Rumors swirl about whether Texas will or can secede from the United States to the point where a confused GOP presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, first said Texas could but more recently said it couldn’t.
But secessionist fever is not only spiking in Texas.
Newsweek reported on Monday that conservative activists in California are working to establish a breakaway republic.
In fact, the leader of the movement told Newsweek that such a move is necessary to prevent another “civil war.”
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“So right now we’re more working on the concept of national divorce as an alternative to potential civil violence and civil war in the country,” conservative activist Louis Marinelli told Newsweek on Saturday.
“Our belief is that there’s a lot of growing political violence and political problems in the country that may lead to fighting in the streets, civil war too, some people are calling for. We are trying to propose the idea of potentially doing a national divorce of some sort … to avoid that type of situation.”
Marinelli is president of a group called Yes California.
Launched in 2015, Yes California is working on a ballot measure dubbed CalExit 3.1. The proposal would break California into two and set up an independent country called Pacifica that would encompass part of the San Francisco Bay area and along the central California coast.
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Newsweek noted that 92,000 people have signed a petition supporting the campaign on Yes California’s website, although it seems unclear exactly how many of those people are actual California residents.
While liberals want to resurrect the ghosts of Dixie by saying the South would force the country apart, Yes California notes on its website, “National Divorce starts in California.”
Ironically, Marinelli’s claim to leadership of the movement is challenged by another conservative activist who helped found Yes California.
Marcus Ruiz Evans told Newsweek that he is the true leader of the CalExit movement and that his plan calls for all of California to separate from the U.S.
Still, Newsweek stuck with Marinelli.
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Marinelli told the magazine that his group doesn’t support a “national divorce” between red and blue states. But, he added, “potentially there’s ways to draw the lines at other places.”
The problem with the red-blue split is that “you don’t alleviate the problem of the division between the red and blue” in any one state.
Newsweek noted that it’s not just California and Texas that are hearing calls for secession.
For one thing, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said in recent weeks that a national divorce “may be our only option” to avoid a second civil war.
Meanwhile, two bills have been filed in New Hampshire that would lead it to leave.
One measure establishes a constitutional amendment that mandates New Hampshire to declare independence if the national debt, now at $34 trillion, hits $40 trillion. The other bill would create a commission to study the economic, legal, and sociological factors of New Hampshire “exerting its sovereign rights,” Newsweek noted.
Marinelli told Newsweek his group supports such thinking, but questions the timing, because uncertain world conditions, such as multiple wars going on, dictate that the U.S. must be united to the outside world.
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“We support the effort of self-determination in general. So, if a state in the United States wants to pursue its right to self-determination and have a vote on independence that’s going to be fair and free and conform to international norms with respect to independence referendum … we would support that,” he said.
Yet, he added, “Because of what’s happening around the world and the possibility that the United States can be drawn into war, we think it would be counterproductive to Western civilization and the cause of democracy if we were also fighting within our own country.”
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