trains there to a local service before attending an event in Detroit (she went on her last leg in one of those electric cars she used on her stops in the West). The whole train journey thing was sold as something significant, something that marked MRQ out as special. She travelled back West by rail too via Chicago, Omaha, Denver and Salt Lake City on the way back home: the _California Zephyr_ was running three times daily. Crowds for MRQ were less than expected in the first two cities on the way home but big in the second pair. The reception in Utah was something special for MRQ when she made her appearance there. Those earlier swing state visits had seen her travel to that trio over in the East and Mid–West yet there was adverse comment at the DNC as to how much longer she had spent via her train trip visiting safe Blue and firm Red states too. It was believed by those who continued to fear the worst that MRQ was on track to lose with the manner in which she chose to cross the country.

The Republicans outspent the Democrats two-to-one in the presidential race. MRQ didn’t take corporate cash (she never had) and her campaign also rejected certain personal donations from objectionable figures: her party had no such qualms. Still, most money flowed to the Republicans. They used it well. Advert buys were extensive and all-consuming. The Roberts/Mitchell campaign was big and costly as well with the massive staffing operation and all of the technology which they employed. Voters were targeted online and in-person with a barrage of why they should vote for the Republican candidate and his running mate. A whole ton of black propaganda was unleashed with most of that in the last week, once November arrived. Lies, hate and outright fakes were what the Republicans put out through deniable sources. There were exposés released of MRQ’s ‘secret socialist agenda’ as well as the connection framed for voters of the link from democratic socialism to communism. The allegations about MRQ’s actual birthplace, where it had been said by Chen that she was actually born in Mexico to Mexican nationals, and this not eligible to become the next president, weren’t amplified that loud by the Republicans. They let the story run without interfering too much with the majority of the party establishment not believing a word of that. Their main focus was the more dramatic lies they could tell as well as selling the supposed qualities of Roberts. As to MRQ, she ignored that issue and kept on talking about her vision of a New America. The social justice reforms she said that she would enact as the 49th President were what she wanted to talk about. Those excited her supporters and were also targeted towards independents & moderate Republicans too. Other Democrats, the conservative-minded ones, were left aghast at all of that but they could do nothing to stop it all. To them, that was going to lose their party the White House. If only Kirk could have been their candidate, if only…

Thirty-five Senate seats (34 of Class 3 and a special) were up for contention on November 7th along with the entire US House and plentiful state-level races. The 2028 congressional elections would end up being shockingly boring when Election Day came. Only twelve – out of 435 – House seats changed hands with an overall outcome being the Republicans making a gain of two once the churn was complete. Most changes occurred in the battleground Purple states. There were many, many uncontested races in an alarming lack of democratic choice for so many voters. All of that money spent on the competitive ones saw no real change when all was said and done too. The Senate races weren’t very dramatic too apart from in just one of them. The Republicans won the special election in Minnesota where the ill and retiring competent Democratic senator couldn’t pass on her popularity to the winner of her party’s primary. The Republicans threw a lot at Minnesota and grabbed it. They were unsuccessful in what many saw as a fool’s errand in trying to take an open seat up in Blue state Vermont just as the Democrats were when they made a major effort to try and nab the open seat in Wisconsin too. The Republicans were run very close, belying those who said Wisconsin was firmly Red, yet their candidate won her race up there in the end. Florida was where the shock of the night happened. Vargas lost his seat. His long-running feud with Teyo, continued after the singer’s death, saw the Republican lose his supposedly safe Senate seat. Democratic turnout was strong there in Florida where party organisers saw that they had a chance due to Vargas making himself unpopular and also the Republicans seemingly taking their eye off the ball. Vargas’ challenger, a young woman from Miami, was caught on camera with her mouth open with gasps of shock when she realised that she had won. That wasn’t supposed to happen but it did and she, like the Republicans and their authoritarian governor, were dumbstruck at how Vargas had thrown everything away in his idiocy. There were other Democratic shock wins too though. Democrats in Utah pooled resources to get Teddy Clarke over the line there in one of the four US House seats that all had a portion of Salt Lake City within their district boundaries with the rest being rural. That was meant to keep the Democrats out yet the democratic socialist Clarke defied all expectations to swipe a seat. Up in violence-hit Idaho, Damien Kowalski won himself one of the two seats in another shock congressional win. He was a conservative-inclined Democrat but still secured a victory in a Red state where no one had given him a chance. Both Idaho and Utah were in the West and while Kowalski didn’t, and Clarke only a bit, ran campaigns with a part of MRQ’s regionalism appeal, they were still victorious. Democratic loses such as that Senate seat in Minnesota, and US House seats across Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania & Virginia were significant. The vote was dragged down across those five states for Democratic incumbents and candidates where they blamed the national presidential campaign for their own defeats to Republicans. There was certainly a depressed turnout for the Democrats in them, as well as elsewhere in the East and the Mid–West too. MRQ being the face of the Democrats had excited many yet alienated others at the same time.

In the presidential race, attention by the Republicans on Election Night was on the swing states where they had found their strongest battles in. The Roberts campaign believed that they had won North Carolina and Pennsylvania away from the Democrats, who’d taken then four years past, while also retaining Wisconsin. Number crunching of Electoral College votes put the White House in sight even with Michigan and Minnesota gone to MRQ. There was a lot of hope through the night that Michigan could still be won despite bad early numbers and there was additionally well-received surprising news that came from elsewhere. New Hampshire had been flipped and the Democrats were looking unlikely to win that available lone vote from Nebraska as well. Before midnight, Roberts was briefed that the victory he was likely to win was 285-253. Then came what would be called the Horror of Florida. Bad news about Senator Vargas’s imminent defeat came alongside awful numbers for Roberts down there. Considered a safe state, less attention had been paid to Florida by the Roberts campaign than previous Republicans had done so. There had been one visit each by him and Mitchell yet others had been cancelled due to the focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania & North Carolina. Florida was worth thirty Electoral College votes and had been near ignored! It didn’t take a maths genius to see that it being lost would see MRQ take the White House. _MSNBC_ then _CNN_ made the call for Florida going Blue before Two in the morning: other networks refused to do that, believing that either the race was far too close to call within a few hours of polling closing or just not accepting such a thing as possible. Mitchell, who’d delivered his home state and was certainly a major player in the Pennsylvania victory for the Republicans too, sought to clutch the straw offered by Michigan and its fifteen Electoral College votes. If that state went Red, Roberts would still eek out a win by 270-268. Michigan stubbornly stayed Blue and by dawn the morning after Election Day, so too was Florida. The end result which the media was showing was 283-255 in favour of MRQ.

At home in Walnut Creek, MRQ spent the evening and subsequent night in her living room with broadcasts from there going out over the internet. All the social media networks were set up so that supporters could follow goings on there live. The MRQ-favoured _Clipper_ allowed for interaction between her and followers (pre-selected ones, naturally). Bree Davis was there and so too was Riley Drew. That megastar actor had come up from Hollywood where he took a break for filming the upcoming romantic tearjerker _Scared Hearts_ to attend. The day before, he had spoken with MRQ about their shared grief at the demise of their friend Teyo while he urged fans to vote for MRQ. The kids, usually heavily-featured in broadcasts from Walnut Creek, were sleeping throughout the early part of the broadcast. Bad news for the Democrats came out of North Carolina first and then Pennsylvania too. MRQ remained confident of eventual victory though, telling her supporters to ‘just believe’ despite what news network anchors were saying about her campaign being doomed after those defeats were projected. Vargas’s defeat was celebrated wildly due to his behaviour after the murder of Teyo. Davis was up on the sofa dancing while Drew popped a bottle of champagne. That woke up the twins and they were in the living room when the first calls were made that MRQ had won Florida away from Roberts. Earlier celebrations there paled into comparison. Daniela & Reuben – always adorable as far as millions of Americans were concerned – danced with both their mothers and also the Adonis-like actor in their home too. At his urging, they both sung that Floridians were ‘doing it for Teyo’. That chant had been heard on the screens as what was coming out of Miami where the Democrats’ base of operation was as campaign volunteers took up a refrain heard by activists out on the streets that day. At MRQ’s urging, the kids changed that to ‘doing it for Uncle Malik’. They’d fall asleep not long afterwards and Drew would also leave too. Talk in the media about Michigan possibly going Red was dismissed by MRQ when addressing supporters: she said she was being told in confidence that it had gone Blue. For several hours after the stunning upset won in Florida, MRQ continued to talk to supporters and also the tens of millions more tuning in. Answers of ‘you betcha’ came to questions as to whether as president MRQ intended to abolish ICE, bring in free universal healthcare, wipe student debt, end the war on drugs and slash the nation’s military budget by half too. Supporters loved it all! She and her wife laughed at _TikTok_ footage of themselves dancing when it was replayed and also further engaged with _Clipper_ interactions, especially from supporters based in the West. It had been a truly special night for them. However, the mood was suddenly broken though when the announcement was made that Governor Cook was to deliver an impromptu speech. MRQ’s phone blew up and viewers saw concern than outrage on her face where she knew something that didn’t. The Governor of Florida then went and said what she did from out of Tallahassee. Her early morning statement started one heck of a fire.​
*​
Before she spoke from out of the Florida state capital, Governor Cook placed a call from Tallahassee to the Roberts campaign HQ in Houston. She was unable to get hold of the Texan senator though. Cook did manage to make contact with Mitchell and told the vice presidential nominee that he and Roberts shouldn’t concede the election either in private nor public to Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz. Mitchell managed to reach Roberts and told him to hold off doing what the presidential nominee had been pretty much on the verge of doing so. After her calls, Cook made that statement out of Tallahassee. She informed Floridians, the country and the world that Florida would refuse to certify MRQ as the winner of the thirty Electoral College votes which the Sunshine State had. The reason given was that Cook believed that MRQ wasn’t legally eligible to become the 49th President. In something that she said had started before Election Day, Cook informed those who saw and heard her speak that the ‘truth’ about where MRQ had actually been born was something being looked into with that investigation stepping up a gear. From what she had seen so far, with Cook talking about those revelations made by Chen the previous month, the Governor of Florida said that she didn’t regard MRQ as eligible. Florida couldn’t vote for someone who was constitutionally unable to become the successor to President Walsh. Cook wouldn’t let that happen. As the shock-waves spread from that, Cook did a live interview with Holly Turner on _Fox News_. The biggest, brightest star of that network was up in Charlotte and the connection was made also with Mitchell over in Raleigh too. Cook was more expansive in what she said to Turner though the message stayed the same: Florida was having an investigation, one which Cook had already declared the outcome of, to de-certify the winning tally of votes cast for MRQ. Mitchell was asked what he thought of that. He affirmed that the Roberts campaign would await the outcome of the Florida investigation before making any moves to either declare victory or concede defeat in the 2028 Presidential Election.

A volcanic eruption came from the Democrats. Nationwide, from MRQ out in California to the DNC Chair at his office in DC, there was fury at what was happening with Florida. It was straight-up theft. MRQ called it that early on and the term for what the Republicans were doing was continuously called that by Democrats and their media allies afterwards. No lesser language was used: it was called what it was. The Roberts campaign had lost the election fair & square, so said Democrats, and so they were seeking to steal it away from its rightful winner. Early congratulations had already started to arrive when that news broke from out of Tallahassee. MRQ was supposed to be the first woman _elected_ to the presidency (not elevated there) and there had been much early celebration. The screeching halt to the party came from what Cook said though. There wasn’t much doubt that Cook was capable of backing up her words too. When online headlines were re-written for publications such as the _Guardian_, the _New York Times_, _Vox_ etc., that theft claim was repeated. Statements put out by leading and influential Democrats too used that same word as they reacted to the election starting to be stolen away from them. Vice President Padley was out in California – away from Walsh back in DC who she was at significant odds with – and she made a joint statement alongside Governor Samuel Pierce. He was the establishment Democrat who had (in the words of his ex-wife who worked for _Newsmax_) ‘gone native out in West America’ to adopt the democratic socialist agenda that MRQ had. Their shared anger was clear for all to see when both spoke of how MRQ had won the popular vote, the EC vote too, but was still about to have her win stolen from her if Cook wasn’t stopped. Congresswoman-elect Shauna McCleary spoke from Portland where the expected tirade of abuse which came form her towards the Republicans was there. She was one of those recognised ‘left provocateurs’ who’d been active in the mid-2020s to built a narrative of a combative Far Left ready to fight. McCleary had helped build that Resistance movement before making a primary run against a progressive Democrat congresswoman in Oregon to win on November 7th. She was a ‘favourite’ of the right-wing media who knew that just like MRQ, McCleary enraged conservatives and could drive ratings significantly up with everything she said and did… and also just existing.

Walsh called for calm the day after the election. He spoke in a presidential address from the White House – rather than staying behind official _Twitter_ releases had he had done throughout the campaign as part of his supposed neutrality – where he urged everyone to respect the process of the post-election outcomes. The Electoral College as well as constitutional requirements for the presidency needed to be respected. On the matter of whether he believed that MRQ was eligible, let alone the outrage that everyone seemed to agree was Cook acting in the manner which she was, Walsh did what he always managed to do on those points: disappoint. He said nothing about either of those things. That was what was of real importance and what was causing all of the drama that he was calling for a calming of yet there was no mention of it by him. Roberts did interviews and then a press conference from Houston. He found himself on the defensive where he defended Cook’s behaviour despite it personally sitting rather uncomfortable with him. He said nothing about that yet it was on his conscience when he had to claim that he was going to be effectively playing along. Pushed towards it by his top campaign people, and also after taking a call from DC with the RNC chair and Senate Majority Leader Green on the other end, the senator claimed that there were questions to be answered on the matter of MRQ’s eligibly too. It was put to him by several reporters at the press conference as to why if he thought that he hadn’t raised the matter strongly during the campaign. Roberts’ responses didn’t look very confident nor presidential. Mitchell would later that day make a stronger media appearance but it was the former who was meant to be the top name on the ticket, the one who the two of them were speaking for.

Media networks carried footage of militia groups making appearances the day after the election. Right-wing adherents to the Free Americans alliance made the biggest splash. The various groups all claimed that they would never accept MRQ as the president of the United States. Guns were on show during those incidents where spokespeople (official and unofficial) made those declarations yet there was no actual violence threatened in response to an MRQ presidency. Still… it was clear that was what they were putting on the table. Rather insignificant in terms of capability when compared to the Free Americans, yet having a media pull because of who they were, figures from the top ranks of the _Vaqueros_ militia on the left said the opposite. MRQ was their president and Cook in Florida was going to be stopped too: the ‘how’ was left out of that. In addition, BLA statements were made through online videos. Most of the membership at the top of that left-wing group was being sought by federal authorities (who were generally leaving the Free Americans alone) so they protected themselves using internet anonymity to declare that they too were supporting the rightful winner of the election. They would fight against the ongoing theft, it was said, with the explicit promise of violence made to achieve that as well. MRQ campaign spokespeople would put great distance between themselves and the BLA yet, to the fury of many establishment Democrats, that distance didn’t include complete denunciations of the BLA. Links between that terror group and MRQ had been the subject of Republican propaganda during the election so when MRQ’s people didn’t do what was believed by party figures to be enough to put clear water between them, she received contact about that. The DNC Chair, James Dillon, considered a fool by many in his party for being behind that new primary system that MRQ had so successfully exploited to beat Kirk, got an earful from MRQ first and then McCleary afterwards. They were focused on looking to combat the theft that the Republicans were undertaking and wouldn’t give a damn about what lies the Republican war machine would say once more about the cop killers in the BLA and their party!

Kowalski was killed on the 9th. The congressman-elect who’d won a US House seat for the Democrats up there in Red state Idaho was assassinated by right-wing militia members. His life had been threatened before the election and those were no idle threats either. Significant protection had been afforded to him with the Secret Service taking over from private security contractors hired by the DNC late in the campaign. USSS agents had been assigned to more than a hundred incumbents and candidates ahead of Election Day in an unprecedented move due to the nationwide security situation. Common logic was that agents would usually only protect presidential candidates yet, at the direction of the USSS director and with a presidential executive order, anyone, even a civilian, would received their protection. There were agents at the private home of Kowalski in Twin Falls but they were unable to stop what happened from extremists determined to kill him. A low-flying drone went towards his house and from it an explosive-tipped rocket was fired. Terror attacks using drones had been made before yet the strike against Kowalski was still completely unprecedented. He lost his life alongside his wife, his daughter, a campaign aide and two USSS agents as well. The house was near demolished due to the effectiveness of the attack and the stolen military-grade weapon employed. The country was still gripped by the crisis with Florida yet the news about Kowalski was hardly ignored. MRQ, Roberts, Walsh etc. denounced it thoroughly. Across in Boise, the Governor of Idaho was left devastated when he heard. He was a Republican who had done all he could for the Roberts campaign as well as stumping for the incumbent whom Kowalski forced from office. Nonetheless, Kowalski was someone whom he knew and respected. That assassination, plus the deaths of five others in Twin Falls, threw him into a rage. Gun battles between militia members and left-wingers – often times anyone whom they were opposed to – had long destabilised Idaho as well as other parts of the Inland North–West. Bryan Winkelman was hamstrung in moving against them by his state legislature as well as supporters throughout state law enforcement. However, the strike on Kowalski was a federal affair. With help from DC which he assumed would follow, Winkelman sought to get even with the militia and their supporters. He moved to make appeals to DC for help with the belief that he and his state would receive that help. The idea that he would be disappointed was completely alien to him when he made that appeal.

The Dillon-led DNC had on paid retainer a variety of powerful law firms. Lawyers from them had been active during the presidential campaign with undertakings made to enforce election laws ahead of ballots being cast. Once Cook pulled what she did with her attempt at theft on the grandest scale imaginable, they were instructed to spring into action. The attorneys and their firms involved were doing what they did for payment yet also (generally) supported cause too. MRQ wasn’t favoured everywhere but the Republicans were the enemy. Lewis ‘Hellfire’ Neville contacted the candidate herself who the enemy were trying to steal the election from and offered to fight what he declared was a moral crusade on her behalf. Hellfire – he got that name after infamously promising a high-profile client that he would walk through the fires of hell to defend her from injustice – was an activist lawyer based in San Francisco with a reputation that wasn’t appealing to the DNC. He wasn’t a constitutional nor election lawyer either. What he was was a fighter. MRQ had a personal attorney yet Hellfire said he would provide legal services to her to combat the entirely absurd claims that she wasn’t a legal citizen as Governor Cook was saying. There were others who’d soon be saying the same thing, Hellfire told her when he spoke with her after calling up Davis (he’d defended her in the past), and it wouldn’t all be about stealing the presidency away from her too. She needed him, so he said. Hellfire was costly yet was always worth the fee to his clients. MRQ couldn’t afford him yet, as he had done with Davis when helping her defeat that Indiana extradition, he offered to work _pro bono_. MRQ still demurred about taking him on so Hellfire reminded her of the consequences of things going wrong and politically-motivated judges in Red state portions of America declaring that she was what they would call an ‘illegal alien’. Deportation was the worst case scenario for her with that. It was unlikely, Hellfire declared, but he promised her that would never happen with him defending her. Urged by Davis to think of their kids, she took Hellfire on as her attorney.​
*​
In the aftermath of the assassination of Kowalski up in Idaho, and with half a nation enraged at the ongoing theft of the presidential election, President Walsh called together his homeland security staff. At a White House meeting down in an annex off the Situation Room, there was a briefing given to him about what was known of the details of the attack in Twin Falls. He was concerned that it was another American Insurgent Army attack but was assured that it was the work of one of the Free Americans groups. As to the election fallout, there were details given about planned protest marches to continue those which had been previously seen. In cities spread across the West, and others nationwide too, MRQ supporters, Democratic voters and ordinary Americans alike were taking to the streets. There had been trouble and more was expected. Discussions were had by the president and his top people to see that there was security against violent attacks against protesters in addition to looking at ways in which to limit unrest on the part of them themselves too. Both his Attorney General and Homeland Security Secretary advised the man who was due to be out of the door two months down the line that significant unrest was expected throughout the legal process going on with MRQ’s campaign seeking to stop Florida’s Electoral College votes being stolen from her. Chen came up in conversation, that V-Blogger who had caused so much trouble with her ‘revelations’ about where MRQ had been born. Her home outside Los Angeles had been burnt down in an arson attack though she was up in Canada after fleeing there ahead of that. In a separate meeting with his political senior staff and aides, Walsh was informed of the continuing support being given to the MRQ campaign by the vice president where she defied the neutrality order issued by Walsh. There was no stopping her, she had gone completely rouge. In addition, news was passed to him that both his energy & transportation secretaries were looking to jump ship by resigning from the Walsh Administration if they were refused permission to publicly speak out against the outrageous theft. Walsh repeated his standing instructions that neutrality was to be maintained and if members of his administration wanted to speak out, then they would have to resign or would be fired.

Almost throughout its entire existence, the Resistance protest movement had been mocked. It had been long considered a joke. At times, the activities of the left-wing group were pretty silly yet there were numbers, determination and also capability there. The Gun Clubs where left-wingers were legally armed had stopped multiple attacks against protesters from occurring in cities in the West whereas there had been violence directed against those elsewhere in the country when they had failed to protect themselves. McCleary had been someone there at the beginning of the Resistance yet wasn’t neither a founder nor an organising member. Right-wing media outlets tied her to the group just because that helped with ratings. Not long before the election, when Resistance members had traded shots with Free Americans gunmen up in Washington state, there had been internal disputes within the Resistance over the violent direction taken. Then the Republicans began to steal the White House away from the legally-elected MRQ. Naturally, members across the nation sprung into action where they planned to do all that they could to stop that. However, key members in the West, egged on by figures such as McCleary, wanted to do more than just protest. They won the argument where it was voted upon that ‘direct action’ would be taken. Easterners within the Resistance generally refused to take part in that yet there were no qualms among so many Westerners. The direct action wasn’t about using force of arms but instead people power. That had been employed many times before the Resistance was the Resistance. Active demonstrations where the law on public gatherings restricted them was to be ignored. Occupations would begin. There would be physical force used to stop the authorities from moving on protesters. Sit-ins, blocking transport links and conducting property damage was considered by those who agreed to that course of action as legitimate means of protest to take. They wished to see notice of them taken and to have an effect upon the legal process ongoing in Florida. Arguments that the wrong sort of attention would be sent, that the opposite outcome desired would occur, were ignored by those hell bent on ‘doing something’ when faced with what they saw as the utter injustice of the Republicans trying to steal the election from the woman they had voted for.

Albuquerque, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma… the list of major protests where civil disobedience was seen was quiet something. All of those cities were run by Democrats with the states that they were in (all but Salt Lake City) being Blue too. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of people took part in marches and demonstrations across them. Organisation was done online and the people showed up. Most of them were young, angry activists yet there were plenty of other people from all demographics who turned out too. The mass gatherings saw people led off the streets into federal buildings to protest there. Criminal damage was done within them and also elsewhere. Resistance marches that had been seen beforehand concerning other matters had had event stewards (volunteers who knew the law when confronted by policemen) try to stop that. However, following the 2028 Presidential Election there was in fact encouragement. Buildings and vehicles were attacked. Police forces moved against those committing criminal damage and also disrupting life for the citizens of those cities. Politicians walked a fine line where they sought to present the message of being in support of the cause but not what was being done. Demands were made upon those politicians that they stop worrying about a few courthouses with graffiti sprayed in them and a couple of burning police cruisers and instead focus on the great injustice that was Governor Cook’s actions. In several Michigan cities – Grand Rapids and Lansing as well as Detroit – there were marches and protests similar to those seen in the West and that was the case in New York City too. Yet, while there were strong Resistance numbers elsewhere in the country, their members didn’t turn out across the Mid–West, the East and the South as expected. Their comrades-in-arms had been talking about that civil disobedience of theirs ahead of action and how they were intending to do that for ‘West America’. Such a term had been something in the media just ahead of and right after the election. It wasn’t something that went down with Americans outside of the West very well no matter where on the political divide the fell. The sense of entitlement, the belief in exceptionalism and the moral high ground coming from those on the left out in the West had been frustrating to hear for many for a long time. It was dramatically increased as MRQ – the darling of the West – had began to see her election victory stolen from her. Michigan and the Big Apple were the exceptions to the otherwise aversion to demands coming out of the West for action and so too would Florida be as well. Elsewhere though, the rejection of the special status that the West seemed to demand was something being reinforced every time further action was demanded.

The AIA made a series of strikes right before the legal process surrounding the election theft sprung into high gear. Court cases in Florida were scheduled to begin and there were those big demonstrations starting in the West: in between, the most lethal, most misunderstood domestic terror group once more went on a murderous rampage where innocent civilians were their targets in their war against the federal government. From the garden of a rented house in Queens (the relator had been honest about the noise of low-flying aircraft to the woman who rented it), mortar rounds were fired towards JFK International Airport. A stolen weapon was used by retired service-personnel who shot off dozens of explosive rounds towards the Big Apple’s largest airport. The mortar rounds smashed into their target with abandon. Parked jetliners were hit and so too one of the terminal buildings. An aviation fuel fire was started. An incoming passenger aircraft suffered foreign object damage when putting down in the middle of the barrage leading to a deadly crash. Panic gripped passengers and workers at the airport, even in parts unaffected by the series of rapid explosions. JFK was quickly closed with aircraft diverted yet that occurred after the last rounds had been fired. Sixty-one people died at the airport. The attention of the whole world was directed towards that attack, not just Americans from coast-to-coast. Images out of New York would cause shock, horror and also (in certain quarters) celebration too. At the same time, a second AIA terror cell was active in Ohio where they went on a shooting rampage. Three of them struck at a federal government building within Cincinnati where the IRS and Homeland Security had staffers employed there at a regional centre. Armed security personnel were taken out by former soldiers adorned with combat gear and heavy weaponry. The killers then began to slaughter men and women who worked for the US Government in their offices and through corridors. Active shooter measures were employed and did save many lives. However, ‘smoke grenades’ were used by the AIA: those were M-15 weapons taken from an arsenal down in Georgia weeks beforehand. The White Phosphorus within the grenades was something the US Armed Forces said was for marking targets while detractors claimed it was a chemical weapon. Horrid, life-changing burns were delivered to sheltering victims both externally and internally when on the wrong end of those grenades. Cincinnati Police Department officers responded quickly and suffered gravely. They did shoot and severely wound one AIA attacker though and she was abandoned by her two other comrades when they escaped. Her life was saved and it would be discovered by federal investigators that she was a deserter from the US Marine Corps. Interrogation efforts as part of the investigation were conducted. As to the body count at that federal building, it would be seventeen with almost another thirty badly hurt. Footage broadcast by _CNN_ would see the escaping gunmen shooting at police officers in the street where they used assault rifles in that. Just like the images out of JFK, such scenes were not easily forgettable.

Lawyers working for the DNC filed the case _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ in the Florida Supreme Court. Procedural delays were anticipated by the plaintiffs and overcome. By the Friday (following the election on Tuesday), the state’s highest court up in Tallahassee was once more at the centre of world attention due to presidential outcome dramatics. It had been twenty-eight long years since the last time that Florida was the key to an election decision. Cook sent her A-Team to defend her state’s rights. The Attorney General and the Secretary of State, Corey Ellis and Sofia del Rio respectively, preformed as the governor wanted them to in front of the media. They spoke of the firm belief that the Florida state government had that Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz was constitutionally ineligible to become the 49th President. She had been born to Mexican national parents with her birth taking place within Mexico too. MRQ was an illegal alien, Ellis said, with del Rio asserting that Florida was going to prove that. From all the way out in distant California, MRQ used the various social media platforms at her disposal to address supporters and those who had voted for her down in Florida. She took her message direct to them rather than going through the traditional media where that would be spun for their own purposes. It was theft, she reminded them. The millions of Floridians who had voted for her to be their next president were having their votes stolen not just from her as their candidate, but them too. The greatest heist imaginable was happening! In Tallahassee, where crowds had gathered, many of them from out-of-state, as well as elsewhere throughout the country’s third-most populous state, her words were followed by an explosion of anger. Troublemakers led violence which saw a surge towards the state courthouse. State troopers as well as members of the mobilised State Guard, stopped them from invading the building. Cook had national guardsmen on standby – for trouble in Tallahassee yet also elsewhere in Florida – though kept them back to allow for the less-militarised units deployed to do their job. She still had plentiful presidential ambitions of her own down the line and was unwilling at that stage in November 2028 to unleash the full force of the Florida National Guard against protesters who weren’t armed nor capable enough of overcoming those on duty. That would change down the line though, in the next month.

In the courthouse itself, the seven sitting justices, all of whom had been appointed by Cook or her Republican predecessors, heard the arguments put to them from MRQ’s team of party-appointed attorneys and then the defence mounted by Florida’s representatives. Those high-priced corporate lawyers on that DNC retainer argued that MRQ was legally a US citizen and provided proof of that. They pointed to her Election Day victory in Florida and declared that Florida must, by state law, grant its votes to MRQ when the Electoral College met. Duplicity of intentions on behalf of Cook and her apparent ‘state investigation’ wasn’t argued before the Florida Supreme Court – that was left to politicians and activists – where they instead kept their case to the point and accurate on matters of law. Florida’s case was argued back. Much of it came from the Chen bombshell dropped as one of those pre-election Black Swans though other portions of what they had had for some time been in the public domain as allegations made at other times over MRQ’s true birth circumstances. There were those notes from Dr. Alvarez, a Mexican physician volunteering to help migrants on the southern side of the border in April 1990 where he accurately recorded the date & place of a birth said to be that of MRQ. The famous celebrity poker player Michael Flowers, once a trucker on the West Coast, had in 2021 put in his autobiography details of picking up that young Latina and her baby beside the highway in California taking them to a church known for assisting migrants. That incident had happened in May 1990 with Flowers putting the mother’s name in print long along with the incident before MRQ became a congresswoman with a national profile bringing Birther allegations. Lenora Oakes’ testimony in a California civil case from 2018 was presented where it was alleged that as a wayward teen staying with her aunt & uncle at their church, she was a caregiver to both mother and daughter who Oakes said had come up together from Mexico. Ten years before her testimony was repeated in Florida, Oakes had been arraigned for stalking MRQ and was not the best of witnesses yet her earlier testimony was on record that MRQ was a one month old in May ‘90, not born that month and certainly hadn’t been born at that church. Finally, the long-missing diary of church events kept by Oakes’ deceased uncle (he was a man who, like Flowers and Alvarez, kept detailed notes) that Chen had uncovered was put before the justices in Tallahassee. For many years, those seeking to ‘expose’ MRQ had been looking for that after Oakes had said it existed but Chen had been the one to get hold of it. There were no live births at all in ‘90 recorded at the church where Oakes’ relatives often cared for migrants. All of this, all of this detailed documentation including the newly-found piece, plus the testimony of the controversial witness that was Oakes, was at the heart of Florida’s case. Put together as one, it was argued that MRQ had been born in Mexico and taken to the United States as a newborn. Either with or without her knowledge, she had been presenting as a US citizen throughout her life when she in fact she wasn’t. As to those justices, they debated the case throughout the weekend when in special session and then during the Monday too. It was the following day, a week after the election, when they published their decision. The theft continued when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that MRQ was ineligible for the thirty Electoral College votes from Florida because she was an illegal alien. The appeal process to that started at once, through the only higher court possible. Violent unrest was also on the cards after that decision was rendered by a court considered entirely partisan and a willing participant in stealing an election.


​*2028 US Presidential Election*
Democrats – 283
Arizona (11), California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Delaware (3), Florida (30), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine * (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), Nevada (6), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), Oregon (8), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12),
Republicans – 255
Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), * Maine * (1), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (4), Nebraska * (5), North Carolina (16), North Dakota (3), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), Pennsylvania (19), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (40), Utah (6), West Virginia (4), Wisconsin (10), Wyoming (3)


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## JamesG

*Fight For Everything*


A simultaneous legal process in Florida alongside the one instigated by the presidential campaign of Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz had been started right after the election. Jointly, the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defence Fund (despite the name, the latter was a separate entity from the NAACP itself) had filed suit with the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The claim was that the statements made by Governor Cook where she said that Florida wouldn’t accept ballots cast in the presidential election for the Democratic candidate was an illegal undertaking to ignore the votes cast by Floridians. A Republican-friendly court, that suit was rejected with the ruling made that Florida had yet to do what the plaintiffs alleged: there was an investigation underway and the ballots hadn’t at that point been rejected. An appeal to that ruling was made to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Attorneys for the civil rights suit were using federal rather than state courts when they went down that route. However, it was well-known that the Eleventh Circuit, like the district court preceding it, was pretty damn partisan. The second court was favoured by culture warriors on the right when forum shopping as to the best venue to file suit. Only starting through the lower courts, working their way up, could those seeking to win move though. At the top of the pyramid was the US Supreme Court. Rather than continue with a separate case, a combining was done ahead of an Eleventh Circuit hearing: the ACLU/NAACP-LDF’s arguments were folding into the Democratic Party’s one. As to that case, a defeat in Tallahassee had been anticipated ahead of filing. In public, that wasn’t the message that the Democrats put out but it was what was expected. Preparations had already been done by attorneys and the law firms assigned to the case ready to move the matter onwards. What the justices of the Florida Supreme Court had to say was heard with paperwork filled in and then the move made to go to the highest court in the nation with that effort. With regard to those working on the case, the lawyers and litigators assigned (along with their staffs) were almost all entirely dedicated personally to the cause. The DNC had them on retainer ahead of Election Day, expecting the Republicans to do something entirely underhand even if what was done with the status of MRQ’s citizenship not foreseen as something to be abused. Noted liberals were selected to challenge whatever was done, those who had beforehand fought for the Democrats. What was wanted by the DNC was complete dedication to the cause. Some party voices had expressed caution at that where they argued that only the best – the dirtiest if need be too – attorneys should be on-staff yet they had lost out there. It was only those who were prepared to give it all, who it was thought had a personal stake in the election outcome which the DNC had moved to hire because of just how important the whole thing really was.

MRQ criticised the ruling from Florida almost immediately after it was made. She spoke to supporters via social media where she slowly, precisely and accurately went through once again went through the known circumstances of her birth. Previous rulings in California courts where she had been harassed for many years with Birther allegations were used to point to the wrongs in Florida’s case. Her mother, a Mexican widow & migrant fleeing poverty, had given birth to her in California before dying weeks afterwards. MRQ had been adopted by Professor Rodríguez and his wife soon afterwards. The ‘Alvarez records’ concerned a different birth-mother by the same name who delivered a daughter a month earlier, Flowers had many times embellished the truth about all sorts of odd encounters he had when as a trucker in the 1990s, Oakes had told lies in public & in the courts before while under oath on matters of her personal harassment of MRQ, and the suddenly-discovered ‘church diaries’ were a complete forgery. MRQ was an American, a legal US citizen who was entirely eligible for the presidency which she had won. Her own remarks and those of supporting lawyers concerning the whole case, especially that final piece of so-called evidence that someone had given to Chen, were used time and time again in the aftermath of the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to demolish the verdict delivered there. It simply wasn’t true, such was the reply, and all a dirty trick part based in racism, part based within a Republican plan to steal the election away from those who had rejected their candidate and instead chosen MRQ for the 49th President. MRQ did an interview with _ABC_ when spoke of her adoptive parents. Dante was dead, murdered because of his daughter’s politics, while his wife was in palliative care where MRQ said she hoped she would see her daughter sworn in come January 2029. Neither of them had lied about where and when MRQ had been born and nor had the aunt & uncle of Oakes either. None were liars and she refused to allow those trying to steal her identity from her to do so.

A protest march against the murder of Congressman-elect Kowalski was met with violence when participants gathered in Boise. The small city which was the state capital of Idaho was flooded with as many law enforcement personnel as possible yet they were far too few overall. Democrats from across Idaho, and states throughout the West too, went to the city yet also did right-wing militia members. There were a few Resistance members who had weapons with them where they aimed to protect protesters yet they were quickly arrested. No members of the Free Americans there to counter-protest were when they brazenly carried their own guns. A stolen semi-truck was driven into protesters, killing three and injuring a dozen, before there were shots fired towards the protesters too. A stampede occurred where civilians fled leaving another two bodies in the streets… and no more arrests. Right-wing online outlets would boast of the ‘score’ 5-0 afterwards. The Governor of Idaho made a real effort to stop what happened and then properly deal with the aftermath yet found himself faced with internal hostility and increasing political pressure to ease off. He carried on though, pushing back with a confrontation on the cards due to Winkelman just not willing to accept his state being a battleground where straight-up murder was acceptable. Elsewhere across the nation, again more in the West than in other parts of America, there were ongoing protests against the ongoing stealing of the election. In Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, the governors of those states worked with local authorities to provide protection to participants. State troopers and SDF personnel were out in defence of them. In reply, the protests remained generally non-violent without vandalism, looting or arson occurring. That wasn’t repeated in Arizona, California and Oregon though. Coordination between Resistance organisers and state/local authorities fell apart. The Resistance remained rather decentralised, despite efforts to do that from many within, and local leaders did their own thing. State governments wanted to stop violence from happening but the circumstances weren’t right. Undertakings were made in the aftermath to change that. Previous big demonstrations in Michigan and New York were lesser attended despite the widespread outrage felt by MRQ supporters outside of the West itself. So many Americans were becoming resigned to the fact that the theft was going to succeed no matter what politicians were saying. The Republicans had long established biased courts, including the Supreme Court too. Disputes with Westerners continued over the rest of the country ‘letting them down’ but resignation to defeat was something growing.

McCleary wasn’t an attendee at the Portland unrest which rocked that city after Florida’s partisan judges made that outrageous ruling. She’d gone down to Las Vegas instead to attend a demonstration there and then afterwards have a meeting with fellow Democrats from across the West. Just because she wasn’t up in Oregon’s largest city, the one which _Fox News_ and _OAN_ both declared was a war-zone, that didn’t meant that the right linked her to all that happened there after the November 14th ruling in Tallahassee. She’d long been at the heart of previous unrest, using her platform as a major Resistance organiser to unseat a fellow Democrat in a fierce primary contest before winning the US House seat she’d run for unopposed in the general election. Long before that too, she’d been one of the key figures in Portland’s Socialist Alternative movement where the Democrats had been their political opponents. A favourite description among the nastiest sections of the right-wing media when they weren’t calling her a communist was to deem her ‘trailer trash’. McCleary was a thirty-six year-old mother of three (each bore by a different father) who had been an activist her entire life. She came from eastern, rural Washington though had moved to Portland to begin her political career. Those roots of hers were poor, so too was her education. McCleary was a loud, proud woman and that infuriated the right. It didn’t always do her many favours with certain sections of the left too though. Establishment Democrats didn’t like her at all and there had been efforts made – generally unsuccessful – to hold her back because she was considered to do more harm than good to their party. Fighting the DNC and corporate Democrats was a battle McCleary seemed to long relish though. She gave as good as she got. Straight after the latest unrest in Portland, while McCleary was in Nevada, the _Washington Post_ ran a story online and in print alleging a comment of hers which they had details about. McCleary would deny it, claiming it was a right-wing smear pushed by fellow Democrats too. What the _WaPo_ had was the assertion that McCleary had called Patty Finkelstein a ‘greedy ****’. Finkelstein was one top-tier of the ideological lawyers fighting on behalf of the MRQ campaign. She’d been the face of fight in Tallahassee and would be too when the suit moved to DC. The ethnic slur was said to have been made by McCleary due to Finkelstein (and others) taking money for what they were doing but more so because, supposedly in the congresswoman-elect’s opinion, the case wasn’t going very well. McCleary had been struck with allegations of similar language before yet did as she always did and hit back. Did the _WaPo_ have evidence of what they were alleging? If not, were they prepared to see her in court? Those public remarks were against that newspaper yet McCleary’s heart was mainly set on a fight with the DNC. She had ammunition ready to use against them, nasty & politically-incorrect things that she could prove enemies of hers had said. She prepared to take that fight to the next step while denying being an anti-Semite.

The meeting which McCleary went to in Las Vegas was invite-only. Senator-elect Julie Ashby – another progressive activist who had launched a successful primary challenge to an establishment opponent – had a couple of dozen politicians at her private home. Those included Governor Pierce out of California among them and additionally Vice President Padley. The meeting was private with security measures taken to ensure the elimination of recordings made. Both the _Associated Press_ and _Vox_ got wind of the gathering though without knowing what it was about nor having an accurate list of attendees. Former Governor Suárez (who Walsh had beaten for the Democratic nomination back in 2024) wasn’t there but knew enough details to tip off _AP_; _Vox_ was told even less details by an aide to Colorado’s governor, someone who did go. Padley’s name was on neither story which the two publications ran. What was in each was pure speculation about why so many influential Democrats had met there. All were Westerners, that was noted, but there were few other ties with progressives, activists and establishment figures there. _AP_ suggested that maybe they were discussing forming a ‘shadow government’ once MRQ was beaten in the federal courts and Senator Roberts ended up succeeding President Walsh. The idea floated was that that would be nothing more than a talking shop for a protest movement. No one was saying they were going to form any sort of real government. What _AP_ had to say, along with the _Vox_ story too, set into motion a flurry of right-wing outrage. There was wild speculation among conservatives and Republicans that those leading lights in ‘West America’ were looking to swear MRQ in as their president come Inauguration Day. Treason and unconstitutional goings on were all that they wanted to talk about. Comment was sought from reputed attendees, those who had been allegedly left out and also anyone else who might have an opinion. The story had a lot of legs to it yet remained short on details. Ashby dropped out of sight, away from the right-wing media especially, though the story wasn’t going anywhere.

MRQ hadn’t gone to Las Vegas. She was in DC at the time when that meeting at Ashby’s home was held, something that supporters of hers made clear when there were allegations that she too was engaged in ‘secret meetings about treason’. After flying to DC, MRQ was met with assertions that she was a hypocrite on her environmental stances. That was ridiculous: her duties as a congresswoman brought her to DC all the time and she made a point of flying only when necessary. Talking with the lawyers representing her case being brought to the US Supreme Court was what MRQ deemed necessary. She was the named plaintiff in _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ after all. The attorneys were doing all that they could to be granted the hearing which they demanded that MRQ was entitled to and she joined in making a public fuss over all of that. Action was demanded of the justices! While in the capitol, MRQ also had other meetings with senior Democrats though rejected a meeting with President Walsh. He had sought to bring MRQ and Roberts both to the White House in some crazy idea where he could talk with each as equals engaged in a legal dispute. MRQ would have none of that at all because it wasn’t about equals but instead one side being engaged in open theft. Secret Service agents worried intensely about her safety due to assassination threats that had been made as well as the concern over a lone gunman who had been keeping his head down. The media followed MRQ everywhere when she was in DC and wanted comment from her about the resignation which came of Sarah Johns. Johns resigned from her position as Energy Secretary in the Walsh Administration after the president’s efforts to get MRQ & Roberts talking after she had long been at odds with the policy of apparent neutrality. Like everyone else in the Walsh Administration, Johns was out of a job when that ended and so she went early to give her the freedom to savage the Republicans for what they were doing after losing the presidential election. MRQ welcomed Johns taking a stand and criticised Walsh for his whole approach. Not long after that, MRQ was informed (in private, unlike when it had been her adoptive father) that the woman who had adopted her had passed away back in California. Blanca Quiroz Diaz had lost her long fight to stay alive and see her daughter become president. MRQ left DC to go back West, leaving behind allegations thrown by sections of the right that that death was rather ‘convenient’ considering Florida’s secretary of state had said that she would be a witness for the defendant in the pending Supreme Court case. Unknown to everyone, including her, MRQ’s visit in mid-November was the last time that she would ever travel to DC.​
*​
Dillon was forced into resigning. The Chair of the DNC, who had overseen an election victory for his party, was the subject of leaks made of recordings of him talking on the phone to a big-money sponsor. Excerpts of that call made a month before Election Day were provided to several media sources where he used some terrible and shocking terms to describe his party’s presidential candidate during her ‘Amtrak tour’. He called her a ‘dumb b*tch’ and a ‘stupid c*nt’ in those recordings when discussing her campaign strategy. The recordings had been known without either his knowledge nor the donor and leaked to damage them both. Left in untenable position where he certainly couldn’t continue after such derogatory language was put into the public arena, Dillon walked. Organising the leaks had been McCleary. She’d been made aware of those recordings and saw to it that the right people at the right publications got hold of them. It was payback for Dillon leaking to the _Washington Post_ allegations against her – ones which he didn’t have any proof of – and her language. Watching him fall on his sword quickly and walking without a fight was a bit of a let down when she expected much more drama to come out, yet she did have the satisfaction of knowing he was gone from his post. She’d won, he’d lost. Though it wasn’t made public, a lot of Democrats knew exactly what had gone on with McCleary getting her revenge. It was known to be more than that personal issue though. What it concerned was the growing chasm opening up within the Democratic Party between what had become the Western and Eastern wings of the entire organisation. At a time when the Republicans remained on the offensive to steal an election, Democratic infighting set about causing the party being ripped in two. Congresswoman Mallory Dunn, a Democrat out of Virginia, who’d nearly lost her district when she & others considered MRQ to have dragged the entire party vote down despite winning, waded into the fight with criticisms directed against McCleary and other Westerners for picking a fight with their fellow Democrats when unity was needed. McCleary hit back with remarks over the extensive corporate funding for Dunn and others like her whereas out in the West, that cash was rejected. The Republicans and the right-wing media weren’t content to just sit back and watch with popcorn but intervened in the whole dispute too, attacking both sides as they did so.

As that went on, the US Supreme Court heard opening arguments in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case. Finkelstein remained right at the centre of the legal dispute on behalf of the plaintiff while del Rio had come up from Florida as the governor down there had instructed her to. Each side generally stuck to what the same script as had been seen down in Florida. Democratic lawyers wanted Florida to cease its ongoing efforts to deny MRQ the votes in the Electoral College which she had rightfully won. Florida’s secretary of state contended that MRQ was ineligible to receive them because the Florida Supreme Court had ruled that she wasn’t an American citizen. There was confirmation made afterwards when del Rio was questioned by the media that the investigation down in Florida as to MRQ’s citizenship status was over with. That state’s highest court had ruled that MRQ was born in Mexico to Mexican parents and therefore no more taxpayers money needed to be expended in Florida. A senior opinion writer for the _Miami Herald_ spoke on a video blog for his publication about that where he argued that state attorney general Ellis wouldn’t be too happy due to the apparent investigation being a big deal for his office yet Governor Cook had issued del Rio to move forward with that position. The whole internal power-play in Tallahassee between appointed and elected officials mattered for naught nationally though. What was important was that was the argument that del Rio was using: MRQ was constitutionally barred for receiving votes from Florida, from every state in fact, because she wasn’t an American. Interviewed outside of the Supreme Court Building in DC, within sight of Congress, MRQ’s campaign manager disputed that. California’s courts had ruled before that MRQ was an American and it would be the Supreme Court who made the final ruling. The opening oral arguments _inside_ were just the beginning. There was no expectation that the Supreme Court would make a ruling anywhere near as fast as had come from the judges down in Tallahassee. Commentators made it clear that the justices in DC would likely hand down their findings come December. It was thought they would certainly want to do so before the Electoral College met when it was constitutionally bound to meaning that the latest a finding could be delivered would be December 18th. The month-long gap would give the Supreme Court enough time to make a judgement due to the utmost seriousness of the matter before them. Hearing about having to wait that long to see the whole thing settled wasn’t something that the vast majority of Americans were rather unhappy to hear.

Joe Carlucci went to Colorado and was assassinated there. The AIA managed to murder the Secretary of Homeland Security in the middle of the massive federal operation against that terror group. Carlucci was effectively at the very top of that effort to see them eliminated though they managed to get him first. The attack against him was launched when he made a visit to the Denver Federal Centre in that city’s suburb of Lakewood. Security was tight when Carlucci was there for his trip to meet with FEMA and Secret Service personnel (both agencies reported to the DHS) but the terrorists with the AIA once more overcame that. A wounded veteran, someone who’d fought for the United States throughout its many wars in the Middle East and been left with a hatred of the system which sent him & others there, entered the secure area by way of securing false authorised access to the on-site Army Reserve Centre. The whole wider facility was home to dozens of US Government facilities. Demonstrators in Colorado marching against the ongoing election theft had been present nearby too where they’d turned their rage towards federal authorities and that had only increased security. Still, the AIA got their man though with him playing on his disabled status. A weapon was provided to him by a sympathiser inside and he was also helped to get into place to ambush Carlucci. At the most opportune moment, the gunman sprayed the Secretary of Homeland Security with bullets from an M4 carbine assault rifle. Carlucci was dead before he hit the ground and another three people (including two Secret Service agents) would also lose their lives with half a dozen more serious injuries. The gunman faced return fire and was hit. Rather than be captured and interrogated – something he wished to play no part in – he would shoot himself in the head. The AIA had had a volunteer captured in Cincinnati but wouldn’t lose someone to be questioned by federal investigators after the Denver attack. Volunteers for the cause had after Cincinnati been encouraged to take their own lives rather than be forced into cooperation with the hated federal government. That assassination of Carlucci was all over the news, just as it had been desired to be by the AIA. They revelled in the attention... and also the media asking why the federal government was unable to do anything to combat them.

Protesters in Denver (also in other Colorado cities too) took part in demonstrations that continued throughout the West. All across the eight Blue states – Hawaii included – that formed the bloc of Blue on the map, people power protests under the banner of the Resistance took place once the Supreme Court case started. There was less of a feeling of despair among them than was seen elsewhere in the country. In the East, the Mid–West and the South, many Democrats had given up with the belief that the Republicans could be stopped. In the West, it wasn’t a matter of relying on the courts which allowed them to keep the faith, but their own actions. The thinking was that by occupying federal buildings and committed acts of civil disobedience, the Walsh Administration would step in. That wasn’t going to happen. Political leaders in the West knew that, hence their own plots and plans being made in secret, yet in the meantime, the demonstrators stayed on the streets day after day. Less and less violence was seen in the majority of cases as time went on. McCleary had secured that agreement with state authorities for the Resistance to not tear cities apart. Her influence in controlling the people power that the Resistance had at hand was something well understood by the leading politicians. However, she wouldn’t do anything about the situation in Washington state through mid- & late-December. Fractures in the Resistance movement had allowed for a lack of influence from her nor any other regional figure up there. Marxist-Leninist Vanguardist groups of various colours were busy leading their own demonstrations where they committed violence and caused great unrest. Gunmen with the People’s Revolutionaries militia were active as well where they shot a state trooper on the highway outside of Tacoma and also two policemen when a crowd stormed Seattle International Airport. The militia said they were defending the protesters from right-wing attacks but those incidents were terror attacks with the excuses not washing with anyone. Washington state was a mess. Images out of there went national and were linked to what was happening elsewhere in the West though guilt by association. That linkage went all the way up through the state government and senior politicians with a national representation there as well. They wouldn’t be part of what else was going on while Washington was the scene of such major unrest.

Senator-elect Ashby gave a speech in Carson City where she addressed a gathering of progressive-minded Democrats from Nevada as well as neighbouring Blue states. The comments made from her concerned the ongoing fight against Republican election theft and also the split opening up within the party. To those who were prepared to give up the presidency that had been rightfully won by their candidate and were talking of ‘waiting until 2032’, Ashby had nothing but contempt. The fight was still there to be had. However, she did concede that that fight was with an entirely corrupt legal system. The Republicans had put all of those conservatives on the US Supreme Court to allow for a victory in a situation like the country found itself in during late 2028. Ashby expressed contempt for that court too, not just its biased and partisan members. The Supreme Court needed to be dismantled, Ashby said, because it was entirely not fit for purpose even if its partisan composition was changed. That change should come about as part of what she said she hoped to see in her lifetime where a ‘Second Republic’ came about. The United States of America needed a change that would come about by extensive reform. The Second Republic remark went viral. The whole speech was recorded (with Ashby knowing that) with the entire focus afterwards being on those two words when put together and coming out of her mouth: again, something she knew would happen. The right freaked out. Condemnation came thick and fast. Demands were made that the Walsh Administration act with legal action undertaken with the assertion that Ashby’s comments were calling for the overthrow of the US Government. It would take a day, but an announcement did come the next day that the Justice Department was actively taking a look at Ashby’s remarks made there in Nevada. That wasn’t enough for so many of those who were furious at what they heard but was all that they got from the outgoing president on that matter. The AIA has just murdered a Cabinet member when the drama erupted yet it had still been hoped in many quarters that a stronger reaction would have been made. Those who Ashby was dealing with, her fellow conspirators, were among those who had hoped for more action to come from DC.

Leaks concerning supposed Republican plans for the Roberts Administration and the legislative agenda following year where they would control the White House & Congress combined were made. Some of them were deliberate, controlled leaks to test reactions while others weren’t authorised by the highest figures in the party. Republicans were confident that the US Supreme Court would find in favour of Florida and thus see the White House granted to Senator Roberts as Walsh’s successor. There was extensive negative reaction on the left and among liberals to the contents of those leaks. Among conservatives and the wider right, they were happy with what they heard. Campaign promises made on the election trail were going to be followed up. 2029 and onwards were looking to the latter to be good years where they finally had the presidency back in their hands. Among on the strategy leaks was something else too, a matter which got a lot of attention. There were reported Republican plans to see that MRQ would face deportation proceedings once she was found to be an illegal alien by the Supreme Court just as Florida had done so. Whether deportation would be possible was considered problematic yet there was a desire to see that tried. Roberts was pressed by reporters for comment. Didn’t that seem like victor’s justice? How could he allow for his election opponent to be punished for something she had no knowledge of (the exact circumstances of her birth) and thrown out of the country? Wouldn’t that make America as bad as several hostile foreign regimes who did similar things to political opponents? Roberts denied that that was any intent of his projected incoming administration. He also said that the leaks had no basis in fact as far as he was aware. MRQ’s personal immigration lawyer, Hellfire Neville, was all over the matter. There were a lot of things he couldn’t do until a ruling was made but one of those wasn’t to not speak to the media. He lived up to his name where he went all out in fighting for her. MRQ also received a call from Walsh. The two of them were at odds but Walsh reached out. Her president told her that nothing like that would be allowed to happen: he’d stop any attempt at deporting her to a country which she didn’t know, seeing her family broken up as part of that. MRQ reminded him that he was out of office come January 20th. Regardless of that point made, Walsh assured her it wouldn’t happen because Roberts wouldn’t do that either. MRQ didn’t share his faith in the character of the man she’d beaten to presidential victory yet who was willing to go along with the theft to still put him in the White House.​
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New York’s lieutenant-governor, André Anderson, died at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on November 19th. He’d run alongside Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz as the Democrats’ vice presidential pick before being subject to an assassination attempt via a terrorist bomb in September. Anderson had survived that AIA strike in the Omaha Bombing when so many others there in Nebraska who’d turned out to see him hadn’t yet he had been left fighting to survive afterwards. For more than two months, he clung to life as he remained on the election ticket despite being in a coma and still there when MRQ engaged in legal action to try and stop the victory the two of them had won being stolen away. The choice of Bellevue – a famous public hospital rather than an expensive one – was a choice made by his wife who said that would have been his wish. It was places like Bellevue which Anderson had spent his political career fighting for. It was there too though that he acquired an infection that would see him suddenly go into sceptic shock and die. All sorts of allegations would be thrown about afterwards about the quality of care at Bellevue, so much of that utterly unfair. There were even stories produced from certain outlets that suggested that Anderson had been ‘finished off’ by assassins rather than succumbed to an infection. MRQ would speak publicly very soon after the news was released and there was a family statement too. Political opponents within New York state would likewise have kind things to say about Anderson, even the Republicans he’d battled against. That wouldn’t be the same outside of New York though. As to the Big Apple, a candlelight vigil would be fast organised and held on the same evening that he died. Thousands turned out. The NYPD had a presence yet weren’t needed. No right-wing gunmen showed up nor did vigil participants start rioting afterwards. Anderson’s death didn’t have that effect upon people. With regard to the opening his death caused on the Democratic ticket, that raised a lot of opinions. A victory for MRQ over Florida in the ongoing US Supreme Court case was considered unlikely by many yet for those who held out hope that she could win, they pondered over who she would pick to replace him. The matter of to whom states where the MRQ–Anderson ticket had won uncontested Electoral College victories would give their vice presidential votes was another. Campaign spokespeople for MRQ were asked those questions though there were ‘no comment’ remarks given in reply.

MRQ had returned from DC to bury her mother in California and with regards to Anderson, that would mean a third funeral within a couple of months for her to attend: the first being the highly-charged, emotional burial of Teyo down in Florida right before the election itself. She went to New York to attend the send off for Anderson and not back to the nation’s capital where hearings in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case continued. Democratic lawyers continued to argue with Florida’s secretary of state and her attorneys before the US Supreme Court on the matter of the eligibility of MRQ to be granted Electoral College votes from Florida. There was also the issue there of the testimony which had been sought from Blanca Quiroz Diaz. Florida had wanted to put her through depositions to question her (despite her recognised dementia) over allegations made that she knowingly adopted a child born in Mexico, not California, and then allowed for the woman that child grew into to run for the presidency based on a lie about her birth. Naturally, her death meant that she couldn’t do so with Finkelstein & other attorneys considering that all a moot point. That wasn’t acceptable to del Rio. What she and her team wanted was for them to be provided access to personal documentation and private correspondence from the estate of MRQ’s parents seeking to find whether there was any reference there to the claim that MRQ had been raised on a lie which her adoptive parents were aware of. The dispute was bitter though to many outsiders it seemed rather overdone. There were other matters ongoing too with the case where Flowers was in no way keen to testify in the case. He released a statement to the media saying that it had never been his desire to get involved in the previous California civil cases, the Florida Supreme Court case and the US Supreme Court fight either. In opposition to that, Chen spoke to the media up in Canada when she said that if called as a witness to testify in the case, she would do so. Her fleeing to Canada was a matter of her personal safety and not because she didn’t stand by the information she had put into the public arena. Through November, the fight there dragged on.

US Attorney General Daniel Gonzalez had opened an investigation in Senator-elect Ashby and her remarks made that were believed to constitute sedition. She had publicly called for the overthrow of the US Government by means of an establishment of a Second Republic: such was how he saw her words. There was a legal precedent for taking action against her – even if that was one fraught with difficulty – and Gonzalez believed that the Justice Department needed to begin that. President Walsh had disagreed yet not stopped him from further investigating the matter where what was looked for, what was indictable, was Ashby being part of a seditious conspiracy. Once that was announced by the Justice Department, Ashby had found herself with a whole load of defenders who spoke out against Gonzalez. One of them was Zenger, the former senator from Pennsylvania who had spent years stoking controversy and also made that no-hope, attention-seeking presidential run. He called for much the same thing where he used the term ‘New America’. The US Supreme Court, the US Senate and so much more needed abolishing, so he said. Gonzalez’s investigation brought with it the Walsh Administration losing another Cabinet member. Johns had resigned and Carlucci had been murdered before Francisco Ibarra chose late November to quit. The Transportation Secretary was, as Johns & Gonzalez were too, out of a job a few months down the line and so wasn’t entirely throwing his career away by walking early. However, his resignation wasn’t a quiet one like that of the Energy Secretary. Ibarra released a video across multiple social media platforms where he explained that his reason for resigning was that Walsh demanded that all administration figures stay silent with regards to the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case. He wouldn’t do that, not when the greatest of all injustices was taking place. He was a Democrat and there could be no silence from him. It was made mention of across several right-wing media outlets in the aftermath of the quitting of the Transportation Secretary that he was, like Johns, a ‘Westerner’: Ibarra was from New Mexico whereas Johns was an Oregon native. This was said to have been a big part of their reasoning for supporting the fight MRQ was having with note made that there were other Westerners in the Walsh Administration at high levels too. Would they join Johns & Ibarra in putting their regional identity over their role as government officials? Among those Westerners, someone whom like the two who had resigned had never spoken of being ‘a Westerner’ as part of her identity, and rejected that, was the Arizona-born US Secretary of State. She spoke on-the-record to a _CNN_ reporter and said she would remain serving her country and also trashed the whole idea of a Western political ideology/allegiance too.

Violent unrest rocked significant portions of Florida during the last weekend of November. To incite that, throughout a trio of counties in the central portion of Florida sheriff’s deputies & state troopers sought for arrest the political activist Oliver Tyrrell. He was wanted on charges of violating sections of the state’s controversial laws concerning encouraging resistance to state authority and organising public unrest. Red state Florida had laws similar to those in Georgia, Indiana, Missouri & Ohio: the passage of them had gained national attention but had remained in-place despite efforts to see the US Supreme Court overturn them. Tyrrell – who went by the pseudonym ‘Spartacus’ when organising – had left the Miami-Dade area and fled ‘into the boonies’ when he got wind of the incoming arrest operation. Using the name Spartacus online, Tyrrell had sought to motivate protesters for upcoming demonstrations across Florida where he used language which Florida state prosecutors deemed incitement to violence. They went after him with law enforcement personnel and, when in rural Polk County, Tyrrell ended up getting shot dead rather than arrested. Governor Cook nor anyone else in Tallahassee wanted that. Once the news was released, with claims made that Tyrrell had a gun on him, the unrest that was feared Spartacus could create came about. Down in Miami, up through Fort Lauderdale & West Palm Beach, in Tampa/St Pete’s, in Orlando and in Jacksonville, protesters took to the streets. The shooting of Tyrrell, where assertions where that he’d been shot as an ‘unarmed Black man’, set off a wave of rioting that lead to looting, arson and deaths. Florida authorities had feared that would come when the US Supreme Court made its decision in the matter of MRQ ‘winning’ Florida in the presidential election. It came early though, catching Cook and others off-guard. For three nights, Florida was alight. Cook brought out the National Guard in the end and, without them really having to do much rather than just showing up, the unrest came to a conclusion. It was seen as a harbinger of what was coming down the line in December though so Cook, yet also those activists against her of whom Tyrrell had been one among many, made plans for the future.

MRQ waited more than a week before she made an announcement as to whom she intended to replace Anderson with as her vice presidential pick. It was McCleary whom she chose. The two women made a joint appearance in Sacramento with both Vice President Padley and Governor Pierce present too. Off in distant DC, Walsh hit the metaphorical roof at Padley being there. It was a continuation of what she had been doing where she entirely defied his administration’s policy of neutrality for members, so he should really have expected something like that. He still went mad though. When he tried to get her on the phone, personally then having go through her Secret Service detail, Padley refused to take his call. She wouldn’t talk to him at all. As to the McCleary pick, MRQ went for her in defiance of what the vast majority of the Democratic Party, especially the establishment portions, would want. Anderson had never been rated highly at the DNC nor among the top ranks of Congressional delegations, yet McCleary was entirely different. She may have secured her US House seat when running as a Democrat yet she was from the Socialist Alternative movement and had forced her way into becoming the congresswoman-elect for the district which she won. The woman fought Democrats rather than being one of them. The DNC was in the hands of an acting chair (after McCleary had conspired to force Dillon out) and had been given zero input. Senate Minority Leader Young, House Minority Leader Underwood etc. were all cut out of not just the decision-making process but also being told it was going to be announced ahead of time. MRQ sprung that surprise on them. Only senior Westerners had been told with figures such as Ashby and Rosen aware ahead of time. The DNC received an email from the MRQ campaign after that announcement where a selection of names that MRQ intended to fill her prospective Cabinet with also arrived. Jaws once more dropped. Those were almost all outsiders with no real experience nor qualification. The list was soon leaked with off-the-record comments made that MRQ had gone off the deep end. When those names joined that of McCleary, there were plentiful smiles among Republicans. In interviews and statements, top level Republicans savaged the selections which MRQ had made as wholly unacceptable. None of those Cabinet names, not a single one, would ever be confirmed by the US Senate, if the outcome of the Supreme Court case went MRQ’s way that was. As to McCleary, there was nothing but contempt expressed for her among Republicans, which was in pretty much the same manner that many Democrats too felt.

Just before the month was out, McCleary made a speech in Albuquerque. She’d travelled across the West – including flying out to Hawaii for a short stop as well – in the several days following MRQ’s selection of her as her vice presidential pick. At passionate speeches in Portland, Honolulu, Denver and Phoenix ahead of her New Mexico appearance, McCleary had addressed huge crowds of supporters for her and MRQ. Talk was of the America that MRQ intended to see built when she won the legal dispute to stop the Republicans stealing the election. The people who showed up were generally those who took part in the ongoing demonstrations against that theft that hadn’t been brought to a halt, as well as partisan & conservative judges getting to decide that rather than ‘the people’. McCleary had no Secret Service protection with her. There were fears that she could be assassinated yet she seemed to pretend there was no threat either when she met with crowds without proper security around her. Members of the Gun Clubs affiliated to the Resistance did provide security yet in a report from undercover FBI agents assigned to keep an eye on things, the Attorney General would read that those people were damn unprofessional. Gonzalez was concerned (as many in DC were) that if McCleary was shot, the unrest previously seen would be dwarfed by what would come. McCleary held a special place for a lot of people and they would lash out if she was hurt. No one targeted her when she was in Albuquerque though. She went up to the stage with FBI agents in the crowd trying to blend in while looking for potential shooters. Her speech started with a call to remember Anderson and, unlike where before she had done that, when in New Mexico she made the claim that the ‘they’ who had killed him hadn’t just been the terrorists with the AIA but ‘the f*cking Republicans too’. The crowd loved it: many other Americans wouldn’t be so happy. She had two more controversial things to say too. The first was an expression of support for Ashby’s Second Republic comments and the second was the demand that supporters continue to ‘fight for everything’. That last remark would be managed by the right-wing media and turned into a ‘fight like hell’ remark: echoing what a former president had once said as part of a needling of the left agenda. A lot of attention when to the misquoting, the lies in fact, about what McCleary said at the end yet her accusations against the Republicans being the same as the AIA and also her backing of Ashby’s sedition was also something that gained a lot of attention. It was McCleary whom MRQ had put up as her selection for the next vice president and when she said things like that, many Democrats, ones outside of the West especially, were entirely turned off. Turned off not by McCleary, they were, but increasingly MRQ too.​


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## JamesG

*A Second Republic*


Chen flew down to DC from Toronto in early December 2028. Florida’s secretary of state, del Rio, had made a firm request that the V-Blogger from out of California, who’d fled for her life to Canada, be ready to take part in depositions so that Florida could use evidence from her in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case. Those hadn’t been needed when the matter of the question over the eligibility of Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz had been fought in Tallahassee, but it was thought that Chen might be needed with the US Supreme Court case. Lawyers could have gone up to Toronto yet Chen was brought down to DC. Threats to her life were considered real and so when she got off the plane, she was escorted to a secured hotel by Secret Service agents. There was a stir caused by the MRQ legal team about that yet it was really necessary. Her house had been burnt down by people who thought that she had been inside and the Canadians had also arrested an American citizen inside Chen’s friend’s apartment building in Canada’s largest city when armed with a concealed pistol. Flowers was also someone whom had been pushed to come to DC. He refused to do so entirely. A friend of his on the international poker circuit lent him use of a holiday hideaway down in Caribbean with everyone, including Flower’s attorney, claiming they had no idea where he was. With his career in ruin and threats to his life for writing a throwaway line in his expansive autobiography all those years past, the ageing Flowers sunned himself though also regretted how everything had all gone wrong. Chen took part in filmed depositions but it turned out that they weren’t used in evidence in the end. One of the young associates with the legal team of Finkelstein would leak a copy of the tape (and end up fired for that) where Chen revealed where that final piece of evidence about the alleged true circumstances of MRQ’s birth had come from. There was an immediate explosion of anger against Edgar Bates and his Bates Foundation. A billionaire, Bates had made his money in pharmaceuticals before selling his business, retiring and going into the political donor game. He gave money to the Democrats with statements made that it was their social policies which he supported. His money was considered poison, blood money in fact, by many on the left though with progressives and democratic socialists refusing to touch Big Pharma cash. MRQ and McCleary were the loudest among those who would refuse to take it though along with many others out West too. How Bates had gotten hold of an events diary filled in weekly at a rural California church back in 1990, Chen didn’t know. Yet it had come from him directly. Bates had provided her with proof of its authenticity too, leading her to release that to (in her own words) ‘destroy the campaign of the China-loving, lesbian communist’ which was MRQ.

McCleary’s continued public statements at demonstrations & rallies where addressing mass crowds, as well as adding to them during online broadcasts, drew condemnation where she remained calling for a Second Republic. America needed a do-over, she said across cities in the West which she visited, where there was the ridding of the undemocratic portions of the nation’s government and a whole new constitution written too. _Facebook_, _Twitter_ and _YouTube_ came under immense pressure to cease broadcasting those statements of hers and began to fold under pressure: _Clipper_ continued to allow her to say what she did and that brought more traffic towards that new social media site, the one known as MRQ’s favourite one too. Note was taken by critics of what she had to say that the terms used by her & others had moved from West America to a New America to a Second Republic. It all seemed so natural in retrospect unless that was carefully looked at: the stage was set early for the ultimate progression to the final term for what McCleary, Ashby and Zenger were calling for. The latter, that former Pennsylvania senator whose two years in office had been full of immense controversy, was one of the few high-profile politicians who wasn’t a Westerner to support what McCleary was arguing for. There was little support elsewhere (and also not full support in anyway across the West either) but he remained committed to it following his latching onto that. Banned from all of the social media networks, even _Clipper_, Zenger broadcast his support through right-wing outlets such as _Gab_ and _Parler_. For him to be using them was quite something but, like _Clipper_, those were money-driven enterprises who wanted the ‘engagement’ that someone such as Zenger whom their majority audience was firmly against. Some of the Far Left nationwide also used both platforms – often seeking to get offended – and they heard what Zenger had to say where he reaffirmed his support for a Second Republic where he linked that to recent ICE raids in both Atlanta and Detroit against illegal immigrants. Plentiful alienation of those outside the West had come from Ashby and McCleary when they focused on what a Second Republic could do for West America, but Zenger highlighted other issues such as the abolishment of ICE and other such hated institutions too. In Los Angeles on December 3rd, when McCleary was talking to an excited crowd in that California city, she told them that if the fight in the US Supreme Court against Florida’s stealing of the election on behalf of the Republicans, then there wouldn’t just be speeches made for a Second Republic but a fight made for that. She didn’t explain exactly what she meant, allowing for those both there and also who would see the footage to take what they wanted from that.

The Democratic congressional leadership and the DNC had already entirely cut ties with both Ashby & McCleary where it was considered that they were calling for the overthrow of the US Government, but they also started the process of breaking with MRQ and people around her after McCleary made that Los Angeles speech. MRQ had decided that McCleary was to replace the deceased Anderson on the party ticket (for an election already considered by so much of the establishment to have been successfully stolen by the Republicans) and stood by her. Enough was enough. Underwood and Young could no longer put up with MRQ’s massive misjudgement. They had influence over the vast majority of the US House and Senate contingents of their party. Kirk, the candidate whom MRQ had beaten in the Democratic primaries, fair and square too, had emphatically campaigned for the victor between June and November. She was aghast at McCleary’s actions and MRQ backing her. The New Jersey senator spoke to_ MSNBC_ and called out McCleary’s treason. That was what it was, she told that network and tens of millions of Americans, and Kirk couldn’t ignore that. Dunn echoed those remarks on _CNN_ and added that she believed that MRQ was completely unfit to be the next president even if the Supreme Court did the unexpected and found her eligible past Republican lies. The Virginia congresswoman would a day later do an interview with _NPR_ where she told listeners across the nation that there was a belief in her and other Democrats that come the following January, McCleary ‘and other traitors’ out West would swear MRQ in as the 49th President and form some sort of shadow government. She urged President Walsh to see that stopped ahead of time. The Republicans revelled in the drama where the Democrats were tearing each other part. Outrage was expressed against what McCleary was saying but the main focus was on twisting the knife in against the Democrats. Walsh was also urged by many of them – where they spoke to the media, not him – to see Ashby, McCleary and Zenger arrested on federal charges.

McCleary had wanted to go to Salt Lake City and talk with supporters in that Utah city. Word of a planned trip to the biggest city in that Red state in the West reached that governor and he made moves to see nothing like that occur. Still raging about the Democrats managing to win a US House seat in Utah, the governor stopped a McCleary visit by making sure that there was no one in that city that had so emphatically supported MRQ ready to gather. Should McCleary still come, a ‘welcoming committee’ of state troopers was ready to turn her and whomever was with her back around to return them from wherever they came. Physical force was intended for that ejection out of Utah for the Democratic politician and any entourage of hers but that was as far as things were ever intended to go there. McCleary never showed up yet a pair of state troopers undertook a different kind of _welcome_ when they came across two African-American men in a car with California plates driving into Salt Lake City. An altercation occurred after a traffic stop where both occupants of that car ended up dead. Congressman-elect Clarke made a massive stink. It was him who had invited McCleary to the city and had been disappointed when she opted not to. The shooting where Caucasian police officers opened fire on what turned out to be unarmed Black men, claiming that they feared those they shot were BLA terrorists, gave him an opportunity which he didn’t turn down. He incited a riot that gained national coverage, all to suit his attention-seeking agenda. There was additionally violence in early December up in Washington state. The Free Americans and the People’s Revolutionaries clashed in several instances in the eastern portion of the state where the two militia/terror groups traded fatal shots. Over in the highly-populated northwestern corner, among the cities on the Puget Sound, continued unrest went on where protesters with the Resistance went on with their independent streak. Their mass civil disobedience across Olympia, Seattle and Tacoma was in anger at the US Supreme Court case: that was something that state authorities in Washington could do nothing about. McCleary’s writ hadn’t run that far up in the Pacific North–West in previous instances yet she went to Seattle and spoke with Resistance people there. She changed their minds about how they should continue to act in reply to the Republicans stealing the election: fighting for a Second Republic was something she convinced them was more fruitful. McCleary also sought a meeting with the Governor of Washington. He refused that. The state government and much of the federal representation from Washington weren’t onboard the same train and wanted nothing to do with McCleary. Things were different elsewhere in the West yet Washington wasn’t joining them.

McCleary had declared in Albuquerque that the American Insurgent Army and the Republican Party were one in the same. That claim had been entirely rejected by Republicans nationwide and that denial echoed by countless Democrats as well as Walsh Administration members too. Nonetheless, the dirt which McCleary had slung regarding the AIA terror group had stuck in many places. Once more following her lead, Zenger had made comments linking the AIA to the Republicans. There were people nationwide who believed that, despite seemingly the entire establishment saying it was entirely false. The AIA had gone out and targeted Democrat politicians though, ‘suspiciously’ leaving Republicans alone. All that changed when they sought to murder Senate Majority Leader Green. A trio of gunmen, each of them a former US Special Forces soldier with many long years of military experience, got into the grounds of his private residence in Oklahoma. Their night-time assault was detected at the last minute though. Both Green and his wife had their shotguns out while the Secret Service detachment on-site had pistols and Uzis. Gunfire ripped through the house. First one then the second assailant went down dead: the third tried to flee though was shot at distance and killed like his compatriots. State authorities were fast on the scene afterwards, followed quickly by the media. Green and his wife were taken out in a helicopter long before the pandemonium of the media showing up occurred. Breaking news across the United States concerned the attempted assassination of Green. There were a lot of people who either openly or privately expressed an opinion that the world would have been a better place if the architect of Republican obstructionism and non-democracy had died. Secret Service agents were praised and the AIA condemned. Nonetheless, there were expressions made in _certain_ quarters that the whole thing was rather convenient, wasn’t it? The deaths of all of those attackers was said to be part of some sort of cover-up as well where not one of them had been taken alive for questioning. It was asked if they really had been AIA and not dupes set up to die for something they didn’t understand.

The Walsh Administration remained in chaos. Yet another Cabinet member left the government though in the case of Sun K. Xa, she was pushed rather than having jumped like those before her did. The Korean-American who was the first transwoman to serve in the Cabinet (something that Walsh’s people had always boasted of with pride) was a California native with the role of Education Secretary. She had expressed displeasure at the ban on all administration figures from speaking out against the Republicans swiping the White House away from her fellow Democrats. It was an injustice which she felt that she couldn’t be silent upon. Talking Walsh around rather than doing as Johns & Ibarra had done in walking was her intention yet she and he had a major bust-up. Her resignation was demanded where Walsh said that he couldn’t trust that she was loyal to him. Xa went straight to the media after tendering the most terse resignation letter she could imagine. She found herself willingly listened to. There were others, outside the Cabinet yet still key people in the Walsh Administration, who had been speaking off-the-record about the paranoia running rampant through their president. He was said to be seeing enemies everywhere, especially among those he deemed ‘Westerners’. Xa told the network correspondents to whom she spoke to that she was entirely against what McCleary was saying too. Walsh was completely unreasonable in his ban on public comments on the most important matter imaginable, that being the fate of the nation. Furthermore, she also blew the lid off on the Padley matter. It was more than an open secret that the vice president was completely at odds with Walsh but Xa revealed unknown details about their dispute: she let everyone know that her president believed that his vice president was fully behind the Second Republic movement.​
*​
The nine justices of the US Supreme Court retired to consider a verdict in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case. They went into secure isolation with other hearings that were in line to he heard pushed aside. It was an unusual situation yet the matter of Florida seeking to effectively have the 2028 US President Election overturned required their full attention. That isolation meant that Chief Justice Andrew Mercer could no longer go jogging, which pleased his security detail no end. He was a target when out & about at a time when tensions were exceedingly high: detailed death threats had been made and the Secret Service believed that to stop the justices delivering a verdict one way or another, there were capable people out there seeking to harm one, several or all of them. MRQ made an appeal for calm and also asked for her supporters to ‘keep the faith’. That had been something which she had said on Election Night, when things had gone against her at the beginning, yet by maintaining the belief that victory was certain, such went the thinking, things had swung her way. All across DC, there were protests throughout early December – just like there had been in mid- & late-November – both in support and against MRQ winning the presidency. Anti-Supreme Court protests also took place, with the ones through the first weeks of December related to the Second Republic matter. Streets were occupied by protesters until the police could clear them. Another protest was one attended by both MRQ supporters and also environmentalists and they stormed the grounds of the Congressional Power Plant within DC. That fossil fuel facility had for a long time been a source of controversy where campaigners refused to accept that it must continue to be oil- & gas-fired. Capitol Police, assisted by both the DC Metro Police and US Park Police, eventually cleared the facility but only after a significant struggle which gained national media attention.

On the other side of the country, violence continued in Idaho. That Red state there in the West was once more beset by shooting incidents resulting in multiple deaths. Far Left and Far Right militias turned the centre of the small town of Moscow (near to the state line with Washington) into a battlefield where two members of the People’s Revolutionaries, three Free Americans, a police officer and two civilians caught in the crossfire lost their lives. Down in the state’s capital, the home of a Resistance organiser was broken into during the night. He exchanged gunfire with his would-be assassins, leaving him and two of them dead. A state trooper was shot dead on Interstate-15 near the Utah state line with evidence uncovered afterwards that he was involved in militia activity when in uniform yet had come unstuck in that. Militia members roamed free across large portions of the state, terrorising citizens. Media crews had been threatened and attacked when trying to broadcast footage. Governor Winkelman was assailed from fellow members of the state government with Lt.–Gov. Carol Sweet at the head of that. The Free Americans had a good chunk of that state authorities onside along with such figures as Sweet in positions of significant power. Winkelman sought federal help when he contacted President Walsh directly. Only words, which meant nothing at, came from DC. Winkelman was helpless and faced threats of removal when Sweet and other officials found out that he had sought to bring ‘federal stormtroopers’ into Idaho to combat ‘patriots’ allegedly defending the state from ‘armed communists’. In something that he didn’t invite, Winkelman was offered support though. It came from an unexpected source in the form of one of his fellow governors in the West, though a Democrat and not a Republican like him.

It was Governor JoAnn Rowan who was in contact where she offered help coming from Colorado, to be joined by others in that too, if Idaho needed it. Law and order could be maintained if Colorado sent aid, Rowan said, and she would do what the federal government refused to. Winkelman said neither yes nor no: he took the offer under consideration. The offer made was one which Rowan consulted with close confidants of hers before she made it. Those weren’t Colorado state officials but instead members of what was jokingly referred to at the start as the ‘Summerlin Gang’. Summerlin was a master planned community outside of Las Vegas where Senator-elect Ashby had her home and had hosted that November meeting of Democrats across the West, a meeting closed to outsiders. Rowan was one of the top tier politicians who made an agreement to act in concert in their mutual interests. There had been nineteen of them in the form of two mayors, six governors, ten Members of Congress (including incoming ones such as Ashby) and the Vice President of the United States. Such people had been making plots and plans ahead of that meeting yet formalised things there, including seeing that McCleary would afterwards fight for their interests too. The nineteen were an unwieldy number for decision-making and also a big security risk: there was an inner core of just four which Rowan, one of the key organisers, was part of. It was to the three others that she asked whether there was any objection to trying to see if there were opportunities to be had with regards to Idaho. The other three were Padley, Pierce and also the Mayor of Albuquerque Ignacio Gutiérrez. It was the four of them, more than anyone else, who were committed to fighting for more than just MRQ succeeding in the legal dispute over the election outcome and even the push for a Second Republic. What they wanted was something else, something that they kept from their co-plotters until they believed that the time was right. That secret aim was to see the West break away from the rest of the United States. The divorce was expected to be violent and costly but they had committed themselves to it. The risks were known. Rowan, who truly believed that the Republicans’ stealing the election was just the start of their autocracy where they would be ‘going full Iran’ (so she put it), had explained to the others that the risks for them were of the severest form. They’d likely lose their lives if they failed. Nonetheless, she, like the other three, were wholly committed once they’d all privately admitted that all was lost with relying upon the Supreme Court to give MRQ a fair hearing. They desired to see that Second Republic come to fruition, but knew that it could never come about across America from coast-to-coast. Instead it would just be in the West. To get to that point, to see that happen when everything was going to be stacked against, wasn’t going to be be easy… not at all. They were trying to do that though even when faced with countless hurdles in their way so as to make the dream impossible.

MRQ knew nothing of the Summerlin Gang, nor especially its inner core group of people who’d wholly committed themselves to overthrowing the US Government in the process of an act of secession. They’d kept her out of it, believing that she would have no part of it until it was inevitable. Padley had spoken of keeping MRQ ‘innocent’. Ashby and McCleary knew quite a bit of the planned outcome yet even they had some of that innocence too. As to MRQ, she spent the wait for the Supreme Court to deliver its verdict back in the Bay Area. She remained at her home in California though also had meetings with supporters and allies. There were additionally regular meetings with Hellfire Neville too, ones that continued at the urging of MRQ’s wife. Davis expressed concern that the Supreme Court would do what was anticipated and find that Florida’s assertion that MRQ was an illegal alien was valid. That would open the congresswoman and presidential candidate up to possible deportation ‘back to’ Mexico during 2029. MRQ had said repeatedly that she couldn’t see that happening yet Davis and Hellfire each told her that it was possible. The leaks which had come out concerning the Republicans’ agenda for government detailed further immigration removal measures going beyond the already outrageous ones which Walsh had allowed Congress to place into law. To be sent to the country where the Birthers said that she had been born and spent the first few weeks of her life would mean MRQ going to an alien place. She’d travelled to Mexico for both personal and congressional reasons yet that wasn’t home. Walnut Creek, California & the United States was her home. Hellfire followed the Supreme Court proceedings extensively and also worked with other attorneys who were willing to assist in prep work should the very worst happen the following year and ICE come for their client. There was a push to be ready to fight deportation at every term, with the full knowledge that an effort like that would act with the ‘legitimacy’ of a finding by the nation’s highest court at its heart. Paperwork was pre-filled and other measures taken as well. Davis took more on an interest in the particulars of that than MRQ herself did. Her wife had gone to Sacramento where she had a one-on-one meeting with Governor Pierce who informed her that there would be no extradition made out of California nor no seizure of MRQ from her home either. Legally, his powers there were less than that. Davis knew exactly what the federal government could do if it wanted to and she feared that her wife really didn’t understand that threat she faced when people such as Pierce assured her that nothing like that could happen.

When arranging that meeting with Pierce, MRQ had used the _Panda_ messaging app. She’d downloaded it onto her cellphone at the suggestion of Hellfire who was using it too. Less than fifty thousand Americans were making use of it despite the promise of secure end-to-end encryption and the high-tech features which _Panda_ came with. It was an app which had come from China (a private company there, not the government) and there had been congressional drama about whether the Chinese government _did_ have access to the contents of text & video messages plus information exchanged between users. The marketing had suffered though there were still a good number of people, Pierce among them so MRQ had found, who didn’t believe the China concerns and valued its secrecy. Pierce had pushed Neville – whom he had something on – to get MRQ off her previous unsecure messaging app and onto the one and those with whom he were plotting were using. _Panda_ was secure, so the Summerlin Gang had been told. Assurance on that had been given by Padley. During the Summer, she had been briefed by National Security Agency figures that the app was uncrackable. The US Intelligence Community and its overseas allies too (Five Eyes, Israel and others) had tried damn hard but had been unable to force their way in. The attempts had been made because all sorts of unsavoury characters were using the service with the NSA and others wanting to read their private mail. Padley had also been assured that the fuss the Republicans had made in Congress, which drove many patriotic Americans to avoid the app, was all rubbish too: the Chinese were certainly not spying upon the messages exchanged and it was all xenophobic China-bashing. In addition, it had also been confided to her that the public trashing of _Panda_ was a pys-op by the Intelligence Community so as to see the continued use of other unsecure apps which customers were told were secure when they in fact weren’t. Those involved in what was happening in the West, either at the top or on the mid-level rungs without full knowledge, were all communicating via _Panda_. If they were talking about what they were on other services, all of the illegality they were planning would have been exposed long beforehand.

The Walsh Administration suffered from more resignations. Figures outside the cabinet, all out of a job starting late-January 2029, began to quit in protest to join the others who had done so. They were all political appointees and not names on the lips of ordinary Americans. From out of his White House staff, Walsh lost his Domestic Policy Council head and the Director of the OMB. Undersecretaries at the big departments quit and so too did agency heads & deputy heads too. The majority of the wave of resignations didn’t come with statements in print or to the media made as to the why that was done. There were Westerners among the number yet the majority weren’t from that region. The quitting was all about what was happening with regard to the ongoing election fallout and the firm instruction made that anyone choosing to speak out couldn’t do that unless they wanted to be fired. The biggest name who quit, a Texan too, denying any accusation that she had any supposed loyalty to the West and those there whom Walsh considered to be against him, was the Solicitor General. The resignation of Simone Ayers was significant as she was a high-level appointee at the Justice Department who’d had to be approved by the Senate and then had been the federal government’s ‘point woman’ when matters were argued before the Supreme Court. Politically-appointed, Ayers was still a career figure. She had had an excellent relationship with Walsh, right up until she had considered he had gone off the deep end though. In her resignation speech – which she did live in a _YouTube_ video – Ayers savaged Walsh’s apparent belief the ‘Westerners were disloyal and Easterners were loyal’. It was madness, she said, the dumbest thing he’d ever done up to and including having that extra-martial affair. Ayers added that at a time when the country was under immense domestic political strain, Walsh’s actions risked tearing it further apart and also endangering the fate of the union too. When at the DOJ, Ayers had reported to the Attorney General. Gonzalez had tried to stop her leaving, or at least making such a strong resignation speech, yet failed. When he spoke with Walsh, he found the president seemingly non-pulsed at such an event as that. The matter which Gonzalez addressed wasn’t the quitting of Ayers though but instead Ashby and McCleary. DOJ investigators had found evidence (all of it in the public sphere, so it wasn’t as if that was hard work) that would justify the arrest of those two women on federal charges. Gonzalez wanted them locked up after Ashby had given a shocking interview to _MSNBC_ where she justified the idea of the disestablishment of the union which was the United States, and further McCleary speeches to crowds in the West also talking about a Second Republic as well. Walsh refused to allow Gonzalez to proceed though. His no was one where it was a no for the time being, not a complete no. He told his disbelieving attorney general that he still hoped the whole thing would blow over eventually and be all over by the New Year. Gonzalez thought him delusional on that.​
*​
Details concerning what the Second Republic was all about, beyond the hyped-up big ticket items, were published by proponents of the New America which they wanted to see. That was all of the United States too, not just the western portions where progressives & democratic socialists had risen right to the top out there. A new constitution was presented along with aspects of an electoral system where fairness was said to be enshrined. The documents contained how a new legal system would be run and also had extensive social aspects covered within it, protected by a very modern Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century. Lawyers of note, legal scholars and constitutional professors who for many years had been separately seeking to get their ideas into the public arena had finally been given the opportunity to do that, all also see them promoted too. There had been hesitation from a good few of their number, especially those based outside of the West, and so there weren’t as many names attached to the whole matter as there should have been, yet others whose work was brought together and presented as a bold new future for a New America felt comfortable doing so. The Second Republic was being fronted by the woman in the running to be the nation’s next vice president and also had the backing of influential political figures on the left too. There were short and long versions put out of the outline of what the founding documents for establishing & governing the Second Republic looked like. The former was to attract the attention of the interested who didn’t want to delve too deep and be lost in legal jargon; the latter were published so to satisfy the urges of those who paid attention to the most minute detail. When the plan went out over the internet, it was soon seen by tens of millions of Americans directly before the rest of the country heard about it through the media. How that presentation came via the media depended upon who was broadcasting that to what particular audience. Away from public perception, there was the political reaction. Every single Republican nationwide seemed to explode in anger at once and they were joined by a majority (though not an overwhelming one) of the Democrats too. The political establishment rejected what they heard whether it was the short or long version.

The political crisis within America where the outcome of the 2028 President Election had yet to be decided a month after it had happened had attracted global attention. The eyes of the world were upon the whole drama of the first then second court cases along with the protests that came with statements for wholescale political reform that were deemed as treasonous. From friend and foe alike, there was a great deal of interest in the whole mess. Many of those foes, opponents of the United States when it came to world & regional outlook, took more than just an interest too: they acted to further their own goals all while America was distracted. The United States had a significant troop contingent within the Baltic States where they were there alongside NATO allies to defend Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania from Russian aggression. Russia’s president wanted those troops sent home and the Baltics back under the control of his nation. War was out of the question but state-directed terrorism, done in a manner where plausible deniability was maintained, was done. Fake terrorists who claimed to be striking for the freedom from oppression for Russian language speakers launched bomb & gun attacks against domestic security forces in those states. US and NATO troops weren’t targeted yet violent instability was rife, especially when there was subsequent (real) violence directed against ethnic Russians that Moscow could point to as a consequence. The Iranians further expanded their influence among Egyptian terror groups. Another Suez blocking operation failed yet neither the Iranians nor the Egyptian revolutionaries they were supporting were going away. The regional tension due to that was immense with Israel itching to strike. The Chinese pushed naval operations in the South China Sea to a near unacceptable level. That too had another regional effect though the consequences would be global if everything blew up there. On top of all of that, there was a counter-_coup_ down in Caracas. During early ‘28, pro-democracy forces had _finally_ removed from power the dictatorship. They had done so with Columbian and Peruvian help, not needing the aid to do that President Walsh had been beset with domestic demands that he send. The urging of Democrats and Republicans alike at home to act, while others from both parties demanded that the United States stay out, had been intense. He had sat on his hands and done nothing to influence what happened, an issue that did cause big ripples in the Republican presidential primaries due to the large numbers of Venezuelans in the Red state of Florida. December ‘28 saw the military seize power and bring back figures from the dictatorship. Freedom vanished for so many who had recently only gained it, all while, once again, the United States did nothing to intervene.

The Resistance changed its pattern of behaviour with regards to where to protest throughout the West. Directed by McCleary, who had power over that movement in a manner which many people close to her could see was rather intoxicating, there was mass disruption caused to the activities of federal law enforcement agencies and components. The stated purpose of the protests that saw building invasions with sit-ins or firm blockages to access on the streets outside if a way in couldn’t be gained was to highlight injustice that that those organisations undertook against the oppressed. There remained a mass of support for MRQ and her legal case among the protesters throughout those states but McCleary was able to send them off on a different ‘mission’. Across Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon, thousands of young people, teenagers of school age too, set about taking on federal law enforcement where they worked. Offices of the DEA and the FBI were targeted, so too those of Customs & Border Protection (C&BP) and ICE. The latter was long a target for protesters, even before the Republicans set about stealing the election, but those against that organisation had an influx of fellow protesters. In cities and towns, thousands of people converged upon government buildings in flash-mob fashion. Here and there, security teams were fast enough to react: in most instances though, their responses were embarrassingly slow. The C&BP was part of the Department for Homeland Security had its offices in urban areas were for support staff. Their field work was also disrupted though. Hundreds of activists were bussed down to the border areas through the states bordering Mexico. They set to work making things difficult for the C&BP, all at a time when the border area was engulfed in a crisis with mass illegal immigration, extensive drug smuggling and an undeclared civil war raging in Mexico. Parents and guardians of many of those teenagers were up in arms when many of the children involved who went down to the border area didn’t return for days. Some came home with horror stories of things that happened to them, a few others didn’t come home at all. Resistance spokespeople defended their actions and set about correcting many of the add-on lies told about what had happened yet couldn’t deny, and neither could McCleary when pressed either, that four teenagers had vanished in troubling circumstances when in isolated stretches of the dangerous border area across Arizona & California.

Speaking out against McCleary as while as easing back on their vocal support for MRQ while the US Supreme Court decided on the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case was eventually decided by so much of the Democratic Party establishment to have not worked. The message hadn’t gotten through to those whom they wanted to cease what they were doing and there was a lot of ‘guilt by association’ ongoing that the Democrats were becoming aware of: they were all being tainted with the same brush as the democratic socialists hell bent on a showdown with the federal government (that was how the Second Republic was regarded, not as something with a wholly different outcome). There was a push made to stop the damage being done to their party by showing those out in the West that they were entirely serious with their displeasure. A strategy of maintaining continuous coverage to express just how against what was happening they were was agreed upon. They would dominate the news media agenda and make sure that they were damn well heard out there in the West! It was strategized that MRQ would rein McCleary in or, if that didn’t work, then cut ties with her as well as figures like Ashby and Zenger too. One after another, spread several hours apart, over the period of many days, top tier Democrats criticised the selection of McCleary by MRQ as her replacement vice presidential candidate. They wanted MRQ to retract that and denounce McCleary: if not, then they couldn’t give their support to MRQ any more. The Governor of New York kicked that off. A Minnesota senator was next. Following her was the House Minority Leader, then the Governor of Virginia and after him, a long-serving congresswoman from Illinois. On and on it went. Drop McCleary, MRQ was told, or we are no longer with you. Among those taking part in that ongoing series of demands made was Nicole Doucet. She was an Arizona senator and someone certainly not part of the Summerlin Gang or any similar grouping. Doucet had never been associated with fellow Westerners from Democratic ranks. She was a centralist, one of the very few that the Democrats had left in the West and certainly the most influential. Progressives and democratic socialists had failed to work together to primary her in the 2024 Arizona Primary but were seeking to do that come ‘30. Doucet broadcast her message from out of Tucson, a city where McCleary had spoken about her Second Republic from. The whole matter was nothing more than an attempt to bring down the nation, she said, and McCleary was instigating treason by being the leading proponent of it all. There was already a target on Doucet’s back – she knew that after the Secret Service had briefed her extensively on threats to her life – but that only got larger after she made that public broadcast. The unelected Amit D’Souza didn’t join in the coordinated series of attacks against MRQ but at the same time chose to wholly reject her. He was a labour activist from Michigan – who’d had highly-publicised nationwide fights with _Amazon _and _Walmart_ – and had been on that list of names that the Democratic presidential candidate had sent to the DNC where she named a Cabinet pick. D’Souza would _never_ have been confirmed by the US senate as the next Labor Secretary. He made a video statement on _Clipper_ where he denounced McCleary for her encouragement of violence, alleged antisemitic comments and general unsuitability for any public office. That MRQ could stand with McCleary made D’Souza believe that MRQ herself was unsuitable for national office.

Back in DC, the decision by Walsh not to do as the Attorney General wanted and have McCleary arrested on federal charges leaked. Gonzalez assured the 48th President that that didn’t come from him though couldn’t be sure if the paranoid Walsh believed him. Details of the Justice Department’s case also went into the public arena and that was certainly something that Gonzalez didn’t want. He sought to find the leaker due to the damage done with that. Defeated Republican primary candidate Stokes and also Roberts’ running mate Mitchell both made public demands that Walsh act upon the wishes of the DOJ. Arrest McCleary and others too, the senator from Wisconsin and the former senator out of North Carolina called upon Walsh to do. That he didn’t.. Walsh allowed her to stay free where, the day after the leak of what the DOJ had been doing emerged, she made another one of her highly-controversial speeches demanding that Second Republic be established. She spoke up in Salem, a small Oregon city some distance away from where she had made her name in Portland. The list of institutions which she called for to be abolished was run through once more. The Supreme Court, the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defence Department… she wanted them all gone. Shots were fired against other elements of the federal government of the United States too. Then she moved to attacking more of the fabric of the nation that had previously been seen. A whole wave of leading Democrats along with every leading Republican one could name had called upon her arrest for the what else she had said about the Second Republic she wanted to see established yet there was a lot of dropping of jaws when she went after the US Constitution itself where she tore into it directly rather than the system it had created. It was a document written by slavers for the benefit of the landed classes & the establishment, she declared to a crowd which whooped for joy, and was an abhorrent document for the standards of 2028. She held up a copy of the Constitution and preceded to tear it into two then four pieces, all to be then thrown to the floor. That was what McCleary thought of the founding document of the United States that countless Americans held so dear to them. That was done by the woman seeking to be the next Vice President of the United States of America.

The justices made a decision earlier than anticipated. On the 11th of December, a Monday exactly a week before the Electoral College was due to meet, they published their ruling. In a six-to-three decision, with the lead dissenting opinion written by none other than the supposed jellyfish that was Singleton, where he proved all those detractors wrong about not having a backbone and being a Republican shill, the US Supreme Court agreed with Florida that Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz was an illegal alien. She was thus unable to be granted the thirty votes from Florida in the Electoral College that had been illegitimately gained in the presidential election the month beforehand. Singleton and the two with him had faced complete disagreement from the majority of other justices on the nation’s highest court. Those six explained in their ruling that there was compelling evidence that MRQ had been born in Mexico to an American mother and brought to the United States as a newborn. If MRQ knew the truth of that, they didn’t state an opinion there: their focus was on whether she was an American citizen or not. Additionally, their ruling also didn’t also cover the new, corrected figure that was the 2028 election. Instead of losing the presidential election 283-255, Senator Edward Roberts would in fact win it 285-253. He was going to be the 49th President. Immediate, tremendous anger erupted nationwide.​


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## JamesG

*Martial Law*


Lawlessness rocked multiple locations across the United States in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court delivering its verdict in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case. Street protests turned – as was expected – to violence, looting and arson. Urban areas were struck by unrest and the police response to the outbreak of general mayhem, despite there being warning of what was likely to happen, was inadequate. The downtown portion of El Paso was somewhere that the local authorities entirely lost control of for an entire evening and the following night. Out there in Far West Texas, it was known that there was significant strong feeling on the election outcome but there wasn’t enough serious consideration given to the scale of the reaction by residents. The police withdrew in the face of massed, dangerous crowds hellbent on violence. Detroit and other Michigan cities had tens of thousands of rioters on their streets where the local and state police forces pulled out to save themselves. Up in fires went a large portion of commercial property where those protesting for democracy to be respected set a wave of fires because they couldn’t have that. The Bronx and Harlem in New York City witnessed a night of violence though other areas of the Big Apple were less effected. The NYPD moved officers into those two portions of the city before the night was out and retook control rather than abandon them to the riotous mob. DC was struck pretty hard by violence too. The authorities would pin the blame on opportunist criminals rather than politically-minded protesters and they were correct in that. There was a chance to loot for self-enrichment and a lot of those involved in tearing apart a big portion of the nation’s capital city were up for that. DC Metro Police didn’t retreat despite being heavily-outnumbered and at one point in the night, they thought they were close to ending everything. ‘Reinforcements’ for the rioters showed up though where more people flooded the streets and the police lines were smashed open. Most of DC, all but the central government core, were left very dangerous places to be out in. Rioters killed rioters. None of that compared to urban areas of Florida though. Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando and Tampa/St. Pete’s were all engulfed in full-on violence. Red state Florida had seen significant trouble since the election and there were many mitigating factors in why it was so extensive after that Supreme Court decision. The deaths of Teyo and then Spartacus down in the Sunshine State came alongside a strong use of force against protesters by the state government. There was a mood to combat the authorities because of that though also the unrelated issue of what was happening in Venezuela linked to it due to the high numbers of exiles from that country in Florida. Furthermore, more than elsewhere in the country outside of the West, Florida had a lot of Gun Club members aligned with the Resistance. They knew their rights and brought with them weapons to defend the protesters from attacks. Soon enough those weapons were used, with a response coming back at them, and that saw Florida drenched in blood.

The Secretary of Defence, the retired General E. John Ferdinand, gained urgent presidential authority to deploy DC & Maryland national guardsmen into DC. Maryland’s governor agreed to the deployment of his state’s military personnel though there was full US Government control over those from DC. Soldiers in riot gear, carrying their weapons too, flooded the streets and retook control within a few hours. There were shooting incidents where seven lives would eventually be lost. Up in Michigan, national guardsmen were also sent into five of that state’s cities. It took far longer to get them underway and there was critical comment that their deployment only began after the night-time rioting was over with. Nonetheless, they shot two people in Dearborn who attacked them with improvised weapons and another in Flint. An even longer delay occurred in Texas. Governor Christina Isabel Flores Cruz – a young Latina who fumed every time there was any comparison made between her and MRQ – oversaw the horror show that was the grindingly slow movement of the deployment of TX ARNG elements into El Paso. They got there eventually, though long after the unrest had came to an end. As was the case with Michigan, there was still some shooting despite the late arrival with five lives lost as part of that. Governor Cook had had the entire Florida National Guard (ground and air components) on stand-by along with the SDF as well. She had them moving ahead of the rioting really getting going. Unfortunately, the numbers of those protesting were too large to deal with and there were also all of those armed ‘defenders’ of the protesters about too who ended up trading shots with ‘patriotic’ Floridians from various right-wing militias. Florida’s part-time military reservists found themselves engaged in firefights and at times forced into retreat. It took all night for order to be restored, with almost two dozen lives lost before that happened. Cook didn’t pull back the troops she’d send out onto the streets afterwards either. She kept them where they were. Emergency powers were employed by the governor to see martial law enforced in selected places across her state. That was rigidly enforced too leading to many further violent instances where a bit of common sense could have avoided things. State authorities cracked down hard on media reporting of the order enforced too where the justification of ‘threats to public safety’ was made to halt live broadcasts emerging from Florida. Cook shut so much of her state down, willing to take the immense criticism, because she didn’t want to see it all burnt down.

What happened in portions of the country outside of the West wasn’t seen within the Blue states there though. There was far more support for MRQ, support which hadn’t wavered like it had in many places in the East, the Mid–West & the South, but violent unrest wasn’t seen out there. McCleary had her iron grip over the Resistance and all of its affiliates, and with that she controlled the demonstration of people power that saw them turn out to protest but in a manner that was deemed useful. Right ahead of the justices in DC delivering that outrageous verdict on the matter of MRQ’s supposed birth circumstances, McCleary had been with Governors Pierce and Rowan. They revealed to her what they were up to and asked for her help. She signed onboard, willing to see the same outcome as they did and assured that her place there in the end was worth something. Even up in Washington state, McCleary had the Resistance at her command. She sent almost a hundred thousands protesters on yet another re-direct to make them useful. It wasn’t into urban areas where they went but instead towards every available federal location possible across the West. The Resistance had already targeted federal law enforcement but the re-focus was also towards US Government buildings of all stripes. Secured grounds were proved to be unsecure with buildings entered too. All across California, neighbouring states, out in Hawaii and up through Colorado & New Mexico, office complexes were invaded. They were taken over by protesters well-experienced by that point in late 2028 in remaining firm where they ended up storming into. Police and state troopers in the eight Blue states didn’t move to evict them because that was federal property that had been invaded. There was vandalism caused within those buildings, and some violence seen against workers who refused to leave their desks when forced out, yet what didn’t occur was any sort of organised physical destruction. Office complexes for government organisations weren’t burnt down nor torn apart. Instead, they were occupied. The Resistance hadn’t grabbed all of their targets though. The move had been put together too fast for that to happen. Secure lockdowns had seen many buildings remain unoccupied. Outside them were protesters seeking a way in, looking for the opportunity to do so when doors were opened to let workers in & out. Dozens upon dozens of mini stand-offs were soon seen with each side waiting for the other to back down and allow them to win the day.

Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz made a _Clipper_ broadcast. She spoke from her family home in the Bay Area, a scene so very familiar to those who’d watched her broadcasts out of the Walnut Creek home she shared with her wife and kids beforehand. Her identity had been stolen from her. Such was how she framed her response to that ruling made. The Supreme Court had decided to support a racist lie, she said, that legally made her an apparent _illegal_ resident of the country which she called home. She repeated what she had said many times before: she was an American, born in the United States. She wasn’t an illegal alien but a legal, rightful citizen. MRQ paid her taxes, obeyed the law and represented her constituents in Congress. She had never been in trouble with the law and had throughout her life been an up-standing member of society. Even if she hadn’t done all of that, MRQ reminded those watching her broadcast that she still would have been entitled to her constitutionally-protected rights as an American regardless. Those rights were being taken away from her though as part of a partisan plot and the theft of an election by those who had lost it. Born in America, an American and elected by the majority of Americans to be their next president: such was how MRQ described herself. She spoke of her fears over what would happen. Her family would be broken up with her being deported to a foreign country. Such was MRQ’s grave concern, one she left no one who saw her in any doubt about how she regarded that as terrifying. There end of her broadcast came with a repeat of what she’d previously said to Floridians when the election theft began. Their votes there had been thrown in the bin. MRQ told the rest of America that everyone across the country in Blue states, Red states and Purple states who had cast their ballots for her, all seventy-nine million of them, had likewise been tossed in the garbage by the US Supreme Court where it made that historic decision.

International congratulations arrived for President-elect Edward Roberts. The entire US media, even the left-wing portions, moved to call him by that title once the last of the legal process was over with. They reported on the incoming messages out of foreign capitals where there was that month-long delayed congratulation on his election victory. Foreign governments had been left in limbo during the wait for the election outcome to be resolved and it had been an uncomfortable experience for a good few of them where there were domestic political pressures upon them to take some sort of stand on the Roberts–MRQ dispute. At the same time, foreign foes, countries with whom the United States had adversarial relations, had spent weeks criticising American democracy and then issued official statements once the matter was finally settled. From many there was comment too on the significant violent unrest followed by a military crackdown that came with Roberts becoming the _de facto_ election winner (the Electoral College had yet to meet). The president-elect went to see the president. At a White House meeting, there were smiles, a handshake and polite remarks for the cameras before the two of them had a private talk. With a nation gripped by violence and also an ongoing different sort of domestic security situation in the West, there was a lot to be spoken about ahead of the transition of power that was still some time away. Roberts would afterwards start to make announcements about who he intended to see in his Cabinet. Most names had already been leaked and all he did was confirm them. He did a press conference concerning the Supreme Court case and subsequent violence before later doing sit down interviews with leading stars of several networks. Turner at _Fox News_ fawned all over him while Parsons at _CBS News_ was less doe-eyed in the company of the incoming 49th President. Vice President-elect Mitchell spent far longer talking to the media where he did back-to-back appearances one after another, even appearing on the hostile _MSNBC_ to speak with one of the main stars there who had many times expressed quiet the negative opinion of him. Mitchell was all smiles with the latter, determined not to show that he cared about her opinion. The matter of martial law in Florida was raised – just as it been by other media outlets – and Mitchell commented upon that. He issued full support for whatever necessary measures that Governor Cook felt necessary to take there. Roberts had said the same thing when talking with _Fox News_ though had come across less convincing that Mitchell did with _MSNBC_. Florida’s governor was doing what she felt necessary though it wasn’t something that Roberts and Mitchell actually agreed with no matter what they said to the media about that. The continued presence of troops patrolling the streets of Florida cities, alongside the paramilitaries of that state’s large SDF, was concerning for the two of them as it was for so many Americans. She’d locked that state down with the use of armed force with no indication of when that would cease.

From out of the West, there was a rush of people leaving. Residents of the Blue states out there decided to take their Christmas vacations early and also to elsewhere in the country. Those were people who could afford to do that though. It was nearly ten thousand people who would leave before the year was over with, far less than the numbers hinted at in certain sections of the media who would sensationalise what went on with that. They left because they feared further violence taking place. Just because it hadn’t in the aftermath of the Supreme Court case, it didn’t mean that that wouldn’t happen eventually: such was their thinking. People with accumulated wealth who voted Democratic or Republican opted to leave a region of the country that they were concerned was due a series of unrest on par with what happened in Florida and also for a sustained period of time too. Images from Florida helped with that assumption yet what really did it was December 12th joint announcement that came from multiple state capitols in the West. Governors from six states denounced the use of military force in Florida and other places while at the same time rejecting the decision made by the Supreme Court. To reject as they did, to say that they considered it invalid, caused the alarm that saw people leave in the fear of violence. The Governors of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico & Oregon declared that Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz had won the 2028 US Presidential Election. The court ruling that she was an illegal alien was a partisan lie, so they said. A wave of coordinated announcements where support from elected politicians in senior positions followed that. The lieutenant-governor of Washington state, Muhammed Ahmad, and Arizona’s secretary of state Tony Sollenberger (that state had no lt.–gov.) made their own supporting announcements as did the high-profile Senator-elect Ashby and Mayor Gutiérrez too. Members of Congress, state legislators, and mayors joined in. It was bigger than the Summerlin Gang in terms of the turnout where over two hundred voices made themselves known. The same thing was said by all of them: we reject the biased decision of that partisan court and MRQ won the election only to have it stolen from her.​
*​
Padley waited until McCleary held another rally before she threw everything in with the cause of the West for the whole world to see. San Jose in Central California was the scene of a Resistance event where there were a couple of thousand young, angry people in attendance yet video cameras along with reporters. The vice president’s appearance was unannounced beforehand with McCleary suddenly calling her up onto the stage at the end of a tirade which the congresswoman-elect had given about the US Supreme Court. Padley did just what McCleary had done at a previous event: she ripped up a copy of the US Constitution and dropped the torn pieces onto the floor. She denounced that founding document of her country, one which was so admired across the United States. It was a document written by slavers, she said, and one which kept the majority of Americans still in bondage hundreds of years later because it created a country where democracy was trampled upon. The crowd cheered. McCleary stomped her feet in celebration before then leading the audience in a call for Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz to become the next president no matter what those partisan justices in DC had ruled. Images from out of San Jose went nationwide and worldwide. Walsh got Padley on the phone after the event, raging down the phone. She hung up on him and made a determination at that point never to speak with him again. The president was just as angry as most Americans – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – were at what they saw Padley do. Not only had she thrown her lot in with all of those Democrats out in the West, she had thrashed their country by attacking the constitution. McCleary had already won herself plenty of enemies outside of the West by her previous similar display and Padley joined her. Media commentators aplenty made mention of that fact that it was the constitution which Padley derived her position from, one which McCleary wanted to be given too. The Republicans – once again – went ape sh*t. One word was repeated by so many of them over and over again after San Jose and that was ‘impeachment’.

National guardsmen on the streets of El Paso and cities in Michigan were pulled out not long after deployment by the Texan governor and her counterpart up in Lansing. The Pentagon removed those on the streets of DC too, though some time later. The immense civil unrest and rioting which had erupted following MRQ losing her legal dispute with Florida, thus having the White House taken from her before she got there, had been put to an end by the soldiers sent in to clear the streets. The delayed pull-out from the nation’s capital was done so as to make sure that the rioters didn’t come back for a second evening. No withdrawal was made by those on patrol across urban areas of Florida though. The entire FL ARNG, supported by personnel of FL ANG units too, remained on active deployment to enforce martial law across portions of the Sunshine State with the Florida SDF and also state troopers backing them up. On the Tuesday night, there was more trouble with protesters clashing with national guardsmen in Miami. Two lives were lost with both of those being from among the ranks of people gathering in defiance of emergency laws against that and being shot by part-time reservist soldiers who fired upon them after reporting shots coming their way first. Commercial disruption due to the imposed lockdowns was significant with business leaders up in arms. Cook refused to lift the martial law and withdraw the troops though: not for them nor President Walsh either. He called Cook and demanded that the governor recall them or he ‘might’ be forced to federalise them and thus see Florida’s governor lose control of them. She told him ‘just you dare’ when losing her cool though having no clue as to what she could do in such a situation. It was Walsh who backed down there though when he didn’t have the Pentagon federalise the national guardsmen (state-level forces were beyond their possible control) despite the intense urging of Secretary of Defence Ferdinand. That call to Cook was made between the one to Padley and then one where he had governors of Western states jointly on the line. For the third time, Walsh was given the metaphorical middle finger. Pierce, Rowan and the others refused to walk back their public renunciation of what the Supreme Court had to say. The president explained that he feared further civil unrest should they not do so but Pierce denied that that was going to happen in the West. There was firm control of the security situation there. Walsh argued that that was hardly the case when Resistance protesters had stormed more than a hundred federal buildings! The reply was again that those politicians out West had the situation firmly under control.

Six states subsequently mobilised their National Guard components. Pressure was put upon the Governors of Arizona and Washington by those from California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico & Oregon to follow their lead though that wasn’t done. State Defence Force units were already mobilised and deployed though the larger numbers of national guardsmen was needed for those governors to do as they wished and ‘ensure the security of the West’. That was the reasoning given to Walsh by Rowan for Colorado’s own soldiers starting to deploy across the Centennial State. Soldiers quickly moved towards where there had been trouble with protesters trying to storm other federal complexes where they hadn’t gained access early on – the Denver Federal Centre where Homeland Security Secretary Carlucci had been recently assassinated among them – and established a security perimeter. That was repeated all across the West. In one way, it looked like those state’s own version of martial law though it was entirely different from what happened down in Florida. Instead, Walsh saw it for what it was: the leaders of the West were positioning themselves for a fight against federal authority. That was no fight which Walsh wanted to have. Others in his shoes would have at once reacted strongly but he had no wish to see what would happen by going down that road. Silence rather than outrage was his response to the mobilising of military forces by those in the West whom he believed were trying to cause a national confrontation. Like with other ongoing security matters in the twilight of his presidency, the lame-duck Walsh took the approach of no confrontation with those he believed wanted that with the outcome he hoped for being that it would all blow over in the end. He refused to see a fight had.

In Canada and the UK there were domestic disturbances in response to what happened in America. Selected politicians and public figures took an opposing view to that of their governments when they congratulated President-elect Roberts ahead of his late-January inauguration. The ruling governments in Ottawa and London might have wanted to keep relations perfectly harmonious but there were those who just refused to accept that that was the way things should be done. The injustice of what had happened with MRQ was condemned and so too was the process involved in that. When Padley came out so strongly against it all, making the same arguments, those in the two countries who had spoken out felt entirely justified. Amongst the general public within each country, there wasn’t so much apathy with regard to ongoing political developments in America which for more than a month had dragged out but instead a realisation that things were going to happen there no matter what they themselves said nor did in their own countries. Still, a good number of ordinary citizens in each decided that they would refuse to be silent on the matter. Protests were arranged with the majority of participants being among the usual suspects yet also joined by others who normally wouldn’t do so. Ottawa, Quebec City, Toronto, Windsor and Vancouver all had demonstrators on the streets of those cities. Across in the UK, protests without the proper authorisation took place and brought about a response from the authorities. In Brighton, Bristol, London and Manchester, the police broke up the illegal gatherings. There was the customary criticism against such alleged heavy-handed tactics where the right to protest had been stomped upon but the British Government countered by pointing to the law on such matters. Up in Scotland, there were protests in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Scottish independence activists had been praised by MRQ during her presidential run where she had spoken up in the defence of their cause – Walsh had gotten an earful from an angry London about UK-US relations – and they repaid her support with their own. Police Scotland officers were less forceful than their English counterparts had been when breaking up protests further south and that would anger the UK Home Secretary no end. Along with the Union Secretary, the two of them would set about further tightening legal restrictions against illegal gatherings and police powers to be used against those involved. In Canada, there were complaints from activists that they had a hard time of things but they had nothing like the troubles of those across in Britain when faced with a government like the one in London.

The rejection of the Supreme Court ruling that had come from all of those Western political figures was made out to be them speaking on behalf of everyone in the West. That wasn’t the case at all. There were a heck of a lot of politicians and public figures in the West who were aghast at the actions of not just McCleary & Padley but Governors Pierce & Rowan and their so-called Summerlin Gang too. They were angry at what had been done with the election being stolen from MRQ, even if they had never agreed with her presidential platform, but were furious at what they saw was nothing but treason from those across the region in response. The answer to one wrong wasn’t another wrong, such was the thinking among them. They started to speak out too. In response, there came a backlash against them with violent undertones. The editor of the _Daily Camera_ (a Boulder, Colorado newspaper) was on the wrong end of a violent attack by a trio of young men who punched and kicked him to the ground when he criticised Rowan. Hawaii’s attorney general, at odds with his governor’s position on standing ‘with the West’, had his home attacked with rocks thrown through windows and his garage set alight. A law professor of the University of Arizona’s Tucson campus received open threats of violence directed towards him and his family after television remarks calling for the forced removal of Arizona’s secretary of state. Up in Tacoma, a powerful local business figure, long targeted for abuse by Far Left groups there in Washington state, had shots fired at his car while he was in it. He’d previously had protection installed upon the vehicle, and to his home too, because he knew that his political comments angered the left. After the shooting incident, he vowed to carry on though and not be deterred. Several state legislators in California and Nevada, plus an investigative journalist for _ProPublica_ based in the latter state and who had a big public profile, were the subject of serious threats to their lives which the authorities made them well-aware of when they too had adverse comment about all that was being said supposedly in the name of the West. Secret Service agents assigned to Senator Doucet – they’d been with her for more than a year at presidential direction – recommended to her limiting public appearances back in Arizona, firmly staying in DC even, until at least the New Year, maybe even after Roberts was sworn in. She’d declared her firm opposition to what she said was ongoing treason and there were threats to her aplenty. People such as these spoke up and faced threats. Others shared their views yet took the decision to keep their mouths shut, all hoping for the best in the long run, because they were frightened.

During the third night of national guardsmen enforcing martial law in certain sections of Florida, there were further shooting incidents. A teenager with a Molotov Cocktail would be shot in West Palm Beach – he’d live – while a young woman with a rifle in Jacksonville would kill a soldier with the FL ANG before his buddies would shoot her dead. There were no mass protests ongoing within urban areas of the state yet Governor Cook kept the declared martial law in-place with the justification made an address to Floridians several hours after talking with Walsh. Florida couldn’t risk seeing a repeat of earlier violence witnessed. The national guardsmen were on the streets to deter unrest and the loss of life that came with that. Her public statements came with a stage-managed leak out of Tallahassee where what she and Walsh had argued about was presented to the world as Cook standing firm against him. That didn’t work out as she planned. In behind-the-scenes activity, Cook came under pressure from fellow Republicans – in Florida and nationally – to ease off. She was acting as if she was one of those crazy fools out in the West! Republican attack lines against _Democrats_ in the West had been holed below the waterline by Florida effectively doing the same thing. Cook argued back that the situation Florida faced was very different yet the response was the public perception mattered. The governor told those who wanted her to withdraw her soldiers that she would take the matter under advisement and consider a pull-out. That didn’t make anyone happy but it was a sign to most that she was eventually going to back down… just when she was ready to do so though.​
*​
Without a direct connection to the election fallout, violence persisted in parts of the United States throughout the middle of December. In Chicago, a policeman shot a suspected mugger. Social media lies swirled fast with the whole story being changed. Apparently, a Caucasian police officer had shot dead an unarmed African-American passer-by. None of that was true yet it didn’t matter. Parts of the city saw rioting and Emergency Rooms would fill up with the wounded. A day later, the police officer ‘named & shamed’ in those false online lies had two men walk up to his private home with handguns with the intention to do him harm. They weren’t BLA members yet were claiming allegiance, willing to commit murder for someone else’s lie. From inside, the targeted policemen and two of his work buddies opened fire to drop both men dead on the lawn. The attack had been feared but all it would do was later cause more trouble in Chicago where another night of unrest was seen. A pair of right-wing extremists sought to plant a bomb in the Minnesota State Capitol building in St. Paul. Two years beforehand, the governor there had authorised the re-creation of the Minnesota State Guard and sniper from that SDF would shot one wannabe bomber dead and leave the other fighting for his life. Members of the organisation which those men belonged to, the previously much unknown ‘Defenders of Minnesota’, would turn out in protest against their killing while claiming that there was no bombing attempted. Counter-protesters with a Resistance-backed local Gun Club showed up, there was a clash and three people were eventually left dead. Violence spilled over from the Mexican Drug War into both California and Texas where murders occurred on American soil. Things were horrible south of the border yet the deaths north of that frontier drew media attention from across America. Down in Texas, the deaths there were Cartel-connected yet had been inflicted at the hands of right-wing militia members operating as legal private security contractors for a series of ranchers. They shot first against targets considered dangerous. Governor Flores was engaged in the fallout from the El Paso unrest but did consider in the aftermath of deploying national guardsmen to the border if violence on the other side got any worse. The shootings in Texas occurred on the same day that seventeen people lost their lives in Mexico with drug-running violence being at the heart of that. There were other militia members in Texas out and about and that was the same in many, many states across the nation. Six states in the West had done what Florida had done where their National Guard units were on long-term deployment (though for an entirely different reason) but others hadn’t followed their lead. Organised militia instead were patrolling, staying within state laws where they did too. Disputes were aplenty over their status but they remained out ‘on patrol’.

Cook brought back in her national guardsmen though. The men & women from the FL ARNG & FL ANG were issued with fresh orders to return to their mobilisation posts on gubernatorial orders. They weren’t demobilised – the state government continued to pick up the growing bill for their deployment – though. All that the governor did was to take them back off the streets. Miami saw street celebrations at the end of the martial law that Cook had imposed, which she wasn’t happy at when seeing the footage of that, but there was no sudden outbreak of unrest. Yet, tensions remained high. There were protest organisers still raging at the deaths of Teyo and then Spartacus (Tyrrell) before Cook’s so-called Storm-troopers had killed demonstrators. They were itching to get back into the fight against the fascist which they regarded Cook as being yet unsure whether they would have the backing of the people behind them. The ‘Storm-troopers’ name had been something that the national guardsmen had been made aware of as what the Resistance online groups had given them. There were _Star Wars_ fans among them too and they didn’t like the comparison. Busting heads, even shooting dangerous people, hadn’t come easy to the Floridian volunteers but they had done their job in difficult times. The widespread feeling was that if they had to redeploy back into the state’s urban areas and do it all again, they would. Cook and her top people were left on edge when the soldiers were pulled out. They feared further unrest. The ending of the martial law had been done at Cook’s instruction yet only because of all of that outside pressure. It hadn’t been President Walsh who had gotten Cook to do it though. It was fellow Republicans nationwide, eager to use deployment in the West as a stick to beat the Democrats with, who had forced her into backing down. She remained angry and was also very willing to do it all over again too.

Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz remained at home following the US Supreme Court decision going against her. She stayed in Walnut Creek without travelling anywhere at all from there in the Bay Area. There had been talk among online supporters who she had engaged with through _Clipper_ where it was put to MRQ that, because she was considered by them to be the rightful election winner, she might be sworn-in as president come January 20th and lead some sort of shadow government. That idea was shut down by her. She spoke about the grief she was felling at all of the personal loss she felt: her mother, her friend Teyo, her identity and the election too. Putting that election loss last raised many eyebrows, though not among anyone who really knew her, who knew MRQ as a person and not as an ‘idea’ in the manner that online supporters saw her. At her request, Secret Service agents left her. They had been with her for several years, long before she was a leading presidential candidate, where Walsh had directed their presence due to all of those threats to her from the Far Right. She pushed for their removal though and they departed. Governor Pierce made sure that California Highway Patrol officers – his own state troopers – ensured security around her house, though they were clearly not as capable as those whom they replaced. While MRQ could have her Secret Service detailed removed, Vice President Padley was unable to see them gone. She had left DC – permanently as far as she was concerned – and was back in California for good. With a month and a bit left on her time in office, she didn’t want the agents with her at all times. Padley had moved higher up within the conspiracy that was the Summerlin gang and there were things that she didn’t want the Secret Service to known about. Alas, federal law required that she be protected no matter what she said. Padley argued repeatedly with the agents (men and women doing their job to risk their lives for hers) and also with their bosses too. Nonetheless, they stayed with her. She had a big showdown with the agent-in-charge where he firmly told her that if she one more time tried to ditch the agents and do a runner, they would have no choice but to ‘take her into secure custody’. It was a battle which Padley gave the impression of conceding defeat in after that, yet she fully intended to be free of them once the circumstances were right.

A week after the verdict in the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case was delivered, the Electoral College met. There was no one big gathering but instead fifty-one separate (all of the states and DC too) meetings in state capitols nationwide all on December 18th. In Tallahassee, the slate of electors for the Republicans’ candidate were those who voted for Roberts to be the 49th President instead of MRQ receiving Democratic votes. The US Supreme Court had decided what would happen there in Florida. Elsewhere, there was no such pre-event drama to be overcome. In Blue, Red & Purple states, delegations of electors cast their ballots for either the Democratic or Republican candidates. The meetings took place among great security, especially in perceived flashpoints, but without any violent attacks being made. After the _correction_ made by the Supreme Court, the finally tally of votes for president was 285-253 in favour of Edwards. There were no instances of faithless electors making a point or any abstention in the presidential ballots. Statements were made by Democratic voters from Blue states, the ones out West especially, that they remained wholly opposed to what they called Republican theft yet that didn’t matter: they cast their ballots for the overall loser once all were counted. Then there were the vice presidential ballots. Mitchell picked up his allotted 285. As to the other 253, they were split all over the place. Anderson had died after winning his on Election Day and thus the members of the Electoral College who had been committed to vote for him were free to cast theirs for anyone else as per constitutional requirements. That they did… and it was a free-for-all. McCleary, whom MRQ had named as Anderson’s replacement, came third in the number of vice presidential votes cast: only bloc voting out of parts, yet not all, of the eight Blue states in the West allowed her to achieve 84. Senator Young came first (with 114) and US Attorney General Gonzalez was second (98). Eleven others won the 57 further votes. They were distributed widely from high-profile political figures to relatively-unknown activists and notables with a lot of that being about favourite sons/daughters from states where those electors lived. They were entirely within their rights to give their votes to whomever they wished to. McCleary’s rejection – she won only seven of those votes from outside of the West too – concerned the expressed belief that they causes which she had been speaking up upon were treasonous. Young and Gonzalez winning those high numbers despite neither entering the party primaries, as well as the granting of votes all over the place, was all symbolic in the end too. It would have had the same overall effect if McCleary had won all 253. None of those Democrats were going to be the next vice president because Mitchell had already achieved the necessary outright majority. While there were still the final stages to go through before their inauguration, by the Electoral College casting the majority of ballots for them, there wasn’t any real uncertainty afterwards that Roberts & Mitchell would be sworn in a month down the line.

Media broadcasts of how the Electoral College had voted told an unsurprised nation of what would be the eventual outcome. The dramas over all of those Democrats voting against McCleary in the vice presidential ballot took up more attention and brought forth a lot of comment. So too did a map which _MSNBC_ used repeatedly during news broadcasts concerning the West. The eight Blue states out there were coloured green on a map where every other state was filled in yellow. Reds, blues and purples had been avoided for the yellow/green imagery. The left-wing news network wanted to make it clear to viewers which states were those they were talking about when all of the political separatism was mentioned: complaints were made that instead it was treating them as some sort of different country to the rest of the nation. As to the issue of separatism, that was how AG Gonzalez had come to regard what the trio of Ashby, Gutiérrez and McCleary were up to ahead of and after the Electoral College met. Though they didn’t actually say it, that was what they were arguing for in all of their public statements – McCleary’s rallies especially – where they carried on with their Second Republic talk. Gonzalez went back to see Walsh on December 17th and asked him once more for arrests to be made on charges of a seditious conspiracy. Refusal came again. McCleary spoke in Reno on the 19th, right after what most of the country (but not her and her die-hard supporters) regarded as that humiliating Electoral College vote against her. She addressed a hyped up crowd on the subject of the great injustice that was the election theft before moving to talk about how she believed that there should be active opposition to ‘Republican laws’ brought in by the next Congress to make them unenforceable. As to the incoming presidency of Roberts, she spoke of opposition against that too. Her words seemed to be chosen carefully yet Gonzalez and his top people at the Justice Department considered them to be more than enough. Republicans and the right-wing media did as expected and went into a rage at it all. Gonzalez focused on the law though… and his own powers of office. He didn’t need Walsh’s permission. Fired he might be after he did what he did, but Gonzalez was out of office once Inauguration Day came. Keeping things from the White House, as well as squashing leaks in the DOJ where there could have been emails sent to favoured reporters, Gonzalez saw to it that what he wanted to do would work without no one getting wind of what was coming. Two old friends, trustworthy federal appointees out in the West, were contacted and brought aboard. On December 20th, the process of arresting Ashby, Gutiérrez and McCleary went into action.

Gonzalez had gone to law school at Georgetown with the US Attorney for Nevada. She’d been itching to do what Gonzalez back in DC authorised her to do. Both Ashby and McCleary were at the former’s home in Summerlin. McCleary was due to speak that night in the middle of Las Vegas itself before flying down to Scottsdale in Arizona for another speech. Neither appearance would be made when the DA brought FBI agents with her to Ashby’s house and arrested the two targets sought there. Each was taken not into Las Vegas directly but rather to the federal holding facility at the Henderson Detention Centre southeast of the city. They were still in Clark County and within the Las Vegas urban area yet not at one of the better known jails in the middle of Las Vegas. The US Marshal (the chief marshal) in New Mexico – the senior federal lawman in that state – was someone whom Gonzalez had likewise known a long time and had great trust in. Two dozen US Marshals went to arrest Mayor Gutiérrez at his office in Albuquerque. He wasn’t there though and when the Marshals raced to locate him up in Santa Fe where they were informed he actually was, they found themselves denied entry to the Governor’s Mansion. The chief marshal himself had guns pointed at him and those weren’t held by state troopers either. Like other states in the West, New Mexico had its National Guard mobilised. They weren’t patrolling the streets and enforcing martial law but rather ‘protecting’ the demonstrators who’d seized & remained holding federal office buildings. No national guardsmen were expected at the Governor’s Mansion, just state troopers who would stand aside when the Marshals turned up. That thinking was wrong. Governor Carmen Espinoza had been brought onside by the Summerlin Gang and was fully prepared to stop Gutiérrez being arrested after hearing the breaking news that Ashby & McCleary had been detained. The Marshals backed off. After making a call to Gonzalez, the chief marshal wasn’t going to see blood spilt and so pulled his people out. Whether the national guardsmen would have opened fire on his people, something that most would have said would have been the first shots of a civil war if it had happened, he had no clue. He chose not to risk it though, not for someone like Gutiérrez. As to those two women in federal custody, their arrests, that of McCleary especially, was national news pretty damn soon. Immediate demands were made by politicians from the West, including Padley herself before the night was out, that they be released. Back in DC, Walsh almost fired Gonzalez for insubordination and also igniting the situation even further. He kept him in place though while trying to sort out the fallout from the arrests, plus the near shoot-out between federal and state forces in Santa Fe, with the hope that things could be resolved by talking rather than acting crazy.​


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## JamesG

*A Martyr*


Street protests, civil disobedience, the invasion & occupation of federal buildings, statements calling for action, resignations & talking a stand… none of that was going to get what the leaders of the Summerlin Gang wanted. They were in no way fools. Governors Pierce and Rowan, Vice President Padley, Mayor Gutiérrez and then others, including Governor Espinoza and Senator-elect Ashby brought into the heart of the conspiracy, were all serious politicians. People power and everything else that they had unleashed was never going to be something that would achieve the goal which they sought. What it was that they were seeking, something that had been decided to be the only course of action right at the beginning of the process starting where the 2028 US Presidential election was stolen, was a separation by the West from the rest of the country. The United States of America was a doomed entity. It couldn’t be fixed, it couldn’t be sorted to their satisfaction. Ashby at first, later followed extensively by Congresswoman-elect McCleary, had spoken of serious reform with regards to a Second Republic yet the truth of the matter was that those conspirators knew that any success they were going to ever achieve would have to come by secession. Republicans and the right-wing media were screaming at the top of their lungs about the separatism and beginnings of secession underway, and in that they were correct. Just because there were many whom usually would be on their side saying that they weren’t going down that path didn’t mean that it wasn’t being done. The number of core conspirators involved had grown from what it was. Meeting either in person or through the secure _Panda_ messaging app, those who knew the truth of the matter became more in number than early on. It was put to them that a divorce was sought. The Two Americas were no longer compatible and could no longer stay together. Painful it would be to split but split they must do. The West would walk out, taking all of the flak for refusing to stay in an abusive relationship, yet that was the only option on the table. No matter what the consequences, those behind the intended separation intended to see it happen. Every name would be thrown against them and the full force of the federal government would seek to stop them. However, by moving in the shadows as they did, by throwing confusion out there as to what their motives were, where a dispute with Walsh & DC was one fight while another was Padley inflaming tensions, they aimed to succeed in their goal. Seeing arrests and detentions made of martyrs for the cause was another.

Ashby and McCleary agreed to be martyrs. Several hours before Attorney General Gonzalez unleashed federal agents against the two of them – plus Gutiérrez too –, former Governor Carter received a tip off from a Justice Department contact. Carter previously represented Colorado and was both Rowan’s predecessor plus that near vice presidential running mate of Walsh back in 2024. He wasn’t in the very heart of the conspiracy and didn’t fully understand the ultimate goal of Rowan and the others where they wanted separation not some sort of ‘justice’. From DC came a rushed warning that arrests were incoming. Padley had the idea to request that McCleary allow herself to be detained. Ashby volunteered straight away, willing to be a ‘prisoner of conscience’, but it was pushed by Padley, with agreement from others at the top, that McCleary being held would have greater benefit. Gutiérrez made it clear that while his dedication to the same cause was complete, he didn’t think his arrest would do anyone any good. For the federal government to stick Ashby and McCleary in jail, and hold those two women in custody away from their families during the holiday season, was too much of a gift to pass up. Ashby had never been imprisoned before. She had some idea of what fate awaited her yet was a bit idealistic about the whole thing. McCleary was no one’s fool. The detention in Nevada would be the fifth for her during her political career. She’d been locked up in Montana, Oregon and her native Washington. It would be no fun and she didn’t think the process would be as short as Ashby foresaw, yet she agreed to allow it to happen. When federal agents stormed Ashby’s home in Summerlin, the two of them peacefully surrendered. The armed stand-off involving Gutiérrez across in New Mexico was also something desired by their co-conspirators though it didn’t involve the Mayor of Albuquerque becoming a martyr like the two of them intended to be. Moreover, McCleary’s martyrdom would be _very different_ from Ashby’s.

Protests erupted following the arrests made in Nevada. Outside of the West, there were mass gatherings of demonstrators in Michigan and also DC. Philadelphia saw some trouble too with Governor Norris prepared to take the ‘Florida option’ if necessary and go all out with martial law and national guardsmen if things there in Pennsylvania got bad. It didn’t though, just like the protests in Michigan and the nation’s capital didn’t include mass civil unrest. Florida was quiet and so too was New York. Where previously there had been extensive violence seen since the election, there wasn’t anymore. It was only in the West that there was a strong reaction. Right across the eight Blue states – including Arizona and Washington where the governors remained outside of the influence of the Summerlin Gang – there was trouble there along with protests seen in both El Paso and Salt Lake City too. Governor Flores came pretty close to sending national guardsmen back into the city out there in Far West Texas yet opted not to at the last minute. Congressman-elect Clarke caused a whole load of trouble there in Utah’s biggest city and – with fateful reflection – the governor nor the authorities took his capability for doing that as anything more than getting people out on the streets to be angry. Resistance members were engaged in those many occupations/protests already yet when demonstrators came out across the West, they were joined by ordinary people. Peaceful protests were demanded for them to take part in. Generally, that was the case though up in Portland and down in Las Vegas that wasn’t the case at all. Significant trouble was seen in each city. Nevada’s District Attorney Catherine Babcock, that old friend of AG Gonzalez, faced fearful personal harassment and her and her staff where they were targeted by activists while trying to go about their daily business, both when at and away from work. Babcock’s teenage son was mobbed by a gang of protesters who knocked him to the ground in Carson City and beat him up because of what his mother had done in arresting Ashby & McCleary. That outrage came with the firebombing of the DA office in that small city that was Nevada’s state capitol and then the kidnapping of one of the assistant ADAs. She was snatched off the streets of Las Vegas. The city’s police force, stretched dealing with major unrest, couldn’t locate her despite all efforts to do so. Federal agents did though with the FBI managing to locate and rescue her on Christmas Eve. They were under significant pressure themselves but managed to rescue that kidnap victim from a small group of Far Left militia.

Governors across six states took action to ‘secure public safety’. Congressman Neil Schwartz, a Republican out of North Carolina who’d been long a major face of public opposition against what was going on in the West, spoke on _Fox News_ when images came out of those states showing national guardsmen being redeployed. He declared that it all looked pre-planned when that network – which loved him for the dramatic statements he would bring in to draw controversy – showed footage of National Guard units taking over security at the mass of federal buildings which the Resistance had occupied. Peacefully those protesters inside left, to join the street demonstrations, and the federal property ended up secured by state-level troops. That was the civil war starting there, so Schwartz declared, even if people might have been expecting shooting to be the opening. Pierce from Sacramento, Rowan out of Denver and other governors too made statements where they said that they were doing what they did in reaction to ‘justified’ public anger. The buildings themselves which they took over were then kept supposedly secure and not turned back over. The national guardsmen, also joined by SDF personnel, remained on deployment. Protesters were guarded against attacks from right-wing militia and a _quid pro quo_ was something that figures such as Schwartz, plus higher-ranking Republicans across the nation, called a further conspiracy. Demands were made that action be taken with the Walsh Administration called upon to federalise the National Guard components in those states. Some Democrats joined in with that though many were rather busy defending their party from accusations of treason due to the Ashby and McCleary detentions. There already was an East–vs.–West split ahead of that within their party but it was one widened even further.

Walsh was accused of doing nothing. That wasn’t the case at all. He did what he could. Should all of that have been made public, it wouldn’t have satisfied those claiming he was impotent and incompetent though. The 48th President saw things (roughly) the same way as figures such as Schwartz did. His arguments with Cook down in Florida and her National Guard deployments coloured his thinking on the matter of the mass deployment of those soldiers belonging to the Blue states in the West. He made no threat that he couldn’t back up. He saw the trump card as being to federalise them rather than as an opening play. What occurred in Santa Fe was also on his mind with that: the national guardsmen there had been willing, eager even from the reports he read, to fire upon federal agents in a tense situation. There was less than a month of Walsh’s presidency left yet his intention wasn’t to see that end with a civil war starting. He wouldn’t have Americans killing Americans and the imperilment of his nation’s fate if he had anything to do with it. Padley wouldn’t take his calls and Rowan and he didn’t know each other. Pierce on the other hand was someone whom Walsh had had previous extensive dealing with. The Governor of California was a reasonable man, so Walsh believed, yet had been driven to extreme actions by the activities of the Republicans. Walsh called him and explained to him why there was the urgent need to see federal activities begin across his state and the others in the West. IRS operations were important but so too were those of the DEA & the FBI too. To have them all shut down, as well as everything else, only hurt the American people. It was only a plus for the Republicans where they could use it for their attack lines upon the party which they were both elected representatives from. Walsh wanted his fellow Democrat to see the sense in that. Alas, Pierce talked about West America and its needs. The Republicans had stolen the election and ‘East America’ had then locked up Ashby and McCleary. There could be no way forward unless those two women were released. Like he had done with Padley before she had ceased all contact with him, Walsh lost his temper. It was something that Pierce knew he would too. The United States Government wouldn’t be blackmailed! Walsh fumed down the phone line to a caller who had disconnected him.

In Bremerton, outside of Seattle, Tim Maguire was finally murdered by the terrorists who’d long sought to do him harm. Maguire was a businessman with an extensive public profile where he had been against the presidential candidacy of MRQ, comments made by McCleary and left-wing people power. A week before he was killed, his car received shots near to his home in Tacoma when he had defended the integrity of the US Supreme Court, and the United States as a whole, and so he had taken his family to stay with a friend in Bremerton. Members of the People’s Revolutionaries tracked him to Bremerton and snatched him. They didn’t hold him for long like the kidnappers of that ADA down in Nevada but instead gave him a short ‘trial’ before executing him in the basement of an abandoned house. Later footage of the whole thing was released online. Maguire had been killed for ‘crimes against the people’ in the form of being a ‘capitalist pig’. The terror group who killed him usually fought gun battles with the right-wing Free Americans militia across the Pacific North–West / Inland North–West yet their hearts lay with Marxist-Leninist Vanguardism. Maguire was long a hate figure and they pulled out all the stops to get him and see him punished for what they decided was his crimes. Lt.–Governor Ahmad condemned the killing just as his governor and other state officials did. It was political violence and none of that was wanted within Washington by those holding office. The murder came at a time when Ahmad was doing everything to try and bring the governor onside to the cause which he was part of: that being the one that the Summerlin Gang sought. Rejection came from out of the Governor’s Mansion in Olympia though where the governor saw the People’s Revolutionaries, the Resistance and McCleary as one in the same. Ahmad gave up after that. He realised he was fighting a lost cause with trying to win over the governor. After talking with Pierce – via _Panda_, certain that no one could listen in –, he set about taking a different course of action in seeing that Washington joined with the others. There would be no future which the sitting governor was a part of in that role with Ahmad intending to see him replaced.​
*​
As a prisoner, McCleary caused no trouble for those detaining her. She behaved and didn’t complain: she’d been locked up before. Ashby was demanding and a right nuisance for the staff at the Henderson Detention Centre where that second female politician had a notion that she should be treated be respect. A senator-elect she was yet Ashby was also held on federal charges of being part of a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States Government. That meant that Ashby, like McCleary, had to do as she was told. Luana Guyon, a native American attorney who’d previously represented McCleary in many a legal fight, caused an expected fuss at the prison yet everyone anticipated that she would. Loudmouth, activist lawyers did that as naturally as breathing. The staff of the facility faced difficulties outside of the prison. They were harassed and subject to abuse. A police presence near the detention centre controlled things there yet information about those who worked there – including those in staff and janitorial roles, those who had no contact with McCleary at all – was all over the internet. That left the guards and others subject to further danger from matters unrelated to McCleary… which those who had made public their identities, addressees and contact details didn’t give a damn about. The cell phones of both women had been taken to be examined with the Department of Homeland Security assisting the Justice Department in trying to have the passwords to them cracked. Ashby and McCleary had each, despite being told it was a federal offence not to, refused to tell the investigators those passwords. Babcock went to the detention facility and spoke with each of the two prisoners which her office had seen to it were locked up. Ashby (who had her own lawyer, a high-priced Las Vegas attorney) refused to cooperate in any way though McCleary was talkative. That didn’t meant that the congresswoman-elect gave Babcock anything to work with though. She just enjoyed the argument. The district attorney was called away several times concerning first that attack upon her son and then when news came that that young assistant district attorney from her staff had been rescued from her kidnappers. In reporting back to Gonzalez in DC on Christmas Eve, Babcock told the Attorney General that the investigation was moving forward – admittedly slowly – and she was hoping that by spending Christmas in lock-up, one of them at least would be prepared to talk after that continued unpleasant experience.

Babcock was with her family the following evening when she received a call at her sister’s home (her own one had been targeted by protesters) that came from the chief administrator for the Henderson Detention Centre. McCleary had been found dead in her cell. She was in a segregated custody section with a supposed permanent watch on her yet McCleary had apparently managed to find a way to hang herself. Much effort had been expended to try and revive her yet she was dead. Babcock asked about Ashby and after confirming that the second prisoner was alive and had multiple sets of eyes on her continuously, she then called DC again. Gonzalez wasn’t at the Justice Department but rather at his Virginia home. He was left stunned into silence – his wife was extremely concerned for his health when she saw his reaction to the phone call – and didn’t know what to do. Stepping above herself, it was Babcock who suggested that his first course of action should probably be to tell the president. There was also the worry expressed by Babcock through the cross-country connection that the news would soon leak: she thought it best to announce it rather than have it leak out. Gonzalez recovered himself and told her to wait. He then contacted Walsh at Camp David – he was there alone, his wife & kids were still not back with him – and informed him of the news about McCleary. Walsh had the wind knocked out of him though dealt with it quicker than the Attorney General. He started issuing instructions as to what was to be done in both DC and also out there in Las Vegas too. The very next morning, early on December 26th, Gonzalez himself made the announcement from the DOJ that McCleary had died while being held in federal custody. Despite Babcock’s fears, there hadn’t been a leak about that ahead of time. That still didn’t nothing to lessen the impact of the news being released about McCleary though.

Governor Rowan from Colorado would later use the term ‘federal security forces’ to describe US Government law enforcement as he (and others too) sought to separate in the public mind those answerable to DC from those of the states in West America. They ended up right on the back foot when faced with the wild, uncontrollable unrest which occurred once news was out there about McCleary having died while she was held prisoner by federal authorities. Anger from protesters-turned-rioters across the West was directed towards them and very much less so towards state-level authorities. Those on the streets letting loose with all their anger had been conditioned ahead of time, so much of that done by McCleary, to tell the difference between the two. It was the federal government who was blamed for McCleary’s death and their on the ground representatives were the ones who suffered the majority of the violence directed their way. The situation was crazy and scary. It was fatal too with lives being lost among the violence in reaction to a death. That violence was also only Western-based: it didn’t expand outside of the West into the rest of the country either. MRQ had a nationwide appeal yet McCleary never had had such a thing. As to the ‘Nights of Rage’, as the Resistance would call it where they claimed that they didn’t organise the unrest, those went on for three nights right at the end of the month before the calls for calm which came from political figures in the West were heeded and it stopped.

The death of Shauna Ashleigh McCleary – aged thirty-seven when she died, leaving behind three young children up in Oregon – didn’t just bring about violence. It also came with demands to know how such a thing could have happened. When public statements were made in the aftermath of Gonzalez making that announcement, those expressing shock at her death, whether they having been for or against her politics, wanted to know how she could have died. While the Attorney General didn’t firmly say that she died at her own hands, he made mention that the indications at the scene looked like that had been the case. Gonzalez would take a lot of flak for saying that where it was said in legal circles that he shouldn’t have put that information out there yet he did so because of the expected political reaction that would come. He and the president knew both that there would be unreasonable demands from those who knew better for answers to come. To say nothing was deemed far worse than giving away a few details like that. A lot of questions were thus directed towards the Walsh Administration as to how that could have happened: wasn’t McCleary, as a high-profile prisoner, subject to special oversight? That was confirmed but no further explanations could be given. There had to be an enquiry, everyone knew, yet still there remained demands from answers. Back with the matter over her death, expressions of sadness at the news came from all quarters. Democrats and Republicans alike made remarks with a lot of those from both sides of the partisan divide being made through gritted teeth. During her political career, especially the last month of that, McCleary had upset people of all political persuasions no end. Regardless, they pretended for the sake of common decency to be contrite. A handful of outspoken figures on the right refused to play along and their remarks where they had nothing but condemnation for McCleary even in death brought extreme criticism down upon them. Still, the remarks came from recognised provocateurs who fed on such condemnation.

Ashby and McCleary being locked up in Nevada, as well as the failed attempt to do the same to Gutiérrez out in New Mexico, had seen Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz demand their release. She had been close to McCleary, barely knowing the other two, yet issued firm statements calling for their release. MRQ called them ‘political prisoners’ just like many Western politicians did too where she saw their imprisonment as being completely unjustified. There had been calls upon her to say more, to do more in fact, yet she hadn’t. There was continued worry in some quarters about the sate of mind that MRQ was in yet from elsewhere there had been a growing contempt of her where it was said that she had given up the fight. Those deaths – Teyo, her mother & then Anderson – affected her though. MRQ also spent time just before Christmas with her attorney Hellfire. The deportation threat come the following year was still there, so Hellfire said, and he prepared her for the process of going through the Path To Citizenship process. MRQ was a ‘dreamer’ in the eyes of the law (based upon that US Supreme Court decision) but there was a way to ensure her citizenship using the P2C protocols. She could apply for citizenship with Hellfire believing that there was a chance that could be rushed through too. MRQ protested to him that she still refused to accept that she hadn’t been born in the United States, so didn’t consider herself a dreamer, and also found the idea of using political allies to accelerate the process to be morally wrong when there were going to be people in front of her whom she would jump the queue of P2C to get ahead of. Hellfire had disputed all of that with her on Christmas Eve with the intention of returning a few days down the line to talk her around. Then the news arrived that McCleary had died. MRQ took that hard where she was stung by the further loss of someone close to her. Yet she sprung into action. The ‘old’ MRQ was back as far as so many of her supporters were concerned. She made multiple, passionate online statements denouncing the detention of McCleary which had resulted in that woman’s death. The gravest of all injustices was what MRQ called it. Doubters who’d said that her heart wasn’t any longer in the cause when it came to fighting for the cause of the West and Westerners shut up. Supporters amplified her message where she became the spokesperson for the rage which so many across the West felt upon hearing that McCleary had died.

Former Senator Zenger had moved to Nevada in the middle of 2028 after being so roundly defeated in the Democratic presidential primaries with a good number of Pennsylvanians glad that he was gone. When there in the Nevada, he had taken up the cause of the West fighting for what outsiders regarded as special treatment with quite the eagerness. He wasn’t close to any of the big-shot politicians, especially those in the Summerlin Gang, yet they allowed him to make himself useful. That he did at their behest seemingly within minutes of the news breaking when it did about McCleary. Zenger was the first major public figure to declare that someone had ‘done the suicide _to_’ McCleary. She’d been murdered by the federal government, so he said, and done so because she posed a threat to the freedoms enjoyed by the people of the Blue states in the West. Zenger had been told about that death ahead of the announcement coming out of DC when he was contacted through _Panda_ by Gutiérrez. He didn’t ask how the Mayor of Albuquerque knew that nor question why Gutiérrez – and presumably others – weren’t getting the news out first. Instead, he was prepared for the announcement and had already formulated the type of wild, unfounded allegation that he had been relied upon to make. Zenger had been the perfect choice for the Summerlin Gang to go out and make a public statement that would gain national attention where the notion was put out that McCleary had been murdered. Guyon, McCleary’s lawyer, would say something similar not long afterwards and her remarks would gain a lot of traction, yet the left provocateur which was Zenger had far more profile on him. His remarks were broadcast and questions were asked as to whether he was correct. Was it possible that the US Government had had something to do with McCleary’s death? What could they gain from that? Down the rabbit hole like that went a good chunk of the nationwide media. Voices calling for a sensible response were drowned out. A lot of people’s minds were made up where they believed what they first heard: that McCleary hadn’t committed suicide and had in fact been killed with an attempt made to make it look like she had taken her own life. Zenger gladly kept on pushing that story, all without evidence too. As to Gutiérrez, as well as Governors Pierce and Rowan, plus Vice President Padley too, they were in fact that ones who had seen to it that the willing martyr McCleary had been _truly_ martyred for the cause. She hadn’t gone into custody to die, not at all, but she was to suffer that fate at the direction of those four people she trusted.​
*​
It was ‘America’s grandmother’ who was at the heart of the decision to kill McCleary and make her truly a martyr for the cause. Cicely Blair Padley had for so long been looked upon with affection by the majority of Americans and regarded as some sort of sweet old lady, someone completely harmless. Her reputation had taken a massive hit outside of the West once she started to argue for a Second Republic and then went about wholly trashing the US Constitution. Opinions on her had changed overnight. Underneath that unthreatening demeanour, Vice President Padley had always had a heart of stone and been utterly ruthless. That was how she had made it as far in politics as she had done. McCleary’s arrest hadn’t been planned by her yet she had jumped into action when the leak came ahead of time that it was due to happen. Padley had been the one to convince her to go along with that and to be locked up. The truth had been told to the young congresswoman-elect in the vein of her detention would benefit the cause which they were both fighting for. Once McCleary was locked up, it was then that Padley spoke with the others within the inner core of their conspiracy concerning the benefits of McCleary’s untimely demise. Governor Pierce was the only one who didn’t express shock; Mayor Gutiérrez and Governor Rowan had jaw-dropping moments. All wanted Padley to explain why she would suggest seeing that McCleary become more than the martyr which she had sighed up to be. Padley had told them that what they were fighting for was more than just the life of one person. It was freedom that they were seeking, for tens of millions of Americans in the West shackled to the rotting remains of dying, authoritarian regime. McCleary was a loose cannon and she was also a non-believer in that cause. What she wanted was a fight, a fight with anyone, and down the line it would be with them too once they had achieved what they had set out to get. She would never be controllable. Pressed to be specific, as to why McCleary had to _die_ and not be somehow sidelined, Padley had been brutally honest: it would give them what they wanted all for the price of one woman’s life. The others could have walked away at that point yet by then they all considered themselves wholly committed to the course of action taken. Padley would afterwards explain that she was acting for the greater good, and would find her strongest defender in that in Pierce, yet everyone, including she, knew that what they were building would be created atop the blood spilt from innocent life. It wasn’t what they had gotten into it all to do yet it was regarded by them in late-December 2028 as the only way to succeed.

President-elect Roberts made a public plea upon President Walsh to take action when first all hell broke loose in the West and then the political leaders out there acted in unison to end things in their own way. Since he’d won the election – a win which Roberts considered fair –, Roberts had watched as sedition was left to go unchecked and violence ruled the day. He’d held his tongue and let others do the talking while in private urging Walsh to act. Long before McCleary was locked up, Roberts had said in private what Vice President-elect Mitchell was saying in public about her needing to be arrested. Looking at the situation right before 2029 began, Roberts and his top people saw the conspiracy that was ongoing out there. To what exact end that was all about wasn’t something that he could be entirely sure about though his primary concern was that a shadow government was going to be formed and that they were going to swear in their own president. Roberts didn’t want that to happen for his own reasons yet also those of the country. His public comments to Walsh called upon him to use the Insurrection Act against what was happening. The West was effectively in rebellion with laws unenforceable and seditious conspiracies ongoing. Roberts demanded that Walsh issue the necessary proclamation for dispersal of those in rebellion ahead of then moving in troops to secure order. _Habeas corpus_ should be suspended, he continued, and mass arrests made of those plotting to overthrow the US Government for their own nefarious gain. That call brought with it rejection from the White House yet also a good number of people outside of the Walsh Administration who also disagreed strongly with the president-elect. Roberts set off opposition to that where he mentioned the use of soldiers. It was only with a troop commitment could order be enforced when federal law enforcement were as on the back foot as they were. However, the images that filled people’s imaginations of soldiers being sent into the Blue states of the West, where there was the possibility that they could face opposition from National Guard contingents of those states, something bigger than what had been seen in Santa Fe too, caused the criticism that came the way of the president-elect for making such a demand as that..

Senator Callum Schofield out of Ohio, a fellow Republican of Roberts yet not someone anywhere near his camp, was the face of Republican objection to such an idea. There were Democrats too though Schofield gained most of the headlines. A noted libertarian, Schofield was against any hint of that. He had been one of the key people in sabotaging congressional bipartisan plans during 2027 to see federal security laws drawn up where the Department of Homeland Security could provide personal protection beyond the overstretched Secret Service for politicians in danger of violence. Others of different political persuasions had helped there yet none of them had the same financial ties with private security contractors tied to the DHS that Schofield had: it was in his interests for those contracts to continue rather than see the whole thing professionalised. His stated position back then and when Roberts pushed for the deployment of soldiers was on each occasion that he was opposed on ideological grounds to the US Government using soldiers against its own citizens. Put as simply as that from him and others too, it was an idea that had widespread appeal. Walsh looked at the whole thing from a different perspective yet that was how he saw things in the end too. Roberts and Mitchell, along with other Republicans, plus a good chunk of Democrats as well, all argued that it was imperative that that be done yet they couldn’t win that argument. In addition, at the same time there also remained the usual partisanship ongoing where Republicans nationwide continued to accuse all Democrats of treason where they were tied into what some of them in the West were up to. Counterattacks went back at the Republicans alleging that Roberts was showing authoritarian tenancies. That was how things were in America during the final week of 2028, just as they had been through the many preceding years where the nation’s politicians were forever at war with each other and refused to give it a break no matter what. Among the top tier of the Summerlin Gang, that was what they successfully counted upon continuing.

Department of Justice investigators faced disruption when seeking to reach the Henderson Detention Centre yet did finally get inside. They came from the DOJ’s inspectorate general office out of DC and flew into the riot-hit Las Vegas metro area. Inside the facility where McCleary had died, and where Ashby was still held too, things were much calmer though. The whole place was on lockdown and there was full cooperation given to those investigating what happened. Professionalism had been shown early on with evidence collection and the cell in which she had died had been firmly secured for further examination. The lead investigator had an open mind about McCleary’s death. Of course he didn’t believe any of that nonsense put out by the nut Zenger about the federal government killing McCleary. His open mind was on the possibility that someone might have staged the death: that could have happened just like it was equally possible that she did in fact commit suicide too. The exact circumstances of the demise of McCleary had been all over the media yet those sent to Nevada to investigate thoroughly went things properly. It looked like a suicide. McCleary had spoken with her children via a phone-call early on Christmas Day and been seen to be distressed afterwards. She had a history of teenage depression and self-harm. The conditions which she was held in were rather straining on her. There had been poor discipline among the guards when it came to watching over her – that extended to the care of other prisoners too – and how she had seemed to have killed herself was entirely within her capabilities to do that without anyone else taking part. There was no evidence that anyone else was involved, not even the slightest lead to follow… until one of the guards who had been on duty was murdered several days later. Officer Aaron Franks had been on duty in the women’s section when McCleary died while being held there and no real suspicion had been upon him. Three days later, while the DOJ people were still on-site, Franks was in a different part of the detention facility when he was attacked by two unidentified male assailants and stabbed (thirty-one times) to death. His murder wasn’t regarded by the investigators as being a coincidence, not when following a search of his home, a significant amount of cash was found hidden there. It looked like he had had something to do with McCleary’s death and then been silenced himself. The talk of the suicide being _done to_ McCleary had come in public from a nut but that didn’t mean that those looking into it considered it crazy, not when Officer Franks was murdered like he was. To progress further with their investigation, the DOJ people began to expand upon their questioning of everyone at the jail and trying to prise the truth out of anyone who might know something. They kept digging yet they were chasing a Red Herring and on a time constraint which they had no idea of either.

Padley and Pierce went to see Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz early on New Year’s Eve. Earlier that same day, Congressman Schwartz made a public statement where he said that once Congress was back in session he would introduce onto the floor of the US House the beginnings of impeachment proceedings against Padley with the aim of making that a fast process too. That Republican from out of North Carolina had been one of the doomsayers talking about civil war and when the matter was brought up in discussion at MRQ’s home by her, Padley told her that she had no worry about it all. If, and it was a big if, that all came off in the manner which figures such as Schwartz wanted, she might be removed as vice president a few days before she was due to depart the position. It didn’t matter to her at all. What she and Pierce had come to talk to MRQ about was said to be far more important than any goings on like that back in DC. MRQ’s two house-guests set about talking her into joining them. They didn’t tell her everything, certainly not the truth about McCleary, yet were honest with her about their intentions. Several times, MRQ raised a hand to cover her mouth in shock. Her eyes darted towards the house’s front door, out there where Padley had insisted that the Secret Service people she couldn’t get rid of stay. She asked them if they understood that they were talking treason. She too wanted to know if they were aware that federal United States law demanded that informed about treason, she had the duty to inform the authorities. The replies which came back to her were of the affirmative. They asked her to join them. They wanted her to fulfil the role which she was elected to the previous month and serve as their president. It wouldn’t be of the United States of America but something different, a separate nation established in the West. She had tons of questions, ones which came out in a random order. The two of them had answers for everything. They went through why they were doing what they were and played upon her upset at the death of McCleary too one which Padley – without missing a beat – declared had been murder.

MRQ demurred over an answer. She told them that while she didn’t want to live in the authoritarian hellhole that the country was on course to become now that the Republicans had all three branches – executive, legislative and judicial – of government, she was an American. Pierce told her that there were those out there hellbent on making sure that she personally, along with millions like her (dreamers), would not for much longer be an American with Padley adding that she had it on apparently good authority that the P2C process would be sabotaged. There was talk of all of that hope that MRQ had given to so many Americans, the people of the West especially, during her presidential run being for nothing. A fair election under the system that they were tied to as part of the United States was no longer impossible where the Republicans were prepared to do anything they could to make sure that they would win. MRQ asked them about McCleary: how was it murder? Padley told her about the dead prison guard and the DOJ looking into that. Someone had killed MRQ’s friend and political ally rather than McCleary having taken her life as was the story which the Walsh Administration continued to pump out. Pierce provided her with some extra proof of that with that proof being a distortion of what really happened at the direction of him and Padley. They two of them used her grief there to help win MRQ over in the end. It took them several hours but they succeeded. The fiction about McCleary was the only lie. The rest of it was – in their opinion anyway – true. They appealed to the inner core of MRQ, where her heart was on politics. Democracy was what she valued… something she was watching being stolen. The final issue that had swayed MRQ was Padley asking her if she too wished to be a martyr, one for the end of democracy in America. That she didn’t want to be and admitting that to them, helped their host get to where Padley and Pierce wanted her to be. An agreement was struck where MRQ said that she would go along with them and the others. MRQ would bring the people of the West onside with what its leading politicians wanted. She asked what she had to do and what was to be done by them. They were ready to provide details there too. MRQ ended their meeting with the final remark that 2029 was to be the year of the secession of the West. Padley affirmed that was the only way to save democracy for them and everyone else.​


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## JamesG

*Boycott*


Secret meetings were held with high-ranking military personnel by Summerlin Gang top figures. Vice President Padley along with Governors Pierce and Rowan sought out sit-downs with identified sympathisers in uniform where the risk of discovery, plus things blowing up in their faces, was significant. Bringing such people onside was imperative though. The separation which they sought in divorce wouldn’t take place without them. Pierce had a connection with a businessman who had his own criminal links, which had allowed what had happened in the Henderson Detention Centre to occur, and the Resistance had affiliated Gun Clubs. National Guard contingents from multiple states were on-side. Nonetheless, the power of elements of the regular elements of the US Armed Forces was wanted to be within their grasp. Lieutenant–General Terrence Millo spent the New Year period in the city of Chico in Northern California and Padley went to see him there. He was on family leave, away from his post down in Texas at Fort Sam Houston where Millo commanded the United States Army North. That was the ‘point command’ for US Army units spread across the Lower 48. Born in upstate New York, Millo’s family had moved to the West when he was a child and remained there. He was a Westerner and someone who Padley was well aware was sympathetic ahead of time. She spoke to him about the stolen election, the injustice with the incoming Roberts Administration and her vision for a Second Republic in West America. Millo committed himself to nothing and didn’t give Padley any indication as to where he might stand down the line, yet what he didn’t do was what he was duty-bound to do and put a stop to it all either directly or by reporting the meeting up the chain of command.

Making use of the Adjutant General of California as an intermediary, Pierce spoke with Lt.–Gen. Charlie Hensen. Another three-star general, Hensen was a US Marine commanding the US I Marine Expeditionary Force. US Marines in Arizona, California & Nevada reported to Hensen who was a Westerner and very amenable to what Pierce wanted to talk about. Hensen had previously expressed alarm (to his former fellow Marine who served as California’s Adjutant General) about his fear of the federal government sending his men & women to ‘clear the streets’ of protesters. There had been too vocal opposition expressed from him about the theft of the election and the feared later elimination of democracy. Hensen made it clear to Pierce that he was onside even when the latter explained in detail the treason against the United States that he wished for Hensen to lead his Marines in to conducting. Rowan was supposed to gain a meeting with the Deputy Commander of the US Northern Command. That joint service command was located at Peterson Space Force Base with the organisation’s second-in-command someone who had told Colorado’s Adjutant General of her similar fears about being ordered to send troops up against civilian protesters. An aide to Lt.–Gen. Philippa Narborogh showed up for the meeting instead, leading Rowan to be weary yet she still pressed ahead with it all. Padley and Pierce expressed concern to Rowan afterwards yet she told them not to worry because everything had gone smoothly and it had only been about taking precautions. Those first meetings were alliance talks began were only the start of what would happen throughout early-January out there in the West.

Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz went back out campaigning. She started the first couple of days of 2029 by making appearances in San Francisco, Fresno and then Los Angeles where she took over what McCleary had been doing before her arrest. MRQ had never been quite comfortable addressing rallies of supporters – preferring the online connection that she had with so many tens of millions of Americans – yet was more than capable of doing it. Pushed by Padley and Pierce to go do that different type of campaigning, she did it for the cause which she had committed herself to. Californians flocked to hear her speak and MRQ was quickly caught up in the emotion of it all. She spoke to ordinary Americans, the politically active and Dreamers too. What she had ‘won’ the previous year’s presidential election on, her stated bloc of policies, was repeated alongside the call which had came from the deceased McCleary for a Second Republic. MRQ didn’t claim that McCleary had been murdered – figures such as Zenger were doing that – yet made sure than no one forgot about the death of that woman nor also the continued detention of Ashby. There were the fears for the future which MRQ spoke about as well where she asserted that democracy was to be brought to a conclusion once President-elect Roberts took office come Jan. 20th. Her lawyer Hellfire Neville called her after the New Year’s Day rally in San Francisco and told her that she had just eliminated any chance of gaining emergency citizenship as a Dreamer and was at real risk of being arrested on federal sedition charges, but she continued. Her efforts there with that US citizenship fight were over with because MRQ regarded herself as a citizen of a new country soon to come into being… once she had brought so many people ready to embrace that.

By law, new sessions of Congress opened every two years on Jan. 3rd. The evening beforehand, a statement was made from Phoenix in Arizona by Congresswoman Rosen. The former House Minority Leader, a fellow Democrat whom President Walsh had forced from her position and made a firm enemy of, announced that she was speaking on behalf of herself and eighty-three more Members of Congress from eight states who were launching a boycott of the opening. They were all Democrats from the West with thirteen senators and seventy-one representatives not travelling to DC for proceedings the following day. The presidential election outcome, the arrests made of Ashby & McCleary’s, McCleary’s death in federal custody and the continued detention of Ashby were all protested by Rosen. Those were the reasons for the boycott, she said, and so instead of going to DC, those engaged in the boycott would be meeting the following day in Las Vegas where they would ‘discuss their response’. Rosen took questions and there were a lot of them. She opted to answer the ones which she felt she would best have a suitable response. On the matter of those Democrats from the West not joining the boycott – two senators and eight representatives –, their absence concerned their own personal stances on the whole issue and didn’t in any way damage the cause of those due to meet up in Nevada. There would be further statements made the following day in Las Vegas concerning what those gathering there would decide for the future. Invitations were being sent out for further attendees too, beyond Members of Congress. Those were the responses which Rosen gave to selected questions. What she didn’t answer were other questions such as whether those going to Las Vegas were intending to form a ‘shadow government’, whether they were going to be ‘talking about secession’ and if she & they feared being arrested on federal charges ‘for treason’. Rosen made the announcement, answered the few questions and left things at that. The anticipated political earthquake erupted afterwards. There was one heck of sh*tstorm in the media where there was a rush to criticise the boycott what Rosen had said was happening by not just the Republicans and the right-wing media yet also fellow Democrats not going to Las Vegas too.

Colorado’s junior senator went AWOL but Doucet out of Arizona, who had been engaged in public disputes with her fellow Westerners for many long years, wasn’t hiding anywhere. She too spoke from Arizona and within an hour of Rosen making that announcement with interviews going out across _ABC_, _Fox News_ and _NPR_. They were going to be talking treason and secession up in Las Vegas, Doucet declared, and she demanded that a stop be put to that. She wanted a whole range of arrests to be made by Justice Department officials. Names were issued by Doucet of those she stated were engaged in acting to build themselves a new country in the West while forcibly, illegally separating themselves from the rest of the United States. Rosen wasn’t at the top of that list and instead it was Padley. After her it was Governors Espinoza, Pierce & Rowan, Gutiérrez, MRQ & Rosen, and Ahmad, Sollenberger & Zenger… there were many names. All of those people were seeking to bring about what Doucet repeatedly stated was treason. Rosen and the eighty-plus Members of Congress, including her fellow senator from Arizona, were also guilty of the same charges, so she said, though she named those ringleaders as being the core people behind it all. They were the ones seeking to do what Doucet alleged in pulling the eight Blue states of the West out of the United States. There was no democratic mandate for that nor was there any moral justification either. If Walsh wouldn’t authorise the arrests and detainment of those engaged in the conspiracy that Doucet said was ongoing, she urged his Cabinet to get rid of him and do it themselves. Should anything like that not happen, she said that she was willing to stay in the West and fight against secession from within. Doucet called upon the people of Arizona and the other Western states who considered themselves Americans to fight against those seeking to make them a party to the injustice which she said was the oncoming secession.

The new session of Congress opened the next day on Capitol Hill. Doucet made a flying visit before returning back to Arizona and six representatives from the West who hadn’t joined the boycott also appeared there (they stayed): another senator and two congressmen remained absent though hadn’t gone to Las Vegas either. Ashby was also absent though for a different reason than them. The gathering out there in Nevada was pretty much all that everyone could talk about when they met to be Seated. There were legal debates over whether their absence on that day meant that their seats in both chambers could be declared vacant with the requirement then for new elections to take place. McCleary’s death had made her newly-won US House seat certainly vacant and talk was at once of making that official: the same too with the one vacated by Kowalski from Idaho after he’d been murdered. The whole matter over the other absences was quite the mess with all sorts of disputes as to how to proceed when all of those members were missing and also gathered elsewhere. Democrats from the West who had showed up made themselves known with a lot of echoing of what Doucet had said. There were fourteen Republican representatives from those states who made a big fuss over the absence of their fellow Westerners meeting in Las Vegas. The exact details of what was happening in Nevada weren’t known and that allowed speculation to run rampant. The treason of planned a secession, rather than some sort of a shadow government as the first fears had been about, was what those in DC decided by general consensus was happening. News reached Capitol Hill hours after everything began there that Padley had shown up in Las Vegas. That at once gave impetus to what Congressman Schwartz had been talking about before the New Year and something given extra attention to by Senator Olivia Holmes from out of Georgia too: the impeachment of the vice president. She was two weeks away from her term of office ending yet was a _key_ figure in what was happening in the West. The numbers of absent Democrats mattered but there was also a feeling that Holmes expressed that once the matter reached the Senate, other Democrats would vote the ‘right way too’. Impeachment to be done so fast so as to be successful was believed possible even on the tight timeframe. The process started that same day as Congress first met for the new session and on the other side of the country Padley was out in Nevada.​
*​
Walsh had taken on a new White House Press Secretary right before Christmas. Emmanuel Queenan was a brash Bostonian who had, until a few months beforehand, been a decade-long anchor for _CNN_. The relationship between ‘Manny Q’ and the media hadn’t gotten off to the best of starts despite the president’s belief that it would with his new chief spokesperson being one of them. The outrageous accusations flung about following the death of McCleary, where Manny Q was called upon to reply to statements from Zenger of all people accusing the 48th President of having something to do with her death – what the absolute f*ck!?: such was his internal response –, wasn’t fun at all. Then came the New Year and the boycott of Congress that all of those Democrats from the West announced where they were further joined by Vice President Padley in Las Vegas too. Former colleagues of Manny Q, who had told him not to sell out by going to work for Walsh, felt sorry for him when before they had regarded his move to the White House as that of a pure mercenary. Again and again, Manny Q was seemingly just there for target practice. An enraged and angry media, for once truly representing the vast majority of the country, demanded that Walsh’s spokesperson give them answers that he couldn’t. Manny Q was unable to give a reason that people would accept for the Walsh Administration not doing anything to stop what was happening out there in the West. Leaks came out of Las Vegas – in a city where Nevada’s National Guard was out in force too – of what the gathering of well over a hundred national politicians were talking about. They were plotting the formation of their own country out there, and not making that much of a secret of it too! Why wouldn’t Walsh do as Vice President-elect Mitchell demanded to suspend _habeas corpus_ and go with the Insurrection Act approach? Manny Q was reminded that Congress was ripe ready to support that too. He got everything that Walsh didn’t yet it was his job to receive it. Walsh stayed away from the mass of reporters, first at Camp David and then inside the White House, while Manny Q floundered about with answers which satisfied no one at all.

Nevada’s governor had national guardsmen on the streets of Las Vegas to protect the mass of politicians in town and also the citizens too. His press releases on that went straight to friendly outlets. In dealings with the public, the soldiers on the streets were professional and behaved for the cameras. Outside hostile media coverage of those scenes from the city pointed to the national guardsmen being there ready to fight against federal agents should Walsh decide to act: the governor had that narrative denied yet it wasn’t widely believed. The Members of Congress engaged in that boycott were joined in Las Vegas by a whole range of other key politicians from across the West. Governors, state-level elected officials and key legislators from multiple states attended. Former Transportation Secretary Ibarra, who’d quit Walsh’s Cabinet, was there and so too was a former Secretary of Defence who’d served under the 47th President too. Padley was at the top of everything. Rosen had been the public face of arranging the boycott yet it was the serving Vice President who gave the public impression of being in-charge out there. In fact, unbeknown to outsiders and insiders both, she was one of the four from the inner core of the Summerlin Gang who were really running things. She had volunteered to stand front and centre to take the public flak. Yet, Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz and others with prominence too would talk to friendly journalists to further the misunderstanding that was desired to be put out about where real power lay. As to what the politicians gathered discussed, that was just what the furious Senator Doucet had spoken about when she savaged that announced boycott. They spoke about forming a new country. Using the basis of the December-published framework for how a Second Republic would work, there was a great deal of discussion about how that could proceed. When Rosen had arranged the gathering, she had presented the meeting as one where secession would be talked about too. That had seen those Westerners who had refused to attend not go but the others had signed on straight away to what they knew was treason. For so many to do so, so fast too, had come on the back of all that had happened in the preceding months and also the safety in numbers too. There were some second thoughts had though. A congressman from Hawaii backed out and left Las Vegas and so too do a congresswoman from California. But the others, so many of them too, remained united. No move was made against them, emboldening those who said that it was all going to work.

The Governor of Arizona, Josh Tate, had begged Walsh for federal assistance. When he hadn’t received what he had asked for, Tate had spoken to friendly journalists who had piled on the pressure with Manny Q there in DC. That didn’t work either. Nor had Tate going through the US Secretary of State – an Arizona native – to reach the Cabinet worked either. She had had no luck in doing what Tate had asked for in seeking to have federal agents come to Arizona and start making arrests of those engaged in sedition and preparations for secession. Arizona’s SecState, Tate’s rival Sollenberger, had gone to Las Vegas to join those seeking to build a new country up there but back in Arizona there were willing disciples preparing the way. Tate’s authority should have been paramount yet he found during the first week of January 2029 that it wasn’t. The state legislature and state law enforcement were _infected_ by those hellbent on what Tate saw the craziness of the idea of forming a new country with Arizona part of that. His wife urged him to resign because she both feared for his safety if he stayed in office and also was certain that once Walsh was replaced in the White House by President-elect Roberts, Tate would face DOJ action for being at the helm of his state when treason was going on. Tate kept on fighting though, fighting all the way until he had a heart attack on the morning of Jan. 6th. It was fatal and, as per the state’s constitution, Sollenberger would replace him holding the reins of power fully in Arizona. Doucet would remain in Arizona afterwards where she continued to fight against what was happening to her state yet without Tate there, and Sollenberger flying back from Las Vegas to take charge, things were only going to get more difficult for her campaign to stop what was happening there in the Grand Canyon State. A lot of people agreed with her that the governor’s death was _rather convenient_ yet there was no proof of that nor could anything be done about it after the fact.

The violence which Tate’s wife had feared had come after she had seen the news reports coming out of Idaho. She was a native of that state though had moved to Arizona as a college student and been a resident in the latter since. Up in Idaho, there was further shocking instances of political violence. Four Democrats serving in the lower chamber of the State Legislature had been shot to death when gathered at the home of one of them in Boise. The two men and two women each had been killed execution-style by unknown gunmen. Courtney Vandel, a state senator and another Democrat out of that city, had gone missing on New Year’s Eve in a suspected militia kidnapping. There were rumours abound that she was dead and a that ‘snuff film’ depicting her torture-rape-murder was doing the rounds on the internet. Governor Winkelman had been briefed that there was no evidence that right-wing militia members from the Free Americans had anything to do with either the shooting nor the kidnapping: he was told too that there was no video. He didn’t believe anything he was told. In many ways, the Republican that was Winkelman was in the same situation that Tate had been in where there were those in his state working against him and seeking to hand power over to extremists. Idaho’s extremists weren’t those seeking secession but rather to establish a militant theocracy. The previous month, Winkelman had been contacted by Rowan where ‘aid’ was offered to Idaho from Colorado to fight against extremists when none was coming from the federal government. Winkelman was aghast at what was happening in Las Vegas, as were so many Americans generally notwithstanding where they fell on the partisan spectrum, yet… he saw what was going to happen down the line. Walsh wasn’t going to take action because he had no wish to see any more Americans killed while he was president and by the time Roberts was in office, what would be done would be done. The eight Blue states of the West, with three of them bordered his Red one (Nevada, Oregon & Washington), were going to leave the United States. In the country which they were going to form, there would be no extremists gleefully taking innocent life and protected in doing that. Idaho’s two senators and lone congressman were all in DC. There they rallied against what was happening in Las Vegas. They were there while Winkelman was in Idaho to be a silent observer as mayhem took place. He decided that enough was enough and set about making contact with Governor Rowan with the _Panda_ link she had sent him. It was a choice which he knew wouldn’t have the full support of Idahoans but one he decided he must make for the greater good.

The American Insurgent Army took the opportunity to strike come early January too. Their last major attack, to try and assassinate Senate Majority Leader Green when he was back down in Oklahoma had been a bloody failure, yet the terrorists with the AIA were organised into entirely independent cells. They functioned with the ‘leaderless resistance’ model where no one was at the top giving orders. Members signed up to an ideology and did what they did without central direction. Four of them (one a woman) struck in DC when so many of the nation’s eyes were on distant Las Vegas. The Director of the US Secret Service was gunned down along with his heavily-pregnant wife. The two of them had just left the office of her OB-GYN when automatic gunfire ripped into them and passer-bys. Both lost their lives and so too did three other people. It was a massacre and also a horror story when it was all over the news. Hands went to mouths nationwide when the talk was of not one but two pregnant women (the other someone on her way into that office) left dead along with their unborn babies too. Questions were asked as to what kind of morally repugnant people could do such a thing? The answer was AIA members. Their killing of the Secret Service head was another one of their blows struck against the foundations of a nation which they regarded as an authoritarian which they needed to act in such a manner against to bring it crashing down. Secret Service agents in Omaha with VP candidate Anderson had been killed by the AIA, those with the much-threatened Kowalski too and also more alongside Homeland Security Secretary Carlucci when he was assassinated in Denver. There were more of them across the country on protective missions alongside US Marshals where the Department of Homeland Security sought to keep politicians alive. The director had sent them out, just as Carlucci had. The AIA responded to that by slaughtering him. Immediate security protocols sprung into place across DC. National guardsmen who’d been on the streets of the city to clear rioters protesting the outcome of the _Rodríguez–Quiroz v. Florida_ case weren’t there but there were police officers, federal agents and DHS contractors working for PMCs. They were there due to the planned National Security Event which was Jan. 6th on Capitol Hill. Nonetheless, the AIA killers got out of the city with ease. They’d proved – once again – that they could operate within DC without consequence. To have people know that, to see fear spread by the inability of the US Government to stop them as the media gleefully showed post-attack, was more of a goal for them than just the deaths they caused too.

Resignations continued out of the Walsh Administration once the two week countdown to its conclusion arrived. No big names out the Cabinet nor highest ranks of agency heads etc. went yet plenty of second-tier political appointees did so. There were undersecretaries & assistant secretaries who resigned from the federal executive departments. Quitters from the independent agencies of the US Government were from the ranks one below the top too. Most went without a fuss but there were a good few who let the world know in statements made where they let off a lot of steam. Allegations were made that Walsh was seeing to it that during his last weeks in office, so-called ‘Westerners’ in any position of serious national influence had duties stripped away from them: those who said such things weren’t all from the Blue states in the West too. That was something that was happening and when Walsh met with his Cabinet – including the good number of acting secretaries there – he explained that he had a plan to deal with what was happening out in Las Vegas to make sure that what they were up to was going to fail. The Stock Market was in chaos, airlines & long-distant freight hauliers were making a real fuss and there were serious political upheaval while open plotting in preparation for a mass secession of a good part of the country went on. Walsh sought to calm those in his administration who feared the worst by assuring them that he was on top of things instead. He said that he wouldn’t be sending federal agents backed by troops into Las Vegas to conduct mass arrests but instead he would make it impossible for any secession to work. He was impressed with his plan yet found that no one else was. AG Gonzalez was entirely unconvinced and, with what he heard, doubted the sanity of the 48th President. The secretaries of HHS & HUD, from Maine & Tennessee respectively, quit following that Cabinet meeting: they gave up on Walsh and sought to salvage their reputations by not being there at the very end. SecState Samantha Leach didn’t resign yet neither did she stay silent. The Arizona-native (in regular touch with Senator Doucet and, before his death, Governor Tate also) argued passionately with Walsh about his course of action. She said that it was doing nothing to stop what was happening in the West and in fact making things worse by expanding divisions. Gonzalez and SecDef Ferdinand joined her but none of them could get Walsh to change his mind. He refused to do anything that he would consider as being responsible for Americans getting killed despite the assertion from senior members of his Cabinet that that was actually going to happen by him refusing to act. One of them, the Secretary of Agriculture, spoke off-the-record to _The Hill_ in the immediate aftermath where she expressed the belief that Walsh was shirking his responsibilities as president and planning to leave all the mess to the incoming Roberts Administration. What she didn’t think, she said of her own opinion and apparently that of several others too, that there wasn’t going to be the time to do that and instead ‘action needed to be taken now’.​
*​
Walsh had that disastrous Cabinet meeting when the US Congress met to confirm the last stage of the presidential election. They counted the votes cast by the Electoral College, including the ones for Edward Roberts rather than Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz from Florida, in alphabetical order. Objections were raised to several – Florida’s especially – yet none of those held up. The vice presidential ballots were processed too and it took some time for all of those one cast by Democrats to be read through. Both the US House and the Senate remained with a large numbers of missing Members of Congress who hadn’t turned up where they either remained in boycott (the majority of them), were absent without explanation or in federal custody (Senator-elect Ashby). A huge security presence was ongoing during the day. Events of eight years prior, threats for a repeat of that four years past and also the deadly assassination of the Secret Service’s head the day beforehand ensured that. DC national guardsmen, joined by more from out of Delaware, Maryland & North Carolina, were present. Senator Roberts’ victory was confirmed. He was to be the next President of the United States with David Mitchell serving alongside of him. No more challenges to that could happen once the _president pro tem_ confirmed them. It was the senator from South Carolina, the long-serving John Sullivan, serving in that role as the most senior member of the Senate who confirmed that Roberts and Mitchell had won the majority of the votes. He did so because Vice President Padley wasn’t in DC and instead out in Nevada. Sullivan filled in as he was constitutionally entitled to do so though the matter of the absent Padley was hardly ignored.

Roberts wasn’t in the Senate for that nor anything else at the beginning of 2029. He’d resigned back in December to concentrate on getting together his administration for when the transition period was over with. Texas’s governor had appointed an interim senator in his place to keep the Republican’s numbers in-place. Hearings for those nominated by the president-elect for Senate-approved executive positions had started the moment that the new session of Congress opened. Working with the Republican leadership, yet also not facing any serious Democratic pushback, there was a rush underway to see that the first senior position to be filled once Roberts was inaugurated would be his pick for Attorney General. In ‘usual’ circumstances, incoming presidents would see the defence, state & homeland security choices confirmed first ready to have them sworn in either the same day as they themselves were or in the following days: other candidates would face a longer period of waiting. Getting Jordan Kirby into post as head of the Justice Department was a Roberts priority though and there was bipartisan Senate agreement on that. The political leadership of both parties had a lot to say about what was happening out in the West with demands that Walsh take action. With him seemingly unwilling to do so, that was why there was a rush to have Kirby ready. He’d already – with approval from Roberts too plus no objections from the Senate Judiciary Committee who’d seen the names – prepared special counsel investigators ready to be deployed as well where a whole wave of legal action was going to be unleashed starting after noon on Jan. 20th. Federal agents would accompany those DOJ people. The directors of the FBI and the US Marshals, neither of whom were political appointees due to leave office once the new administration took over, as was the case with US/District Attorneys in the West, were onboard too. The Insurrection Act would go into force with Roberts prepared to see that sighed literally as the first thing he would do as president.

Ahead of and after Jan. 6th, the US House held impeachment hearings against Padley. The investigation stage of impeachment had been skipped – it was legally possible though politically troublesome – with things moving with extreme haste on Capitol Hill. The lone charge laid against the Vice President was that of treason. No federal office holder had beforehand been impeached on such a charge, despite a couple of hundred years of successful & failed impeachments of presidents, vice presidents, Members of Congress, and judges. She could have been indicted for inciting rebellion, something that a good number of Democrats were willing to work with the Republicans on, but from the start of it, they went for treason. There was the headline-grabbing affect that they went for. The term ‘treason’ hit more nerves than anything else could. Despite a good number of objections in opposition to the speed of it all, there was a vote in the House on Jan. 7th. Seven Democrats voted in opposition while the rest of the US House, more than three hundred and fifty others, Republicans and Democrats alike, agreed with the treason charge. The mass of Democrats had come on at the last minute where House Minority Leader Underwood ensured that history would note his party as being against what Padley was doing it even if they didn’t like the way in which the Republicans went about that. Congressman Clarke from Utah was one of those Democrats who voted no, along with the few others from across the Mid–West and the South too, and while what he had to say did gain a lot of attention, the news agenda was on the overwhelming vote against Padley. Speaker Fraser then set about seeing that the Senate would take up the proceedings against the vice president following what had been done under his supervision. There was a rush to see ‘managers’ appointed from the House to present the prosecution in the Senate against Padley: her trial there would start the next day. When in the House and as things moved towards the Senate, the whole impeachment moved at lightning speed not just because of the mass of votes going the way that they did but because there was no defence mounted. Congressional procedures employed to make everything move at warp speed weren’t objected to. People like Clarke or those isolated Democratic representatives objecting to what they saw as the railroading of the vice president had no coordination to them. Those seeking to remove Padley for office did so almost entirely unimpeded.

Impeachment of the vice president moved to the Senate. The Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court was there with Mercer bound to preside over a trial which he was unhappy at how fast it was all going. Everything was set up in such a way that he couldn’t find fault with though and had to proceed. Representatives from the House acting as managers, with the Republican Swartz who’d formally started it all plus also Dunn as the Democratic congresswoman joining him, prosecuted the case. The evidence was thin and witnesses few. Not much was needed though. Commentators were already aware that impeachment was all but assured. All of those absent Democrats who were with Padley out in Las Vegas changed the balance of power with the Senate extensively for the Republicans. They already controlled a strong majority but with the missing Westerners, they had on their own more than a two-thirds majority. Democratic senators spoken to by reporters ahead of the trial commencing gave indications that they intended to vote for Padley’s conviction and removal from office even if they were a bit uncomfortable with the exact charge. Turner on _Fox News_ confidently predicted to her devoted audience that the ayes would defeat the nays by either 80-5 or higher. Attention from her network, yet also left-wing ones too, was on the likely Democrats whom it was believed would vote against convicting Padley in her absence. They were badgered into giving answers to questions on rumours that they intended to vote one way instead of another. Almost all of the nationwide US media had a remarkable pro-impeachment tone when talking about Padley, so critics of that noted, with the corporate owners making it clear to those lower down that any hint of separation, secession and treason was to be opposed. The final vote was had late on Jan. 9th with senators casting those votes on the Tuesday night. There was no surprise in the outcome. Eighty-two senators voted to convict, two abstained from voting and one cast a dissenting vote. Chief Justice Mercer would declare that Cicely Blair Padley had been convicted and thus had been removed from office.

Comment was sought from Padley throughout the impeachment proceedings concerning them. Reporters out in Nevada’s largest city asked repeatedly her and her people for comment. None came. Padley had nothing to say when the Republicans and Democrats together back on Capitol Hill worked together with the speed that they did to take away the vice presidency from her. Though she dealt with several reporters herself with the ‘no comment’ approach, her staff did most of the work there. The majority of them were very new to Padley’s team. Most of the previous team had quit or been fired by Padley since she had first decamped to California as part of her initial permanent move to the West and then a lot more left once she went to Las Vegas. Staffers who worked for the Members of Congress who were also gathered together there had likewise quit. All of the fresh blood which had come in was either made up of those dedicated to the new cause or (in a good number of cases) rather opportunistic rather than believing as others did. All of the politicians in Las Vegas had been repeatedly openly called traitors. That came from both outside and inside the West too. Senator Doucet had called them traitors right after Congresswoman Rosen announced that they were boycotting the new session of Congress, before there was any public indication given as to just what they were up to. That wasn’t how things had been wanted to begin yet once it was out there, that was just the way of things. Meetings were held in a conference centre provided for them and secure accommodation was provided too. Those politicians were talking about and arranging for the establishment of a government for a new that they were soon to form. There was a lot to do with that. A lot of worries were had that there would be a sudden invasion of federal agents but that never came. The news was full of Walsh being impotent in the face of their activities and so they carried on. It was the same evening that Padley was convicted by the US Senate on the charge of treason that a final _provisional_ agreement was struck in Las Vegas. Everything wasn’t ready and there was more to do, yet the different factions came to general agreement on how a government would function for the Second Republic that they wanted to establish in West America. No announcement was made at that point. Other issues were fast addressed before they proceeded with that.

Manny Q quit as Walsh’s Press Secretary on the Wednesday morning. He went home, turned off his phone and slept. His short, torrid tenure was over with the former journalist having lost the respect of everyone he knew when standing up at the podium inside the White House trying to defend the indefensible: Walsh’s inaction in the face of ongoing secession and treason. He’d miss what would happen later that day at his former place of work. Leach had another meeting with that president where she implored him to act to stop her beloved Arizona, plus the other states out West, from being dragged out of the union that was the United States by traitors. Ferdinand called over where he spoke of reports he’d received that senior officers in command positions out in the West had had meetings in the past week with politicians out there seeking to induce them to commit treason. Gonzalez once more requested that Walsh allow him to start making more arrests where he intended to flood Las Vegas with federal agents in his own version of the plan that AG-designate Kirby had for Jan, 20th. They were all told no by him. What they did next was what Manny Q’s emergency replacement would declare to the media that night was ‘attempt to launch a _coup d'etat_’. Those three arranged for the Cabinet to meet and worked with the Congressional leadership to see that meeting take place over on Capitol Hill rather than in the White House. The numbers were thought to be on the side of the Ferdinand-Gonzalez-Leach trio where they believed that a majority of the Cabinet would agree that Walsh was unfit to continue with the duties of the presidency. They intended to use the powers of the 25th Amendment to _legally_ depose him. With no vice president, and with bipartisan backing to see it happen, a successful vote against Walsh would see House Speaker Fraser elevated to the presidency. Roberts was brought aboard late on though didn’t disagree, not after receiving an FBI briefing about the latest reported development in Las Vegas. For just ten days, Fraser was to be the Acting President with the Democrats willing to allow the Republicans to install him there despite all partisan fears considering what was ongoing in the West. That all depended upon how the fifteen votes went though. After an assassination and then a wave of resignations among members, six of the fifteen were acting secretaries: their legitimacy when it came to their votes counting had been raised yet it had been decided that their votes would count as much as those of Senate-confirmed members. The Trio had done their sums right ahead of time but two Cabinet members who’d said that they would boycott the vote changed their minds when Walsh – who’d been tipped off – called them on their way over to Capitol Hill. The vote to implement Section Four of the 25th Amendment went 7-8 against the Trio when the Commerce & Interior Secretaries cast ballots to keep Walsh in place. In the aftermath, with everything all over the news, Walsh would that night fire _all seven_ of the Cabinet members who voted for his removal. The Trio (Defence, Justice & State) went alongside his Agriculture, Labor, Treasury & Veterans Affairs Secretaries. Such a mass firing was unprecedented, but so too had been their effort made to try and see him pushed out of office ten days ahead of schedule with the claim that he was ‘mentally unfit’ to retain the presidency. Walsh would fill those posts with more acting secretaries – having thirteen of them overall! – and attempt to carry on as normal. There wouldn’t be any more ‘normal’ after what happened the following morning though.​


----------



## JamesG

*Unilateral Declaration of Independence*


Early on January 11th 2029, in a speech made in Las Vegas by Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz, a new country was declared. The Democratic American Republic came into being with a statement issued by her where a unilateral declaration of independence was employed to make it happen. She was flanked by key allies in the Second Republic/West America movement in the form of Gutiérrez, Padley, Rosen & Zenger when making the announcement. She spoke of the nation being formed ‘here in the West’ though didn’t truly define its borders upon making that UDI. The United States of America was a failed state, so she declared, and thus those who believed in a different way of doing things, a different & brighter future, were leaving. What the new country offered to its citizens was what MRQ wanted to talk about and that she did with her usual passion for such a subject. Universal free healthcare, free education, the elimination of student debt, fair housing, expanded welfare for those in need, guaranteed reproductive rights, minority justice, climate action instead of words, expansive labor rights, gun prohibitions, an immigration overhaul, nationalised public utilities, the formation of public safety departments to replace the militarized police… it was all there.

That was what the DAR was going to offer those who had been made its citizens. The were further expansions upon what MRQ had in her presidential campaign yet those where what progressives, democratic socialists and left-wing Americans across the West had continuously voted for. The New America which MRQ told those watching and listening was wanted by the people, and was to be given to them because they were from the moment of her speech, part of a new country where all of those were enshrined in law. The online publication of the founding principles and laws of the DAR was something that she said was underway and information on where that would be found was provided by her to everyone could see it all for themselves. MRQ announced that the conference in Las Vegas of founders of the new country had chosen her to be their president and Padley would serve alongside as vice president. There was to be an executive council – the National Council – and a one hundred member single-chamber parliament. Appointments to that parliament & to the council, plus those of her & Padley, had been made yet there would be elections ‘within months’. The free and fair voting which MRQ spoke of stressed that there would be no possibility of any form of election theft being possible. The four governors closest to the forming of the DAR – Espinoza (from New Mexico), Pierce (California), Rowan (Colorado) and Sollenberger (Arizona) – weren’t in Las Vegas when that announcement was made. They returned to their state capitols, doing what the governors of Hawaii, Nevada and Oregon had already done. From each, they set about ensuring that their states would be fully integrated into the new country and that there would be no serious opposition to that. Lt.–Gov. Ahmad went up to Olympia for a showdown with the governor where he demanded that Washington state become part of the DAR due to the reported ‘people’s will’ for that. Ahmad didn’t get his way yet wasn’t finished. The seven governors would make public statements throughout the day where they praised the formation of the new country which they were glad to make their states part of. Nevada’s governor spoke of her pride that Las Vegas would be the national capital – the state capitol was up in Carson City – though mentioned the sadness of it being the city where McCleary, a fighter for the New America that the DAR was, had been martyred there. Campaigners from across the West, including many that were involved with the Resistance which McCleary had arguably led, celebrated the victory that had been won for the cause they they had committed themselves to furthering for so long. There were certain public figures who’d been involved in putting the DAR together and those individuals who had influence also made their support known. The new country formed in the West was only a good thing, so said such a wide group of people, and the future for the DAR was one where everyone who was part of it was certain to only benefit from being a participant.

A whole load of people across the West came out in just as strong opposition. There were politicians, public figures and individuals who had been fearing the worst and the UDI made was something they were entirely against where they made that known. Senator Doucet – back in Arizona again after backwards-&-forwards flights to DC to take part in Congressional votes – had the biggest profile and made the most noise yet Washington’s governor, Hawaii’s lieutenant-governor, mayors of Spokane & Tucson, and state legislators aplenty from multiple states received much media coverage. No, no, no: such was their answer to the secession of the Blue states of the West and the formation of a new country. There was no electoral mandate for such action and it was all illegal. The West was part for the _United_ States of America and that union was indivisible. Acting as they did, MRQ and those with her were called morally bankrupt by those opposing politicians and reminded that they had committed treason against the US Government with punishment for them due. Non-political figures who spoke out in immediate opposition warned of the massive social and economic costs of what had been done. On the second point, all of that ‘free stuff’ (education and Medicare especially) that MRQ had said was to be given away was going to put a whole load of people out of work. Ripping the West out of the United States would see economic links with the rest of the country severed in every conceivable manner too. The same arguments had been made beforehand when the separation seemingly by some sort of divorce that Ashby & McCleary had been arguing for had been talked about, back when the thinking of the opponents of such an idea had thought that there would never be the crazy idea of a UDI made like it was. More than that, a lot of people just didn’t want to be part of another country. They were happy being part of the United States, even with its faults. Several high-profile celebrities and sports figures, who had large public followings, also made impassioned objectives. Among them was was the Hollywood-based actor Monique Campbell (from Louisiana but living in California) and the basketball player Kwaku Anekwe who was with the Portland Trail Blazers up in his home state of Oregon. What they had to say might have been dismissed by many people who wanted such folk to stay out of politics yet they had a public platform and used it where they rejected the DAR from within.

From outside of the West, the TV star Gerri Gray and the hockey player (with the New Jersey Devils) Jason Lane both gave significant criticism at once too. Gray was from Colorado and Lane was California-born. They each rejected the entire idea of a breakaway nation being formed out there in the West and let everyone know that. MRQ’s long-standing friend, the actor Riley Drew, was sought for comment too, to see if he would echo what Campbell had said, yet he made himself unavailable to the media. Those celebrities made a splash yet the majority of attention was upon the political reaction. Democrats and Republicans through the Mid–West, the South and the East could only condemn what was happening. No real support came for what MRQ and the others out there had done with their UDI. Opposition to the perceived exceptionalism that the West had, along with groans every time its own grievances were treated as more important than anyone else’s, was already significant ahead of their politicians declaring they were forming their own nation. Media outlets did immediate _vox pop_ segments where they spoke to ordinary people to gain a reaction to what was happening. There was anger to match what the politicians were saying yet also a lot of ‘just who do they think they are’ ongoing as well. Ashby, McCleary and Zenger, even MRQ too, had caused a significantly large number of people outside of the West to turn against the West, tarring everyone with the same brush, while they had energised their own base. President-elect Roberts spoke of treason and his rejection of the formation of the DAR. It was an illegal undertaking and he would be putting a stop to it all once he was in office. His statement was very presidential yet there were remarks made afterwards by many commentators that, if things went the way that those in Las Vegas wanted, and following the failure by his Cabinet to see Walsh removed while he remained inactive, then any vows made by Roberts of action were going to be significantly hard to achieve once he was sworn in.

Like everyone else, President Walsh was left absolutely stunned when the announcement was made. He had no course of action that he was willing to take rather than just address the nation where he declared that he refused to recognise the new nation. The UDI to form the DAR was meaningless, so he said. There was no country that had been formed by the politicians making announcements in Las Vegas and the governors in those state capitols declaring that their states were part of it. His approach to it was, summed up best by a _CNN_ anchor, that ‘if I say I don’t recognise it, then it isn’t real’. There was no one significant who gave any positive response to what Walsh had to say. All that the comments from the 48th President showed was his complete inability to do the job. Action was demanded from him, not statements like that. The fallout from the failed attempt to remove him continued with further resignations from his administration including the Acting Energy Secretary. Kelly Silas had voted to keep him in office yet following his firing of half of the Cabinet and then the utter impotence shown when responding to what MRQ did, she couldn’t stomach any more of that. She went on _MSNBC_ and expressed rueful regret at voting to keep him in-place: should they have gotten rid of him, Acting President Fraser would certainly be acting to stop what was happening. Silas’ admission of making a mistake wasn’t followed elsewhere. No one else in DC seemed willing to admit they had made any errors in the preceding months when dealing with the growing issue of separatism in the West. Politicians from the West who had refused to go to Las Vegas for the congressional boycott and instead spent the beginning of 2029 in DC, elected Democrats and Republicans alike, denounced what was happening out in the states which they were elected from. Senator Al Forbes, who’d gone AWOL rather than initially committing to either the boycott or attending the new session of Congress, turned up there on Capitol Hill. He detailed his extensive opposition to what was happening back in Colorado and also across the West. Forbes also sought to add his voice to what other Democrats were doing and stated that those people elected as Democrats out there in the West weren’t ‘real Democrats’ and he considered them nothing to do with the party of which he was a member. Others in the same party as him, who remained angry at him for his trying to stay on the fence as he had, were more forceful with all of that. They were looking to the future, to the electability of their party where for the _second time_ in their nation’s history, Democrats were committing secession and treason on the grandest scale.

The ripples from the UDI were extensive outside of the political arena. If there was a pond, then a space rock had been dumped atop of that. Unforeseen craziness occurred following the announcement that a new country had been formed in the manner that it was and then the complete refusal shown by the president to do anything about that apart from stamping his feet. Trading on Wall Street was suspended following a crash by the NYSE and then there was the closure of further stock markets nationwide too: more than just a domestic matter, that had international effects too. In prisons throughout the West there were riots which erupted when the news of the DAR being formed came. Multiple large corporations which had a presence throughout what had suddenly become two countries shut down remotely their operations in the West fearing that staying in business would negatively effect them down the line ‘once everything was sorted out’. That had quite the effect when it concerned retail and banking operations. Without a firm answer as to what to do from the Department of Transportation, national airlines took action themselves. Where the bigger ones acted first, the smaller ones did the same. Flights going into the West were cancelled while at the same time instructions went out for aircraft on the ground out there to fly ‘home’. _Amtrak_ wished to continue running but, after consultation with insurance companies, decided to suspend services which went either to or through the West. None of this had been foreseen and things were done in a panic. It was something that should have been well expected though. There were political differences between the West and the rest of the country yet the whole nation was entirely connected in every other way imaginable. The airline issue was brought up when foreign leaders sought to contact Walsh, his hurriedly-appointed Acting SecState and administration figures such as the UN Ambassador. They were worried about their nationals out there in the West and what the illegal independence declared meant for them. The fear was over whether there was going to be military action and how that would effect their nationals but also wider global security too.​
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The serving generals whom the Summerlin Gang sought out early on for support had given their word that they would act and that they did. The three of them were joined by a retired senior military officer: General Darius Sylvester–Fuller. He had previously served as the head of the US Air Force and then subsequently the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before being eased out of uniform by the Walsh Administration. There had been disputes between the White House and Sylvester–Fuller concerning many global military flashpoints – the Baltic, Egypt and the South China Sea just to name a few – and the latter had to walk in the end. Born in Ohio, Sylvester–Fuller had settled after retirement in California. He had approached Padley in the aftermath of the Republicans beginning the process of stealing the election. The politics of MRQ weren’t to his particular taste, especially her world-view, yet Sylvester–Fuller was outraged at how the US Constitution was abused like it was by those seeking power. He believed in democracy though had to watch as that was ridden roughshod through so outrageously. Sylvester–Fuller spoke with Lt.–General Millo before and after Padley did with the elder man bringing his fellow native Easterner on-side to join those out in the West aiming to bring about democracy. Each of them had sworn oath of service to their country and its institutions but considered those to have failed. They had done their best and the only _right thing_ that they could see to do was join with those who were acting to set things back to how they should be in a new country. Treason was what each knew that they would be accused of yet, like Lt.–Generals Hensen & Narborogh too, they jumped in what they did feet first and with eyes wide open at the personal consequences for them if it all went wrong.

Millo began issuing orders from down in Fort Sam Houston once the UDI was made. Instructions went to subordinate commands within the US Army North that they weren’t to take any action against either the forming Democratic American Republic nor against National Guard elements from the states in the West moving to secure operational control over their bases. The orders went out in Millo’s name as the commanding officer of the US Army North though had the apparent stamp of approval of the Pentagon behind that. Naturally, each and every garrison across eight states which received such an unexpected order replied with questions over that. They wanted clarification, so the senior officer would say, though what they really meant was ‘are you out of your mind?’. Millo’s follow-up was to state that those were orders ultimately from President Walsh where he didn’t want to see Americans killing Americans, not on his watch. Millo mixed a lie with the truth there. He sewed confusion with what he said. He brought time for what happened to go ahead. Several hours later, Sylvester–Fuller would leave Texas and fly up to Colorado and Fort Carson there. He’d hadn’t achieved all that he wanted to yet had done a lot to further the cause which he supported. Narborogh stayed where she was at Peterson SFB and told her own lies there. Junior personnel were duped by her and several closest aides into following instructions to arrest her superior, the commanding general heading up US Northern Command, on charges of treason and plotting a military _coup_. Those involved did that themselves. The story never would have held for long but it didn’t need to. ‘Friendly forces’ – Colorado national guardsmen – arrived at the headquarters for one of the US Armed Forces unified combatant commands to help secure the takeover there. Narborogh had done what Millo had done in sending out false orders to military bases though didn’t need to flee. Hensen at Camp Pendleton received the first order that Narborogh had sent out and he took the US Marines – DAR Marines after that – with the I MEF into action across the West. Unit detachments held ready for an exercise that Hensen had forged the orders for suddenly started to move. There were hundreds of them, not the tens of thousands of available, but the few men & women on the move did as they were ordered to and helped to establish control over various military bases all while unknowing undertaking the first missions of the DAR Marines. Sylvester–Fuller coordinated everything from his base of operations at JTFB Los Alamitos – California National Guard base outside of Los Angeles – with report after report incoming to him. There were many successes yet also a few failures with what was done.

The I MEF detachments flying about by heli-lift across a good chunk of California were joined elsewhere by National Guard elements under orders from state governors across the West. The latter had been mobilised for some time and were damn well overstretched with what Sylvester–Fuller had them do. The DAR’s commander-in-chief sent the troops under command to enter military bases. Millo and Narborogh had each issued those orders to see a stand-down of a position to fight off any intrusion by garrisoned military units yet it still wasn’t something that could be easily done. Small detachments of troops approaching in truck columns demanding entry and helicopters landing within the confines of military bases were hardly welcome. They got into and started taking over the key points – the communications, HQ and magazines – at a whole range of sites though. Joint Base Lewis–McChord (a garrison and an airbase both) in Washington state was taken without any bloodshed when the base commander, an old comrade-in-arms of Millo, switched sides. The DoD secret site known as Area 51 in Nevada was gained control of along with Creech AFB, NAS Fallon and Nellis AFB. The trio of US Space Force ground facilities in Colorado (Buckley SFB, Peterson & Schriever SFB) were brought under control along with Air Force Academy, Cheyenne Mountain and Fort Carson. Cannon AFB and Kirtland AFB in New Mexico went over to the DAR; in Arizona, the airbases of Davis-Monthan AFB and Luke AFB were gained along with Fort Huachuca and MCAS Yuma. Out on Hawaii, the majority of the targeted major military facilities fell in one swoop where Camp Smith, MCAS Kaneohe Bay, MCB Hawaii and Schofield Barracks were taken. California was full of military bases. The big air facilities at Beale AFB, NAS Lemoore, March ARB, MCAS Miramar & Travis AFB were gained control over and so too were Camp Pendleton & Twentynine Palms by the complicit Marines themselves. Fort Irwin was taken and so too was Vandenberg AFB plus the naval base at Ventura Co. Those active military bases full of uniformed personnel who had no idea what was happening, and who Sylvester–Fuller wanted to keep in the dark, were swallowed up just like three of the major military depots in the West full of military equipment and stores. Barstow, Hawthorne and Sierra were immense gains for the newborn DAR Armed Forces due to what they held.

However, there was resistance to the same actions tried at various other military sites where blood was either spilt or there was a strong threat to see that happen. Fairchild AFB wasn’t taken over and nor were NAS El Centro & Holloman AFB too. Security personnel stood to and refused entry to those seeking to bluff, coerce and threaten their way in. It was the same on Hawaii with Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickham not entered under threat of a devastating military response from within to that. There was shooting in California. At Edwards AFB where the US Air Force had a trio of brand new B-21A Raider stealth bombers sitting there, Hensen’s Marines were fired upon. They seized all three aircraft undamaged, along with the airbase out there in the desert, but it was costly for them. Other Marines from the I MEF found that US Navy sailors & base personnel in the sprawling San Diego complex could and would fight to defend the place from falling to what their commander deemed ‘communist insurrectionists’. Naval Base Kitsap (several sites on Puget Sound) was also defended against from those few soldiers out of Fort Lewis seeking to enter it: their lies were met with bullets. There was a mass of nuclear weapons stored at Kitsap but plenty more were at both Kirtland and Nellis that Sylvester–Fuller’s people secured without bloodshed. A huge arsenal of the ultimate weapons of mass destruction, including more than a hundred that had been returned to Nevada from Europe the preceding year when NATO Nuclear Sharing had ended, but also a couple of thousand in New Mexico, were taken without anyone doing anything about that.

Walsh was briefed about the Kitsap situation continuously as it went on. News from Kirtland & Nellis came in alongside the takeovers of all of the other military sites too, and the implications of the seizure by secessions of so many nukes was made clear. Attention was on Kitsap though. The 48th President, with just over a week left in office, sought to seize control of the situation from afar. He demanded that the base commander hold out though told him not to take any ‘unnecessary action to inflame the situation’. Inflame the situation! The US Navy man there kept his cool yet wanted to scream down the link-up to the idiot in command in DC. Then the line went dead. Communications to Kitsap were cut off and everything tried to get through to there – from civilian land lines to military satellite link ups – went down. Kitsap would be cut off by Sylvester–Fuller just like those other islands of resistance. The Acting SecDef and the Joint Chiefs faced crisis after crisis. There was a massive political drama ongoing following the UDI made yet their focus was on the sudden but thoroughly coordinated effort to rob the United States of a good portion of its military power. They implored Walsh to allow them to issue orders for action to be taken. They wanted an active defence, for military units in the West to make a fight of it by striking outwards, rather than curled up where they did manage to hold on with instructions to only stop anyone coming in. They too wanted him to begin to deploy the rest of the US Armed Forces to put down what was an insurrection and an ongoing military rebellion. Though details on exactly what happened were patchy, there was still a good understanding. The insurrectionists had few forces and spread them thin while making out they had a much larger strength. Only select commanders were in the know with others going along unawares. The whole situation was reversible… if only Walsh would give the order. That he wouldn’t do. He refused to be the one to give the order for Americans to kill Americans, making a big fuss over the supposed moral high ground that he was standing upon. Again and again those at the Pentagon tried to get him to change his mind but he wouldn’t back down.

Mobilisation orders went out from governors of states across the nation, especially those ones a-joining or near to the ones in the West. SDF units had already been on alert yet they were joined by national guardsmen who received the call to arms. The mobilisation was organised by those states without any central order to act from the Pentagon. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau – a member of the Joint Chiefs – gave tacit approval though couldn’t do anything official. The call-up was rapid but it would be some time indeed before ‘anything could be done’, especially without any federal coordination to the mobilisations. Among military personnel, be they in the new DAR or within the old United States, what was happening was known about at their various garrisons from coast-to-coast. It was all over the news and then there were orders which came for them to stand-to (from Los Alamitos and the Pentagon too). Details were lacking on what was happening but those in uniform fast understood what was happening: they were being readied to fight in a civil war. It could be one to start soon or down the line, such was the understanding, but it was going to happen. Their duty to their nation and their oaths of service weighed heavy on the minds of officers and enlisted personnel alike. The US Armed Forces were a volunteer organisation with those serving having wanted to be there. In the West though, it soon became apparent that they were part of another country’s armed forces with instructions coming that they were to soon swear a new oath of allegiance, one to a new country. Outside of the DAR, military personnel believed that they were soon to be sent off to fight their former brothers- & sisters-in-arms. Emotions ran wild. Questions were asked and opinions expressed where they shouldn’t have been. The first desertions would begin, so too would the wilful damage done to equipment and supplies. The first mutinies would also start aplenty. The armed forces of the one country that had so suddenly become two were about to have large parts of their strength torn apart from within. Loyalties would be tested. Soldiers from the West served in the East and vice versa. Political views varied on whether the DAR’s founders were traitors or patriots. Orders only come down from the top within one of them to do anything yet everyone in uniform feared they would soon be sent off to fight.​
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The second day of the existence of the Democratic American Republic following the UDI which had seen it created witnessed shocking acts of political assassination which the founders of that new nation would be blamed for. Outside of Tucson, when returning to that Arizona city where a bastion of resistance was being formed against the DAR, Senator Doucet was murdered. She was in a vehicle approaching Davis-Monthan AFB to try and convince those there who had claimed allegiance to the illegal, unrecognised country to return their support back to the United States. A meeting had been arranged between Doucet and the airbase commander where the Secret Service agents usually alongside her were left behind. Everything was supposed to go smoothly. It didn’t though when the vehicle stopped, the Tucson police officers within suddenly got out without saying a word, and Doucet remained inside the car when it was sprayed with automatic rifle fire by a trio of balaclava-clad men. They and the policemen would all disappear, leaving the bullet-ridden body within the car to be found soon enough by civilians. Back in Tucson, the mayor there would be gripped with fright at what had happened to Doucet and consider giving in on her course of action to resist that DAR. The betrayal of her & the senator and the willingness to go so far by those against them was quite something. However, she rallied her internal strength and decided to fight on with greater determination. Across in California, former Congressman Alejandro Ortiz was killed in Calexico and within sight of the border with Mexico. Defeated two months beforehand where his California US House seat had been taken from him by a Democratic challenger, the Republican had been for several weeks making public statements against sedition and treason. He had been threatened but considered that all a bluff. Finally seeing that the danger was real once those he had been fighting against had taken power, Ortiz had decided to flee. Mexico was closer than ‘friendly lines’ on the other side of the Rockies. His car was stopped, he was taken out at gunpoint and shot beside the road. Dozens of witnesses saw two men & a woman walk away apparently unconcerned at being observed committing murder.

Putsches took place across the West to depose state governments which stood in opposition to the DAR. Washington state was one of those undergoing rebellion against the United States though its governor had kept it out of that illegal country’s formation. His resistance to seeing Washington subsumed and what he regarded as a compete stripping of the democratic rights of its citizens ended the next day though when national guardsmen moved into Olympia and went to the Governor’s Mansion. Governor Craig Reeves _could_ have fled. He decided to stay though and tried to talk down those who came to have him arrested. There was no success for him though and Reeves was taken away. He expected that he would have a fatal accident at some point though was wrong in that. His lt.–gov., Ahmad, wouldn’t do anything like that. When the right-wing media got hold of the news that a Muslim had deposed a sitting state governor, they went nuts. Ahmad saw none of that though because his focus once he had taken control of Washington was to add it to the DAR. A similar attempt at a forced change of state government happened in neighbouring Idaho. Things were very different in that Red state though. Governor Winkelman’s lt.–gov. sought to depose him with the belief in her that he was about to take Idaho into the secessionist DAR. She had national guardsmen loyal to her – to Idaho, to the United States, she said – move on Boise. Others flocked to the defence of Winkelman though where he successfully stood firm against that attempt to force him from office, possibly even see him killed. No exchanges of gunfire took place within Boise though the small city, one long gripped by violence, had two sets of opposing troops within it both wearing the same uniform and claiming the same higher allegiance. There had been pre-UDI contact between Winkelman and one of the founders of the DAR and when Sweet did what she did with those backing her that she had, Winkelman took the step into the unknown and set about doing what she said he was in taking Idaho into the DAR. It was to stop violence, to allow Idahoans to live in peace, so Winkelman determined.

Counter-secession was seen on Jan. 12th. The defence of expressing the universally-recognised principle of self determination had been used by Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz in public statements at the very first moments of the new country. She had claimed that the people of the West had spoken and they wanted to be free. The same reasoning was employed by political leaders within the DAR when they set about taking portions of it out of the states which had joined that new country and back into the United States: the people in those regions had spoken too and said that they wanted to be free. Led by the state’s attorney general, a wide range of mid-ranking Colorado politicians – Democrats and Republicans – met within the small city of Grand Junction in the west of Colorado. They represented a different set of constituents as opposed to the ‘big city folk’ from Denver, Colorado Springs & Boulder etc. They were entirely opposed to Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz, treason and leaving the United States. In San Diego, the mayor and the city council were emboldened by what had happened with the US Navy personnel defying the attempt to seize the massive naval base and they set about seceding out of California with that state being part of the DAR. Spokane’s mayor Frank Forrest was well aware of what happened in Olympia where he watched events there live on television over where he was on the other side of Washington. When Reeves lost the state capital, many thought that Washington was lost. It wasn’t as far as Forrest was concerned. He, his city and everyone that could come to his aid, including the murderous right-wing militias that had long plagued the Inland North–West would make a stand in and around Spokane. The nearby Fairchild AFB had resisted a military takeover and, standing together, opposition to illegality would be firm there. Down in Tucson, Annabelle Markovitz recovered enough after Doucet’s death to make a public statement declaring that if Arizona was leaving the United States, then Tucson was leaving Arizona. It was a bold announcement considering that the Arizona National Guard had been active and was under the full command of Governor Sollenberger, but the flame of resistance via counter-secession was lit down in Tucson.

Las Vegas had been where the new country was founded and it was there that the national capital was. A home for the government in terms of workplaces and a seat for the new parliament was needed in the long-term though temporary facilities used during the meetings ahead of the UDI were made use of in those early days. There was a lot of MRQ and her government to do. Planning had been done ahead of time and it had been something understood that there would be a lot of chaos where things went wrong and also the unexpected happened… yet, still, the situation was serious enough early on that there were (private) thoughts from many of those involved in the founding that everything was going to collapse around them. The financial chaos and the witnessing of so much anger against the DAR, plus all those people who set about fleeing the new country, unnerved a good number of influential figures. However, Padley rallied many who worried and so to did messages of support incoming from Governor Pierce out there in Sacramento and from Denver where Governor Rowan was. The new government established control over its territory. That wasn’t only about securing a defensive position to stop it being crushed at birth but undertaking a transition of power at all levels. Politically and economically that was one hell of a struggle. The idea of the DAR appealed to many yet drove so many others to rage where they set about opposing the new country in every way possible. To assert control where that could be publicised as propaganda, the freed Ashby was back making public appearances and statements. The US Government had locked her up yet the DAR Government had freed her: she also spoke of the ‘murder’ of McCleary too, blaming that on ‘agents of DC’. Her comments and those of government leaders such as MRQ went out through a media which the DAR brought under control. In the nation’s founding documents, media controls were there as a power of the government. They were used to shut opposition being broadcast from network employees, ‘foreigners’ (those outside the DAR) and also ‘internal subversives’. As to the latter, the DAR did early on what its founders had raged against the US Government for doing where they themselves started detaining people. It was done in the name of ‘necessary public safety’ but had a decidedly political bent to it. Unlike when Ashby & McCleary had been arrested, there was no wall-to-wall media coverage of the detainment by the authorities of others.

In areas claimed by the DAR, near to military bases which forces loyal to the US Government still held, there was more violence on the second day. There was silence from the Pentagon where the DAR Armed Forces had cut off communications yet a determination within them from the base commanders & senior people to remain holding out. It was their duty to make a stand, to deny the insurrections from seizing what wasn’t theirs. Naval Base Kitsap was spread across several individual sites including where all of those US Marines guarding the massive nuclear stockpile at Bremerton where located. Sailors and Marines alike though had weapons in-hand and pointed outwards in defence. They were soon feeling more in the sticky stuff then before though when Reeves was deposed and Ahmad had Washington state’s National Guard firmly under his control. Sylvester–Fuller down in Los Alamitos was already seeing to it that the soldiers at Fort Lewis who were prepared to fight for the DAR – and so many weren’t too – were getting ready to move but the national guardsmen from both Oregon (already there) and Washington were closer. Soon enough, they started to surround Kitsap with most concentrating around Bremerton. Gunfire was witnessed within hours and the national guardsmen moved forward. Americans were killing Americans with those doing in in uniform. It was the same on Hawaii’s Oahu Island. Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors clashed. The morning of the day beforehand they had all been Americans yet commanders began answering to different, opposing governments. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickham was soon somewhere to be fought over with casualty numbers that grew at an extraordinary rate. Holloman AFB in New Mexico would be taken after the defenders gave in following the exchange of shots with advancing national guardsmen. There had been hope from both within and from afar (back in DC) that the facility could hold out but those Airmen there had no answer to heavy weapons brought up and used. They gave in rather than be flattened by artillery and killed while fighting on behalf of a nation that sent them no help at all. The base commander knew that there were soldiers and national guardsmen (the latter were Texans) _just down the road_ at Fort Bliss and around El Paso yet none of them were sent up to rescue him and his people. Shots were fired around the San Diego military area too. DAR Marines were moving in to replace the few national guardsmen outside of the perimeter. The shooting took place in urban areas from where civilians had been fleeing though some were caught up in that. The two sides blamed the other for that while imploring the other to give up what they were fighting for. Those were the exchanges between commanders though down at lower levels, so many of those in uniform didn’t want to be fighting inside an American city for a difference of political opinion.

Over on the other side of the divided country, one finally firmly ripped into two as many had long feared, there was talk in DC of Walsh being rapidly impeached to stop what was happening out there in the West. The countdown until his presidency was over with was at the eight days stage yet the talk was rather serious. Congressional figures were plotting to see if it could be done, if they could remove him faster than they had gotten rid of Padley. The failed first attempt by his own Cabinet was still fresh in many minds though. Then there was the distraction of continued, shocking developments from out there in the newfangled Democratic American Republic. The death of Doucet was reported on and so too the deposing of Reeves. Unannounced yet clearly seen DAR moves to strengthen its grip on power where they started silencing the media and also began making quiet arrests were observed. Additionally, there was the mass economic disruption ongoing out in the West. Nonetheless, the latter was also affecting the portions of the United States not in rebellion too. A lot of focus was on that rather than on the root cause of it, that being Las Vegas. Walsh held briefing after briefing in the White House with half of them being about the DAR and the rest concerning economic and security woes. His attention was pulled one way and then another, just as it was for everyone else too. Military chiefs over at the Pentagon were up in arms at his behaviour just like many of those on Capitol Hill. They wanted action taken to unleash military force against the insurrectionists. Walsh said no. They wanted Walsh to approve a call-up of military reservists so that when the Roberts Administration took charge, those could be employed. Walsh denied them that. They wanted recall orders prepared for US military forces overseas, again for when the new president took office. The answer from Walsh there was a refusal. The Joint Chiefs requested that they be allowed to start making other preparations on home soil for the use of military force come Jan. 20th. The reply was yet another no. Nothing that was asked for came with a yes. The DAR Armed Forces, led by traitors without a mass of support from its ranks, was weak and could easily be crushed, so said the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, but that wouldn’t be the case for very long. Walsh only focused on the traitors he imagined though: Westerners in government and military service. Only ‘Easterners’ could be relied upon… where he ignored the fact that so many Easterners had sworn allegiance to the DAR. The United States Armed Forces were in serious trouble with all that was happening beyond just those bases in the West, with that having a geo-political national security threat, yet Walsh did nothing at all. His only excuse was that he wouldn’t be responsible for Americans killing Americans yet when they were doing that because of his refusal to act.​


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## JamesG

*Here Be Dragons*


Right-wing militia forces across the Pacific North–West / Inland North–West had long waited for the day to come where they would ride to the rescue as patriots to save their country from the perils of socialists, communists etc. The UDI that created the Democratic American Republic gave them that opportunity. They were taken aback in the manner that it happened yet, acting under the banner of the Free Americans, gunmen/women set about resisting the tyranny that they had long feared to be under. In both Oregon and Washington, across the eastern parts of those states, there were exchanges of fire with state authorities. Not all of them were onboard with what was going on with the DAR yet the militia had a fight with them nonetheless. Hundreds of local members as well as many more from across the nation who’d recently flooded in were within the rural portions of those two states with many more on their way as they travelled across Idaho and Montana to join the struggle. The latter would get held up in that endeavour though by ‘trouble’ on the way. In the meantime, there were other militias active across the West. In Arizona and Colorado both, smaller armed groups had a presence. They weren’t as well-equipped nor anywhere near as organised as the Free Americans yet they were just as committed. There were gun battles with state authorities in that further pair of states too though also a good number of innocents were caught up in the violence which took place. They were caught in the crossfire or targeted in error by the militia members. As to those armed and hellbent on opposing the DAR, be they in any of those states, the typical media narrative on the left was that all of them were Caucasian males, racists and probably inbred too. There might have been just a little bit of truth to some of that assumption yet not much. There were African-American, Asian and Hispanic members as well as a large number of women within the groups. Racists and misogynists aplenty were there but there were others with them. They came from communities outside of the urban areas where their political feelings were very different from the majority. They fought to oppose a new country whose very idea they hated, doing so when the armed forces of the country to which they had allegiance had been ordered not to.

Free Americans travelling through Idaho found themselves caught up in the chaos which erupted there in mid-January where the governor and his lieutenant-governor each sought authority over the state and had armed military personnel on their side. The stand-off in Boise between national guardsmen defending Winkelman and in support of Sweet’s putsch was the highlight yet all across Idaho, which was to be right on border of the DAR by its geography, fault lines fractured as news of what happened in the state capital spread. Idaho’s National Guard, its State Defence Force and state troopers had their loyalties torn in two when Winkelman responded to the effort by Sweet and her Far Right supporters to illegally seize power by taking Idaho into the DAR. He had no moral authority nor legal right to do that yet he did so. With permission from his president, General Sylvester–Fuller down in Southern California sent DAR Marines up to Idaho. They were air-lifted late on Jan. 13th and helped secure control of Boise the same night. It was full on civil war there with soldiers shooting at each other in pitched battles. Militia members joined in on the pro-US side though found themselves outgunned and not capable of fighting the opponents that they had. Idahoans killed Idahoans aplenty too. They knew about in DC yet President Walsh there did nothing to intervene: ‘union forces’ were pushed back and suffered significant losses. State forces were caught up in all of that just like the militia were too. Boise and only a small portion of the state were in DAR hands during the second day of fighting there with many of those who’d answered Sweet’s call to arms pushed back towards Mountain Home AFB where there was a bastion being formed up. The rest of the state, along with most of its people, were opposed to what was going. Regardless, Winkelman did what he remained believing was the best and took Idaho into the DAR. He thought that he would save lives by doing so rather than having Idaho remain with the United States.

Similarly, neighbouring Utah likewise joined the DAR in those early days of that new country’s existence where once again the will of the people wasn’t in any way for any form of separatism from the United States. Congressman Clarke was the architect of that. He’d returned from DC and led what became a people power revolution. On the streets of Salt Lake City – a liberal bastion in an arch-conservative state – Clarke was at the head of an insurrection that brought down the state government. Rumours swept Utah that elements of the DAR Armed Forces were due to enter the state. Utah’s National Guard had been mobilised by the governor yet it was too small and also too slow to fully be brought out. Protesters had seized the state capitol long before there was any organised resistance against them. Clarke was soon there and broadcasting a declaration that the people of Utah had chosen to join the DAR and there was no one to stop him. The governor and key state officials had fled from the mob in fear of their lives. They went to Hill AFB where there was a federal military presence with the belief that there would be safety there and Hill would also become the staging point of a Pentagon-organised offensive to put down the insurrection and restore law-&-order. There they stayed while elsewhere across Utah, through small cities, supporters of Clarke and those in awe at the promise of what the DAR was supposed to be took over local authorities without opposition too. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Utah’s people spread across most of the state had no wish to join them. There was no organised opposition though, nor even any significant unorganised militia presence. The warning sighs had long been in Utah that major unrest leading to something crazy like that was possible and the governor had all of the warning he needed when he witnessed from afar what happened in neighbouring states. Clarke’s love affair with the ‘cause of the West’ had never been hidden either. Still, legitimate authority evaporated within Utah rather easily. Like a house of cards faced with a strong breeze, Utah’s foundations as part of the United States collapsed. Confusion and fear amongst those in charge led to the residents there soon finding themselves as part of an illegal new nation when that could have been so easily stopped.

People would leave Idaho and Utah both in the aftermath of what happened there though they were those that were able to. Like residents of the initial states across the West, the Blue ones rather than those Red ones, the vast majority of those who wanted to leave found themselves unable to. The airlines weren’t flying and there was no rail service. While the highways and interstates out were open, a consumer run on fuel was fast and that left plenty without any gas to make the drive. In the name of ensuring public safety, many of the road access points out were closed within time too. Families were left stranded where they’d been on the move yet left unable to leave the DAR nor return to their homes: paying for any form of accommodation was also impossible due to the shutdown of the banking system. Some of the people who got out early on from states such as California, Nevada & Oregon had fled into Idaho, Utah and Washington rather than going any further. They were left to rue that error when they found that those states had too joined the country from which they were fleeing. Canada didn’t shut its border though not many people left the DAR heading north. So many who couldn’t go east went south instead. Crossing into Mexico and then going onwards back into the United States was the widespread intention. Mexico was a war zone though and had been for some time. The establishment of the DAR declared that federal border personnel working on the new DAR-Mexico frontier worked for that new country. A good number of them, who’d already faced organised harassment from Resistance efforts as part of the pre-UDI political unrest, walked away from their jobs rather than answer to an illegal regime. Other border control efforts including transnational coordination with US Government entities collapsed. That opened up the border for those people who went into Mexico yet also for those seeking to go the other way.

A wave of refugees moved north, entering the DAR in great numbers. They were from across Latin America and long held against their will in Mexico due to strict US immigration. Various drug cartels supported that mass movement of people where they brought those people across for their own nefarious gains. They also moved significant quantities of narcotics north where the opportunity to do so was seized. Guns and cash went southwards at the same time with the criminal groups deciding that the time was ripe to do that as well. Political chaos in the United States – the Western bits calling themselves a new country – was taken advantage of by them. For so long they had driven Mexico to an undeclared civil war and they were fast enough to move when witnessing a different kind of conflict erupt to the north. The border was in chaos across California, Arizona and New Mexico, and the cartels furthered what they were doing where they started moving their own armed personnel northwards in great numbers. Hundreds of _Sicario_s (many of them natives from elsewhere in Latin America rather than Mexico) travelled into the new DAR with instructions to establish bases of operation on the other side of the long frontier. Armed clashes took place between multiple groups soon enough deep within the DAR though also along the border areas too. Civilians were caught up in that including many of those seeking to flee the homes and make themselves temporary refugees because they refused to stay in the new country led by Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz and others. American lives had been lost in the border areas ahead of the DAR being established due to Mexico’s undeclared civil war – there were also those disappearances of teenage protesters too – though the numbers were significantly higher come the middle of January 2029.

Former Senator Erik Johansen, who’d retired from the Senate back in November after representing Minnesota for eight years, set himself up as a peacemaker. A centralist Democrat, he’d long had good relations with the ‘Western wing’ of his party regardless of that ideological friction. He had seen what happened coming (so he said with a lot of hindsight anyway) and tried to fix things. His actions were independent. They were dismissed by many who thought that he should but out and ‘let the grown ups do the talking’ as well as respond in a different manner to the one which Johansen tried. His efforts were of a diplomatic nature. He wanted to get people talking rather than fighting as he foresaw happening the moment that President-elect Roberts took office. With his own private jet – his fellow Democrats long hadn’t liked his apparent disregard for the environmental damage there – he flew from Minneapolis to Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. Military air traffic control on the ground in DAR hands failed to organise a response to that aircraft intrusion and its unauthorised landing: there would be hell to pay for many in uniform considering that US military action was feared. Johansen attempted to set up a meeting when in Las Vegas with MRQ and Padley both. His intention was to talk to them as to stepping back from the abyss with a key element of that in his mind being that they should hand back over all of the nuclear weapons they had taken. Johansen actually considered that more important than anything else. He was arrested by Nevada national guardsmen and never had his meeting with the two women he went to the DAR’s capital to see. There was no mood for talking there, not with someone considered a busybody with no authority, not when their country was in its first days and beset by seemingly a million problems that could bring it all crashing down. One of those was the certainty of military action soon enough. Walsh remained keeping the US Armed Forces impotent yet there was no doubt among members of the National Council – the ruling executive body – that Roberts would bring a fight to them. Padley had an initial strong hand on early military matters though delegated responsibilities soon enough to Eleanor Rawlings. She was a Hawaiian and had been a US senator before she joined that boycott and then sworn an oath of allegiance to the Democratic American Republic. Rawlings was the first DAR Minister of Defence & Security. That issue with Johansen’s plane was not only an embarrassment but showed perfectly all of the problems that the new DAR Armed Forces faced. All over the place there were desertions of personnel, mutinies and gaps in capabilities. Fighting was taking place in some areas to seize military bases from US forces on DAR soil with so much of that more of a mess than it should have been. Rawlings continually looked at the calendar where she counted down the days to Jan. 20th. Everything she was building was on that day going to face the ultimate test where the nation which she served was going to take one giant step into the unknown.​
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Working with newly-appointed Minister Rawlings, General Sylvester–Fuller had been seeking to end the stand-off around the trio of major naval bases which remained out of the grasp of the DAR Armed Forces. Kitsap, Pearl Harbor and San Diego had commanders who refused to yield to the new authority. Since the first days of the new country, there was enough strength available to take them if necessary yet Sylvester–Fuller hadn’t wanted to see what was inside of them destroyed during the attempt. Seizing Army, Air Force & Space Force bases in the West from the United States had come with little physical destruction caused, plus too little loss of life. It was understood that the loyalist US forces inside the last trio were playing for time and Sylvester–Fuller became more and more impatient: so too Rawlings and the National Council which she served. That patience snapped on Jan. 15th. From out of the big naval facilities in California, Hawaii and Washington state, there were coordinated mass sailings of ships. Some had already left yet on that day, they flooded out: among them were the aircraft carriers _Kennedy_ and _Roosevelt_. Of all of the uniformed services, the US Navy had been the most resistant to being subsumed in part by the DAR. Those who wished to join the new country, or refused to take part in an upcoming fight, were left behind. Large numbers of ships left the naval bases, taking with them significant numbers of personnel. Sylvester–Fuller send in the troops he had to take control of the bases. The fighting was intense. It was just as destructive and as costly as feared. US Marines at the Bremerton portion of Kitsap fought to almost the very end to guard the massive nuclear stockpile there and covered the activities of naval engineers who detonated explosive charges of bury many weapons. That fighting was near to Seattle and there were also those battles around the urban areas of Honolulu and San Diego too. Few civilians were caught up in that after so many of them had previously been evacuated. Where uniformed Americans fought uniformed Americans in those fights, ones that many would argue signalled that the civil war really was underway, serious effort was expended by each side to not harm civilians: everyone was aware that those were their fellow Americans there… though so too were the troops on the other side.

Air power was used sparingly yet effectively in the fighting for those naval bases and also when the DAR Armed Forces also moved to crush the last military opposition elsewhere across the West in their ‘claimed territory’. Aircraft and helicopters were employed to make attacks directly or to display capability & intent with the aim to force an early end to conflict. DAR Marine F-35B Lightnings were effective without dropping bombs when forcing the surrender of Fairchild AFB in Washington while Arizona Army National Guard Apache gunships were involved in limited engagements outside of San Diego. The trouble with using air power like that, especially along with all of what was captured across the West, was that many military personnel used the opportunity to either re-defect back to the United States, or to flee with their aircraft to Canada or Mexico. On many occasions throughout the early days of air power flying for the DAR, aircrew fled with their aircraft rather than use them against their fellow Americans as ordered. There was significant air activity through Idaho and into Utah following the absorption of those two states into the DAR. Mountain Home AFB fell easily to Idaho national guardsmen loyal to Governor Winkelman though Hill AFB in Utah was a different matter. Nevada national guardsmen, riding in tanks and tracked armoured vehicles, stormed that facility supported by helicopter gunships. It was an airbase, not a real fortified position. Significant opposition came from within there though there was a big bug-out ahead of time where many aircraft – more F-35s but also transports too – fled Hill. Utah’s governor was aboard one of those flights where he feared staying in his home state and facing ‘revolutionary justice’. Back in Salt Lake City, self-declared Governor Clarke was doing that as he tore apart the state government and institutions. At the Tooele Army Depot, an explosion similar to what happened at Bremerton was planned for there where the mass of stored ammunition was due to be exploded less it be seized by the DAR. Oregon national guardsmen got to that Utah facility first. More soldiers from that state, plus ones from out of Washington, moved into Idaho in mid-January. They joined with what national guardsmen Winkelman could muster in facing off against ‘disloyal’ National Guard units and also masses of armed militia from the Free Americans. Back into Montana and Wyoming those were pushed… or walked over when shot down across Idaho.

The city of Spokane was reabsorbed when the nearby Fairchild fell. Many residents fled – so too did a good number of out-of-state militia who’d flocked towards there – yet Mayor Forrest remained. When DAR Army soldiers escorting agents of the DAR’s newborn Ministry of Public Safety arrived, Forrest surrendered himself. He wanted a trial, he wanted a public platform like that… with the foolish belief that he would get such a thing. Watching that event was an _NBC_ team with one of that network’s star reporters present. Outward broadcast capability had been jammed by DAR military electronic efforts yet Shelby Bryant was there with her crew still filming. Forrest’s surrender and then his arrest in the name of the Democratic American Republic, where his supposed treason was condemned, was filmed. As a media team, Bryant expected to be released. She and her team weren’t. Those weren’t the only arrests made there either. Down in Tucson, an Arizona city which had undertaken counter-secession too, Mayor Nunez fled ahead of time. She didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Senator Doucet had done and be murdered. A good number of others also made their escape from the city where either a trip through New Mexico towards Texas was one idea or another was to head down into Mexico. As the days went by, the situation along the border there got even worse than it already had been and that made such a trip extremely dangerous. Nunez would survive it though and appear in Texas – going in and out of Mexico – after being accompanied on her journey by several military personnel who wished to fight for their country where the odds were better in their favour. DAR Army units arrived in Tucson. There weren’t that many of them and they found themselves in hostile territory. Armed civilians shot at them while at the same time there was a wave of criminality which hit the city in the absence of civil authority. Those soldiers pulled out and waited for reinforcements to come and assist them. Tucson had been taken back into the DAR but pacifying it was going to be no easy task indeed. When that did begin, those civilians with guns weren’t fellow Americans as first believed by the soldiers who’d exchanged shots with them. They were instead _Sicario_s from south of the border who’d been sent to Tucson. They’d lose but they wouldn’t give in easy.

Francis E. Warren was a US Air Force facility headquartered outside of Cheyenne in Wyoming. It was home to the 90th Missile Wing, which had silos & launch control centres for its ICBMs spread across three states: Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. The latter had joined the DAR with everywhere within the state’s borders having been proclaimed by the governor to be part of that new country. Governor Rowan was one of the key people who’d built the DAR and while bullish she wasn’t stupid. She’d already had military bases across her state overrun by troops loyal to her and the new country, including the cold-storage Cheyenne Mountain, but seizing the missile silos was something that had been agreed with the National Council down in Las Vegas would be foolish. To take them would only be about making a point, a dangerous point, rather than achieving anything: the DAR was already nuclear-armed and taking ICBMs could set off an early (yet still expected in the long-run) real fight with the United States. Rowan kept her own state forces away from the 90th Missile Wing’s elements in Colorado and the National Council kept back DAR Armed Forces elements too. There were US Air Force security units present yet they didn’t pose a threat. What changed was when Spencer Lynch, Governor of Nebraska, started playing by his own rules in such a situation. When Walsh sat on his hands, Lynch and other Red state governors across the West acted. Nebraska national guardsmen moved into Colorado and through the missile fields. There were ‘difficult’ encounters with US Air Force personnel but no exchanges of gunfire because they had come help. Nebraska had invaded Colorado: such was how it looked to outsiders, a view taken after Lynch highlighted what he had done in media appearances to that effect.

Nebraska’s congressional contingent, along with those from western states either within the DAR or on its edges, remained in DC. Congress had impeached and removed Vice President Padley on charges of treason in record time yet that had been followed up by her presence as one of the key figures of the illegal regime out there. Senators and representatives from across the West – excluding those who had boycotted Congress and were part of the DAR Government – were night and day condemning what was happening and demanding action. The same was being done by Members from elsewhere across the nation yet those from the West considered their voices to be more important. Republicans from the Blue states were joined by those from the Red states of Idaho & Utah in seeing their home states _stolen_ from underneath them. Members from the new Border States of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas & Wyoming, plus also distant Alaska, were insistent that they were next for further land grabs such as had been seen in Idaho & Utah unless something was done to stop that. Talk aplenty among all those on Capitol Hill was of all that had gone on out West since that UDI was made in Las Vegas. The description of a ‘Muslim _coup_’ in Olympia was a racist attack just because the lt.–gov. of Washington was Muslim, yet there was a lot of focus on what happened there because that was an undemocratic seizure of power. Ahmad was tied in within the public mind with the Vanguardist groups too (totally incorrect) and thus causing further angst in DC. The reported arrests and deaths – some news true, other bits false – ongoing with political figures further across the West also brought about great distress. Congressional ire was on those responsible but also President Walsh. Cabinet members whom he had fired for seeing unsuccessfully to remove him were called before committees on Capitol Hill. Ferdinand and Leach both pointed the finger of blames squarely at Walsh. The fired SecDef and SecState each accused the 48th President of utter dereliction of duty ahead of the DAR coming into being and also after its creation too.

None of those accusations were ever going to go away though they certainly only intensified on Jan. 16th (four days before President-elect Roberts was due to take office) when Walsh fired General Richard van Paten from his position as Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As the nation’s senior-most military officer, van Paten was at that time receiving a tremendous amount of abuse because he was in charge at the Pentagon when mass defections and desertions happened throughout the US Armed Forces. The situation in the West was outrageous yet it was also pretty bad elsewhere too. Domestically and on foreign soil, personnel were walking away rather than remain in uniform and wait for Roberts to do what Walsh wouldn’t and send them to war. Into Canada from out of the United States, and across Western Europe away from their Baltic deployment went AWOL personnel. There was too destruction of military equipment and aircraft flights made to foreign territory. Large numbers of service-personnel did everything that they could to do their part in denting the military capability to fight the DAR: the argument that that regime was illegal and needed to be crushed because it held hostage all of those Americans out there held no water with such people. They wouldn’t fight their fellow Americans, just as Walsh too believed. The Chair had sought to make improvements, to move troops about when he had been denied permission to, and, in a huff of rage, Walsh fired him. As to the president, he spent the last week of his term in office boasting that he was willing off the DAR without violence. Walsh pointed to all that was done to supposedly cripple that regime where the economy out there was meant to be shut down and a ring of diplomatic isolation went up. There was no way that illegal entity (the Walsh Administration never called the DAR a country) could survive for very long, negating the need for a fight at the behest of either Walsh or Roberts. The rest of the country didn’t agree – opinion polls for Walsh’s leadership saw him placed at an earth-shattering _six per cent_ – but he believed it. At a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Young three days ahead of leaving office, where he told her he wouldn’t be attending Roberts’ inauguration, Walsh said that he’d killed off the DAR. The New Yorker once more urged him to resign. She then disagreed entirely with that, reminding him that the DAR Armed Forces was using extreme military force out there. She told him of how in the past, uncharted territory on maps would be marked with the description ‘Here Be Dragons’. Fire-breathers with tails weren’t actually feared. Instead, it was the horror of the unknown, of what lay ahead unseen, that caused feared. The last few days ahead of Roberts taking office, where the DAR was also well aware of that countdown, was a time when she spoke of the dragons becoming a reality.​
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Californian national guardsmen arrived in strength across New Mexico with DAR Marines and also elements of the DAR Army from out of Fort Irwin too. The 40th Infantry Division and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment had moved through Arizona following the interstate network (delayed by jams which took some time to clear) though a good portion of the 3rd Marine Division was flown from Hawaii in a large air-lift. Like Colorado and Idaho too, New Mexico was regarded by General Sylvester–Fuller as somewhere to be right on the front-lines of the upcoming war with the United States. He built the New Mexico Corps there and intended to see it reinforced by much of the 1st Marine Division too. Fully-equipped, properly trained and organised in a professional manner, those forward portions of the DAR Armed Forces that their commander-in-chief sent to New Mexico were a real military force. The Democratic American Republic was only a week old when the majority of those Marines flown in from Hawaii arrived yet its armed forces weren’t the typical calibre of those of a new nation. There was a problem with numbers though, a big problem. Thousands of personnel who should have been with those units and supporting non-combat elements which formed the New Mexico Corps were absent all of those who had either gone AWOL or mutinied back in their bases. Media reports from across the United States highlighted all of the ongoing issues that the US Armed Forces were having but none of those mentioned what was going on with the DAR in that regard. They didn’t know the truth of that. One of the brigade-level components of the 40th Infantry Division – mostly National Guard elements from California though with Arizona troopers too – moved into the south of New Mexico after its journey eastwards. Armoured vehicles rolled right down to the state-line with Texas, somewhere that the DAR considered its border with a foreign country. While doing so, they not only arrived across evacuated (on White House orders) outer portions of the military post at Fort Bliss but also were within spitting distance of the Texan city of El Paso. Right across imaginary lines stretching through Interstate-10 and US Highway-54 both, the DAR had its military forces.

Texas was full of uniformed personnel with a large number of them in Far West Texas where El Paso was too. National guardsmen from the 36th Infantry Division were on active service along with more from out-of-state where Red states across the South had made significant deployments in consultation with Austin, not DC. There were Texas State Guard and Texan Rangers present though with the majority of them spread down the Rio Grande facing Mexico rather than positioned up against the border of the new, hostile nation on the state’s frontiers. Governor Flores directly controlled the organised state-level militia elements and there was a joint command for all of the state & out-of-state national guardsmen present too. Yet, the unrecognised militia were a law unto themselves. Texas was a friendly state to militia forces such as the Free Americans though there had been a large-scale arrival of outsiders who felt free to do as they wished and weren’t so well disciplined. The Rio Grande, at the El Paso and Brownsville ends both, was a body of water shot across where gunmen on the two sides fired on each other. The city of Juárez, across from El Paso, was engulfed in cartel violence and into it went some of those militia too. They’d supposedly come to Texas to defend it from the secessionists in the West yet instead went south looking for loot and trouble. As to those armed elements she had control over, Flores had made sure that the El Paso area was well-garrisoned. The vast majority of the US Army component at Fort Bliss had left there late in 2027 for a deployment to the Baltics and she had watched from afar as through January ‘29, the DAR took over military bases across the West. When Walsh had the Pentagon do nothing to secure Fort Bliss beyond what was there in terms of light forces, Flores made sure that there were a good number of soldiers answerable to her – including ones from other states so it wouldn’t just be a Texas issue if blood was spilt – around the base. The facility straddled both states yet was also right outside the city which had seen all of that pro-MRQ violence the previous year.

Flores had sent national guardsmen into El Paso during December and kept them nearby after pulling them back out. It had been armed military police elements mostly rather than riflemen and light armour, though Texan paratroopers had gone in there too. All of those in uniform nearby, plus the state & federal personnel on the US-Mexican border, were present when El Paso saw violence once again in mid-January. Part of that was related to what was happening in Juárez yet there were also what Flores was told were DAR-supporting agitators there too. Rioting and arson took place with significant civil unrest seen on two evenings in a row. On the second, after holding fire on the first, Flores sent the national guardsmen back in again. They took charge of the city and put an end to those seeking to either destroy it or have it handed over to the secessionists. The DAR had little support from those who lived in El Paso though the praise that did come from the few caught up in that madness was amplified pretty loud by those seeking to gain from figures such as Flores being aware. Texan Rangers – Flores’ own state troopers – were sent by her in with the national guardsmen and they arrested several people considered to be major players in an effort to see El Paso, Far West Texas and maybe even _all_ of Texas too taken over by the DAR. The arrests brought about more violence yet El Paso remained under the control of Flores’ deployed personnel. She’d been embarrassed back in December and was determined not to see that happen again. Media teams were given (controlled) access to all that went on and a big show was made out of the professionalism of them and their activities. External praise came for Flores, all fuelling her already extensive ego to a point where she would soon show the whole world the real character of those in uniform on behalf of the Lone Star state. She spoke to fellow governors in Atlanta, Baton Rogue, Little Rock & Oklahoma City ahead of that though didn’t contact DC about it, not even to talk to the Texan who was President-elect Roberts.

The majority of the infrastructure at Fort Bliss was south of the Texas-New Mexico state-line, including the extensive Biggs Army Airfield. There were mostly exercise areas to the north though there were some storage sites which the arriving 40th Infantry Division units took over to see them emptied. Second-line US Army soldiers on-base had been ordered by the Pentagon to not fire unless fired upon and to retreat back into the Texan portions of the base. There were a few thousand of them on-base and they did nothing when all around them fighting erupted. On both sides of the military post, on the outside of the perimeter, an attack was made northwards by Texan national guardsmen joined by those from Georgia and Louisiana too. In near divisional-strength, a full combined arms assault was launched into New Mexico. Tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships were involved in that. Part-time soldiers from Arizona and California there in New Mexico were assailed by those wearing near identical uniforms as them though under orders to fight them as if they were a foreign force. The 36th Infantry Division struck on the morning of Jan. 18th with that attack ordered by Flores where the orders were to move as far north as possible, ‘liberating’ as much as could be liberated within New Mexico. The advance got going well though did slow down as the day went onwards. Hundreds were soon dead or wounded with civilians caught up in the cross-fire. Time and time again, soldiers on each side held their fire in the face of civilians in the combat zone yet on a very few occasions things went wrong and they were caught up in it all. DAR Marines and then Air Force aircraft joined in before the day was out with air power also coming into play from the Texas-led forces too where Air National Guard elements flying into New Mexico skies consisted of the most modern aircraft. Holloman AFB was evacuated by the DAR Air Force on the morning of Jan. 20th despite the fighting still being some distance away. Flores would make a statement from Austin claiming its successful capture a few hours later where she once more extolled her state’s military prowess. Those public remarks made from Austin came not an hour before up in DC, the 49th President of the United States was sworn into office on the steps of the Capitol there.

Walsh wasn’t there when his successor took office. The 48th President had gone back to his private home in Pennsylvania rather than do what was expected of him and be there when Roberts constitutionally replaced him. Roberts didn’t give a damn about him and left Vice President Mitchell to attack Walsh’s legacy in statements made afterwards. To the Pentagon Roberts went straight after taking the oath of office. With the media present, Roberts was there for the swearing in of the new Secretary of Defence. Dwayne Cartwright took up his post not long after Kirby became the new Attorney General and Roberts’ pick for Homeland Security Secretary was too put in-place. Congress had been busy approving his senior national security & legal picks ahead of his inauguration. That media event at the Pentagon saw Roberts make a statement there where he informed the country that Cartwright’s #1 priority would be the liberation of the West. It had become a military matter, not one for federal law enforcement. The ten states claimed by an illegal regime of criminals based in Las Vegas would be freed with military force employed only in a proportional manner. Roberts made it clear that state-level military efforts out in ‘border areas’ (he meant Flores’s little war of her own) would be subsumed by a federal undertaking. When Cartwright took media questions in a short series of them he batted away comments about what foreign foes of the United States were saying about UN peacekeepers being sent to America – they were just trolling there in Caracas, Havana, Minsk & Pyongyang – and talked about the grand military strategy for defeating the DAR: that included what he called ‘a REFORGER in reverse’ where US military forces from overseas (Europe, the Middle East and Asia) would return home _en masse_. That would come alongside a full military mobilisation. He didn’t let them know about secret military instructions given direct by Roberts when it came to targeting for death the leadership of the DAR.

The same night that Roberts took office, he was over in the White House – with Cartwright patched in from the Pentagon – when Operation’s Dragon Fire took place. A drone strike using guided missiles killed Vice President Padley in Las Vegas: another one saw the elimination of Maria Rodríguez–Quiroz at her Walnut Creek home. The wife and children of MRQ died alongside her in that California missile attack too. They were collateral damage because it was the DAR President who was the target. Dragon Fire was a stunning success with those two kills though further planned strikes to kill Governor Pierce as well as Minister Rawlings would fail to achieve the same. Seemingly left suddenly leaderless, the DAR wasn’t though. Pierce would take over, fulfilling what many would say was his destiny in taking the power always within his grasp: unlike MRQ, he wasn’t a pacifist and had no compunction about ‘doing what was necessary’ to defend the independence of the DAR. A return strike to equal the ones made in Las Vegas & the Bay Area would occur after Pierce’s assumption of power. Two of those stolen B-21 stealth bombers would strike DC with the Pentagon and then Capitol Hill hit with laser-guided bombs dropped atop of them. The White House was bombed too yet Roberts wasn’t there at the time. Those strikes in the West followed by retaliation in the East took place while up and down the new US–DAR border, and back inside each nation too, a full-scale war opened. It was a rather uncivil war too where the Years of Lead were ended with the violence of combined arms warfare. Divorces were always messy but the American Divorce was going to be one heck of a bloody affair as it fully got going.


*The End*​


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