Red states

It’s no secret that Americans are moving from blue states to red ones. According to recently released Census Bureau data, the five with the largest population loss to other states between July 2022 and July 2023 were California (-338,371), then New York (-216,778), Illinois (-83,839), New Jersey (-44,666), Massachusetts (-39,149) and Maryland (-30,905). The five states with the largest overall increases during the same period were Texas (473,453), Florida (365,205), Georgia (116,077), South Carolina (90,600) and Tennessee (77,512). The most frequently cited reason for this ongoing blue-to-red migration is taxes — or, more correctly, the opportunity to pay less and fewer of them.

Marjorie Taylor Greene wants Americans to get a national divorce, and the only question is who gets custody of Puerto Rico. Actually there are other questions, such as: why the hell are we talking about this again? And: why is a member of the United States House of Representatives advocating breaking up the United States? And: which third party gets to be the divorce lawyer? Because there is no way Canada is telling me how much alimony I have to pay. For those of you leading normal and productive lives, this latest brain-plague began on Twitter when Congresswoman Greene declared, "We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government," adding, "Everyone I talk to says this.

Americans are voting with their feet and the results are in: red states are winning. An incredible 46 million people moved to a new ZIP code over the year to February 2022, the highest annual total since Equifax, a credit agency, began tracking moves in 2010. Republican-leaning red states gained the most residents — led by Florida, Texas, and North Carolina — while the blue states of California, New York, and Illinois were the biggest migratory losers. The most popular pandemic-era moves were from New York to Florida and California to Texas — so much so that U-Haul ran out of moving trucks leaving California last year. Given the chance to flee high-cost cities, Millennials did so in droves.

Mom, can you come pick me up? They’re talking about a national divorce again. This time, it’s the Party of Lincoln fantasizing about separation. Marjorie Taylor Greene sparked the latest round of divorce discourse amid speculation about visitation rights for blue-state transplants to red America. She mused that proposals for punitive taxes and a “cooling off period” of suspended voting privileges for new arrivals were “all possible in a National Divorce scenario.” Right on cue, blue-checkmark cholesterol levels shot into the stratosphere. To her credit, Greene clarified that she was “clearly…not in favor of divorce” in a thread she posted the next day. “You know what is necessary about threatening a divorce?

Dean Obeidallah has an impressive résumé. While he is not a household name, the lawyer-turned-award-winning-comedian hosts a satellite radio program, is a frequent guest on MSNBC and CNN, and has written for all the big publications. But while he has good chops for a progressive pundit, he is no Abraham Lincoln. It shows. Far from emulating the tone taken by the Great Emancipator, Obeidallah prefers to fan the flames of political disunity. In a recent tweet, for example, he wrote that he does not believe that a civil war is coming because 'the Civil War in 1861 happened when Red States said we are leaving and Blue States waged a war to preserve the Union. Today if Red States wanted to leave Blue states would say "Check out time is 1 p.m.”’ That tweet is preposterous!