Inside the Plan to Split Red and Blue America

Trump and Putin’s shared project, sources warn, is to fracture America into rival blocs, weaken democracy, and leave Europe exposed as authoritarian power advances unchecked.

The call came at dusk, London time, with rainwater still seamed along the kerb and the city’s electric pulse returning after the storm. The source did not waste syllables. There was, they said¹, a plan, grandiose in ambition, plain in its terms. Separate America into “red” and “blue” polities; align the red states with an eastern geopolitical bloc centred on China, Russia and the wider BRICS constellation; squeeze the blue states into a Western rump with Canada and Europe; and, over time, weaponise the split to weaken Europe’s security and the liberal order that has sheltered under the phrase “the West” for three-quarters of a century. The name Vladimir Putin floated in the preamble. Donald Trump’s hovered close by.

Extraordinary claims seldom announce themselves with footnotes, and this one is no exception. But timing is a character witness. In Washington, the President has just invoked a half-century-old emergency valve in the District of Columbia Home Rule Act Section 740² to wrench …