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I'll admit I haven't seriously considered the idea, but I can't come up with something the USG can do that will alienate both CA and TX and 17 more states, but not the rest of the states.
It looks from that map like the federal government tried to take unilateral control of water allocation and decided to prioritize big cities in deserts(Pheonix, Santa Fe, Las Vegas), driving a wedge between Texas/California on the one hand and the states in between on the other and alienating the south(which is extremely rainy) with some kind of infrastructure project to transport water northwards. The bigger question is how the northwest stuck together when it jumped; it doesn't make any sense how the red and blue states there weren't at each others' throats instantly.
Oh, my goodness, you have got to read Cadillac Desert, a book about water that is one of my all-time classics. I wish I were more motivated to do good, solid, effort posts, because a review of that book could really work...
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Large unilateral extension of federal domain? Later states have a lot more of it than early ones.
Texas has very little federal land. California has a lot, but so do the neighboring loyalists.
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