The New Battles Between Blue and Red America

States and cities are adopting sweeping bills on a number of major hot-button issues, from gay rights to minimum wage increases — broad and controversial actions that are at times creating heightened tensions between different localities.

After North Carolina and Mississippi adopted new laws that deny some legal protections to people who are gay, lesbian and transgender, Democratic mayors and governors in Vermont, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and New York announced bans on non-essential, government-funded travel to those conservative-leaning states.

Republicans in North Carolina were acting in part to preempt a law adopted by the Democratically-controlled city council of Charlotte that allows transgender people to use restrooms that correspond with the gender they identify with, as opposed to the one on their birth certificates.

The provisions adopted by state legislatures, cities and governors over the last month illustrate that the core divide between blue states and red states remains firmly entrenched, even as the unusual, insurgent candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have reshuffled political coalitions at the national level. Blue states are strongly pushing moves aimed at boosting pay and benefits for low and middle-class workers, while red states continue to back limits on abortion and gay rights.

The legislation also illustrates also how states, not the federal government, are increasingly the place where major policy initiatives are being adopted, because of the divide between President Obama and congressional Republicans in Washington. Officials in local government are already executing some of the ideas that candidates like Sanders, Trump and Hillary Clinton are promising if elected president.

“It is all an example of the kind of expressive politics that is so prevalent. The purpose of all of this isn’t policy — or even a good business decision — but to make a statement,” said Bill Bishop, whose 2008 book “The Big Sort” argues Americans are increasingly moving to areas where their neighbors are politically aligned with them.

“In a world where identity construction is a primary consideration of everything, more and more politics and neighborhood choice is about expressing who you are,” he added.

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