Most Canadians have taken it as read that Donald Trump’s raving about our country becoming the 51st state is just limited to him. We’ve assured each other that, apart from the fanboy retinue that echoes everything he says, the vast majority of Americans support Canadian sovereignty. When push came to shove, we tell ourselves — whether it involved military force and annexation or just the kind of economic coercion — that vast majority would stand with us.

Our faith was more than a little shaken by Tuesday’s New York Times piece by Peter Baker quoting a former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Steve Israel, saying “I strongly agree with Donald Trump.”

Annexing Canada, he said, “means more Democrats in Congress and Electoral College votes, not to mention providing universal health care and combating climate change.”

Bear in mind, Israel isn’t some Tulsi Gabbard-esque fringe member of his party. He was an eight-term member of the House of Representatives, serving as assistant whip and chairing the House Democratic Caucus Task Force on Defense and Military.

And here he is treating a direct threat against an independent nation, America’s closest ally and its largest trading partner as though it’s either a fun electoral math exercise or — worse — something to be favourably considered.

The online reaction from the Americans I know and follow has been reassuringly outraged. But reading this article shakes me to my core, as do passages in the article like “the notion of Canada as a state, however farcical and unlikely, has intrigued the political class and been the source of parlor games in Washington.”

Your president is openly talking about naked aggression against your best friend on the planet, and you’re “intrigued”?

Now, maybe Israel and company couched what they said in vocal condemnations of the very idea of violating an ally’s sovereignty. But you don’t get to be a Steve Israel without knowing that context gets stripped from quotes all the time. He’s media-savvy enough to know what he was saying.

To be generous, maybe some of the folks quoted in this article (and others posting gleeful Electoral College scenarios on Bluesky and LinkedIn) think they’re helping by making Canada look less electorally attractive to Republicans. But the very fact that they’re entertaining the idea at all — that they’re mulling over the practical upside of the unthinkably wrong — normalizes it. They’re making it respectable. And it’s a very short walk from the realm of “what if” to the cold, hard world of “how to.”

And to those who like the thought of absorbing Canada because the electoral math might yield more progressive outcomes: that’s a solid no from us. Our country isn’t some emergency epi-pen for broken electoral systems. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, corporate manipulation and the Electoral College are all serious issues, but they’re your issues. You can have our support and our sympathy… just not our sovereignty.

Canadians have been attuned to American politics for as long as there’s been a Canada. We have to be. We’ve been alarmed by Trump’s rise for your sake even more than for ours; we care what happens to you.

But today we’re watching and listening more closely than ever before, with grave, immediate concern for our own future. Some of us are terrified; almost all of us are furious.

And America, we’re noticing what you’re saying.

I am doing my best, as are many of us, to convince friends and neighbours that the great majority of Americans aren’t with Trump on this. Even as we await the imposition of tariffs that will deal a brutal blow to our economy, I’m telling them that most of you are as horrified as we are by what he’s proposing, and as determined as we are to make sure it never happens.

But that can be a hard sell when even some Democrats are talking about carving us up for congressional advantage.

If you’re an American appalled by Donald Trump’s designs on Canada, this would be a very good day for Canadians to hear from you. And if you’re Steve Israel, this would be an excellent day to stop giving interviews for a while.