1. If you want to overturn the government directly it might rally people against you but it’s possible to siege the capital. I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s a left tactic.
  2. If you want to start a secession movement and take the center of the country, you take Texas because it has sufficient population, sufficient military resources, ports, a power grid, and one of the two mints. You move north using texas as a base, and cut off the rest of the country – but you have to do it fast.   I don’t favor holding territory on the defense, it’s better to keep in constant motion.
  3. If you want to take over the country you raid one of the more vulnerable immigrant or leftist cities, and overload it’s resources, and move on to the next in short order, leaving fires, power, water, communication, rail, and road (air doesn’t matter), although preventing landings at least is trivial.
  4. If you want to win quickly you issue demands that people actually prefer to the current order, issue incentives to police, military, guard, and ‘civilian actors’, and then do three to four cities at once. It’s impossible to react to that.  And it only takes ‘thousands’ per city.

Communication is more important than power. Power more important than money, money more important than transport, transport more important than political figures.