Trump deployed Marines. Newsom threatened to keep federal taxes. And 44 percent of Californians decided they have had enough of Washington.
LOS ANGELES: California has the world’s fourth-largest economy, feeds a tenth of America, and just sent Washington more tax dollars than it will ever get back. Now it wants a divorce. Not metaphorically. Not as a bumper sticker. As an actual, formally filed, signature-gathering, ballot-measure, commission-appointing push to leave the United States of America and the number of Californians ready to sign the papers just hit a record high.
A poll by the Independent California Institute found that 44 percent of Californian adults would now vote for the state to leave the United States a record high across 12 separate surveys going back years, surpassing the previous peak of 42 percent in June 2021. That is not protest politics. That is four in ten Californians in a state of 39 million people saying they want out of the country they were born into.
“Now, everybody recognizes what we know. This is Trump‘s America,” Marcus Ruiz Evans, the movement’s founder, told journalists after relaunching the effort. “There will not be a Resist movement to counter CalExit, like there was in 2016, because nobody believes he’s a fluke.”
He has a point that is difficult to dismiss.
How We Got Here
CalExit, shorthand for California Exit, modelled deliberately on Britain’s Brexit, first surfaced after Trump’s 2016 victory as a largely symbolic protest. Sacramento laughed it off. Political scientists filed it under “not serious.” It faded.
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Then Trump came back. This latest push follows his re-election, his deployment of the National Guard over the objection of Governor Gavin Newsom, and the subsequent deployment of US Marines into California a move widely described as an attempt to intimidate Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Sacramento stopped laughing.
Tensions escalated further as the federal government threatened to withhold funding from California, prompting Newsom to consider retaining the state’s federal tax contributions for in-state use, a move that, in constitutional terms, would be extraordinary.
The same poll found that 50 percent of Californians now trust state authorities in Sacramento more than the federal government in Washington up sharply from 34 percent in a January survey, while trust in Washington collapsed to just 23 percent.
The Economics of Going It Alone
Secessionists do not lack for an economic argument. California is the fourth biggest economy in the world, coming after Japan, as of April 2025, according to IMF figures. California is responsible for over ten percent of all the food produced in America. In addition, it contributes more than 20% of all agricultural exports in America.
To Californians, the state is known as a “giver,” because of its tendency to contribute more money to the federal government than it receives in return. Almost 71 percent of Californians say that through taxation, their money goes to help fund other states rather than their own.
Its proponents believe that if California is to declare its sovereignty, it will become one of the richest nations in the world right from the get-go because of its technological prowess, agriculture industry, and port facilities.
The Wall They Cannot Get Around
The legal reality does not bend for economic arguments. No provision exists in the American constitution whereby a state can exit. This matter was put to rest by the Supreme Court in the case of Texas v. White in 1869 when the court ruled that the United States is an indissoluble Union that cannot be unmade by a single state. In addition, the California Constitution makes the matter worse by stating that California is an “inseparable part of the United States of America,” thus any attempt for independence must go through the legislature and a constitutional convention first.
This final attempt sought to bring forth a clear proposal before the people of California on November 3, 2026: “Should California be a free state and break away from the Union?” This final attempt failed because it did not even get to that stage since the requisite number of 546,651 signatures were not achieved.. A second version followed almost immediately.
A Smarter, Slower Strategy
The movement’s more sophisticated wing has since shifted tactics entirely. CalExit.now pushes for a Joint Resolution in the California Senate and Assembly authorising a formal legislative inquiry into California sovereignty, followed by legislation empowering the Governor to appoint a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate all lawful means by which California could secure an independent future. Calexit, It is a longer road. It is also a more credible one because it transforms CalExit from a protest into a process, with hearings, reports, and legislative momentum that a failed signature drive never generates.
What Happens Next
There will never be any real prospect of California seceding from the union. This would be constitutionally impossible without something much larger happening, something no one can bear to imagine. But the real question CalExit now poses is not whether California leaves. It is how much leverage a state commanding the world’s fourth-largest economy can extract from Washington simply by making the threat credible and loud. According to a Los Angeles Times survey in 2024, a full 48 percent of Republicans think California is not “really” American. Mutual contempt is only increasing over time.
Ruiz Evans has been filing paperwork for a decade and losing every time. He has never had 44 percent of his state’s residents standing behind him before. That changes nothing legally. It changes everything politically.
