[adastra22]

> At this point the consensus can go whichever the government likes because those operating the nodes would want to be participating in the current legal chain.

I think this is an unwarranted assumption on your part. Capital would flee the US-controlled fork, causing the price of US-ETH tokens to plummet and staking to centralize. At that point there'd be absolutely no reason for US-ETH to exist: you could operate the same system more efficiently without a blockchain, and by isolating the system you would have lost the main, if not only advantage that blockchain systems have today: low-friction international transactions. Corporate entities which stick with the US-ETH split would find their revenues dry up very fast. I guarantee you that those which survive would be looking for ways to go multinational in their corporate structure so they can continue supporting ETH for non-US participants, and focus all of their efforts there. All this would do is isolate and exclude the US from participating in blockchain innovation.