Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

43 – One voice

Several media commentators made remarks that Maria Arreola Rodriquez had seemingly ‘gone quiet’ over the New Year period. The theft of the presidential election from her, her fight for citizenship and the propelling by MAR of McCleary into the national scene were behind all of the troubles where the push for West America came about. Still hiding aboard, Maddie Chen blogged from Canada that she had sources who said that MAR had had a mental breakdown. That was fake news, so typical of self-appointed enemies such as Chen, though there was much mental strain which MAR was under. She lost two good friends to violence in late 2028: Malik Sanchez (the singer better known as Teyo) and then Shauna McCleary too. An attempt to starve off possible deportation to Mexico in the coming year was stalled like it was and then her ill mother, who’d been in a San Francisco hospital for more than a year, passed away a few days after McCleary died: cancer took her life following a long fight against it. Those were personal blows which she had to take, alongside the ongoing political drama. Statements were put out by her calling for a cessation of the violence being seen across the West and she also joined in with the boycott organised when the new Congressional session opened. Still… she wasn’t seen as much and her social media feeds were quieter than usual. Speculation ran that maybe she was giving up the fight. There were many who didn’t want that to happen, for several opposing reasons. Enemies like Chen and the right-wing media fed off MAR. They could move on and find someone else, but she ‘ticked all the right boxes’ for them when it come to someone to be so against. On the left, progressives and liberals alike, she stood for so much of what they were fighting for. Their causes were personified in her. MAR’s late December support for West America caused a stir among her supporters outside of the West who didn’t agree with that, yet it wasn’t delivered with the same sort of passion as MAR gave to other causes. There was a hope that it wasn’t really meant and that, when things got back to normal, she would remain what they wanted her to be.

Kelly Harris withdrew from representing MAR come the New Year. McCleary’s lawyer, Lewis ‘Hellfire’ Neville, took over legal duties from the former. MAR and Harris had had a personal disagreement on the matter of West America: Harris asked to be relieved and was due to the strength of the gulf between her and her client. Neville gave MAR one of his legendary speeches to win her over as a client though, unlike with McCleary who he had worked for without payment, MAR’s wife’s parents forked over a large retainer for his services. Neville got to work on re-establishing MAR’s attempts at gaining emergency citizenship. He sought a hearing where he aimed to establish before a judge that MAR was in no way engaged in any form of seditious conspiracy against the United States – as alleged by Nevada’s District Attorney – and should be allowed to continue on the fast-track Path to Citizenship through the USCIS. A remote hearing, rather than one in-person, was sought by Neville due to the violence which had surrounded so many federal courthouses across the West. Unlike Harris, he kept his political views on that to himself as he regarded Harris as being unprofessional there. His duty was to his client first and foremost. He made her and her wife aware of news coming out of DC concerning bills being readied by the new Congress. There were two of them in their earliest stages being drafted by the Republicans which concerned so-called Dreamers with each likely to affect her should they become law. Neville wanted to get MAR citizenship long before then. To delay would mean that there was every chance that MAR could be deported to Mexico – from where the Supreme Court had ruled she was born and spent a few days as a newborn there; she hadn’t been there since – even without the protection given to her by what the proponents of one of those bills called as having ‘anchor babies’ herself. MAR and her wife had two young children but Bree Davis had given birth to them. MAR was legally recognised as their parent by California and the United States. However, there was the possibility that soon enough she would lose the right to stay in the country when not as a citizen just because she was their parent: if she had given birth to them, the story would have been different. The 2025 immigration & naturalisation law which had established the P2C route for naturalisation had included that protection to parents such as herself but was in danger of being superseded by a new law. Neville wanted to make her a citizen long ahead of that change which, naturally, wouldn’t be applied retroactively once passed into federal law.

Neville asked her directly if she was involved in anything like what Nevada’s DA had accused her of – including sending messages to others on that secure Panda app – when her P2C application had come to a screeching halt. MAR had assured him that she certainly wasn’t.


Senators Ryan Drummond (CA) and Eleanor Rawlings (HI) went to see MAR following the beginning of the Congressional boycott. The two of them had taken part in that and released videos on the Campaign for a Democratic America website explaining why that was being done by them and all of the others involved. The vice president and California’s governor encouraged the two of them to make the trip to Walnut Creek where MAR remained at her home. The senators knew MAR very well and had long had much influence with her. Padley and Pierce wanted to bring MAR fully onside and had been getting others, plus doing so themselves, in trying to do that using Panda yet had believed that a personal visit from Drummond & Rawlings might do the trick. Those senators were sent to get MAR to be the one voice speaking for all of them and the cause for which they were fighting for: West America.

The meeting went as well as hoped. Drummond and Rawlings talked MAR into doing what was wanted. She agreed that she would fully take onboard the responsibilities as being the lead spokesperson for West America. No longer would there be all sorts of different people promoting the idea where they contradicted each other – before his arrest on a federal warrant, Carville had done some real harm with his ill-thought out concepts – on what they were trying to build. She would sell West America to the people of the West. In return, she would be their president when the country which they were trying to build, breaking away from the United States in the process, was formed. It hadn’t been easy to convince MAR to do this yet she had been won around.

Much of her previous hesitancy came from the practicalities of forming a new country. She didn’t want to be a part of that because it would have to come alongside violence: secession was illegal and would be opposed with everything that the federal government had. All that President Walsh had done, and what President-elect Roberts was looking likely to do once he was in the White House, finally made her understand though that the consequences of not doing so were even worse. There was a plan for a successful breakaway presented to MAR and she agreed with how it would work. The aftermath, the formation of the new country and how it would be governed, were even more to her taste the more she heard of the plans for that too. The detail put into it all had surprised MAR, but only in a good way. The arguments she had used in her presidency for how the United States of America should be matched perfectly what this new West America was to be! The presidency of West America was offered to her unconditionally. MAR had hesitated there, but it was stressed that she would take it on as an interim post pending a public vote where if she lost that, she would obey the democratic will of the people. Drummond and Rawlings had also had to convince her that the death of McCleary was an intentional act done at if not the behest of Walsh – which she had stuck to her guns in not believing – then with his later knowledge of who had. There was no other explanation that MAR was willing to accept. Walsh was a lot of things but not a killer. MAR did regard him as weak and subject to the will of others: she’d seen that many times herself. The senators couldn’t provide any proof, something which MAR had previously demanded of Padley and Pierce, yet had managed to convince her that the weight of evidence was there that McCleary murder was done by someone senior in DC to hinder the political aims of those in the West. Who else could it have been? Who else had the motive? They’d first locked her up and then subsequently killed her when the protests for her release, which MAR had herself taken part in, had been stronger than it had been believed they would be. McCleary had been used as an expendable pawn and then that that young woman had been murdered… someone who MAR had seen so much of herself in.

West America was soon to happen. It was something wanted by the politicians of the West and they regarded themselves as having enough public support – an admitted minority – to make it happen. Later on, once it was a fact, they told themselves that the majority would come onside. MAR jumped aboard the train because she was convinced that that was the only right course of action for her to take. The risks though were laid out for her. She would become a target of federal attention like Ashby, Carville, Gutierrez & King… and also like McCleary had been too. Rumours had come out of DC that arrest warrants had been drawn up for Pierce and Colorado’s Governor Rowan on federal charges of inciting insurrection. Walsh had yet to authorise their detentions for reasons unknown. MAR was going to be sought by the federal government for arrest the moment she spoke up as well, to say nothing of the end of her citizenship process as well. Still, she gave Drummond and Rawlings her word that the public fight for West America would now be delivered by her.

MAR would emerge from her self-imposed near-silence. She would set out to bring about West America, to turn it from a dream into a reality. The consequences of doing so were those she believed she understood.

[James G]

44 – Demands

One of the many outrageous acts that led President Walsh to invoke the Insurrection Act was the taking of more innocent hostages by (previously-unknown) terrorist groups. Two had been snatched before McCleary died with each then murdered afterwards when she hadn’t been released from federal custody as per their demands for that. Another pair were then taken on New Year’s Eve. The ‘Defenders of Democracy’ seized office administrative staff working for the US Citizenship & Immigration Service from their shared apartment in Tacoma, up in Washington state. That group, who claimed to represent a hardcore Trotskyist agenda so alien to most Americans, had kidnapped that husband of a senior FBI agent previously and then killed him: the other mid-December snatching had been of an employee from the Nevada DA’s office by a group calling themselves 'Los Libertadores'. It wasn’t known by the FBI nor anyone else in the US Government that the Defenders of Democracy and Los Libertadores were one in the same in terms of operatives. Their whole agenda was nothing more than an elaborate sham orchestrated by one man. Investigators were looking into them separately and trying to work out where each fitted into the overall picture of insurrection in the West. The tress hid the forest from view: that being that Carrillo was behind it all.

On January 4th 2029, the Defenders of Democracy made contact with the FBI. An email went direct to the task force investigating the Tacoma kidnappings with a list of demands. Included was a video. One of the two hostages was horribly mutilated, resulting in his death, in that video while the other was shown to be watching in pure terror while being told that the same would be done to her soon enough. The FBI was informed that if the second hostage was to live, then their demands were to be met. All of those arrested on federal warrants as part of Operation Restore Order, from Ashby, Carville & King down to those operators of the Revolución website and organisers from the Green Socialist Alliance – every single detainee – were to be released from custody. That had to be done within forty-eight hours from when the email was sent. There would be no negotiation on timescale nor scale of releases. In addition, there must too be a statement from the president himself admitting that McCleary was killed in Las Vegas at the behest of the federal government. If those demands weren’t met, the promise was made that the second hostage would be killed and others taken to suffer the same eventual fate if the Defenders of Democracy didn’t get their way. Director Cohen was informed at once. He agreed with the task force lead agent that that second hostage was going to die regardless of what was done. This terror group were going to continue kidnapping people too: either federal employees or their families. They had to know that their demands were utterly unrealistic. Those people weren’t going to be released and the president wasn’t going to say anything like that at the behest or murderous terrorists! The point clearly wasn’t to see them achieved but something else entirely different. What that was, the answer to the riddle posed, was an unknown. Instructions came to try and negotiate and to keep up the hunt for members/supporters of the Defenders of Democracy. The FBI didn’t give up despite knowing the impossibility of the situation.

Cohen still tried to have his organisation do what it could. Stopping the continuation of events such as these was immensely difficult though when his agents out in the West were operating within states that many regarded as in rebellion against the federal government without any formal declaration of that. It had become an unfriendly place for anyone associated with the federal government.


Overseas, another terror attack committed by those using a façade to hide who they were took place. In Estonia, so-called ethnic Russian patriots struck with mortar shells and rocket fire against a NATO base in that Baltic country. It was abundantly clear that Russian commandos, their infamous Spetsnaz, were at work and acting behind a false flag rather than any locals hitting NATO troops. Among the casualties in Narva were four US Army soldiers. They were killed trying to keep the peace in the Baltic States like others before them had been since Walsh committed the United States to the huge NATO deployment to face down Russian territorial designs. Images of the attack were captured on camera by both ABC and CNN who had media teams in Narva when it happened. The coincidence of that presence wasn’t missed by those in the White House and the Pentagon. The attack was certainly timed for maximum attention to be gained. With American casualties and impressive footage, the Narva story made headline news back home in America. A country torn apart by partisan divide, and also a new regional push for independence, united somewhat in anger against Moscow: everyone knew that the Russian president was behind the attack. The unity lasted not very long at all though. There was blame apportioned on Russia yet also domestically. Walsh was accused of not doing enough to keep the peace; the Republicans were said to be stirring the pot by promising that once Roberts was in the White House, further action would be taken against Russia for what it was doing by launching a proxy war across the Baltic States.

But then the gunfight in Denver happened to knock that Narva story out completely of the news.

Governor Rowan sent the Colorado National Guard – supported by attached Oregon elements sent previously under a mutual aid agreement – up against the private military company EXF Solutions. The Department of Homeland Security had contracted them to deploy hundreds of armed personnel to guard federal property in Colorado in the face of recent violent attacks made by protesters and rioters. Rowan had demanded that the Acting Secretary not deploy them: he’d been told they were being sent to Colorado regardless of what he as governor said as only the right of the federal government, not the state government on the ground, was where the authority came from to act. In Denver, the state’s capital and biggest city, those well-armed security guards had arrayed themselves like an army where they guarded the Bryon G. Rogers Federal Courthouse in the middle of Downtown and also out at the Denver Federal Centre in suburban Lakewood where many federal agencies had offices. They came with light armoured vehicles and heavy man-portable weapons. Such places had been the scenes of rioting since McCleary’s death with the Denver Police Department and national guardsmen struggling to stop that violence against federal property plus employees. Some shocking instances of extreme violence had occurred ahead of the deployment. EXF Solutions fulfilled their federally-mandated task yet also used deadly force on two separate occasions against protesters. After the second shooting, Rowan, admittedly looking for an excuse to act, publicly declared her would stand no more for the ‘invasion’ of his state underway. He asserted control back over the Colorado National Guard in an illegal action due to their previous federalisation. Their commanders went along with that, disobeying their constitutional duty.

EXF Solutions was registered in Delaware but owned by a variety of New York City hedge funds. The company had shareholders too and a big order book of federal customers. It was no marauding army on the war path and fights with neither protesters nor state governments were sought. Upon hearing the announcement made by Rowan, calls went out from the New York head office for the personnel in Colorado to stand down. The political game being played by Colorado’s governor in his fight with DC had no financial gain for the company nor its owners. Being right in the middle of some egomaniac’s desire for civil war was not on the agenda for them! Those on the ground followed the directive because they were only in Denver for the paycheck and career progression. The national guardsmen moved faster then expected though, especially the detachment of those from Oregon serving in Colorado who went out into Lakewood. At the courthouse in Downtown, native Colorado part-time soldiers took over once more in security tasks there but in Lakewood, the far bigger site meant that the armed contractors there needed more time to stand down. That they weren’t given. There were traded insults, pushing & shoving done and then guns were pointed. The Oregon national guardsmen treated the EXF Solutions people pretty harshly and were eager to remind them who were the real professionals. In one of those incidents, a trigger was squeezed by one of those Oregon National Guard soldiers. Gunfire was returned pretty fast first by a contractor who’d seen his friend shot and then by more national guardsmen responding to that. The exchange of fire didn’t last very long and senior people reasserted control yet before then, five lives had been lost and twice as many people were injured. The national guardsmen lost one of their own yet killed four of those who their on-scene commander regarded as ‘mercenaries’.

Rowan was told the truth of what had happened. It wasn’t the story he wanted to hear so he changed the facts around to suit his own purposes. After quickly getting in contact with Padley and Pierce out in distant California, he turned the whole issue into a defining moment for West America. Back in front of the cameras he went with an explosive statement alleging a pre-planned attack made by ‘federal invaders’ against his state and the people of the West. He echoed New Mexico’s governor in her previous remarks where she had declared her state to have banned federal agents. Rowan proclaimed that Colorado was likewise to be free of them (and also PMC contractors too) no matter what the federal government said on that matter. Colorado’s National Guard would remain under state control as well… ready to defend the state against another attack.

Within the hour, told a version of events that had some truth to it yet mixed with some outright lies, MAR made her first public statement as the one voice speaking for West America. She came out in full support of Governors Espinoza and Rowan in their defence of their state’s rights to assert themselves against federal aggression. All eyes turned to DC to see how the federal government would react to what the recently-defeated presidential candidate had said. That had to be rebellion against the United States, did it not?

[James G]

45 – Campaign for a Democratic America

President Walsh didn’t consider what MAR said to be incitement to rebellion. He told those at the top tier of his government that, no matter what media commentators and other politicians were saying, claiming that Colorado and New Mexico had the right to affirm their rights as states wasn’t rebellion. It was wrong but not rebellion. He faced strong opposition to such a position yet stuck to his guns in public on that. However, Walsh personally believed the opposite. MAR had joined with Padley, Pierce, Rowan & others in trying to tear the country apart. Why he went with the rejection of allegations of rebellion was part of a political play that his chief-of-staff and the Acting Attorney General had talked him into. That strategy had evolved into one where there was no longer to be ‘overreactions’ to comments made by political figures from out West. Doing so, responding to words and not actions, had played right into their hands. The about-turn taken by his administration was now to play the opposite game: pretend that it didn’t matter and give those seeking to create a West America no victories to gain.

Sunny Park briefed a friendly journalist from the Washington Post that it was a ‘kill them with kindness’ approach. Having recently resigned, the former Secretary of Labor told a reporter from the New York Times that it was madness! He claimed that Walsh still had much friendly affection for MAR. The president had sent the Justice Department after McCleary for far less than what MAR had said. Walsh, it was alleged, was still trying to make up to MAR for her anger at him for supposedly betraying his progressive principles upon taking office. Meanwhile, the nation was being taken to the brink of civil war by MAR and those out West. Walsh invited MAR to visit the White House. His vice president was likewise given the same invitation to DC. They were asked to come and see the president where the three of them could talk through a resolution to solving the issues. Padley and MAR had previously said that there was no way out of the crisis that the country was in yet Walsh claimed that there was. That route was via talking things out. His public invite came alongside an authorised leak made out of the Oval Office that, if necessary, Walsh would go to California if the two of them didn’t want to come to DC. He was being reasonable, his chief-of-staff put into the public sphere.

Within hours of Walsh making that offer, there was another blow-up in the Baltics. Attention in DC shifted there with haste. Near the uninhabited island of Vaindloo in the Gulf of Finland, just off the Estonian coast, there was an exchange of shots between the Estonian & Russian Navies. Russian jets were in the sky above and there were two NATO warships nearby – one America and one British – though the at-sea clash was contained between the Estonians and Russians. The EML Tallinn fired first. That Estonian frigate had only a few years beforehand been in Royal Navy service as HMS Richmond and likely on its way to the scrapyard before it was purchased by Estonia. It was a big vessel and larger than anything that the Estonian Navy had had before. Protecting the Estonian coastline was what the Tallinn was for and that included the waters around islands such Vaindloo that the Russians were constantly intruding upon. When the RFS Admiral Isakov refused instructions to leave Estonian waters, gunfire from the Tallinn was directed against that newer frigate. Shells came back from the Russian Navy leaving each vessel left considerably damaged. HMS Glasgow and USS Paul Ignatius, as well as RFS Nastoycvyy, showed up soon enough but there were no more exchanges of lethal fire seen. A far bigger battle with warships using their full arsenal of weapons was avoided when the two captains of the ships who had fired on each other backed away licking their wounds.

While the clash only lasted a few minutes, due to the wider stand-off in the Baltics, Walsh and his national security team had to give that their full attention for much time afterwards. Secretary of Defence Ferdinand at once had United States Armed Forces elements deployed in the region stand-to unless President Makarov decided that that Estonian naval gunfire meant war. A Kremlin-ordered attack on Estonia, or elsewhere in the Baltics, would mean going to war with the United States though due to how American forces there were positioned. The destroyer Paul Ignatius was only one of several warships deployed there and there was also that huge ground and air presence. Through Secretary of State Leach getting in contact with Makarov’s foreign minister, there was an agreement that each side would back off. The Russians were still rightfully angry that they had been shot at with casualties sustained yet Walsh had Leach make it clear that any Russian retaliatory strike against Estonia would draw the United States into the fight. Those in the Situation Room with the president were impressed by how he handled himself. Weeks away from leaving office, and with the disastrous conflict with China still fresh in memories, Walsh stood ready to call Russia’s bluff on its own military positioning. Makarov was told he would lose should he chose to roll the dice on conflict.

Yet… why he couldn’t he play hardball like that with those seeking domestic strife?


Walsh’s play was quickly realised for what it was by those out West leading the way towards West America. Padley saw through it first and convinced the others in her circle that he was stalling for time. The president wanted the movement to run out of steam and die a quiet death. She and the others looked at the situation which they found themselves in and realised that if they didn’t act, Walsh would get his way. Having MAR aboard, and with committed participants such as Governors Espinoza and Rowan too, meant that West America wasn’t going to die. Escaping from the failed democracy which the United States of America was regarded as having become was what the vice president and those around her were determined to do. That wouldn’t come about by agreeing to sit down and talk with the president. Only action would work.

That action came about by agreements struck between those involved to follow the example set in Colorado by Rowan. The security of federal buildings would be taken back over by National Guard units who would be removed from federal control. A big show was made when it began down in New Mexico. California national guardsmen were there alongside those from New Mexico as PMC contractors working for the Department of Homeland Security were evicted. Those private military companies walked away when they were told that they would be removed by force of arms if they didn’t. A flurry of activity was seen, all broadcast either live or afterwards by the media to the rest of the country. Espinoza ‘kept her word’ on asserting New Mexico’s sovereign status and Rowan followed up by completing what had started in Denver across more of Colorado. The National Guard units doing this saw several senior officers resign rather than follow such orders but the rest of the soldiers did what their state governments directed them to do. There was the ability to make these internal deployments away from where the units involved had been positioned beforehand due to the lessening of the ongoing protests against the federal government by the mob as the first week of January 2029 went on. There were far fewer violent incidents by rioters. Those national guardsmen weren’t really needed to protect the federal property which they moved to guard due to that yet that wasn’t really the point. What was being done was to show both the federal government and the people across the states in West America that the secession process was now unstoppable. It was agreed that in Nevada next then California to follow the same would be done.

As to those who had been on the streets for some time since McCleary’s death, their anger was something that Padley and others wanted to keep yet also feared. In opposition to DC they had been yet in the process, much damage had been done to non-federal targets. There had been deaths caused and lawlessness seen: none of which those seeking making West America a reality wanted to continue. Channelling the anger was desired. Federal action in response to the latest action taken was expected. When that came, people power was what was believed to be of vital importance into defeating the efforts of the federal government. There were difficulties in that though. A lot of what had happened to bring about the situation which the West was now in had come from severe acts of criminality which had shown federal weakness. In addition, there were terror groups active who had struck against Big Government yet looked likely to turn that attention in the end to what replaced that. Solutions were still being sought as to how not let the situation spiral out of control where West America would be strangled at birth not by the federal government but by the ordinary people out of control instead.


Padley wanted to form what she and Governor Pierce had called a Council of Ten. Eight governors, the vice president and MAR would be the ones making the decisions which would take the West out of the United States. Collective decisions made as that progressed would be taken by them. Once that was achieved, and as West America was in its infancy, surely fighting back against federal forces under President Roberts by then, they would govern until a later democratic replacement came about. Pierce, Espinoza, Rowan and the governors of Nevada & Oregon too were already taking part in those collective decisions. With Padley and MAR as well, that was seven… with three missing members. In Arizona, Hawaii and Washington state, there were many elected officials (senators and congressmen/women) on-side already. The majority, like those from the five other states, had joined the boycott of the opening of the new Congressional session under the Campaign for a Democratic America banner. Yet the trio of governors were sitting on the fence when it came to West America. Padley believed that Hawaii’s governor was soon to come onboard yet in Olympia and Phoenix, the two of them were showing no signs of doing so. Washington’s state’s lieutenant-governor had been talking with Pierce and said that she would lead the fight to remove her state’s chief executive if it came to it but Arizona was the most unfavourable to West America from all of the eight states in the West. It had several Members of Congress who’d gone there – and stayed there too – when Congress opened. The governor and his secretary of state (Arizona was one of the few states which didn’t have a lieutenant-governor) were silently opposed to secession along with the state’s other senator who hadn’t gone to DC but not shown a willingness to do anything else. How to ‘fix’ that issue was another unresolved problem. West America could survive without Arizona if necessary, and also Hawaii & Washington state too should it come to that. However, those determined to do everything possible to bring that about wanted all eight states within their new country regardless of the opposition from those seen as too scared or stubborn to take part… those they regarded as traitors to the cause within them.

The boycott of Congress by those who proclaimed their intention to stay away had brought with it hostile questions from the right-wing media and the Republicans about how those absent intended to represent their voters. The question had been asked as to whether those who didn’t go to DC were going to meet elsewhere as some sort of ‘alternative government’. Such was in fact the intention from those behind the boycott with those staying away from Congress not all initially being aware of that idea. Most were railroaded into it afterwards led by several key senators including Drummond from California and Hawaii’s Rawlings. Representatives Gutierrez and MAR talked others around. There was a meeting on January 5th which took place in Las Vegas. The name Campaign for a Democratic America was used for the gathering which saw some attendees make their attendance virtually too.

More than eighty missing Members of Congress – plus others – came together there in Nevada. Walsh’s offer of meeting with those at the forefront of the West America campaign had come earlier that day and both Padley and MAR, in attendance, publicly rejected it. They were in Las Vegas to talk about forming a democratic nation, one carved out of the United States, and told everyone exactly what they were doing. Back East, the sh*t hit the fan in response. Once again, action was demanded from the president to put a stop to this ongoing rebellion!

[James G]

46 – Berkeley Circle

Before his 2026 assassination, due to his daughter’s politics, Professor Dante Arreola Vega had taught constitutional law at UC Berkeley’s prestigious Law School. One of his many pupils had been the future wife of his daughter. Bree Davis had afterwards joined with several former pupils and colleagues in establishing a scholarship in his name. There was a memorial plague at Berkeley too. Moreover, colleagues with whom Professor Arreola had socialised with, like-minded men & women from across the college who shared his politics, had created a group which met once a month. They took up a project which he had been working on right before his death and had spent the next few years expanding upon that. Professor Arreola had taught the US Constitution yet at the same time had privately been working upon modifications to it to bring it up to the modern era considering its age. It had been a hobby of his yet those who took it on made it a passion. They significantly moved from where he started in drafting something new. A whole new system of government, beyond just a constitution, was created. For some members, the project was all encompassing and took up nearly all of their free time. One member withdrew from what had been started to be called the ‘Berkeley Circle’ (a name started in jest, which later became real) due to strong disagreements with the others over the direction being taken: other participants joined, from further afield than just UC Berkeley. The project was far from finished at the end of 2028.

Vice President Padley had trashed the US Constitution – and the Founding Fathers – in public remarks following the Supreme Court decision which robbed Professor Arreola’s daughter of the presidency. She’d met with Bree Davis afterwards when at the home the Berkeley Law School professor (Davis taught patent law) shared with Maria Arreola Rodriquez and their children. While the former wasn’t a part of something which the latter’s father had started, she knew all about it and put Padley in touch with those at the top of the Berkeley Circle. Governor Pierce likewise soon became aware of what some of the brightest legal minds in the state had been toiling away at. He and the vice president were greatly impressed with what they read from the system of government which was still in the process of being drafted. It wasn’t perfect – Pierce found more flaws in it than Padley did – though was something that once consumed, the two of them kept in mind as they began the process of setting the mood music to allow for West America to come about. With permission, copies of the work done by the Berkeley Circle were given to supporters of the two of them who Padley and Pierce had asked to (quietly) put together a system of government themselves. Chopping and changing was done here and there where elsewhere it was a case of copy-paste. Professor Arreola wouldn’t have recognised the final product. That wasn’t what he had set out to do. He had never wanted to see a new country created – he loved the United States of America! – when he started his private hobby but rather modifications done to the Constitution. There were also a few members of the Berkeley Circle who wouldn’t too have liked what was done with their work… though it wasn’t shown to them as Padley and Pierce kept the finished product held close less it end up in unfriendly hands.

That, the basic framework of fundamental laws and a functioning government for West America, was presented to those politicians who boycotted Congress and gathered in Las Vegas under the Campaign for a Democratic America banner.


Elliot Carville had written that article for Slade magazine before he was arrested on federal charges of sedition where he had ever-so-briefly described how a New America / West America could work. It had been attacked from all sides for its simplicity and the flaws in it were pointed out. Carville had been skewered as part of a wave of criticism. What Carville had done though had presented a general idea of how the new country which he wished to see would function. That had been more than others had done. Ahead of him writing what he had, and afterwards when ignoring his article, there had been much opposition to those seeking to building a new country where it was said that they had no plan. Only a fool would lead a breakaway from the United States without having something else ready, it was said many times over. Those critics didn’t know about the people whom Padley and Pierce had put to work – all doing so in secret and likely to be arrested like Carville if discovered – in doing just that. Knowledge of what the Berkeley Circle had created wasn’t into the public sphere either.

West America was realised by its proponents as something that it wouldn’t be easy to create when faced not just with opposition from the federal government, but the practicalities of nation-building themselves. The initial thinking had been to ‘start again’: that being a new beginning with everything from public services to laws to democratic representation. Greg Antonetti had soon been brought in (at the beginning of December 2028) where, at Pierce’s invitation, the former New Mexico congressman had joined those assembled in secret in Sacramento to build the framework for that new country. He had gained national attention, and notoriety, by being one of the first public figures to make an open call for New America alongside Carville and Judy Ashby. The vice president-elect had called him a ‘nobody’… a nobody he was certainly not. Antonetti had served nine consecutive terms in Congress and worked on the election campaigns of a trio of Democratic presidents! He was a big player in his state and national politics. Watching with fury at how the Republicans had stolen the White House from MAR, he’d spoken up. Within days, when out to dinner with his wife in Santa Fe, two right-wing nuts (from out of state) had entered the restaurant which they were in and tried to kill him. A fellow patron had intervened and knocked the two would-be assassins to the ground: that man was a former soldier who’d put down a pair of crazies armed with knives. Antonetti had a friendship with Pierce – the California governor had himself served in the US House previously – and so gone to Sacramento in light of that shocking attack. He’d been worried about his wife’s safety as much as his own. Upon hearing what those Pierce had working on doing, he’d told them to stop being so foolish. There was no need to start again. They all lived within a functioning nation, one which had all of those things they were trying to build from the ground up already in-place. It was a failed state in terms of politics, Antonetti had told Pierce, but everything else was there. What served the United States would serve West America. Those who worked for the government of the United States would do so for West America. Modifications to the draft proposals from the Berkeley Circle ended up being done with Antonetti overseeing that. Padley and Pierce were delighted with his efforts. What came to them was how their new country would work.

Public employees in West America would remain in their roles. Public services would stay as they were. This covered everything from schools and hospitals to the police and prisons. Federal property belonging to the United States would become that of West America. Military forces based in the territory of what was once the western regions of the United States would become part of the armed forces of West America. Using regional offices, federal agencies would be formed to mirror the ones which they replaced. There would be a new currency, printed within West America, and starting out to be worth on a one-for-one basis with the US Dollar. Almost the entirety of the laws which governed the United States would be kept at the start and then later modified: they worked and were already enforceable. The judicial system was likewise to be followed at the start with provision made for a new system to evolve over time. When it came to the government of West America, Antonetti worked off the proposals from the Berkeley Circle. Those had initially concerned the United States yet modifications meant that they could be applied to the new West America.

There would be a president and vice president elected on a joint ticket by popular vote using the ranked choice method: those elections would take place every five years. West America would be a federation of states with each of them electing delegates every two years to a national parliament consisting of just the one chamber. Once again, those elections would use the ranked choice method to allow for full democratic participation. The states themselves would retain their governor as chief executive and state legislatures. There would be federal government departments not so different from those of the United States though including one for Climate Change and the merging of other functions of federal government: such as Defence & Homeland and Security Interior & Agriculture. The federal cabinet would need appointments to be approved by the parliament with the power retained to remove them. Policy proposals from the presidential campaign made by MAR would be enacted as new laws once the parliament was up and running. Those democratic socialist ideas included abortion & gender recognition rights, immigration reform, social programmes such as free healthcare, free education & a job guarantee and national gun control. There would be controls on the media and the activities of political parties too so as to not foster hatred and allow for democracy to function as it should.

Other states and territories from the United States would be free to join West America as long as they respected the democratic character of the nation: all of their residents would be guaranteed the same rights and freedoms without prejudice. Friendly relations would be sought with the United States alongside neighbouring nations such as Canada, Mexico and Pacific countries. With regard to the country which West America would be leaving, the plan which Antonetti drew up proposed that a firm position be maintained that while West America wanted to have good relations, it would firmly oppose any hostile action taken against it whether that be financial, diplomatic or military by the United States. A new country would face many challenges to its formation, especially from that which it was to be carved out of against the latter’s will, but the proposals for West America set down the principle that it was to be done without aggression launched and the hope for non-violence.

When presented to those in Las Vegas, Padley and Pierce, in addition to MAR who’d also made the trip down into Nevada, told those assembled that they really believed it was possible that all this could be done. They had the people behind them and they were morally right in what they wanted to create as well. How could anyone present not agree that this was what they had to do?

[James G]

47 – January 6th

Not long after the opening bell was rung, on the morning of January 6th 2029, a bomb went off on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. So much of what was done at the NYSE was done online and remote, yet the trading floor was still a busy place. A holdall being seemingly used as a gym bag contained the explosive device which was surrounded by nails. Five lives would be lost with dozens of injuries, horrible ones, reported too. Trading was immediately suspended. Moments after that blast on Wall Street, there was another once also in Lower Manhattan. Inside the Thurgood Marshall US Courthouse, within spitting distance of the NYPD headquarters and the FBI’s New York field office in the Jacob J. Javits Building, an explosion tore through a corridor where another gym bag was the source of the blast. It was smaller than the bomb detonated over on Wall Street and didn’t result in any direct casualties itself. There were a lot of wounded people and many in shock. A defence attorney collapsed during the mandatory evacuation when he had what would turn out to be a fatal heart attack. A Federal Marshal was killed and another badly hurt in the aftermath too when during that evacuation, the prisoner who they were guarding attacked them. He was a high-ranking member of the Latin Kings criminal street gang and made a daring escape. Getting away from the building, he murdered someone else before then fleeing the general area during the wider evacuation of more federal buildings near the courthouse. There was speculation afterwards that he and his gang had something to do with that blast. It was just something fortunate for him though. The FBI would recapture him two days later and by then it was clear that the Latin Kings had absolutely no involvement at all in what had happened to facilitate his murderous flight from custody.

Within the hour, there were drones detected approaching restricted air space around both O’Hare in Illinois and LAX out in California. Deployed near to each of those major international airports were defensive systems fielded by the Transportation Security Administration under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security. Each were taken down on the edges of the airport’s perimeters. Electromagnetic pulses were directed at them and they crashed. Air travel was severely disrupted by those instances though with flights delayed. Air National Guard fighters were soon in the immediate area around each incident as well. Upon recovery of the wreckage of each drone, investigators found neither of them to be very advanced. They weren’t protected with any shielding against an EM pulse – that the TSA had such weapons was known about – and also didn’t take evasive action upon their approach. Neither carried any weapons either. It was a very strange sort of terrorist attack… with the reasoning behind that, like why those targets in New York were attacked, only understood later on.

Just as it had been remarked that Maria Arreola Rodriquez had ‘gone quiet’ over the New Year period, the same had been said by commentators about the American Insurgent Army. There hadn’t been an AIA attack since they assassinated the DHS Secretary in Michigan with a sniper and then got the Attorney General too with that stolen biological weapons. The FBI had made a few arrests but they had realised they were only nibbling around the edges of the terror group. Living up to the death-cult description given to them by the federal government, a suspect sought for arrest on New Year’s Day had shot himself in the head rather than be arrested and interrogated. One school of thought at the Department of Justice had been that that figure had been some sort of controlling officer and the AIA had suffered a big blow there. He was a nobody though, which was just what the DHS had countered. What instead had seen the AIA take a step back was them watching as a great deal of federal investigation efforts were directed to the West where there was insurrection underway. The task force still hunting them was still active yet so much support from outside of that was stripped away to send federal agents to California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and elsewhere. Many leads weren’t followed up in the timely fashion that they should have been allowing for several cells to prepare for action on January 6th.

The attacks made first in the Big Apple and then around the airports outside of Chicago and Los Angeles were distraction efforts. Attention was wanted to be drawn towards them, and it was, yet at the same time, the AIA sought an increase of security around their principal target for that day. Only with that happening would the cell who struck there be able to manage to pull of what they did.


Events eight years beforehand had seen security tightened on Capitol Hill on the day when the Electoral College ballots from across the country were given their final count and certification came of who the next president of the United States would be. Like many other important gatherings of Congress, it was a National Security Event with protection against attack comparable to Inauguration Day, the State of the Union and such like. It had been long decided that Senator Edward Roberts from Texas would be the 49th President (and former North Carolina Governor Lee Mitchell becoming the 52nd Vice President) yet Congress met to make that official. When news came of the nationwide terror attacks taking place, though on a limited scale away from DC, security around Capitol Hill was tightened even further than it already had been. Extra personnel were moved closer in to where hundreds of senators and representatives were gathered.

Dressed in the uniforms of officer from the Capitol Hill Police, and carrying the correct identification of such persons too, an AIA strike team entered the Capitol Building. Among them was Boatswain’s Mate Noel Reed, that US Navy SEAL who had been AWOL for more than six months. He was the most sought man in the United States and occupied the #1 spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He walked into one of the most secure federal buildings in the country during a heightened terror alert. A physical disguise – some fancy prosthetics – helped with that and so too did the fact that while the AI-driven facial recognition software for terror suspects was working & had his file, there had been sabotage done to that file. A wholly different person, someone completely innocent (a telemarketer from Cleveland), was who the cameras were scanning for. Reed and three others – one a woman who had much military experience like the rest of them – entered the Capitol Building to make their terror attack.

Two of the strike team made ‘noisy’ attacks. They fired their pistols and threw flash bang grenades. Panic ensued as they ran about while being chased and shot at. Security efforts focused on taking them down. Three people were soon shot dead – Congressional staffers – and that female terrorist was too. The other evaded efforts to get him and gained access to a secure area outside of the House Chamber. He killed two Capitol Hill police officers and another congressional staffer while badly wounding a Secret Service agent as well. He couldn’t get into where there were hundreds of congressmen/women gathered though and was shot dead before he could force his way in. Alarms sounded throughout the building. Shelter in-place orders were given at first before, after confirming that the two shooters were dead, decisions were made by the House Speaker and the president pro tem (presiding over the Senate in the continued absence of the Vice President) to continue with the EC vote count. There were Members of Congress outside each chamber who had been caught in offices, restrooms and elsewhere when the attack had taken place who had been held safe where they were. They were ordered to be brought to each chamber, around which there was far more security then elsewhere in the large legislative complex. No one else was getting into the Capitol Building and safety seemed assured inside those attack-proof chambers.

Reed and the other surviving terrorist, each of whom had stayed out of sight during the first series of gunfights, then struck the final, decisive blow.


Gunnery Sergeant Carl Bright, AWOL from his US Marines posting as he served the cause of the AIA, attacked representatives being brought into the House Chamber. He wounded six of them and killed four more. The dead were Representative Nicola Bailey (a Democrat from Colorado who’d come to DC in rejection of the boycott by others out West), Representative Hunter P. Clark (a Republican from Missouri regarded as one of the most socially conservative members of the US House), Representative Amanda Jackson (a Democrat from Georgia who had been given a EC vote by a faithless elector) and Representative Armando Toledo Cruz (a freshman Republican from Texas). Jackson was wheelchair-bound since a bicycle accident as a teenager and Toledo had unsuccessfully tried to shield her from the gunfire.

Reed killed a trio of senators and wounded another two. Those who lost their lives were Senator Harry Dunn (a Republican from Wisconsin), Senator Laura Garfield (a Democrat from Florida who’d won that upset victory the previous November) and Senator Ron Short (a Democrat from Delaware). Dunn had been shot execution-style when already wounded on the ground while Garfield would die later that day in hospital rather than at the scene. The US House Sergeant at Arms and the Chaplain of the US Senate were among the dead away from elected Members of Congress: a total of eighteen plus the seven slain Members… and two of the four terrorists too. A Capitol Hill Police officer was shot at by DC Police SWAT officer who mistook him for a terrorist when they arrived after the attack was over due to the impromptu briefing they received en-route about terrorists being dressed as police officers. He would survive though had life-changing injures afterwards from that friendly-fire incident. Wounded Members of Congress plus staffers and Capitol Building personnel were taken to hospitals across DC and Maryland too. US Army soldiers, US Marines and national guardsmen flooded the city later on.

As to Bright and Reed, each of them escaped from the Capitol Building. They slipped through the net thrown around Capitol Hill and then the DC area as well, aided in their flight by co-conspirators who’d helped them get in. The breach of security was quite something. Federal investigators would be stunned at how successful the attack had been in execution and escape. They were left unable to identify those who facilitated it either, leading to the frightening concern that the AIA could come back at will. Unbeknown to the media, President Walsh was evacuated from the White House and returned to seclusion at Camp David due to that worry. January 6th went down in American history for, once more, all the wrong reasons. There were soon conspiracy theories linking the AIA action to what was happening out West too because to those minded to believe such things, it all did seem rather convenient in terms of timing.

[redrobin65]

Well it doesn't look like the US can take much more at this point.

[gillan1220]

So Storming the Capitol but much worse? Damn.

[James G]

Feb 24, 2021 3:28:02 GMT redrobin65 said:

Well it doesn't look like the US can take much more at this point.

The country retains so much strength despite all of this. What it needs is someone to employ that strength though.

Feb 24, 2021 10:58:38 GMT gillan1220 said:

So Storming the Capitol but much worse? Damn.

Yes. But it has been done before. Puerto Rican terrorists got in and shot congressmen in 1954. The building has been bombed a couple of times too by terrorists.
Those seven killed here in this incident were outside the secure chambers established (ITTL) post 2021 incident.   

[James G]

48 – Warp speed

Las Vegas being in the Pacific Time Zone and thus four hours behind the East Coast, news from the shooting incidents in the Capitol Building arrived when the day’s meeting in that city was soon to begin. First reports which arrived said that one shooter had been shot dead before that was corrected to a second shooter also killed. There were that day messages exchanged between the politicians meeting under the Campaign for a Democratic America umbrella for a halt to their discussions about secession. However, those news reports had said though that no Members of Congress, those not taking part in the boycott that those in Las Vegas were, had been hurt. That too was later corrected, but later. Throughout the day, there was a torrent of conflicting news which arrived there. Comment would be made that the senators and representatives showed great disrespect for their colleagues. Perhaps they did yet they didn’t know the full details. Nonetheless… even if the terrorist attack by the AIA had been even worse than it was, say they had killed dozens of Members of Congress instead of seven, those behind the Las Vegas event had been determined to continue. They had set up the gathering with haste and knew that there was little time to mess around. West America was something that could have been crushed in its infancy at any moment should the federal government really wish too. Cold calculations were made by several key figures, Vice President Padley and Governor Pierce in particular, that what had happened in DC that day only aided them. They opted not to say that aloud – a wise choice – yet images of the United States in chaos being broadcast nationally and globally were seen as a bonus for them. They were in the middle of trying to form a new country and weren’t stopping for anything.

First the governor of Hawaii and then Arizona’s one too sent messages to those in Las Vegas that they had reconsidered their position on where they stood. The two of them – making contact through senators from their states in attendance and before the news from DC was as bad as it would become – made it clear that they were willing to join the Council of Ten… that would give it nine members (seven governors plus Padley and MAR). From up in Washington state, the lieutenant-governor there continued with the effort to get that state’s governor to change his mind or be removed otherwise. Seven chief executives made it clear that were ready to take their states out of the union which was the United States if there was agreement in Las Vegas as to what would replace that. Talks on that replacement continued throughout January 6th. The basis of a new government to be at the centre of West America was something that became the subject of heated discussion. Not everyone agreed with what was presented to them. They were politicians and used to arguing among themselves with much of the disagreement coming down to the finer points of the whole thing. However, there were also some who had come to Las Vegas without the intention of having their state leave the United States and join another federation: they were thinking about independence.

Several from California, Hawaii and Nevada had such ideas. Their fellow participants spent a great deal of time talking them out of such a thing. Only California was somewhere that it might just be possible to go it alone but that was a dicey prospect indeed. Together they had strength and together, the counter-arguments went, they could achieve a breakaway that the rest of the United States would be unable to stop from happening. Independence had very little public support too within any of the states in the West. On a good day, when there was something especially outrageous that could be blamed on DC, support for hypothetical Californian independence might gain up to five per cent public support. Pierce made that point to a pair of congressmen from his state and backed it up with facts. In light of the US Supreme Court allowing the Republicans to steal the presidential election, that had jumped closer to seven, even eight per cent. That was it. Polling done in the weeks before the Las Vegas meeting showed that there was support for West America, a federal republic of multiple states in the West, close to thirty per cent. Questions asked of those opposed to it as to why, had brought replies of their worries that there was no plan of action for a new country and also expressed concerns over its democratic character. Padley told those pair of congressmen, plus others who talked of state-level independence for other states, that once the people saw that West America was something thoroughly thought out and which had a likelihood of success, that number would more than double. People feared the unknown, she told them, but would be comfortable with something which there was momentum behind and looked real.


Those in Las Vegas talked about the ‘will of the people’. Leading figures from the Campaign for a Democratic America, such as Senator Rawlings and Congressman Gutierrez, used that line multiple times when they pushed for their colleagues to hurry along and start agreeing with one another. Questions were asked as to whether there was that will of the people behind the planning for multi-state secession and how to gain that if there wasn’t. Padley had repeatedly talked about plebiscites before the New Year when she had supported the rights of individual states to act. That had been done in her public disputes with President Walsh before he invoked the Insurrection Act. Nothing had been done on that note though. In none of the states in the West had there been even initial steps taken towards it. Going down the ‘proper’ route could take up to a year, so said the estimates of several attendees. Others baulked at such an idea. They feared being part of a fascist-led United States for such a period of time and knew that there would be West America at the end of that. The Republicans were at that point weeks away from having the White House and control over all branches of the federal government: they had already said that they would stop West America in its tracks and would thus be able to with such control. Public anger following the stolen election and the death of McCleary would have certainly long faded too. MAR, and followed by Governor Espinoza (the latter a remote attendee via video-conferencing), convinced many that they needed to act with extreme haste, at warp speed. There would be no wait. No fair referendums where the will of the people would be truly allowed to be expressed would be possibly allowed to happen in such a time period. The majority of those in Las Vegas, perhaps all of them, would be long locked up before then too on federal charges. Such steps would have to be jumped. Once the new country was up and running there would be elections for parliamentarians and at that stage the democratic will of the people could be expressed. That argument, one which if used another time would have those gathered to hear it up in arms because it went against the very idea of democracy, won most of them over.

Secret contact was had with others not in attendance at the Campaign for a Democratic America event. Colorado’s Governor Rowan had a trusted supporter make a trip to Idaho for a meeting with the embattled Republican who served as Governor of Idaho. Winkelman had long-standing issues with right-wing militia in his state and his hands had been tied by his legislature in trying to adequately respond to them. Rowan, who had moved to the forefront of the West America movement following the narrative of how he had ‘chased the feds out’ of Colorado, was convinced that Winkelman might want to have Idaho join West America. That was kept quiet from others in Las Vegas who would have opposed the idea on general principle – Idaho being a firmly Red state – and not be willing to be talked around about how Boise had elected that strongly-left Democratic congressman back the previous November. Rowan did what he did to see if it was possible before playing his hand openly. In addition, in another Red state on the borders of what those who wanted to see happen it were already calling their new country was Utah. In Salt Lake City MAR had all of those supporters and on her coat-tails, in the face of all attempts at Republican gerrymandering, a Democrat had been elected there. That city had long been a bastion for the Democrats yet the strongest of all get-out-the-vote efforts had seen a US House seat taken from the Republicans: the congressman was in DC but still in contact with Las Vegas. Pierce was behind that despite the misgivings of MAR and Padley. Then there was also what Rawlings did. The three-termer from Hawaii had long been an advocate for Pacific territories belonging to America (Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa) gaining statehood. She had contacts across the Pacific and worked them. The United States might have long rejected them but she sought out views as to if they could become part of West America. So many of those gathered to discuss forming a new country did so with the belief that they were talking about the eight states of the West – Washington state was thought to be destined to come on-side eventually – and wouldn’t have liked to hear any of that. If there was any chance of the United States allowing West America to be formed without a fight, thought very unlikely, then the fears had run that that would be blown with any attempts at what would be a land grab.


The warp speed approach forced upon the others by those at the top of the yet-completed Council of Ten saw success achieved. Two days of talks brought about general agreement. Those who’d boycotted Congress when joining with the Campaign for a Democratic America, and went to Las Vegas to talk about forming a new country, agreed to do it. The adapted plans of the Berkeley Circle with the additions to the governance overseen by Antonetti met approval following conditions being attached. Unthinkable it would have been beforehand for so many of them who might have shared the same political party yet had vastly different political ideas to do what they did. The situation was so extraordinary though and there was that urgency to their actions brought about by the fear of consequences. Plenty understood that they would be called traitors yet considered themselves to be in fact patriots. They told themselves that they were acting in the interests of those who elected them to the offices which they held.

MAR followed up the agreement by making a public statement the following morning. Padley and Pierce had wanted her to do so that same night but the news of so many deaths back in DC made her hold fire on that. There was going to be criticism either way, she was told, yet she held firm. She was their previously-agreed One Voice when it came to West America and so they gave in in the end to her plan of action on timing. The California congresswoman who so much of the country, in both the East and West, believed had legitimately won the presidential election yet had that stolen from her publicly declared that agreement had been reached by those part of the Campaign for a Democratic America to leave the United States and form a new country instead. She said that that would be done with the democratic will of the people… not mentioning the fudge agreed in Las Vegas about not having plebiscites ahead of that. No date was given by her of when that new country would come about, to turn it from words to fact. She didn’t mention other important issues with regard to that new country as well such as the Council of Ten agreement on urgently seeking to defend what they were building, the secret attempts at effective land grabs nor how they planned to enforce their government against those opposed to it from within.

West America moved from fantasy to reality with that announcement. Only force was something that could stop it.

[James G]

49 – Treason

Congress gave final certification to the presidential election result a day later than planned. Roberts and Mitchell would be the next President and Vice President of the United States. Members of Congress absent – either in Las Vegas or dead/in hospital after the terrorist attack – didn’t cast their votes during the roll call of each state yet they didn’t have to. There were overwhelming majorities in favour of proclaiming that the two of them would secede Walsh and Padley. As to the latter, the impeachment of vice president continued once the Electoral College results certification was finished with. She was soon out of office but senators and representatives moved to strip her of that position ahead of time. Democrats votes alongside Republicans in the US House for her impeachment for treason and thus on multiple counts of treason, the process moved afterwards to the Senate. Things progressed fast with that. There was a message being sent from those in Washington due to what she was doing out West. Editorial comment in the media had asked whether it was worth it all yet it happened regardless. For so many of those involved in Padley’s impeachment, they took her treason personally and so responded accordingly.

No longer a sitting senator himself (he’d resigned in late November 2028: his position filled by an appointee by the Governor of Texas), Roberts spoke outside of the Capitol Building after the last certification of his victory had come. His remarks started with comments on the events the day before when the American Insurgent Army had struck to kill seven of his former colleagues, plus many other innocents. Then he moved to welcome the outcome of the vote confirming that he and his running mate would take their oaths of office on January 20th. The first thing that the Roberts Administration would do, the president-elect said, was to put a firm end to the ongoing rebellion and efforts to form West America. There would be no referendums, no secession and no more treason once he was president. Those involved, everyone from top to bottom, would be brought up on federal charges. If he had to use the regular US Armed Forces to achieve that, Roberts promised then that would be what he would do. Secession was illegal and so was trying to form a new country within the union which was the United States. He spoke of how those in Las Vegas were acting against the people of the West, not in their best interests as Maria Arreola Rodriquez had claimed in her statement earlier that day that they were. There was no majority, not even a substantial minority, of citizens across the states in the West who wished to leave the United States. The democratic mandate wasn’t there. He warned those who had yet to involve themselves in secession against the consequences of joining in. They too would face prosecution and jail time.

Roberts addressed the matter of Padley’s impeachment. He reminded the country that Congress was getting underway with the process of removing her from office for her treason. Those out West, MAR, Governor Pierce & the others, had committed the same offense. It turned his stomach, he admitted, to be witness to such prominent figures committed such an infamous act. Yet, they were undertaking treason too. Rather than wait upon his incoming administration to act, Roberts called on Walsh to do so first. He urged the president to arrest all of those involved in that Campaign for a Democratic America who were trying to build a new, illegal nation within the sovereign borders of the United States. Roberts said that there would be Congressional backing for any and all action which Walsh could take to crush the rebellion and treason underway. He himself would support it and assured the president that his party, plus the vast majority of Democrats too, would do so. Walsh just had to take that final step, to finish what he had begun when he had invoked the Insurrection Act on New Year’s Eve. However, Roberts finished his remarks by saying, if Walsh didn’t do it, then he would do so himself. The president-elect asked those out West to mark his words: ‘I will put an end to your treason, with force, myself’ he finished with.

Such a speech was well-received, even by many opponents. Roberts’ comments were said to be presidential and invoking strength. The unity he had spoken of, with Republicans and Democrats alike acting together, went down better than he and his closest advisers had thought it would. What had happened the day beforehand inside the Capitol Building had helped with that impression. Members of Congress from both parties had been killed side-by-side: the story about Congressman Toledo trying to save the life of wheelchair-bound Congresswoman Jackson had made it into the media with many eyewitnesses to that. Yet for all of his talk of bipartisanship to the media, behind the scenes there was partisan division from the Roberts’ camp. Out of the public eye the president-elect and others, especially his running mate Mitchell, were angry at some of the slow progress being made with late stage elements of the presidential transition. After the Supreme Court had ruled against the plaintiff in the Arreola Rodriquez vs. Florida case the previous November, the transition had at first been underway without too many difficulties. In some fields that continued yet there had been recent hold ups when it came to elements of that with regard to important government departments and federal agencies dealing with security and law-&-order. Roberts and Mitchell put that down to Walsh doing his own thing, blowing hot and cold, when it came to the rebellion coming from the West. Cooperation with the new administration’s efforts to move seamlessly into the Departments of Homeland Security & Justice had been slowed down. Walsh Administration figures, the acting secretaries of both departments in particular, were putting the speed breaks on. They were restricting access to Roberts’ people and not sharing enough information. Mitchell had wanted Roberts to go public with that and to criticise Walsh openly yet the president-elect was attempting to work behind the scenes. He didn’t think that a big blow-up like that in the open was the best way of doing things at such a sensitive time.

Several hours after Roberts made his speech, Walsh’s press secretary briefed the media at the White House on the same matter. He read a statement from the (absent) president first where the declaration of the forming of a new country met firm opposition and was deemed illegal. The press secretary then answered posed questions about what the president was going to do in light of what had been said by MAR out in Las Vegas. Was Walsh going to use troops? Were arrest warrants going to be issued for her and other leading figures? The answers which came avoided stating any firm course of action to be taken. No new strategy was unveiled. Members of the media pushed, aiming to discover if there was some sort of secret that maybe they could get a hint of from the press secretary. Perhaps he was saying nothing to not give the game away ahead of a major federal action? There was no hint of that though. The president had tried the Insurrection Act approach, made some arrests and… that was it. Nothing more was to be done. The impotence was shocking for those there in the White House Briefing Room and also elsewhere. Right-wing media outlets and Democratic politicians joined each other in their outrage when that became apparent to all. Walsh was doing nothing. He’d given up after the first hurdle. It was said that his undeclared inaction was worse than him leading the country to defeat in the short military engagement with China. Several Democrats declared that he was the worst president that the country had ever had with one of them, a former congressman, stating in a CNN broadcast that it was in fact the president who was committing treason by not acting. How on earth could he do nothing when faced with what was happening?


The whole country had heard what MAR had said from Las Vegas about the West America which she was front-and-centre of. There were a good number of people – a minority but not an insignificant one – elsewhere in the United States to whom a new start with the nation’s governance and the democracy which was promised appealed to. Across Blue states and Red states, there was recognition that the system was broken. The Electoral College, the Senate and the power of the Supreme Court were regarded as undemocratic for a time such as 2029. Yet… MAR didn’t win them over with what she said. Criticism of the supposed exceptionalism that those in the West had when they had first called for a New America and then a Second Republic before they moved to the idea of West America had cut home. A lot of people had the thought of ‘just who do they think they are’. That came too from others across America, those who had always been opposed to the whole idea of secession by the West since the issue was first raised. Forming a new country came alongside the (unsaid) criticism that there was something wrong with the current one. Patriotism kicked in among so many more. They defended their country’s honour when they saw it as being attacked by those who ‘thought that they were too good for America anymore’.

The basketball player Cleo Brady made that particular remark in an interview with ESPN. He was one of the best players with the LA Lakers and known for his off-court comments in support of progressive social issues. He’d voted for MAR in the presidential election and made campaign appearances in California in 2028 as an important surrogate. His family were from Connecticut and when visiting there, confronted by an interviewer, he attacked the declaration made for a West America. He wouldn’t be returning to the West until it was all over, he said. Another high-profile figure who gave immediate criticism was the television personality Leah Scott. A comedian who like Brady was well-known for her left-wing political views, she was an Arizona native who worked primarily in New York though was often out West. Back there she wouldn’t be going, she told MSNBC, until West America was ‘dead and buried’. It was brought up on several news channels that the 47th President, that California native who’d served twenty-three months in office during 2023 to ’25, had left her home state previously claiming that ‘civil war was imminent’. She had been laughed at then but that wasn’t the case after what MAR had to say on January 7th. There were reports that other people were doing the same: leaving the states out West.

Up In Canada, talking to reporters about the latest fierce winter storm to strike the Maritimes, causing many casualties, the Prime Minister of America’s northern neighbour was asked for comment about West America. It came from a hostile journalist who framed it in a manner to give no wiggle room. How did she view the announcement of a new country soon to be formed? Would Canada have friendly relations with West America? She was forced into commenting. There was only one thing that she could say. She knew that those down in America would be watching and had to reply in the negative straight away because a dodge wouldn’t do it. Canada didn’t support the secession of several American states to form a new country within the borders of the United States. There would be no friendly relations. To say anything else would have brought not just the ire of the incoming Roberts Administration but also have had unwanted domestic effects.

At first out of the public eye, a dispute erupted between Walsh and his Secretary of Defence. General Ferdinand – overseeing the transition at the Pentagon with ease since he was staying there come January 20th – sought to remove from their duties National Guard commanders across six states in the West. In his opinion, they were under Pentagon command when federalised on New Year’s Eve and he had the power to terminate them from their positions. He wanted to do that because they had, illegally, allowed for their individual state governments to start giving them orders again in direct contravention of their federalisation. Some mid-ranking officers within the National Guard elements from California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico & Oregon had already resigned from their post because they agreed that that reassertion of control by state governors was illegal, but the senior people hadn’t. Ferdinand aimed to have the commanders replaced with subordinates who would obey federal orders: not commit what he saw as treason. Walsh’s national security adviser had agreed yet the president, who had gone back to Camp David, overruled him plus the Joint Chiefs too. Ferdinand was told not to relieve those men and women of their posts: it would ‘only inflame the tense situation’, Sunny Park said as she relayed the president’s instructions. Ferdinand demanded to talk to Walsh himself, not going through an unelected appointee as the president’s chief-of-staff. When he finally managed to get through to Walsh, that instruction to not act was confirmed. If Ferdinand hadn’t been less than two weeks away from serving under a new president, he would have resigned. He stayed on though others didn’t. First the Chief of the National Guard Bureau (a Joint Chiefs of Staff member) quit in protest and he was followed by the Secretary of the Army too. Both had previously threatened to do so before due to Walsh’s behaviour and finally did. Ferdinand was told that the latter was to make a public statement as to why that was the case. He alerted Roberts to that but didn’t tell his president… Walsh would find out soon enough, he reasoned.

[James G]

50 – Reporting for duty

Unannounced yet certainly not unintentionally, more than three hundred known attendees of the Campaign for a Democratic America gathering in Las Vegas ended up on the federal no-fly list. Members of Congress boycotting that institution, state governors & legislature members and private citizens working for those elected officials were refused entry onto commercial aircraft on domestic and international routes. Many of them flew away from Las Vegas before it came into effect yet found themselves caught by it afterwards. At a directive of the Department of Homeland Security, they found themselves alongside terrorists, suspected and real, without permission to fly. Sometimes sympathetic and other times harassed airline employees were unable to tell those seeking to fly why that was the case: ‘the computer says no’ was just how it was. Efforts were made to travel either by private aircraft or alternative means – such as rail & hired vehicles – but problems were soon discovered by those affected in doing that too. The Acting DHS Secretary had also sought a petition from a federal judge in DC for financial institutions to put an emergency block on bank accounts and credit cards of those added to that no-fly list. They’d find out later that the IRS was also being tasked to investigate their finances, yet ahead of then, their access to funds was curtailed: under protest, those financial firms acceded to federal demands. Aides and relatives helped out in the short-term yet the problems were going to remain. Fox News obtained cell-phone footage taken by a passenger waiting in-line at Phoenix Sky-Harbor Airport in Arizona. A congressman who’d flown down from Las Vegas with no issues was denied entry onto a connecting flight to take him to near his home in the southwestern corner of the state outside of Yuma. He subjected the airline staff from American Eagle to significant verbal abuse while also asserted that as a ‘sitting Member of Congress’ they couldn’t deny him the right to travel because that was ‘unconstitutional’. The Fox News hosts pointed out that he was wrong on constitutional grounds – that covered impediment travelling to Congress – and also mocked his line of attack there… he was boycotting Congress to help form a new country!

Among those held up in their travels by the sudden federal action was Senator Rawlings who ended up stuck for some time in California. She was unable to fly back to Hawaii after going to Sacramento after Las Vegas. While in California’s state capital, Rawlings took an unscheduled meeting with someone also in town who she knew from DC. Following their talk, she then took that retired military officer, Lt.-General Darius Fuller, with her when she made an urgent appointment to see Governor Pierce and Vice President Padley who had returned from Nevada when she had. Both of them knew who Fuller was and so introductions weren’t needed. He’d been a casualty of the fall-out from the Taiwan Conflict where the Republican-controlled Congress had taken a meat cleaver to senior people at the State Department and the Pentagon too. Walsh’s Secretaries of State & Defence had resigned but the Republicans had forced the removal of lower-ranking people including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plus his own staff. Fuller had been the Director of the Joint Staff, an administrator serving at the Pentagon. The Republicans already had it in for him due to his then-wife (they’d divorced later in 2027) being a problem for them in Ohio stale-level politics and used him as a political football there: Fuller had no blame for what had happened above Taiwan and in the Western Pacific. Walsh had caved in to the Republican’s wishes to see him gone among almost a dozen other uniformed people though. Rather than take a dead-end post away from the stepping-stone on the career ladder where he had been, Fuller had taken early retirement. He’d made several appearances on CNN and MSNBC discussing military matters as well as also musing over a political run as a Democrat. Hearing what he had to say when it was just the pair of them, Rawlings brought him to two of the top people among the Council of Ten. She had her own motives for doing so, trying to position herself at the top of the government of the new country once appointments came around, but also knew his input would be valuable.

Fuller told Padley and Pierce about how West America could defend itself once the new president did as promised and took action to crush it. He was ready, if requested, to report for duty to serve that new country.

National Guard elements of the states in the West couldn’t defend the territory of West America. Fuller made it clear to them that no matter how they were arrayed, using any particular form of clever tactics supported by people power getting in the way to deter federal use of force, there would be a rapid conquest of West America. The Army & Air National Guard units didn’t have the numbers nor equipment to put up any more than a token effort. Attacks against West America would come not just from outside but from within too: based all across the West were elements of the US Armed Forces. Padley and Pierce explained that they were aware of that and had been secret meetings held already with many senior military officers. In addition, Rawlings spoke too of those which had happened in Hawaii though in a different manner to the ones done in California. Fuller asked of them how successful those had been and heard what he expected on that. There had been no luck, and the Pentagon had gotten wind of what was happening with the result being replacement of officers. What should have been done, Fuller told them, was to wait before making the initial moves. Those generals and admirals in senior postings needed to see West America happening first. Try again, quickly too, was his message. He spoke of the certainty that there would be many defections from military units where soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines would walk away from units which declared for West America. Those would be people who came from states outside of West America yet also from within too. However, he also told those he met with that from federal forces given orders to attack West America, the same would occur. That needed to be encouraged. He moved on afterwards to explain a draft concept of how West America could defend itself on the battlefield. Fuller assured his hosts that the federal government would fight them but that West America could manage to weather those attacks and remain as an independent, new country. His ideas were well-received. Like Rawlings had been when he had briefed her, Padley and Pierce were impressed with Fuller’s concepts of how West America could remain free. Nothing official was confirmed at the end of the meeting yet both Rawlings and Fuller left the Governor’s Mansion sure to soon be appointed as both the civilian and military defence chiefs of West America. The new country, still without an official name, capital & even currency, had its general.


Up in Washington state – which hadn’t joined West America at that time – the innocent hostage taken by the so-called Defenders of Democracy from her apartment in Tacoma turned up dead. The deadline for her release had passed without the demands of those who took her and her co-worker/roommate hostage too, and killed him, being met. She was never going to survive anyway due to the Defenders of Democracy being a fraud and the intention being to kill her regardless. Her corpse, showing signs of extreme torture, was dumped on the sidewalk outside the home of a fellow employee at the US Citizenship & Immigration Service’s Tacoma office. The FBI hadn’t managed to get anywhere near finding her before her killing nor those whom they were looking for as the hostage-takers. Their focus was on far left radical terrorists, not an international criminal organisation fronting as such. Director Cohen was told at once and back there in DC, he informed the Acting Attorney General that it was almost certain that the Defenders of Democracy were going to snatch some more hostages to be held with demands made of an entirely unrealistic nature.

Also back in DC, Richard Miller, the subject of that Plan Red leak the previous November, was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the incoming Roberts Administration to be the president-elect’s pick for the new Secretary for Homeland Security. He was a divisive figure and the idea of putting someone regarded as a zealot like he was in-charge of such a federal department upset many Members of Congress. He didn’t look likely to be voted down when the time came though. Long a fighter against what the right had called extremism in the form of far left activists, it was argued that someone like him was needed when there was secession underway. The retired admiral made a comment to a reporter that he was ‘reporting for duty’ upon being called upon by the incoming president to serve the United States against those seeking to destroy it. Florida’s governor, Erika Cook, made her own announcement concerning an appointment just after the Miller story broke. Laura Garfield had been killed in the January 6th terror attack at the Capitol Building leaving her Red state Florida with just the one senator. That short tenure, less than four days, had created a vacancy which Cook filled: she chose her own recently-appointed Florida Secretary of State to be that replacement. Corey Donner, a Republican, was to replace the Democrat’s Garfield. Other states had laws concerning replacements needing to be from the same political party but Florida didn’t. Cook ‘corrected’ the decision of Florida’s voters late the previous year once more: first denying MAR her state’s Electoral College votes and then putting another Republican back in the Senate. Plenty of criticism came her way yet Cook took no notice of any of that noise. Senate Majority Leader Green had pre-approved Donner and was happy to have the Republicans back at the number of sixty senators. There remained plenty of absent Democrats, making the majority in the Upper House even more secure than it had been, yet he saw it as a case of more always being better than less. He welcomed Donner’s arrival in DC at a press conference where he updated the media on proceedings to do with the impeachment against the vice president too. A vote was soon coming, he told them, and he was entirely confident that Padley would be removed from office. In addition, when asked about the recent activities of national guardsmen in the states out West, Green spoke of how he would soon be directing Congressional efforts to have the National Guard elements of those states disestablished. They’d committed treason and brought shame upon themselves. Such remarks weren’t co-ordinated beforehand with the Roberts transition team. That was Green’s way though. The new president, like Walsh, would have to govern the country while so much real power for action lay in the hands of Bill Green from Oklahoma.

Black Friday occurred on January 8th 2029.

The name had long been associated with retail sales ahead of Christmas yet the stock market crash which took place that day was afterwards called that. It was worse than what had been seen almost two years beforehand in the aftermath of the Taiwan Conflict. World markets first, then domestic investors & speculators, caused a financial meltdown in light of the domestic situation in the United States with part of the country attempting to breakaway. It had been some time coming yet when it did, the crash was quite something. Trading opened that morning since suspension on the Wednesday after the bombing on Wall Street. The Acting Treasury Secretary (the long-serving Philip Moore had quit in protest the previous November after the US Supreme Court made that election decision) had tried to get Walsh’s permission to keep the NYSE closed until the Monday due to early moves on foreign markets but had been refused permission to have that done. Such a mistake was a costly one. Civil war fears caused the crash to happen. There were long-term factors at play going back to the collapse in the majority of China-US trade but the declaration that West America was going to happen was the spark which lit the fire. Tens of billions of dollars were wiped off the value of American companies. Trading on the NYSE was suspended once again, after an hour of chaos when the president finally relented, but by then it was too late. Markets in East Asia and then those in Western Europe had already done enough to make that closure irrelevant.

On the face of it, a crash on the NYSE didn’t seem to at once affect ordinary Americans. Yet, it would do. Saving and kid’s college funds were invested in stocks and shares. Access to credit for companies small and large was going to be denied. Imports and exports were going to suffer, affecting jobs. Black Friday happened because the realisation was among so many, inside and outside of the United States, that West America was only going to be stopped by military force. Conflict wasn’t going to be of a benefit to anyone… not in the short-term anyway. Therefore the outcome was that pre-emptive financial action taken by a few, followed by many, where their activities brought about a crash comparable to October 25th 1929.

[gillan1220]

Just 12 more days before the transfer of power, things are looking so bad.

[James G]

Feb 27, 2021 4:44:53 GMT gillan1220 said:

Just 12 more days before the transfer of power, things are looking so bad.

Everyone is hoping that when that happens, everything will be resolved. Yet those seeking destruction are aware of that date too unfortunately.

[James G]

51 – Squabbles

It was illegal for political parties in the United States to ban entry to, and later subsequently expel, members who joined their parties. Civil rights legislation was behind that with the intent upon creation being noble. Such a loophole had long been exploited. Racists and nutters had run in elections as Democrats and Republicans. At times, in extreme circumstances, the two parties had even joined together to fight against a particular candidate to stop them from winning elected office with that even happening for federal offices when at times the LaRouche movement tried to co-opt the Democrats’ status and the Ku Klux Klan targeted the Republicans. Nonetheless, there was too exploitation done by those on one side of the partisan divide when someone especially awful ran under the banner of the other and that worked both ways. Elsewhere in the world, a party could get rid of those that they didn’t like, but not in the United States.

The Democratic National Committee would have loved to have expelled all of those Democrats who joined the Campaign for a Democratic America and sought to establish West America. They weren’t allowed too though. That gave the Republicans plenty of ammunition to launch attack after attack with the tag-line ‘all Democrats are traitors’. In the face of such an effort, the DNC’s Chair, Jamie Murrow, contacted party members elsewhere across the United States and told them to counterattack by calling them something else instead with the intention that the media would follow and stop referring to such people as Democrats. ‘Traitors’ had already been appropriated by the Republicans yet there were a few Democrats who used that too. However, the term ‘Jacobeans’ came into favour soon enough. Leading Democrats kept saying that on air and encouraged friendly journalist to do so too.

The Jacobin was an influential monthly political magazine (online and in print) with those Democrats aligned to the cause of democratic socialism, as most of those out West, especially the leading figures, being regular participants to its articles and also following the same political ideology from that publication. There had been democratic socialists who’d called themselves Jacobeans even before the idea of West America was first formed. To them, such a name was a badge of honour. Used by their opponents, those from their own party who considered them traitors, the name wasn’t a compliment yet was adopted as such when it happened. Jacobeans were regarded by other Democrats as having too much of a focus on ideological purity… mixed with an unhealthy dose of stubbornness in that too. That all worked into how the name started to stick when the party establishment and Democrats from elsewhere in the country made a serious effort to say it again and again. They wanted that label applied wholesale as they sought to protect their party from guilt by association and make it clear that those in West America were different from the rest of them. The Republicans didn’t ease off their attacks but the hope was that it would sink in with the American people that there was a big difference between Democrats and Jacobeans. As Senator Laura Yorke put it when talking with Murrow and the party’s Congressional leadership, when ‘all the treason was done with’ and ‘West America stomped out’, the Democrats would need to ‘go back to winning elections again’.


That ideological purity which the Jacobeans had brought about internal squabbles with those who’d agreed in Las Vegas to form a new country. Democratic socialists, moderate liberals and neoliberals were all part of the group led by MAR and Vice President Padley who sought to breakaway from the United States. Many of the latter, neoliberals who represented states in the West either as senators or representatives, had – for lack of a better description – fled for their lives to DC during the first week of January 2029 claiming that to stay meant death. Those who stayed behind deemed that as a massive overreaction yet were glad to see the back of those particular Democrats. As to the ones who remained, there weren’t many of them yet they were important members of the Campaign for a Democratic America. They had signed up to take West America out of the United States because they believed that that was the only salvation for democracy. However, they had never been onboard with the extreme elements of the democratic socialist platform which MAR had run her presidential campaign upon and what had subsequently become the basis for the government of that new nation. Aiming to join with the moderate liberals caught in the middle, they pushed for a moderation in many aspects of economic and social policy as West America started to get off the ground. The democratic socialists fought back, in true Jacobean fashion. Governor Pierce – one of those moderates caught in the middle – acted as peacemaker-in-chief between the two factions at each end. It was hard going for him. Plenty of effort was made to keep the neoliberals on-side. He and Padley feared that they could bring West America to a screeching halt long before the federal action promised by incoming President Roberts do that. He wanted to have a country built before then and it couldn’t be done with everyone at each other’s throats.

Calling their new country either New America or West America wasn’t favoured by those at the forefront of creating it. Something different was desired by them. To Governor Rowan the name to be chosen was obvious. Colorado’s governor suggested calling the fresh-faced nation the Democratic American Republic. It was to be a republic and it had been formed out of the Campaign for a Democratic America. MAR liked it the moment she heard it and pushed for that to be the name. The Council of Ten agreed… they decided that they didn’t need everyone’s input there, not when that involved hundreds of people. Padley was the one who chose where the capital of the Democratic American Republic would be. The centre of government was to be in Las Vegas. Locations such as Sacramento and Santa Fe had been favoured by others due to them already being state capitals, and there had also been a wish by the Mayor of Los Angeles (she’d been quite influential in getting Members of Congress from Southern California, neoliberals aplenty, to join the new country) to have America’s second largest city as the capital. Padley won the day though with her argument that Las Vegas was centrally-located – generally anyway – and the ‘birthplace’ of the Democratic American Republic. Nevada’s governor arm-twisted others on the Council of Ten into agreeing with that. Las Vegas would become the capital city where the federal government and parliament would be based.

An outline of the manner in which that government and parliament would operate had been agreed in Las Vegas on January 6th. The details of it all though weren’t so easy to get everyone to go along with. There was a jockeying for positions in the government. MAR and Padley had been agreed upon as president and vice president respectively but there were all of those top-level posts to be filled. Putting themselves forwards for them, further squabbles broke out whether such people were suitable and had enough general support. Senator Rawlings was considered a shoo-in for the defence & security portfolio while Congressman Ignacio Gutierrez had wide support for the position to head an economic/treasury role. Everything else was up for grabs. As to the parliament, it was to consist of one chamber. The reasoning of the emergency situation as the nation was created was used to justify immediate taking up of seats ahead of later planned elections of a promised true democratic character. One hundred seats, split on population grounds, was the number agreed. Those could be filled easily: there were more people wanting a seat than were seats available. Senators considered themselves guaranteed a right to have them with other candidates, those who had been US House representatives as well as those in state legislatures looking to ‘step up’, pushed to the back of the queue. How many each state would get was argued over too. Due to its huge population, California was assured to have the largest number but others thought that unfair and sought for a proportional manner of distribution of seats. The Council of Ten wouldn’t agree to that because, as MAR told them, that ‘had the stink of the Electoral College / US Senate shenanigans’ which (in her opinion) had made the United States a failed state. There was additionally the matter of the Council of Ten where it had only nine members at that point. Washington state had a seat on that body assured and there was consideration given to how many seats in the parliament would be given to them as well.

Yet, Washington had not joined the Democratic American Republic upon the declaration of the nation’s formation. Members of Congress representing that state alongside senior state-level political figures had been in Las Vegas but the state up in the Pacific North-West hadn’t come on-side. They sought to change that come January 9th.


What happened that Saturday in the small city of Olympia was an assault on democracy. It was a coup d’état, so said in unison media outlets on each extreme end of the partisan divide such as Fox News and MSNBC. Pennsylvania’s moderate Democratic Governor Dwight Norris and the hard-right South Carolina Senator Jerry Stokes were likewise in firm alignment in their expressed view that an illegal coup deposed the Governor of Washington. Josh Reeves, plus his secretary of state who had stood by him, were removed from office by Lt.-Governor Ann Quinn, the state’s attorney general and the others of influence there. There was no legal justification which they used other than a hastily drawn-up emergency act to get rid of Reeves. Quinn replaced him and announced that she was taking Washington state out of the United States to join the Democratic American Republic. The National Guard was removed from federal control as part of this and when their senior commanders wouldn’t comply with that, they were fired. State troopers with the Washington State Patrol – a force of over five thousand personnel – assisted in the ‘transfer of power’ when their sworn duty was to the governor and the state’s constitution. There was no violence used yet the threat of it was there when a company of riflemen with the Washington Army National Guard acting on behalf of Quinn surrounded the governor’s mansion and pointed their guns at the state troopers during the final showdown. The state troopers there received last-minute orders to stand down and did so: officers from that force afterwards took Reeves and others into ‘protective custody’.

The people of Washington state, like those in the seven other states which formed the Democratic American Republic, weren’t consulted either ahead of time, nor in the immediate afterwards either.

Reeves had unsuccessfully fought to keep Washington in the United States. His state’s two senators and four of the six Democratic representatives had gone to Las Vegas to sign up for the new country being formed which they aimed to make Washington part of. They had claimed to be speaking for the people of the state plus those of the wider West America when they did that. Reeve’s position was that the half dozen Members of Congress who went to DC (four of them Republicans) were doing that instead. Only through a majority gained in a public vote approved by the state legislature, with his approval too, could Washington state leave the union… and then as well with the approval of the rest of the United States on top. There had been no vote nor was there any overwhelming public demand for one. Those Jacobeans who wanted to secede were the ones who had tried to stop the state certification of the presidential election vote the November beforehand where four of the twelve Electoral College votes given went to the Republican candidate Roberts. They had likewise been instrumental in organising public unrest before and after Shauna McCleary – a Washington native yet strongly associated with Oregon – had died. That unrest, which Reeves considered to be the full responsibility of secessionists, had brought about the kidnap-murder of innocent federal employees in his state and also the Vanguardist domestic terrorism that Washington had seen.

Marxist-Leninists forming several competing groups had for many years been active in Washington state. They rejected electoral politics (though had come out in quiet support for MAR) and also were ideological pure in their make-up. Middle-class college kids who wanted to be activists were banned from joining the various Vanguardist sects: only the working-class, especially those from minorities, were tolerated. The aims of those terrorists were to transform Washington into some form of communist utopia. They killed people and committed bombings. Reeves had been working alongside federal efforts to combat them when their activities had exploded following McCleary’s death and the wider unrest across the West. He had considered that they could only be defeated with federal participation yet had faced a pushback by those such as Quinn – whom the Vanguardists had no time for – who decried ‘federal invasion’. Joining the Democratic American Republic had been considered by Reeves to be madness when his state was under assault like it was by those who looked likely to strike against the authority that country as they did against that of the United States. The democratic socialists, the Jacobeans arrayed around the Democratic American Republic, weren’t consider left enough for the Vanguardist terrorists!

None of that had mattered to those who deposed Reeves in their coup. They thought that they knew better than him what was good for their state and its people. The Council of Ten would be complete with Quinn.

[James G]

52 – Who’s the boss?

Padley made a public declaration for the ‘people of the West’ to come out ‘when necessary’ to ‘defend the new country being built’. In one of her last public statements as Vice President of the United States, and ahead of taking a promised post as Vice President of the Democratic American Republic, the incitement for violence against the federal authorities had never been so clear. She sought to keep the people power where it was wanted rather than let it either evaporate or go out of control endangering everything being built. The other members of the Council of Ten had the same fears that she had that federal action would take a wrecking ball to West America before it was finished being established. The only way to stop that, such was the thinking, was to put the people in the way of any attack while at the same time employing caution so that things didn’t get out of control. Back in DC, there was uproar from Democrats and Republicans alike at President Walsh’s inaction in the face of the final stages of secession by eight states out West. However, Padley, MAR and the others concerned themselves that that supposed abrogation of responsibility from the 48th President might just have been a smokescreen to hide planned action. Rumours ran riot and there was plentiful suspicion that instead of doing nothing, Walsh was going to strike a decisive blow from out of the blue.

In Colorado and Oregon, led by Governors Rowan and Isaac, had already done what Padley was doing in bringing out supporters of an independent West America to ‘defend’ it. That was done via the harassment of federal agents active in their states of the FBI and the US Marshals. Still following instructions set down by the near-aborted Operated Restore Order, far left terrorists in Oregon and BLA gunmen in Colorado were being hunted by those agents. While engaged in trying to do that, they faced mass civil disobedience restricting their movements. Their vehicles were attacked and they themselves came under a torrent of verbal abuse with incidents of spitting and then also objects thrown at them too. ‘Out, out, out’ were the chants led by impromptu organisers against their activities. Those federal agents were trying to catch murderers who’d killed people in the two states, plus elsewhere, yet found themselves subject to extreme harassment even when they weren’t working as protesters followed them home. Social media sites were awash with ‘spottings’ of them at work and when off the clock which allowed for that extensive campaign to stop them acting on behalf of the federal government enforcing the law. Colorado’s lieutenant governor was another target of protesters out in support of West America. She attempted to carry on the fight against her state’s secession despite Rowan illegally pushing that through without any form of public vote nor action taken by Colorado’s legislature. She spoke in both Fort Collins and Loveland, two towns in the northern reaches of her state where there were crowds of people gathered in support of Colorado remaining in the union. Counter-protesters showed up, in larger numbers than those who had come out in support of Webb. Fistfights broke out and then there was a gunshot heard. Webb was taken to safety with her closest aides – who’d left the state capital Denver alongside her fearing the consequences of staying there – soon urging her to leave for Wyoming (the state line wasn’t far off) or somewhere else outside of Colorado. She opted to stay though and fighting against Rowan’s illegal activity. Her chief-of-staff feared that she was seeking to become a martyr.

On that same Sunday, workers for dozens upon dozens of federal agencies (including those from the FBI and the Federal Marshal Service) who had places of work in the eight states out West received emails coming from a source identified as dar_gov_net. Spam filtering didn’t remove it from their work email accounts despite the previously unknown source. They were informed that starting the next workday, they would be working for the Democratic American Republic. Their job titles, positions, pay and benefits would all remain the same yet their allegiance as federal employees would be to the new country being formed. They were to come into work as usual and carry on doing the same job despite the change in the ultimate representative government. Significant numbers of those who received that ignored it as junk, even if they opened the email, and thought it was some sort of joke or a political stunt. Others took it more seriously though. They reported it up the administrative chain or went outside of that to contacts with elected officials. Approaches were made to the media as well with those working for all sorts of organisations from the Border Patrol to the Bureau of Prisons to public health services to veteran’s offices making it clear that something extraordinary was going on. The story went nationwide with some outlets giving it more importance than others did. With the latter treatment, there remained some of that feeling that West America wasn’t really serious despite all indications to the contrary and this was all some kind of elaborate show being made by those who refused to accept reality of the incoming president governing all of America. However, it was no such thing. The leaders of the Democratic American Republic were at that point in the final stages of their plan to launch their new country. They were telling people who was the boss from now on: those in Las Vegas, not DC.

Among those who really did understand the significance of it all, and could see just what was coming next, there were a good number of immediate resignations made by federal employees including judges and federal agents. Others intended to follow them if what looked possible to happen soon enough did yet waited before walking away from their jobs. Many of those about to become citizens of West America had no intention of working for it due to various objections, plus also the clear lack of democratic mandate.


In DC, history was made when the US Senate voted 82-2 to remove Cicely Blair Padley from the office of Vice President of the United States of America. All Republican senators voted aye for the conviction alongside twenty-two Democrats including Arizona’s Senator Dunbar. Fifteen Westerners were absent and one from elsewhere in the country was dead (and yet replaced) after the January 6th terror attack. Only two Democrats voted nay, neither defending Padley’s actions yet unwilling to follow the lead set by everyone else. The removal was immediate. The country didn’t have a vice president from six o’clock on the evening of January 10th 2029.

She was removed from office after being found guilty of treason.

Impeachment against presidents, vice presidents, officials and judges had been undertaken beforehand in the United States with both successful and failed outcomes in the process. There had been impeachment efforts made for the charges of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’ as well as bribery but never before had treason been the charge laid. Republicans and Democrats alike joined forces in first the US House and then the Senate to get rid of Padley for that offense though. No formal defence was offered, something which those two dissenting senators had protested against. However, with Padley having left nation’s capital and effectively undertaking her own abrogation of responsibility that was impossible. Since November 2028, she had been involved in subversion, secession, insurrection and rebellion against the United States. Already named as the vice president in the illegal West America, she had long since stopped being any sort of real vice president for the United States. Yet, while she had retained that post, Padley had been first in the line of succession for the presidency. Congressional figures had worried themselves silly during the time when Attorney General Underwood had been fatally poisoned and Walsh was at risk of biological infection about that constitutionally-protected position of hers. Removed from the line of succession she was too with that overwhelming vote to get her out of office.

Senators gave speeches on the floor of the Senate and then afterwards to the media. The barrage of criticism given to Padley’s actions in the previous three months was extensive. There was also the blame apportioned to her for what had happened the day before in Washington state where she was accused of being one of the key instigators of the illegal removal of Governor Reeves. Many of them promised that they would join together to begin pressing for the Acting AG to issue an arrest warrant for her on federal charges: Senator Stokes caused his usual upset when he said he wanted to see her brought to DC ‘in chains’. With Padley being African-American, that comments saw others take offense with all of the slavery connotations which they were sure Stokes injected into that image. He claimed innocence there in stoking racial hatred yet he knew exactly what he had been saying. Walsh’s press secretary released a short statement from the president expressing support for the actions taken by the Senate but said nothing directly himself. The silence was deafening.

When the allotted time came for the removal to become law – an extremely fast process the whole impeachment had been –, and Padley was no longer in the line of succession, a separate action was taken. Cabinet members, all of them either Democrats or Independents, were assembled by the US Secretary of State. Walsh wasn’t present for that meeting. Samantha Leach made her move to see Walsh joining Padley in being removed from office too. All hell broke loose with that.