Like, the Trump administration has deported a bunch of U.S. citizens. This is a thing they did. They have faced essentially zero repercussions for this, so why would they slow that process down?

A policy of "ignore the laws" has the same effect as a policy of "write new laws," if you also have significant control over the judiciary, you use budgetary powers to effectively rewrite laws, and literally no one stops you from illegally shutting down dozens of agencies.

Republicans took a sledgehammer to Medicare and Medicaid, which are very popular. They stripped funding from public media, a thing voters say they don't want to see happen. They demonstrably do not care about elections. Why should they?

Well, no. Republicans don't *have* to do anything, because they've adopted a political and legal theory that shifts all authority to the White House or to state governments. Nor are they all that concerned about elections, which they have demonstrated a willingness to tamper with or outright ignore

They *have* total control over the law. They are actively working to implement these policies, or to hamstring enforcement of laws that would prevent these policies.

If the worst case scenario is the status quo, I'm not sure how you argue that's worse than how it is now.

I don't think it's necessary to split up and build a ton of walls between portions of the country. There are models - especially the European Union model - that still allow for free movement while changing the relationship between the states or multistate entities