title: Molnupiravir

text: DRIVE then licensed molnupiravir for human clinical studies to Miami-based company Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which later partnered with Merck & Co. to develop the drug further.


title: Molnupiravir

text: The primary data supporting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization for molnupiravir are from MOVe-OUT, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial studying molnupiravir for the treatment of non-hospitalized participants with mild to moderate COVID-19 at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. Participants were adults 18 and older with a pre-specified chronic medical condition or at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for other reasons who had not received a COVID-19 vaccine. The main outcome measured in the trial was the percentage of people who were hospitalized or died due to any cause during 29 days of follow-up. Of the 709 people who received molnupiravir, 6.8% were hospitalized or died within this period compared to 9.7% of the 699 people who received a placebo.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In September 2021, Merck signed a voluntary licensing agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) that allows MPP to sublicense molnupiravir and supply the COVID-19 oral medication to 105 low- and middle-income countries. The cost of the U.S. government's initial purchase was about $712 per course of treatment; treatment with generics in developing countries can cost as little as $20.


title: Molnupiravir

text: Sales of Molnupiravir were $952 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, which in part made Merck's sales figures increase with respect to the same period of the previous year.


title: Molnupiravir

text: On 11 October 2021, Merck submitted an EUA application to the FDA, and on 30 November 2021, the FDA's Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee (AMDAC) at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research met to discuss the application. The committee narrowly voted, 13 for and 10 opposed, to recommend authorization for adults with mild to moderate illness who are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19. Concerns were expressed over the drug's low effectiveness in preventing death, which in the final trial was only 30%, as well as the increased mutation rate the drug causes, which could theoretically worsen the pandemic by driving the evolution of more dangerous variants. In December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for molnupiravir for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in adults with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 viral testing who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death, and for whom alternative COVID-19 treatment options authorized by the FDA are not accessible or clinically appropriate.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In October 2021, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) started a rolling review of molnupiravir.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In November 2021, molnupiravir was approved in the U.K. by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for the treatment of established infections of COVID-19. The MHRA issued a conditional marketing authorization applicable in the U.K., and an emergency use authorization for Northern Ireland.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In November 2021, the Bangladesh Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) authorized emergency use of molnupiravir.


title: Molnupiravir

text: At a November 2021 AMDAC meeting, multiple advisors raised the concern that molnupiravir could accelerate the emergence of variants of concern. Other scientists raised similar concerns both before and after the meeting.


title: Molnupiravir

text: In October 2021, preliminary results from a clinical trial (MOVe-OUT) indicated that treatment with molnupiravir may reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. The final analysis reported a 30% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The "Second American Civil War" is an umbrella term used by academics in order to reclassify historical eras of significant political violence in the history of the United States as a "civil war" or, more commonly, to discuss the potential outbreak of a future civil war in the country. Discussion of a second civil war has occurred with varying degrees of frequency and sincerity since the first civil war ended in 1865.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Discussion of a possible second civil war entered the mainstream in earnest as a result of the polarizing effect of the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Many conservatives had come to express perceived grievances against the government, which they viewed as tyrannical under Democrats such as President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile, left-leaning groups viewed Trump's election as a sign that reactionary, far-right, and extremist movements were gaining political power, warning that Trump's incendiary and antidemocratic behavior would promote political violence, while the efforts of Trump conservatives to subvert democratic norms would lead to a rise in fascism, ultra-nationalism, Christian nationalism, and white supremacy. The resulting social division is considered by most experts to be one of the most politically polarizing eras in American history.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Concerns about a civil war rose dramatically after the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and it continued to grow due to political turmoil. Stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest during the George Floyd protests, the aftermath and legal investigations related to the historically contentious 2020 United States presidential election, the poor economic conditions from the , the overturning of "Roe v. Wade", and the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Those who see early signs of a second civil war point to trends including democratic decline and a normalization of political violence, claiming that the United States deeply resembles other countries that have broken out into civil war. Meanwhile, those who say the risk of civil war is overblown characterize such discussions as alarmist and fearmongering, pointing to significant disincentives to large-scale violence ranging from the economic to the geopolitical. Almost all observers claim a second civil war of any magnitude would incur deep costs to global stability.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Following the violent pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, an increasing number of political scientists, journalists, historians, intelligence officials, military leaders, former U.S. generals, investors, political leaders on both sides of the political divide began to raise growing concern that the United States might break into civil war. Evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, including Focus on the Family, have urged conservative Christians to prepare for civil war against the "radical left." The British progressive newspaper "The Guardian" suggested that America's "treasonous far-right factions" have already declared war. Some intelligence officials and journalists have asserted that the country is locked into a cold civil war between the political left and the political right that could start within the next five to ten years. Others state that the 2022 midterms or the 2024 presidential election could act as a potential fire-starter. And still others claim a second civil war may have already begun and a shooting war is inevitable. During the 2022 election cycle, several Republican candidates ran their platform on "civil war" rhetoric, with many candidates discussing violence against the left, while many Democrats warned of fascism if Republicans take control of the government.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Polling data demonstrates growing pessimism among Americans who view the future of their country at risk of civil war. A slim majority consider the U.S. to be in a cold civil war between the political left and political right. Other polling shows that a majority of self-identified Republicans agree that "some violence may be necessary to get the country back on track" and that the "U.S. seems headed toward a civil war in the near future." It has also been demonstrated that both self-identified Democrats and Republicans have a growing tolerance for violence as a means to justify political ends. These sentiments have translated into real-world action, with a handful of mass shootings and politically motivated killings being at least partly motivated by right-wing perpetrators hoping to foment a second civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some historians name the 1861–1865 war the "Second American Civil War", because in their view, the American Revolutionary War can also be considered a civil war (since the term can be used in reference to any war in which one political body separates itself from another political body). They then refer to the Independence War, which resulted in the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, as the "First American Civil War". A significant number of American colonists stayed loyal to the British Crown and as Loyalists fought on the British side while opposite were a significant amount of colonists called Patriots who fought on the American side. In some localities, there was fierce fighting between Americans including gruesome instances of hanging, drawing, and quartering on both sides. As Canadian historian William Stewart Wallace noted:


title: Second American Civil War

text: As early as 1789, David Ramsay, an American patriot historian, wrote in his "History of the American Revolution" that "Many circumstances concurred to make the American war particularly calamitous. It was originally a civil war in the estimation of both parties." Framing the American Revolutionary War as a civil war is gaining increasing examination.


title: Second American Civil War

text: After the American Civil War effectively ended with the Ceasefire Agreement of the Confederacy, the federal government began a process which it called Reconstruction, leading to the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). The United States aimed to return Southern states to the Union and update the federal and state governments in accordance with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The post-war volatility created endemic violence in Southern states, including armed conflict. Due to the violence and severity of the social, political and constitutional challenges during the Reconstruction Era, this period in history is sometimes called the "Second Civil War". Referring to Reconstruction as a "Second American Civil War" was established by the "American Experience" episode "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War" and made its way to the school curriculum.


title: Second American Civil War

text: White supremacy terrorist groups emerged in the South to oppose Reconstruction, including the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and the Knights of the White Camelia, which consisted primarily of Confederate veterans. These organizations attempted to oppose the United States government through assassinations, intimidation of black and white Republican officials, voter intimidation, and, at times, attempted coups and insurrections such as The Battle of Liberty Place in Louisiana in 1874. Historian Clarence Walker described this period as "a war of terror" aimed at black voters and politicians, as well as whites considered "race traitors."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some historians have interpreted the Coal Wars as constituting some form of a Second American Civil War and they also consider it to be the largest national revolt since the first Civil War ended. Starting in 1890, the informal armed rebellion began when coal workers revolted against their employers due to poor working conditions. Attempts to unionize were met with police crackdowns, resulting in several revolts and even resulting in armed battles throughout the United States. Although they occurred mainly in the East, particularly in Appalachia, there was a significant amount of violence in Colorado after the turn of the century.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The largest conflict which occurred during the revolt was the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. That battle was the largest labor uprising in United States history and it was also the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. Some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders) when tensions rose between workers and mine management. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired and the United States Army, represented by the West Virginia Army National Guard led by McDowell County native William Eubanks, intervened by presidential order. Up to 100 people were killed, and many more arrested.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The Business Plot (also called the Wall Street Putsch and The White House Putsch) was a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a dictator. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler asserted that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the "McCormack–Dickstein Committee") on these revelations. Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, "there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Early in the committee's gathering of testimony most major news media dismissed the plot, with a "New York Times" editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax". When the committee's final report was released, the Times said the committee "purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true" and "... also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated". The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot. Historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, but most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.


title: Second American Civil War

text: A national discussion of a second civil war can be traced back to the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and increased in frequency and seriousness after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The debate became mainstream after several socially destabilizing events in 2020–2022, most notably was the political fallout from the highly contentious 2020 presidential election.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some researchers have also posited that a civil war might break out along racial and religious lines, exacerbated by the rise of secularization and multiculturalism in America, coupled with white decline and the decline in Christianity. Less commonly, some conservative observers, including Republican politicians, claim a second civil war is being stoked by far-left and socialist movements, such as Antifa, that seek to spark a revolution, suspend the U.S. Constitution, and implement a new form of tyranny. They typically cite discredited conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 misinformation, election rigging, the deep state, or white replacement theory to justify their position.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Skeptics claim that the occurrence of a civil war in the modern U.S. is essentially impossible due to certain present day conditions, including:


title: Second American Civil War

text: They claim that popular discussion about war is alarmist, fearmongering, polarizing, a "failure of historical perspective," and detracts from other real problems facing the nation (such as democratic backsliding and voter suppression). Skeptics generally claim that in its present form, the current political division is a mostly nonviolent culture war that does not represent a existential risk to the continuity of government.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Other critics claim that the term "second civil war" is being used inappropriately when it is being used to describe the potential rise of political violence that does not meet the academic definition of a civil war. They also warn that mainstream talk about a second civil war could become a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Some conservative critics have also claimed that the left is stoking fear to justify censorship and "criminalize dissent."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Experts state that if civil war breaks out in the United States it will look vastly different from the first civil war, often pointing to the Syrian Civil War as an example of a modern civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The general consensus is that a second civil war would likely take the form of fourth-generation warfare or a low-intensity conflict. Some envision a similar event to The Troubles in Ireland, or the Years of Lead in Italy. Others, such as Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), conceive of a second civil war as frequent acts of political assassination, mass shootings, and domestic terrorism (similar to the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in 2020 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing).


title: Second American Civil War

text: Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, stated that if a modern civil war breaks out in the U.S. it will likely grow out of a cycle of protests and counter-protests, leading to deadly confrontations similar to the Kenosha unrest shooting by Kyle Rittenhouse. Mason theorized that if a Republican state legislature rejects the results of a future election it could have a snowball effect. "The first violent event can precipitate a bunch of other violent events," she notes, adding that it could cycle into a "future in which we can't stop the violence."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Other researchers, such as Stephen Marche and Barbara F. Walter, envision a second civil war as more organized, leading to a violent insurgency against the federal and state governments. These movements would manifest as leaderless resistance, guerilla warfare, irregular warfare, or asymmetric warfare driven by white nationalist militias and antigovernmental insurgents who attempt to carve out white ethno-states from the nation.


title: Second American Civil War

text: A large-scale conflict between insurgents and the U.S. military would likely result in a president declaring emergency powers and the implementation of invasive government surveillance, lockdowns and curfews, security checkpoints, and mass detention of suspected insurgents. Others suggest a second civil war could break out "within" the military, resulting in a conflict much larger in scope that could be "catastrophic," leading to a collapse of the U.S. political system.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Most experts agree that any form of second civil war would have significant economic and political costs, and would have a far-reaching impact to global stability established by the Post-World War II world order.


title: Second American Civil War

text: On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first President of the United States with African-American ancestry. Obama appeared just before midnight Eastern Time in Grant Park, Chicago, in front of a crowd of 250,000 people to deliver his victory speech. There was no overt discussion about a Second American Civil War in response to Obama's election. However, former Texas Governor Rick Perry discussed secession at a 2009 rally while the crowd chanted "secede," but later claimed that his remarks were rhetorical.


title: Second American Civil War

text: American professor Victor Davis Hanson blamed Obama's presidency for "sharpening" conflict between "constitutionalism and American exceptionalism" and "globalist ecumenicalism." Hanson also claimed that Obama's conduct fueled racialism by stoking a "white-versus-nonwhite binary." Hanson also claimed that the Obama administration "weaponized the IRS, the FBI, the NSC, the CIA, and the State Department and redefined the deep state as if it were the Congress, but with the ability to make and enforce laws all at once," deepening political polarization. Hanson added that the impact of the Digital Revolution and "campus radicalism" had brought the country to "the brink of a veritable civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: David Blight, a Yale historian, also states that the "shock of events" from recent polarization "dates to Obama's election [in 2008]." However, Blight points to "a tremendous resistance from the right" as the leading cause of tension. Blight adds that "episodes of police violence" under Obama renewed racial tensions in America, stating: "parallels and analogies are always risky, but we do have weakened institutions and not just polarized parties but parties that are risking disintegration."


title: Second American Civil War

text: According to data which was collected and published by the Anti-Defamation League, Obama's 2008 election led to a surge in membership in the American militia movement, including increased membership in far-right and neo-fascist militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the most polarizing election since the Civil War. Speculation about a potential civil war began to circulate as a result.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some commentators assert that the rise of Trumpism constitutes either a form of nonviolent "Second Civil War," or a possible prelude to an actual civil war. Trump's actions and rhetoric with regards to race and immigration have been highlighted for their potential to spark a civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In 2019, Rebekah Mercer, a Republican political donor who financed Trump's election win, stated that the country was not "yet in armed conflict" and then, she quoted part of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, "Now we are engaged in a great civil war". Mercer then said "One hundred and fifty-five years later, it is barely hyperbolic to echo the Great Emancipator.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: In 2020, the United States faced considerable social, economic and political challenges that exacerbated pre-existing divisions brought on by Trump's election. These conflicts were driven primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest related to the George Floyd protests, and the contentious 2020 United States presidential election. Several political analysts have suggested that the fallout from these events caused significant division between everyday conservatives and liberals, adding that the United States strongly resembles countries that experienced civil wars in the past.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Controversy arose early in 2020 in regards to government health measures used to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. These included mask mandates, government-imposed lockdowns, and stay-at-home orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Many protests broke out from right-leaning and far-right groups, including armed militias, that perceived these mandates as a suspension of civil rights. The nationwide protests against COVID-19 measures resulted in some state capitols being stormed by militias, including in multiple times in Michigan and once in Oregon. Journalist John T. Bennett from "The Independent" said anti-lockdown violence constituted a form of "Second Civil War" that would escalate division between rural conservatives and urban areas in the United States.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Later, after his inauguration in 2021, President Joe Biden attempted to implement COVID-19 vaccination mandates. Some Trump supporters began flying solid black flags and black stylized American flags. These flags were historically used as a symbol of "no quarter," where a winning side of a battle refused to spare the life of a vanquished opponent (the opposite of the white flag of surrender). These flags were primarily flown by pirates in the 1800s and irregularly by Confederate troops during the American Civil War. Many commentators have interpreted these flags as an explicit threat of political violence and civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Nationwide protests, civil unrest and riots against police brutality erupted in America as a reaction to widely circulated bystander videos that documented the murder of an unarmed 46-year-old black man named George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Even though the movement was widely nonviolent, several protests escalated into riots in major U.S. cities, resulting in estimations of $2 billion in damages, the deaths of more than 19 people, and injuries to more than 2,000 police officers.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Then-President Trump immediately characterized the movement as anarchism and labelled the rioters "Antifa" and "domestic terrorists." Trump pushed privately and publicly for a police or military "crackdown" against protestors to restore "law and order." According to White House officials, Trump was privately advocating for the military to shoot protestors. A proclamation invoking the Insurrection Act was drafted for Trump to deploy troops against protesters across the country, but was never used. Trump later denied any intention of invoking the act. Some former CIA analysts expressed fear that Trump's use of the military would trigger a national collapse.


title: Second American Civil War

text: On June 1, 2020, Trump ordered the use of tear gas against nonviolent protesters in Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John's Episcopal Church. Many commentators at the time proclaimed this action as a strong indicator that the country was teetering towards a spike in civil violence. King University professor Gail Helt wrote: "I've seen this kind of violence... This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me." Counterterrorism expert Marc Polymeropoulos compared Trump's response to the actions of dictators like Bashar al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi. Other analysts criticized Trump for demanding that Republican governors "dominate the battlespace" of protest, as if he were describing a war zone, as well as Trump's intention to declare that the Antifa movement is a terrorist organization as a pretext for a military crackdown.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Political scientist Barbara F. Walter labelled Trump an "ethnic entrepreneur" due to his response to these protests, and his stoking of white nationalism. She claims that Trump's "fight [is] expressly about [his] group's position and his status in society," which he perceives as being threatened by out-groups. Walter compares Trump's rhetoric to the dehumanizing tactics of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman, who helped stoke the Yugoslav Wars, Léon Mugesera, whose inflammatory anti-Tutsi speech was a driving force behind the Rwandan genocide and the Rwandan Civil War, or Omar al-Bashir, who helped start the Second Sudanese Civil War.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The demand for police reform by protesters also exacerbated tensions between citizens and several police departments throughout the country. In June 2020, a viral audio tape on which three police officers from Wilmington, North Carolina, were heard using derogatory remarks when they described black Americans, saying that "there should be another civil war to wipe them off the fucking map" was leaked. The three officers were fired after the completion of an investigation. On his first day on the job, Wilmington Police Chief Donny Williams condemned the incident and advocated police reform. It was later revealed that two of the officers had prior disciplinary issues, among them were some incidents which occurred in the 1990s.


title: Second American Civil War

text: On numerous occasions throughout the 2020 presidential election, then-President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he wasn't re-elected. Trump began to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election by claiming widespread election fraud by Democrats would lead to an illegitimate Biden win.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Several commentators connected Trump's undermining of the election with increases in political violence by right-wing groups, stating that the 2020 election would result in an attempted coup or civil war. Some commentators compared it to the election of 1860, which triggered the American Civil War. Historian Richard Stringer asserted that Trump's attempt to delegitimize the election was akin to a "fascist revolution."


title: Second American Civil War

text: As the election approached, activist Noam Chomsky warned a group at the Progressive International summit that without a "very clear Trump victory," the risk of civil war would be "imminent," stating: "They are strong words, which we have never heard in public voices. I am not saying it; other people are saying it. Many people have that fear. Nothing of this kind had happened in the complex history of parliamentary democracy. The megalomania that dominates the world, that of Trump, for him is no longer enough. He could not respect the Constitution and [also] do what he calls 'negotiating' for a third term."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Days prior to the election, Sky News reported a "run on guns" driven by many Americans from both political backgrounds in preparation for a possible civil war. Several suppliers of tactical gear and ammo saw a significant increase in sales.


title: Second American Civil War

text: After candidate Joe Biden was announced as the winner of the election, Trump refused to concede and attempted several times to overturn the election results in his favor, including reports of allegedly discussing martial law to seize voting machines and hold a new election. When Trump's legal efforts to overturn the election results failed, he held a "Save America" rally in Washington, D.C., which brought thousands of his supporters to The Ellipse park on January 6, 2021, during the time the election results were being certified by Congress. Trump repeated unproven claims of election fraud and said, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country any more." A mob of Trump supporters then attacked the United States Capitol with the intent to overturn the election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize then President-elect Joe Biden's victory.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Discussion of civil war by Trump supporters began to circulate on social media in the days leading up to the attack, including on right-leaning platform Parler. According to trend analysis, the online conversation of civil war intensified during Trump's speech, moments before the Capitol attack. Some participants in the attack wore shirts and carried signs that read "MAGA Civil War, January 6, 2021." These shirts were also sold online after the attack. Calls for a civil war also made their way into court filings for some of the arrested capitol rioters, with prosecutors alleging that rioters tried to incite a civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Lloyd Green, a former Department of Justice official, stated in response to public hearings, that "The US careens through a cold civil war, its feet on the gas pedal, both hands clutching the accelerator."


title: Second American Civil War

text: During the committee hearing on July 12, 2022, it was revealed that Brad Parscale, a Trump campaign manager, texted another aide the evening of January 6, 2021, stating that Trump's actions before and during the riot constituted "a sitting president asking for civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned "Roe v. Wade," effectively challenging the constitutionality of legal abortion access. Polling data consistently demonstrated that the ruling was deeply unpopular among most Americans. Some characterized it as the start of a "legal civil war" between states.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Supporters of the ruling called the decision morally right, a "victory for unborn life," and a "celebration." Meanwhile, critics claimed the ruling was an undemocratic form of Christian right minority rule that further destabilized democratic norms. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called it the start of a judicial coup. Peter Flaherty, Chairman National Legal and Policy Center, called criticism of the court a slow-motion coup attempt by the left. The decision resulted in public celebration among conservatives, mass protests across the US, and condemnation from world leaders who characterized the decision as "appalling," "horrific," and "one of the darkest days for women's rights."


title: Second American Civil War

text: During his presidency, Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, giving the court a conservative majority. On May 2, 2022, a draft majority opinion from the Supreme Court case "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization," written by Justice Samuel Alito"," leaked to Politico and was published online. The opinion was later ruled on June 24, 2022, overturning "Roe v. Wade" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey," effectively making abortion illegal in at least 26 states due to trigger laws and opening up the conversation for a federal ban on abortion.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Democratic-led states responding by protecting abortion rights (the state governments of California, New York and Vermont are seeking to enshrine the right to an abortion in their state constitutions). Meanwhile, Republican-led states began to make abortion effectively illegal. (Missouri, for example, is seeking to allow citizens to sue out-of-state providers.) The ensuing legal infighting between states has been characterized as the most divisive moment in American history since right before the American Civil War. Some have compared the ruling to the 1857 Supreme Court decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped start the civil war four years later. Historian Ariela J. Gross summarized the crisis by calling it a "failure of comity" between states, noting: “you [now] have these really stark differences over an issue involving a fundamental right, and that’s what happened in the years leading up to the Civil War.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: Throughout their individual confirmation hearings, each conservative justice, including Clarence Thomas, stated that abortion laws had precedent and that there was no political agenda to overturn them. The ruling in context of these public statements fed into the political firestorm, with some Democratic leaders demanding that the justices be impeached for perjury.


title: Second American Civil War

text: High-ranking Democrats, including President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claimed such a ruling threatened to destabilize national law, and characterized it as far-right, extremist, radical, politically motivated, unconstitutional and dangerous. Hillary Clinton said the decision would "kill and subjugate women." Meanwhile, conservative leaders condemned the unprecedented leak of Supreme Court brief, with some depicting it as a left-wing insurrection similar to or worse than the January 6 attack. Other conservatives characterized the leak as a coordinated "attack" and form of left-wing terrorism meant to trigger civil violence with the intention of intimidating the justices to renege on the ruling. "The Daily Wire" contributor Matt Walsh, a conservative political commentator, said the political fallout of the leak could "potentially plunge the nation into civil war," while former Bush aide Lloyd Green stated that a "neo-Confederate spirit" was emerging amongst far-right Republicans and that "America's cold civil war just got really hot."


title: Second American Civil War

text: A few days prior to the leak, Stephen Marche, who warned of a second civil war after the January 6 attacks, stated that overturning Roe v. Wade was the kind of event that could act as a watershed moment. Comparing such legal action to resignation of Andrew Magrath prior to the Civil War, Marche concluded: "From that moment on, there were two legal systems. All that remained was the war. A similar breakdown in the legal system of the United States is already apparent." After the overturning of Roe became official, Marche went further, stating: "The question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in the United States. The question is how the sides will divide, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how those strengths and weaknesses will determine the outcome."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Michael Schaffer, senior editor at Politico, speculated that overturning Roe v. Wade has the potential of ""two-nationing"" the country by triggering mass immigration and the relocation of businesses along political lines, which could accelerate an "animus" for civil war. Noting that such a division doesn't "doom" the country, Schaffer observes that interstate migration currently means nominal changes such as "marginally different tax rates," but "if the ruling takes place along the lines of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft, there immediately will be an enormous practical difference between living in most red states and most blue ones. On one side of the line, you have a right; on the other, you don’t." Rachel Rebouché, dean of law at Philadelphia's Temple University, agreed, stating: "[the ruling] really strikes at the heart of the kind of cooperation and comity that states have had in the U.S., and it speaks to the divisions that are going to erupt that were the hallmark of the Civil War."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In response to the draft decision, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich stated that the "second American civil war is already occurring," but said its current state is not a hot war but a national "divorce," wherein parties struggle to find a way to be "civil toward each other." Reich stated the court decision will accelerate the division between two population segments: the "largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young" and "the rural or exurban, white and old," creating "two versions of America."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In August 2022, it was revealed that Trump was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for potential obstruction of justice and violation of the Espionage Act for allegedly taking TS/SCI (Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information) government documents with him to his residence in Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House. The Washington Post reported that at least some of the documents were related to nuclear weapons. The investigation came to light days after the FBI executed a search warrant, personally approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence to retain the documents.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The resulting political firestorm resulted in a spike of violent rhetoric among Trump supporters, including renewed calls for a second civil war. Trump himself took to Truth Social to decry the investigation as a form of political persecution, making unfounded claims of evidence planting then later claiming the documents in question were declassified. The search was broadly characterized by conservative leaders as a form of political repression and an attempt to stop Trump from running for president in 2024.


title: Second American Civil War

text: On the day the FBI search was revealed by Trump the term "#civilwar" started trending on Twitter. Terms such as "civil war" and "lock and load" also spiked online among far-right users on platforms such as Truth Social, Gab and Telegram, echoing similar online trends prior to the January 6 riots. Some pro-Trump online message boards specifically referenced the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist attack.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Violent rhetoric also spiked among Republican politicians and mainstream conservatives, including influencer Steven Crowder who tweeted: "Tomorrow is war. Sleep well." to his 2 million followers (though he later clarified that was not calling for "literal" violence). Meanwhile, Florida Republican nominee Laura Loomer told her followers on Telegram: "If you're a freedom loving American, you must remove the Words decorum and civility from your vocabulary. This is a WAR! And it's time to obliterate these communists. Tonight they attacked President Donald Trump. If you sit on the sidelines and refuse to act, they will attack you and your family next."


title: Second American Civil War

text: As a result of the spike in violent rhetoric the FBI began investigating an "unprecedented" number of threats against the bureau, including plots for armed rebellion, "general civil war," targeted assassination of government officials, and at least one plot using a dirty bomb. Trump supporters gathered in protest in front of Mar-a-Lago and in front of FBI offices in Phoenix, Arizona and Washington D.C.. Over the next couple days, additional protests continued outside Mar-a-Lago and outside FBI offices in Columbia, South Carolina, Myrtle Beach, Palm Springs and Riverside, California. One Trump supporter posted a call to war on social media before attempting to breach an FBI field office in Cincinnati where he was fatally shot by law enforcement officials after attempting to flee the scene. Another supporter in Mercer County, Pennsylvania was arrested for threatening to kill FBI agents. Another individual drove his car into a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., fired shots in the air, then committed suicide as police approached him, though motive was unclear.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In response to the spike in violence, Trump allegedly sent a cryptic message to Garland, stating: “The country is on fire. What can I do to reduce the heat?" Trump later warned that his supporters were "angry" and that "terrible things are going to happen" because "the people of this country are not going to stand for another scam." Some interpreted Trump's remarks a veiled threat. Robert Maguire, a research director at the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, for example, characterized Trump's rhetoric as threatening to "fan the flames of violence" if the FBI didn't relent in their investigation. Trump reiterated his warning in September during an interview with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewit, stating Americans would not tolerate his indictment, and that the country would face “problems the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen" if it happened. Asked if he felt his comment might incite people to violence, Trump responded: "That’s not inciting. I’m just saying what my opinion is. I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: As the investigation heated up towards the end of August, Trump later went on Truth Social to call to be reinstated as president or hold a "new election," while also asking some FBI agents to "not take it anymore" and go "nuts." Trump also demanded that the Department of Justice stop investigating him, and characterized alleged underreporting of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy as evidence of election interference by the FBI. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R - S.C.) suggested there would be "riots in the street" if Trump is criminally indicted.


title: Second American Civil War

text: On September 1, 2022, President Joe Biden gave a prime-time speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In the speech, Biden characterized Trump and "MAGA Republicans" as stoking political violence, and labelling them a threat to "the very foundations of our republic." The speech was noted for deviating from Biden's typical approach towards compromise and bipartisanship. For several weeks prior to the speech Biden had also begun to characterize the extreme wings of the Republican Party as fascist.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some observers remarked that the speech took a "wartime" urgency evoking concerns of a second American Civil War. In response to the speech, far-right actors renewed calls for a civil war. MSNBC journalist Tiffany Cross stated a civil war "may have already begun" in response to the speech.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some speculated that the speech came out of a meeting Biden held with several historians a few weeks prior, many of whom warned the President that the current political climate echoed that of pre-Civil War America, as well as that of the 1930s and 1940s by pro-fascist movements before World War II.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Many Democrats praised the speech, while most Republicans condemned the speech as either offensive, divisive or evil. Some Congressional leaders characterized Biden as a dictator similar to Adolf Hitler. Trump himself called Biden an "enemy of the state." Some Trump supporters called for political violence, including assassination of Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In the late 1960s, Charles Manson, a white supremacist, led the Manson Family into becoming a doomsday cult fixated on the idea of an imminent apocalyptic race war between America's Black population and the larger White population. Manson told some of the Manson Family that Black people in America would rise up and kill all White people except for Manson and his "Family", but that they were not intelligent enough to survive on their own; they would need a White man to lead them, and so they would serve Manson as their "master". Various murders and other crimes attributed to the Manson Family have been examined as part of a scheme to incite a national race war of the type envisioned.


title: Second American Civil War

text: There have been a handful of mass shootings which were motivated, in part, by an attempt to trigger a second civil war. These shootings were lone wolf attacks which were exclusively perpetrated by far-right white supremacists who typically targeted Black or Jewish neighborhoods, Democratic politicians, or critical infrastructure. They include:


title: Second American Civil War

text: In October 2017, a conspiracy theory claiming that antifa groups were planning a violent insurrection or civil war the following month spread on YouTube and was advanced by far-right figures including Alex Jones, Lucian Wintrich, Paul Joseph Watson, and Steven Crowder. The basis for the conspiracy theory was a series of protests against Donald Trump organized by the group Refuse Fascism. The protests passed off as planned without causing significant disruption.


title: Second American Civil War

text: There have been a few recorded instances in which Trump's supporters either predicted or threatened to wage a second civil war during several of Trump's rallies, particularly after Trump lost the 2020 election. "Civil War" trended again on Twitter in 2021 after a video of a Trump supporter predicting civil war at an Iowa rally went viral. MSNBC reporter Gary Grumbach added that the supporter's call for civil war was echoed at several Trump rallies as a general consensus.


title: Second American Civil War

text: A Trump rally in Conroe, Texas on Jan. 29, 2022, drew significant attention when Donald Trump openly criticized the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, which was considering a criminal referral in relation to Trump's connection to the attack, and several investigators who were looking into his conduct during the 2020 election. Trump claimed Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, New York Attorney General Letitia James, prosecutor Alvin Bragg, and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D - Miss.), chairman of the select committee, were racists. Trump stated: "If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going have, in this country, the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt." Many commentators pointed out that Trump's rhetoric around race was particularly troubling, and interpreted it as an attempt to undermine the criminal investigations. Willis, who stated she began to receive racist threats after the Conroe rally, requested security assistance from the FBI field office in Atlanta.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Trump also claimed that supporters who were arrested in relation to the January 6 riot were being "treated so unfairly," suggesting that he will offer presidential pardons to rioters if he is re-elected in 2024. Trump further claimed that all investigations into his personal conduct, as well as investigations into The Trump Organization, were an ongoing organized conspiracy "to put me in jail."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Writing for the "Philadelphia Inquirer", columnist Will Bunch interpreted the Conroe rally as unlike prior rallies, noting: "Trump's incendiary remarks in Conroe sound like a call for a new civil war — naming both the locales and the casus belli."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In March 2022, Trump again drew significant attention when he told supporters to "lay down their lives," stating:Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it's also a matter of national survival. We have no choice…. The fate of any nation ultimately depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down — and they must do this — lay down their very lives to defend their country…. If we allow the Marxists and communists and socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or protect our great country or its freedom. Some commentators stated that Trump's language was incendiary because it was provoking the start of a civil war along racial lines.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Limited digital efforts to spark or show support for a civil war have also occurred; the hashtags #CivilWar2 and #CivilWarSignup, for instance, trended on Twitter in support of comments which were made by United States President Donald Trump following his impeachment by the House of Representatives in December 2019.


title: Second American Civil War

text: A proliferation of conspiracy theories involving domestic actors, like the deep state, the great replacement, and the QAnon movement, have been argued as factors that could spark a civil war. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has argued that deep state theories could serve as an ideological justification for an insurgency supported by the U.S. Armed Forces. Political scientist and specialist in civil wars Barbara F. Walter has argued that an increase in domestic terrorism (such as the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting) and a high rate of gun violence in the United States could be indicators of an impending second civil war. Citing the QAnon conspiracy movement and Alex Jones specifically, Walter notes: "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Saqib Bhatti, the co-executive director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy, claims that "civil war rhetoric" is being stoked by "fascist billionaires" who have "bankrolled and fueled the rise of violent white supremacist and authoritarian forces in this country.” Bhatti points to the Mercer family specifically for helping fuel hate by funding Donald Trump, Parler, and Cambridge Analytica, stating: "[Rebekah] Mercer is not warning us against armed conflict, she is threatening us with it.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: Several experts and commentators claim that the United States is already engaged in a cold civil war and they also claim that a violent civil war could erupt in the future. Discussion of a cold civil war was sparked primarily by the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the subsequent political fallout. "Financial Times" journalist Edward Luce sums up the national mood by stating: "when one party loses, its voters feel as though their America is being occupied by a foreign power." Gregory Treverton, former chairperson of the National Intelligence Council, and Karen Treverton, former Special Assistant at the RAND Corporation, go further, stating: "it seems plain that a civil war is coming, and the only question is whether it will be fought with lawsuits and secessions or with AK-15s."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Thomas E. Ricks argued in a 2017 article for "Foreign Policy" that the current political tensions in the United States could escalate to asymmetric or irregular warfare with the help of radicalizing digital propaganda, and speculated that "the likelihood of a second U.S. civil war in the next five years is between 20 and 40 percent, but trending upward significantly."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein claimed early into the Trump presidency that news of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections had put the country in a "cold civil war." Later that year, in response to the formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump during the 2019 Trump-Ukraine scandal, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed, without evidence, that the Democratic Party and the mainstream media had "aligned" to overturn the 2016 election results and protect "the deep state," pushing the United States into a "cold civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: During the Special Counsel investigation by Robert Mueller, Sean Hannity also claimed on his radio show that there was a conspiracy to remove President Trump from office, which would result in a civil war "in terms of two sides that are just hating each other." Bernstein later stated that conservative conspiracies and attempts to delegitimize the 2020 election, including disproven claims of mass voter fraud and an alleged conspiracy by a deep state government to force Trump out of power, were "radicalizing" members of the Republican Party and bringing a civil war "closer and closer to ignition." He added after the election that Trump's actions created a "cultural civil war such as we've never seen since 1860 to 1865."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Bernstein later compared Trump to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, stating: "You'd have to go back to the civil war to think of anything like the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6"." You'd have to go back to [Confederate leader] Jefferson Davis, who was a Democrat, if you’re looking for a seditious leader of a faction of the country."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Former U.S. National Security Council official Fiona Hill, who testified in the first impeachment of Donald Trump, said the radicalization of conservatism, which resulted in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, was a clear indicator that the nation is taking "darker turns," and summarized the cold civil war concern by stating: "The United States is teetering on the edge of violence here. We're already, I think, in a cold civil war. We've got a chance now to turn this around. But if we don't take it, we're heading down that autocratic path that we've seen in other countries."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Keith Boykin, co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, argues that white decline in the United States, coupled with Trump's stolen election claims, is the primary cause of a "cold civil war." Boykin states Trump created fear among many White Americans that their political power was being destroyed by diversity. "New York Times" journalist Charles M. Blow also identified white decline as a primary reason the country is "on the verge of another civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: After the Supreme Court rescinded the constitutional protection of abortion rights, stemming from "United States v. Texas" in 2021, Blow stated that if a civil war breaks out it would be fought between "a white racist patriarchy" and anyone who stood up to it, adding that the conflict would likely have "spats of violence" instead of organized battlefields, and would be primarily "fought in courts, statehouses and ballot boxes." Other scholars have identified perceived white displacement as the "root cause" of a pre-civil war climate.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Ryan Williams, president of the conservative Claremont Institute, took the opposite view, claiming that the rise of multiculturalism and secularism was responsible for pushing the country towards civil war, not conservative Christianity. Williams claimed that the authors of the Constitution saw the country as "really only fit for a Christian people," putting it at odds with "woke, social-justice anti-racism" movements. Williams claimed that a form of anti-Christian "woke totalitarianism" was rising in the country and stood in direct opposition to principles like constitutionalism and limited government, adding that the United States is "more divided now than we were [in the 1860s]." Williams said the "ideal endgame" is for conservatism to maintain a slim majority, and to "effect a realignment of our politics and take control of all three branches of government for a generation or two." Journalist Stephen Marche views William's "endgame" with concern, stating: "The moment the [political] right takes control of institutions, they will use them to overthrow democracy in its most basic forms; they are already rushing to dissolve whatever norms stand in the way of their full empowerment. The right has recognized what the left has not: that the system is in collapse. The right has a plan: it involves violence and solidarity."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Several journalists have also warned that a civil war is possible in the coming decade. Journalist Robert Evans, who investigates global conflict and online extremism for Bellingcat, has also warned that a civil war is imminent. Evans dedicates a podcast called "It Could Happen Here" to the subject, in which he speculates on possible scenarios of a Second American Civil War.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Other political and social commentators acknowledge that extreme partisan politics on Capitol Hill, accompanied by related commonplace verbal and occasional physical acts of aggression in the streets, plus an increased general hostility, are tearing apart the fabric of American society, but point to the fact that "culture wars cycles" are imminent to the process of replenishing American values, and the first such cycle started after George Washington's retirement, and that Americans have to find "America's middle again and return to civility."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins echoed this view by stating that a civil war is unlikely (though not impossible), and that a possible rise in political violence, such as assassination attempts and armed conflict, was not uncommon from other periods in American history, concluding that "the country has a high tolerance for [political] violence without breaking apart." Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, disagrees, stating that, while Americans tolerate political violence to some extent, "violence [is] being given an explicit political agenda. That's a kind of terrifying new direction in America.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: Conservative radio host Dan Bongino told his listenership in 2021 that conservatives need "to understand we are in a war and we then act accordingly," characterizing it as an existential "zero sum" situation of "we win, you lose." Citing an article from nationalist conservative news and opinion website American Greatness, Bongino stated: "First, you must understand that you are, in fact, at war. Wartime requires very different rhetoric, strategy, and people than peacetime. Trump is a wartime leader." Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, recommend Bongino to Trump for United States Secretary of Homeland Security if Trump is reelected in 2024.


title: Second American Civil War

text: As criminal inquires ramped up into Trump's attempts to remain in power, some legal observers raised the prospect that Trump could be arrested at the conclusion of two main investigations:


title: Second American Civil War

text: Legal experts believe that Trump could be prosecuted on charges which are related to the obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, seditious conspiracy, or, in the Georgia investigation, racketeering.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade speculated that Trump's arrest could trigger a violent response from Trump supporters and could trigger a second civil war. Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law and philosophy and the founder of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that we "may be on the brink of mass violence" which could be triggered by a Trump arrest, but she adds that prosecuting Trump is "the right thing to do" even if it starts a civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: There have been a handful of attempts by states to secede from the union since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Most legal experts note that secession is illegal as a result of a 1868 ruling from the Supreme Court and would likely result in war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: The Yes California Independence Campaign received an increase in support in the aftermath of Trump's election, which organizers saw as a "tipping point" and a "crossroads" for the nation. The movement pushed unsuccessfully for the state to secede from the rest of the country. Though the movement never legitimized in the mainstream, historian Richard Stringer called the level of talk of secession in the aftermath of Trump's election "unprecedented" in American politics. Stringer asserted that the political climate after the 2016 election was similar to the climate preceding the American Civil War, stating: "When Lincoln was elected in 1860, the defenders of slavery concluded that their time had run out. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and his supporters exulted in their vision of 'morning in America.' In 2017, we might very well be moving toward the stroke of midnight."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In the summer of 2022, The Republican Party of Texas released a final Report of the Permanent 2022 Platform & Resolutions Committee. Several line items of the platform are being voted on by Texas Republican leaders. Within the party platform, the Texas GOP claims that President Biden is only "acting President" because his 2020 win was "illegitimate." The party platform also went further, stating that "the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government" and that "federally mandated legislation that infringes up on the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified." The platform also claims Texas has the right to secede from the United States and called on the Texas Legislature to put secession to a vote in 2023.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Richard Albert, a professor of law and government and the director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, stated that if Texas broke away from the Union it "would mean war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: There has been growing concern among some observers that either the 2022 midterm elections or the 2024 presidential election will trigger a civil war in the United States, particularly if Donald Trump (or a Trumpian figure) loses but fights the 2024 election results. Economist Umair Haque, for example, has argued that primary victories for Trump-endorsed candidates during the 2022 midterm elections demonstrates that the Trump wing of the Republican party has moved from a "neo-fascist rabble" to "an organized, sophisticated authoritarian-fascist political bloc" that ensures future "far more effective" coup attempts that could trigger civil war and split the U.S. military into warring factions.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Ray Dalio suggests there is a high chance that there will be disagreement between the federal government and conservative states over results from the 2022 midterm elections, and that there is a "reasonable chance" that one of the major parties will reject the results of the 2024 election, regardless of outcome, adding that state legislators could use newly enacted voting restrictions to alter election results in favor of their preferred candidate. Dalio suggests such a result could trigger an unprecedented breakdown of law between the federal and state government, including the possibility of civil conflict, stating: "It will be power that will determine how that goes down." Dalio later clarified that such a "civil war" could be a nonviolent breakdown of federal rules, though did not dismiss the possibility of widespread political violence. Thomas Homer-Dixon, Canadian political scientist, agreed that U.S. elections are "becoming increasingly ungovernable", suggesting that the nation could descend into civil war if the 2024 election is won or contested by Donald Trump. He adds that by 2030 "the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship", drawing several political and economic comparisons between the contemporary United States and the final years of Germany's Weimar Republic.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Rep. Jamaal Bowman, (D-N.Y.) predicted that a heavy GOP victory in the 2022 midterms would embolden far-right extremists and rally them to ignite a race-driven civil war, stating: "That is what’s at stake right now in terms of this election."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative think-tank Project for the New American Century, wrote in "The Washington Post," that if Trump runs for a second term, that the country will face its "greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War". Kagan asserted that there is "a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves". Former policy advisor Fiona Hill echoed Kagan, stating that a Trump victory in the 2024 presidential election, even if legally won, has the potential of triggering an "open civil war".


title: Second American Civil War

text: James Hawdon, director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech, echoed the concern for future elections, stating: "I don't like to be an alarmist, but the country has been moving more and more toward violence, not away from it. Another contested election may have grim consequences", adding: "there are similar sentiments [to just before the American Civil War] about the seriousness of the threat and the need to take arms to 'defend' the country".


title: Second American Civil War

text: Edward Luce of the Financial Times adds: "America’s armed forces today cannot be outgunned. Even in a country that, uniquely, has more privately owned guns than people (at more than 400 million), many of which are military-grade, it would be no contest. Yet, America, of all countries, knows that asymmetric warfare is unwinnable. Think of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some members of the Republican Party have publicly suggested a second civil war in America, with a handful calling for secession, a civil war, or both. These calls for violence have been primarily in response to the First Impeachment of Donald Trump, and later in response to Trump's loss in the 2020 election, which many party leaders claim was stolen despite a lack of evidence and several refuted claims of voter fraud.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Former House Representative Steve King (R-Iowa), for instance, posted a much-criticized Internet meme on March 19, 2019, reading: "Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use."


title: Second American Civil War

text: After the opening of the first impeachment inquiry in Sept. 2019, President Trump made a Twitter post paraphrasing evangelical Christian pastor and Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress, stating: "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which our country will never heal."


title: Second American Civil War

text: In December 2020, after the Supreme Court refused to hear "Texas v. Pennsylvania", a lawsuit regarding unproven claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, Texas GOP Chair Allen West criticized the Court's decision and suggested "law-abiding states" should secede. West faced widespread criticism, including from Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Democratic Senator Brian Schatz. The official Arizona Republican Party Twitter account went further, encouraging Republican voters to prepare to "fight," and asking them if they were ready to "die for something." Around the same time, Kelli Ward, chair for the Arizona Republican Party, tweeted at Trump, urging him to "cross the Rubicon" (a reference to the Roman Civil War). Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn retweeted Ward's call.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Days prior to the 2021 Capitol attack, the website for the St. Croix County Republican Party in Hudson, Wisconsin called on conservatives to "prepare for war." John Kraft, chairman for the county party, also posted on his personal Facebook page that it had "never been clearer that we are absolutely at war with the left." Kraft refused to remove the Facebook message and later resigned under pressure. The message was later removed from the website after condemnation from state conservatives. Members of the county party later released a statement condemning the call to war, stating that Kraft had posted it on their website without their consolation or approval.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In May 2021, U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) told a crowd of Trump supporters at an "America First" rally that "we have a Second Amendment in this country and I think we have an obligation to use it... it's about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary." The crowded applauded and cheered these remarks. Gaetz later denied that he was encouraging political violence and that his words were taken out of context.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Later in August, Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), drawing on claims that the 2020 United States presidential election had been stolen by Democrats, stated that "if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, it's gonna lead to one place, and it's bloodshed." Cawthorn also added: "And I will tell you, as much as I'm willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there's nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American." Cawthorn later echoed this sentiment following the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, using social media to call on his supporters to "be armed, be dangerous and be moral," which some interpreted as incendiary.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In October 2021, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted a poll asking her followers if the United States was ready for a "national divorce" based on the party majority of each state, which many commentators interpreted as incendiary and provocative of political violence and civil war. In December 2021, Greene reinforced her call for a "national divorce" and "dismantling" of the U.S. government, but stated she was not advocating for war. Her statements prompted Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) to claim that Greene was "toying with the idea of civil war" and called for her expulsion from Congress. Meanwhile, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) tweeted: "There is no 'National Divorce' either [Greene is] for civil war or not," adding: "Just say it if you want a civil war and officially declare yourself a traitor." Greene later went on the "America First" radio show with Sebastian Gorka and said that the right to bear arms was established to allow citizens to violently overthrow tyrants, stating that 2022 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and the Democratic Party writ-large were using the power of the federal government to curtail state's rights, stating: "I hate to use this language, but Democrats ... they're doing exactly what our Founders [warned] about." Greene stated that she was not a "violent person," preferring a secession instead of open civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: In February 2022, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, the two Republicans on the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, and issued a controversial statement, claiming the representatives were "participating in Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate public discourse," though later claimed their statement did not endorse political violence. Kinzinger was critical of the RNC for legitimizing the attack and standing by Trump, and said such statements were a "defining moment" that put the country on course for a civil war. He continued by stating it was "not a far thought" that "someday, some militia shows up somewhere to do something, and then some counter-militia shows up, and truly at that point that is how you end up in a civil war." When pushed if he actually believed civil war was possible, Kinzinger stated: "I do. And a year ago I would have said no, not a chance. But I have come to realize when we don't see each other as fellow Americans, when we begin to separate into cultural identities, when we begin to basically give up everything we believe so we could be part of a group, and then when you have leaders that come and abuse that faithfulness of that group to violent ends, as we saw on January 6, we would be naïve to think it's not possible here." Kinzinger later went on The View to echo his concern about civil war, stating: "In the past, I've said, oh, we don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to make it likely. Well, let's look at where we are." Kinzinger also clarified that such a violent conflict would look less like historical civil wars and more like fourth-generation warfare with "armed groups against armed groups, targeted assassination and violence. That's what a 21st and 20th century Civil War is."


title: Second American Civil War

text: During the 2022 midterm election season, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stated that if Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams won the 2022 Georgia gubernatorial election there would be a "cold war" between the states of Florida and Georgia. DeSantis declared: "I can’t have Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster." Prior to the 2022 election season, DeSantis drew concern from Democratic congressional leaders when he proposed reactivating a state defense force called the Florida State Guard that he would control. State Sen. Annette Taddeo claimed DeSantis was a "wannabe dictator trying to make his move for his own vigilante militia like we've seen in Cuba." Rep. Charlie Crist claimed DeSantis was creating “his own handpicked secret police."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Originally budgeted at $3.5 million in DeSantis' "Freedom First" proposed budget, the Florida State Senate later proposed $10 million to train 400 initial civilians to response to state disasters without being "encumbered by the federal government." The propose budget would establish DeSantis as a "Adjutant General," with plans to expand the budget. Others assert that the fear of a "private army" ruled exclusively by DeSantis was exaggerated and that state guards can be legally federalized by the president under such laws as the Insurrection Act.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue echoed similar sentiments during a debate with Republican Governor Brian Kemp when he accused Kemp of bringing the country "to the brink of war" by allowing "radical Democrats to steal our election." Kemp faced heated criticism from Trump and other Republicans for enforcing state law and certifying the election results in favor of Biden.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Donald Trump, having been banned from most major social media platforms after the January 6 attacks, took to his platform Truth Social on May 22, 2022, and "ReTruthed" (similar to retweeting) an ambiguous reference to civil war. The post contained a screencap of El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele discussing inflation, stating: "the most powerful country in the world is falling so fast, that it makes you rethink what are the real reasons. Something so big and powerful can't be destroyed so quickly, unless the enemy comes from within," with another statement from a Truth Social user stating "Civil war." The post was condemned by Kinzinger and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell who interpreted it as advocating for a real civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Republican Senator Mitt Romney, an outspoken critic of Trump, wrote an op-ed in "The Atlantic" on July 4, 2022 (Independence Day) warning Americans of "cataclysmic" outcomes based on poor political leadership in both political parties, and denialism of emerging problems such as national debt, climate change and illegal immigration. Romney specifically cited conservative former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig's opening statement to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack as a dire warning of a "potentially cataclysmic threat." Luttig stated: "Serious thinkers about the American experiment, who are not given to apocalyptic prophesying, question whether America is on the verge of a literal civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: There have been no public calls for civil war from any other political party, though some have expressed concerns that increased polarization will lead to a civil war.


title: Second American Civil War

text: During the second impeachment of Donald Trump, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cali.) claimed Trump was "capable of starting a civil war." A year later, she echoed this view, stating that domestic terrorist organizations were being encouraged by Trump in the way "he speaks to them ... in the way he encourages them. And so, we're in for it ... These people have lost their minds. They are crazy. And people had better understand that democracy is being damaged and undermined. And I believe they would like to see a civil war in the country."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) remarked in 2020 that Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic had put the country "in the worst moment in American history maybe since the Civil War."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who ran in the 2020 Democratic primary and later established the Forward Party political action committee, has become increasingly vocal about his concerns for a second civil war, tweeting in October 2021: "Polarization is worse than ever and getting worse not better. There is a Civil War coming if we don't stop dehumanizing those we disagree with politically." He echoed the same concern that a second civil war is possible on the Making Sense podcast with Sam Harris, stating high polarization on both sides "could end up being a new civil war that ends up bringing down our democracy as it currently exists." Yang later identified the winner-take-all two-party system as a driving force of polarization, stating it had put the nation at "literally civil war levels of political tension" that would lead to "violence and Civil War 2.0, which is frankly the path we're on right now."


title: Second American Civil War

text: During his inauguration, President Joe Biden called on the country to end the "uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal," referring to the high polarization of American politics. In response to new voting restrictions enacted by conservative political leaders, Biden remarked that the country was facing "the worst challenge to our democracy since the Civil War." Biden, in private, was later quoted by a senior Democrat stating that: “I certainly hope [my presidency] works out. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: On the first anniversary of the 2021 Capitol Attack, Former President Jimmy Carter warned that "our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss" and that "without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy." Carter blamed Trump, inaction by the Republican Party in the aftermath of the attack, and "promoters of the lie that the election was stolen" for stoking "distrust in our electoral systems." Carter noted that former Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama had each "affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election" and condemned "relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.),a member of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, classified the attack as an "inside coup" organized by Trump that could have triggered a civil war, stating: "It’s anybody’s guess what could have happened — martial law, civil war. You know, the beginning of authoritarianism. I want people to pay attention to what’s going on here, because that’s as close to fascism as I ever want my country to come to again."


title: Second American Civil War

text: There has been growing concern among military leaders that a civil war could break out in the United States in the coming years.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Eight Former Secretaries of Defense and Five Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, including Trump's Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, penned an open letter in September, 2022 characterizing the political climate as an "exceptionally challenging civil-military environment," warning that the military had to "confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt." The letter was written because Pentagon leaders were "alarmed" by the Trump campaign's "rhetoric and ideas" in the 2020 election, including a never issued order for the military to seize voting machines. The open letter reaffirmed the military's neutrality in election outcomes, but warned that "could well get worse before they get better."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Former U.S. Generals Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba and Steven M. Anderson stated together in a "Washington Post" op-ed that if Trump or a "Trumpian figure" contests the 2024 election there could be "lethal chaos inside our military", including a "total breakdown" into civil war. They state that "rogue [military] units" could pledge loyalty to the losing candidate, highlighting that 1 in 10 people charged in relation to the 2021 Capitol attack had a service record. They each urged the United States Department of Defense to begin conducting wargames for a 2024 insurrection or coup attempt. General Anderson later went on CNN to say that the threat of civil war lies within the U.S. military, not necessarily in its citizens, claiming "[some service members] think the president is something like a king" and are willing to defy the Constitution to follow "people like Trump", adding that such individuals should be identified, removed from service, and replaced by members who are loyal to Constitutional order.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Retired U.S. Army Col. and Iraq War veteran Peter Mansoor states such a scenario is plausible. Mansoor states "it would not be like the first Civil War, with armies maneuvering on the battlefield. I think it would very much be a free-for-all, neighbor on neighbor, based on beliefs and skin colors and religion. And it would be horrific."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Chilean newspaper "El Mercurio", published in January 2022 an opinion column by Heraldo Muñoz (former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile; former Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant Administrator, and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Programme; and the former Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations, to Brazil, and to the Organization of American States), in which he discusses the possibility of a coup d'état in the next US presidential elections and says, "The specter of political violence is perceived to be rising." He mentions Trump's lies about the results of the 2020 elections, the support he has in the military and his following base, and the maneuvers of the Republican Party to decrease access to voting as elements that could lead to a generalized popular mistrust in future election's results. Muñoz says that situation is already considered as the start of a civil war by authors like Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book "How Democracies Die", Barton Gellman's The Atlantic's article "Trump's Next Coup Has Already Begun", and the Zogby Analytics 2021 poll in which a 46% of voters believes a civil war is likely. In Muñoz's opinion, the subsequent "collapse of American democracy" would have "very negative consequences" for Chile and other countries. He reiterated those ideas in a follow-up column published in July 2022, after the first round of the January 6 hearings. On November 12, when 2022 midterm elections' results were still incomplete, Muñoz wrote: "American democracy is safe, for now; but the deep political and social divide in the US continues. The problem of an electoral tie in a polarized society is the possible recourse to violence instead of voting."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Among the general public, there is considerable and growing concern that a Second American Civil War could erupt in the near future. Journalist Malcom Kyeyune summarizes the political climate by stating: "Talk of insurrection, secession, civil conflict and civil war is no longer the chatter of the gullible and the mentally ill. It's entering the fringes of polite society."


title: Second American Civil War

text: A 2018 Rasmussen poll, for instance, found that 31 percent of American voters feared that the intense partisanship following the 2016 presidential election and the victory of Donald Trump would cause a Second Civil War within five years, while a 2019 poll by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service revealed that "the average voter believes the U.S. is two-thirds of the way to the edge of a civil war". A Zogby Analytics poll in 2021 found that nearly half of likely voters (46 percent) considered a second civil war likely. Voters in the South felt a civil war was more likely when compared to other regions. The University of West Virginia's Center For Politics found that roughly 41% of Biden voters and 52% of Trump voters at least somewhat supported splitting the country from the union into liberal and conservative states. The same polling found that most voters saw everyday Americans who strongly support the opposing political party as either somewhat or very much a danger to society, and the majority of voters viewed political leaders of opposing parties as very much a danger. Research conducted by the University of Chicago in 2021 found that more than a fourth of adults agree that "the 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president" and approximately 9 percent of Americans felt that "use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency." Researchers also concluded that belief in the Great Replacement and QAnon conspiracy theories were fueling much of the insurrectionist movement, and extrapolated that approximately 21 million Americans are prepared for violent conflict with the federal government.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Many Americans of both political parties saw the fallout of the 2020 election as a clear sign that "America is falling apart." Political scientist Eliot A. Cohen summarized this research by stating that most Americans are living under "the specter of civil war and the collapse of American democracy," but argues that American political institutions are stronger than most people credit them to be, and likens the cultural tension to the interwar period.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Research conducted in late 2021 by the Harvard Kennedy School found that a majority of young Americans (between the age of 18 to 29) viewed the United States in peril. The poll also found that a third of young Americans anticipated a Second American Civil War within their lifetime. Anticipation of a civil war was held mostly by young Republicans or young Americans who reside in rural or small town areas. A University of Maryland poll later found that 34 percent of Americans felt violent action against the government is justified (40 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats).


title: Second American Civil War

text: Journalist David Smith summarizes the public perception of a civil war, by stating: "The mere fact that such notions are entering the public domain shows the once unthinkable has become thinkable, even though some would argue it remains firmly improbable." Meanwhile, Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service asked voters to rank political division in America on a 0-100 scale, with 100 representing "on the edge of a civil war." The mean response was 70.36. Other research indicates that between a third and a half of the country is anticipating a civil war in their lifetime, particularly among young, rural Americans who identify as Republican or conservative.


title: Second American Civil War

text: A May 2022 poll conducted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics found that more than half of Americans think the government is corrupt, and more than a quarter (Strong Republicans 45%, Independents 35%, strong Democrats 21%, total 28%) agree with "it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take arms up against the government." In a TV interview the poll's conductors, Republican Neil Newhouse and Democrat Joel Benenson, attributed the situation to a "pandemic of mistrust between Americans and their government, and the media," and "partisanship and the media they consume." As the media are seen as partisan, this leads the public to rely on social media where their own views are reinforced.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Research from the University of California and the California Violence Research Center demonstrated that half of Americans "at least somewhat agree that a civil war will happen soon." Researchers said the conclusions were consistent with two years of polling, stating: "the motivating premises for this survey were that current conditions in the US create both perceived threats and actual threats to its future as a free and democratic society. The findings bear out both premises.”


title: Second American Civil War

text: Sociologist Jack Goldstone of George Mason University and quantitative historian Peter Turchin, using a predictive model for political instability, concluded in 2020 that the United States is "headed for civil war." The first prediction came in 2010 when Turchin cited stagnating or declining wages, income inequality, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt as predictors of civil war. Turchin reaffirmed the model's predictions in 2016 after the election of Trump, concluding that political instability would peak in the 2020s. As the model's predictions unfolded in 2020, Turchin said the predictions were vindicated and he also said that political trends in the U.S. are "strongly associated" with civil violence, summarizing the research by stating: "Our model shows there is plenty of dangerous tinder piled up and any spark could generate an inferno."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Meanwhile, researchers at the Brookings Institution countered that the outbreak of a civil war would be limited by several factors: a strong national rule of law, a lack of government-sponsored violence, no clear regional split, and likely conflict resolution through elections or public policy. However, the researchers suggested that an uptick in domestic terrorism and mass violence could occur, and they also stated that the outbreak of a civil war was not entirely impossible, concluding: "we should not assume it could not happen and ignore the ominous signs that conflict is spiraling out of control." Some observers have noted that recent interstate migration, fueled on the basis of state laws around issues like abortion and COVID-19-related mandates, is helping to create a more homogeneous blue versus red landscape that might help reinforce the perception of a forthcoming civil war or secession.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Writing for "Foreign Policy", international relations scholar Monica Toft identified three elements that could lead to civil war in the United States in the coming years: the existence of a prior civil war, divided national identity on lines of "race, faith and class," and a "shift from tribalism to sectarianism." Toft states: "if one described them—fractured elites with competing narratives, deep-seated identity cleavages, and a politically polarized citizenry—without identifying the United States by name, most scholars of civil war would say, "Hey, that country is on the brink of a civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist who sits on the Political Instability Task Force, claimed that quantitative and qualitative predictive modeling, used by the research project to forecast civil wars in foreign countries, showed that the United States is facing "conditions that make civil war likely." Walter claimed the two most predictive factors of civil war include:


title: Second American Civil War

text: Republican presidential candidates have only won the popular vote once since 1988. Walter claims that white male Republican candidates will continue to underperform in national elections because of an increasingly multicultural one-person one-vote society. She also states that leaders within the Republican Party recognize that they "no longer benefit from democracy" and must now seek non-democratic ways to retain power.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Some data analysts have questioned if the Republican Party is coalescing around white conservative Christians, pointing to inroads with the Latino population in the 2020 Presidential Election. Walter claims inroads by Republicans with other demographics are nominal, and that the Republican party has become a "whites-only" party ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Walter concludes that "every year we don't reform our democracy and make it stronger... every year that we have one of our two major parties appealing to only one segment of our society: the white Christian population, [and] every year that those two factors continue to exist, our risk [of civil war] increases." Walter adds that "full liberal democracies don't have civil wars," claiming predictive modeling places the possibility of a civil war in countries similar to the United States at among the highest: an annual risk of 3.4%. Noting some might perceive that number as "small," Walter states that the risk rate will increase annually if systematic problems remain unaddressed, likening the risk of civil war to the annual risk increase of lung cancer for every year a smoker doesn't quit smoking.


title: Second American Civil War

text: Walter summarizes her interpretation of the data by stating: "if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you'd look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist" and "what you would find is that the United States ... has entered very dangerous territory." Walter compares the current political framework of the United States to partial democracies such as Ecuador, Somalia, or Haiti, and falls short of full democracies like Norway, Switzerland, or Iceland. Journalist David J. Remnick agrees with Walter's assessment, stating the grim suspension "between democracy and autocracy" creates an uncertain political future that "radically heightens the likelihood of episodic bloodletting in America, and even the risk of civil war."


title: Second American Civil War

text: Carl Bernstein also claims Trump has driven fear in Christians, stating: "Whatever you say about Trump, 45, damn near 50% of the people who vote, voted for him and – you look at the surveys – some 35% of people who voted for Trump believe Christianity is being taken away from them. The idea that the Trump base is some narrow group of white men with guns? Bullshit. This is a huge movement including misogynistic women, including racists of every kind, but also including all kinds of educated people in cities and suburbs. It's also a movement against liberalism, against what the Democratic party in their view has come to represent. It's about race, all kinds of forces, people’s idea of what the United States ought to be. This movement embraces autocracy, authoritarianism, a peculiarly American neo-fascism which Trump represents".""