Red counties in California, Illinois move to secede and form their own states

Secession is brewing in the United States. But it’s not pitting one region against another. Instead, Republican-dominant counties in blue states are pushing to secede and form their own states. In one very liberal state, the movement is being sold as a way to “Leave Illinois Without Moving” and it’s gaining momentum following the stunning victory by President-elect Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election.

Some conservative residents in blue states decide to pick up and move to a red state where the taxes are lower and the regulations are lighter. The influx of GOP voters to Nevada may have helped flip that state for Trump. Other rural residents who are sick of woke politics and the high cost of living, however, are wondering why they can’t just stay put and declare themselves independent, The New York Post reported. On Election Day, seven rural counties in Illinois approved an initiative to secede.

“There’s a lot of people in Chicago, and I think that they make a lot of decisions that affect people downstate,” Phil Gioja, from Iroquois County, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just sending a message that, ‘Hey, you know, there’s people that would like to be part of the conversation, and often aren’t.’”

There’s an appetite for separation in Iroquois County, IL, where 73 percent of voters said they would agree to join with other like-minded counties in the state and forming a new state. The idea was not popular in Cook County, which includes Chicago, a sanctuary city that is one of the most liberal in America, where Mayor Brandon Johnson says Trump is a “threat to everything that is sensible.”

So what is the likelihood of moving from theory to practice? Backers say the economic destitution brought on by Democratic policies might provide the window for secession.

“We always believed that our best opportunity to negotiate our way out of Illinois was when Illinois was approaching that financial cliff — it’s been on a path toward it for years,” G.H. Merritt, who is fighting to create the New Illinois State, told the WSJ.

There is the same degree of optimism in the ultimate blue state of California, where the New California State organization is looking to separate from the San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles areas. “I’m so flipping excited,” Paul Preston, who founded New California State, told the WSJ. Preston called California a “one-party communist state” that has “seceded from the Union already.”

But in order to become separate states, these county coalitions require the approval of their state legislature, perhaps not an easy task. The last state to be admitted into the Union was Hawaii in 1959. Since then, even Washington DC and Puerto Rico lack statehood, The Post noted.