COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?"

 

There can be no doubt that the relatively few Californians strongly interested in becoming an independent country have had high hopes that President Trump’s “War on California” would drive many new adherents to their camp.

 

So far, it is not happening at a level that can be taken seriously. That’s the upshot of a new poll taken by the YouGov survey service for the Carlsbad-based Independent California Institute (ICI).

 

Let’s tot up a few things Trump has done to harm California: He’s eliminated the state’s unique ability to make smog rules for the state’s vehicles, once thought securely written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. He’s invented a series of Los Angeles “riots,” which were at most a few incidents of vandalism, and used it to send thousands of soldiers into Southern California. He’s eliminated funding for bringing English-learning schoolchildren and migrant kids into the academic mainstream.

 

These are only a few anti-California measures he’s taken, besides ordering the region to undergo the nation’s most intensive deportation drive ever, claiming to go after seriously criminal illegal immigrants but mostly picking up undocumented workers who broke no other laws.

 

Apparently, all this has not yet had huge negative impact on mainstream Californians. 

 

The new poll does say Californians’ confidence in the federal government has nosedived since Trump took office, with 50 percent of Californians saying they now trust Sacramento more than Washington, D.C. and only 23 percent holding the opposite view. Those numbers are significantly changed from February, when only 34 percent trusted Sacramento more, while 18 percent trusted the feds.

 

But when asked if they’d vote for a peaceful secession ballot initiative, only 44 percent were in favor, with 54 percent against.

 

Is it possible Californians could shift radically to the side of secession in the foreseeable future? Says ICI director Coyote Codornices Marin, “It would probably take something quite direct. For instance, if Trump were to say something like ‘We don’t need California,’ that could seriously drive secession. But I strongly doubt he would ever be stupid enough to say that.”

 

Even without such a seminal event, 71 percent of Californians believe they’d be better off if California somehow gained special autonomous status within the USA, something that seems ever less likely under the Trump administration, which seems bent on allowing California less autonomy, not more.

 

This reality does not faze the 60 percent of Californians who said they want California’s 52-person House delegation in Congress to back autonomy with “hardball tactics” like refusing to vote for federal budgets as long as California receives billions of dollars less in federal spending than it pays in federal taxes.

 

Other significant findings in the poll of 500 Californians included 71 percent wanting a new state law enforcement division focused on violent extremism and hate crimes, rather than leaving such enforcement strictly up to local police and sheriffs. A similar 72 percent want California police to have authority to arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” And 80 percent want California to control its borders “more like a country,” checking for illegal firearms and other types of contraband, rather than merely seeking out perishable fruit.

 

Said the ICI’s vice chair, Timothy Vollmer, “Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions.”

 

But that leaves out the Trump factor. The president wants exactly the reverse from California, and seems most compliant with California desires when they are addressed to him with abject obsequiousness.

 

“Yes, our poll numbers for secession are at a record high,” said Marin. But he added the numbers also indicate a steep uphill climb would still be required, especially without special autonomous status as a step in that direction.

 

“Many people just don’t think it’s possible to be sovereign in the immediate future,” said Marin.

 

But that could change were Trump’s steadfast irritation with California to become more active and focused on depriving Californians of basic rights.

 

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com