nation on Tuesday night.
The Governors of Texas and California met sometime in June 2037 with the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, an Air Guard four-star general, about their concerns if the internal national situation became worse. The general agreed and he quietly ordered much of the Air Guard units and aircraft to move to California or Texas for various exercises during late June. Army National Guard units were less flexible to move, but combat brigades and divisions in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon, and Washington had quietly moved into Texas or California by June 29th for similar exercises.
While this would provide a significant military force to the two Governors, there was much fear that President Powers might attack any states succeeding with nuclear weapons, given his track record of using them. The two Governors worked through their National Guard commanders to discuss potential options with active duty forces in their states, plus some quiet talks with other Governors.
President Powers on June 29, 2037, issued his third Martial Law order to the nation. This restricted travel to within twenty-five miles of a person’s legal residence (as stated on their national identification card); directed local governments to restrict residency among certain classes; allowed administrative detentions and expulsions of suspected terrorists; allowed active duty Navy and Marines to issue instructions and orders to civilians; allowed local authorities to close down offices, schools, camps, and factories; allowed local governments to suppress meetings and assemblies,; banned certain organizations labeled as terrorist by the Attorney General; limited freedoms of movement, expression, press, speech, and religion in areas of terrorism, questioning government activities, loyalty of individuals, and other situations as determined by local authorities; froze wages and forbid strikes; closed all higher educational institutions; and expanded federal definitions of what constituted terrorism.
Later that evening, the Conservative Governor of Texas and the Progressive Governor of California immediately and jointly declared that their two states would no longer abide by the acts of the Powers Administration since 2033 and would not recognize any federal authorities and authorizations reference the three Martial Law acts, literally succeeding from the United States. The second Civil War had begun.
The Governors also sent representatives to the United Kingdom and France after the two states succeeded, to propose that they support these efforts and potentially come under their nuclear umbrellas, but they received little interest from the two countries in getting involved in an internal American matter.
THE SECOND CIVIL WAR (JULY 2037 - MAY 2038)
A few minutes after midnight on July 1, 2037, the Vice President and about half of the Cabinet Secretaries, met to discuss the President’s Martial Law order and the reaction by Texas and California. The Vice President revealed that six months ago, the head of the Secret Service had approached him with concerns about the mental state of the President, and the Secret Service had utilized three Secret Service physicians in the protective detail to observe the President. The three physicians recently concluded that President Powers may no longer be mentally competent to hold his office. Mitchell had not invited the Alt-Right Cabinet Secretaries and Powers’ children who were Cabinet Secretaries to this meeting. Those present were not convinced of the physicians’ conclusions and hesitant to proceed. There was further discussion of what the procedures were to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. The meeting broke up after four hours, to be resumed on July 6th.
The Vice President and part of the Cabinet met again on July 6th. They agreed that the entire Cabinet needed to meet and vote in a majority to invoke Section 4. The Vice President called a Cabinet meeting to be held at noon on July 9th for the reason to consider whether or not to declare the President disabled. The Secretary of State/Defense/Homeland Security and Powers’ children provided a copy of the meeting transmail to President Powers within hours.
The President ordered the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff to have military police arrest the Vice President and any Cabinet Secretaries involved for treason if they met at noon. Vice President Mitchell and the Secretaries of Veteran Affairs, Transportation, and Treasury, Chief of the Federal Reserve, the United Nations Ambassador, and the Director of National Intelligence, were all arrested by military police in front of Powers’ children and the remaining Cabinet Secretaries and Chief Presidential Advisor. Our consensus is that the efforts by the Vice President were doomed from the start because the children and Alt-Right Cabinet officers outnumbered others by nine to six.
The White House Press Secretary announced on July 14th that the Secretaries of Veteran Affairs, Transportation, and Treasury, Chief of the Federal Reserve, the United Nations Ambassador, and the Director of National Intelligence had offered the President their resignations, and that the President would be nominating individuals for these offices, except the ambassadorship, in the future. No one was ever nominated for these positions. There was no mention of their arrests, and nothing was mentioned about the Vice President.
On July 28th, there was an explosion at Andrews Air Force Base. The Press Secretary immediately announce that this was a suspected terrorist attack, and that the Vice President was in the vicinity and missing. A few hours later, the White House announced the death of Vice President Mitchell. A state funeral occurred five days later. The FBI identified a group of five Americans affiliated with The League suspected in the bombing. Local police in Maryland stopped them at a traffic stop and killed all five. There is no information in the presidential records of the fate of the other Cabinet officers arrested; it is assumed that they died in the explosion at Andrews or by other means. On that same day, Stephen Schmidt was named White House Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer. All White House staff and Cabinet officers reported to Schmidt.
During the early days of July, the inner advisors for the President debated what to do about the actions of the California and Texas Governors and the impacts it would have on the federally-imposed Martial Law. At first, they assumed that there would be no effects on the military chain of command and active duty military units. However, the Martial Law situation had made it difficult for the Pentagon to understand what was going on with the National Guard. They discovered by mid-July that 70% of the Air Guard and eleven Army Guard combat brigades were now under the authority of the Governors of the Republics of Texas or California. Also, active duty federal military units in these two states had surrendered to the new Republics, the equivalent of six combat brigades and 25% of the Air Force.
More than half of the United States Army was overseas, as was about 40% of the Air Force. Naval and Marines were similarly deployed. The inner group recommended that these troops return to the United States immediately. The President decided in late July to only have military units in Europe return. He wanted to keep his military’s presence in the western Pacific and did not want to recall the 50,000 troops in Afghanistan.
On August 4th, President Powers ordered the withdrawal of all American troops in NATO and their immediate return to the United States. When the NATO allies protested, Powers responded by sending classified transmails to each saying they were no longer under the protection of America’s nuclear umbrella unless they paid an annual fee for protection. Because of fear of an almost immediate Russian attack, the countries of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Greece, Turkey, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, plus non-NATO Ukraine, paid for security to the tune of $1.3 trillion (we think it was this much, though there is some evidence that the TAP Infrastructure Corporation took a cut of these payments). Powers notified the Russian Federation’s new leaders of the new defensive pact and that the United States was no longer a member of NATO. This new defensive pact did not lead to any American military forces leaving Europe until November 2037.
The quiet period of the second Civil War continued into August. For purposes of clarity, we will call milita
ry forces under President Powers as Federalist, while those under the control of the succeeding states as Republic.
We know from historical sources that five more Army Guard combat brigades moved in August to the Republics, as did three significant Air Force or Air Guard units. On August 10th, the President ordered Federalist military forces in the western Pacific to return to the United States, and put the Federalist forces in Afghanistan on notice to move back to the United States. The Federalist naval forces steamed to Pearl Harbor or flew into Hawaii by August 29th.
In late August, websites began to question if the Vice President was killed in a terrorist attack, by suspected nationalist groups, or directly by the Powers Administration. It was believed that a possible source of this information was Brown, Jones, and Smith, who probably recognized that the Andrews bombing was right out of the white nationalist playbook. This led some Governors to consider joining the Republic side. It also led to increased civil disobedience in Federalist controlled areas under Martial Law.
On August 31st, the Governor of Hawaii announced he was joining the Republic