2 would mostly only happen in red states. The rest mostly know how to cooperate.

And you know that California doesn't need Canada, even less when you consider the rest of the US west coast in with it.

Some states have proven that, without federal intervention, they cannot effectively govern themselves. Texas, for instance…

Probably better to form an analogy to the old European Coal and Steel Community rather than to jump directly into an EU equivalent, also bring Mexico in since without the US being a thing they'll end up with the largest population on the continent.

And Mexico as Madre?

Claudia Sheinbaum is pretty cute. I'm in.

Each state puts forth a new constitution elevating themselves to country status.

I hope my state can successfully wage war against every state to the south of it.

I could get behind that.

While my theory is based on various sci-fi so should be taken with a mine of salt, my guess is that USA will split into three different countries: NUSA (lol Cyberpunk) which will comprise of the original 13 colony states and the upper North East, The California Republic which will essentially be the West and NW and in good relations with NUSA but with different legislature, and the South which might be called anything from Texas, New Texas, Republic of Texas, or New Louisiana Territory, which will essentially be a war-torn area full of religious extremists not unlike Middle-Eastern areas after the West had their way with them. It will be full of forever wars by religious factions funded by the MIC shareholders of various other countries but in the public face it'll be covered by the media as religious extremism and/or patriotic fanaticism while ignoring the material reality and history of the situation.

IIRC, he's starting negotiations in the middle and is eager to give up even more.

To do that, we'll need to split off from the federal banks.

The resulting power vacuum would result in something far worse. Our best chance is to revive this dead democracy and fix the shit that allowed this to happen.

I don’t think that’s possible though with this electorate.

Personally, I think that a future incarnation of the United States can be one nation, but divided into four regions, each with their own president and branches. Western, Middle, Eastern, and Outer America. The outer region is places outside of the contiguous US, such as Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, military bases like Djibouti, Greenland, and so forth.

These presidents can elect a Figurehead President, who heads the national executive for one term, and no more. Each region donates soldiers and other resources to the national government, and the national court is expanded to have an equal number of justices from each region. I am thinking about 21 justices - 4 from each region, and each president selecting a justice who represents their executive branch during the tenure of their president.

This would make it much harder for any one faction to have controlling power over politics, and make genuine collaboration much more likely.

HFC - High-Frequency Caving

No, we don't live in fantasy land. That could only work on a very small scale and even then, there are political leaders.