Fox News is not content with knowingly lying to its audience and spreading dangerous claims in the pursuit of profit. The network is also seeking to further destabilize the country along partisan lines, as its hosts and guests are increasingly promoting various schemes like a “national divorce” to break up parts of the United States.

Last month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) issued an absurd call for a “national divorce.” But Fox’s obsession with finding some way to split the country internally goes back a long way, since at least President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, when both Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity and the cast of Fox’s The Five responded sympathetically to fruitless secession petitions from aggrieved Republicans in states Obama did not carry.

Later, in December 2020, the network gave a friendly interview to the Texas state GOP chair who called for red states to “form a Union of states” and to push back in some unspecified manner after the Supreme Court had upheld Joe Biden’s victory and rejected the defeated President Donald Trump’s legal challenges.

More recently, the network’s on-air talent have supported efforts to split off conservative counties in California into a new state called “Jefferson.” (Fox has previously been very interested in the so-called “Calexit” movement, an ostensibly left-wing call for Californian independence, which was ironically supported by right-wing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.)

The “national divorce”

The network is now defending Greene’s impossible proposal for what she called a “national divorce.” Last week, Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity endorsed her idea that people who move from blue states to red states should be barred from voting for five years to avoid altering the partisanship of their new home states. (It’s possible Hannity hadn’t considered the implications of such a policy, which would bar someone like himself — a New Yorker — from voting if he were to move to a Republican-controlled state.)

So far just this week, the network has supported two different internal separatist movements in the United States, in addition to Greene’s proposed “national divorce.”

“Greater Idaho”

To start with, on Monday morning one of the network’s purported “straight news” personalities openly approved of a push for Republican-voting counties in Oregon to join the Republican-dominated state of Idaho instead. After quoting an op-ed saying the plan would free “rural, conservative communities from progressive blue-state law," Fox News correspondent and overnight anchor Ashley Strohmier stated simply, “I would be OK with it.” Later that night, FoxNews.com published an article further promoting the so-called “Greater Idaho” plan.

Two days later, the Wednesday edition of Fox & Friends aired a credulous segment on the plan, interviewing Republican Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a proponent.

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt concluded the interview by pining for such right-wing separatist movements to sprout up elsewhere: “There are people in New York that would love to do this, too. Because New York City’s so liberal, but the fringe area is not at all. So, it does affect elections.”

In 2022, the “Greater Idaho” movement was given the level of attention and analysis it actually deserves from legitimate news outlets: The Daily Show dismantled the scheme, which an expert estimated could cost the state of Idaho $10-15 billion.

“Buckhead City”

Fox has also taken up the cause of so-called “Buckhead City,” a wealthy district in Atlanta where some activists have sought for years to separate from the city and form their own municipality. On Monday, a committee in the Republican-controlled state Senate advanced a bill that would allow Buckhead to separate. The bill must still pass through a full vote in the state Senate, separate passage in the state House, and be signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

Greene appeared again with Hannity on Tuesday night’s show, during which the two further discussed her “national divorce” proposals, and Greene declared that conservatives “want our own safe space, and we deserve it.” Hannity then brought up the Buckhead case, which Greene of course supported.

Then on Wednesday’s edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host interviewed the volunteer CEO of the Buckhead secession committee. Carlson declared that the neighborhood’s push for separation “really is a test of democracy,” rhetorically asking, “Since when did democracy become so unfashionable? I thought everyone was in favor of democracy. What happened?” (Carlson has a prolific record of spreading conspiracy theories about the January 6 insurrection, recently questioned the legitimacy of American democracy, and has made various pronouncements about which groups of people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.)

Carlson concluded the interview by wishing the group success and calling for more such separatist movements: “So if you win this, I think it will be a sign for towns across the country: You don’t have to be managed into the ground by criminals who hate you. You can run your own affairs. It’s democracy.”

Fox gave the Buckhead push more promotion Thursday morning, with Fox & Friends hosting local talk radio host MalaniKai Massey, who is also a Buckhead resident.

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt mentioned briefly at the start of the segment that Kemp was “throwing cold water on the proposal, questioning its legality,” a topic that she did not revisit in any major detail.

Massey briefly addressed the topic, sounding a cautiously optimistic note: “Is everything on paper always going to go as planned? Absolutely not. However, you’ve got to talk to the bond people. You’ve got to talk to the attorneys, have addressed all of Gov. Kemp’s concerns that he put out yesterday.”

Earhardt concluded the interview: “I’m sure some government officials don’t like this because they’re worried other neighborhoods, your surrounding neighborhoods, will do the same thing and they’ll lose more and more money.”

The Buckhead proposal actually presents major legal and financial difficulties, with a coalition of area business groups warning on Monday that the proposal would “choke off economic development” in Buckhead itself. Then on Tuesday, Kemp’s executive counsel warned that the proposal was potentially unconstitutional for the manner in which it would seek to apportion the city of Atlanta’s public debt, and that the specter of further city break-ups could trigger the “possible widespread default” of local government bonds in Georgia. Fox’s own online reporting Thursday depicted this letter as a sign that Kemp himself had “delivered a blow” to the Buckhead City cause.

Rather than addressing the numerous problems that these Balkanization proposals would actually pose, Fox’s hosts have instead extolled the desire of conservative voters to have “their own government” in the name of “democracy,” in an attempt to declare that they shouldn’t have to live under a political system when they don’t like the majority results.