A free California? Trump visits as initiative to leave U.S. cleared to gather signatures

LOS ANGELES – President Donald Trump, long a vocal detractor of California, touched down in Los Angeles on Friday to tour fire ravaged areas, pledging federal support after days of criticizing Democrats over the fires. 

The visit came the day after a new ballot initiative asking voters whether the state should become an independent country was cleared by the California Secretary of State's office to begin gathering signatures.

Could the Golden State just fly the coop, become its own nation and walk away from 175 years of union with the United States?

After all, the idea of California becoming its own country has been around for decades. The state flag still commemorates the 25 days it was once its own republic. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom has slipped and called it a "nation state" more than a few times.

The fires have brought Californians together, said Michael Bryant, 56, whose girlfriend's Malibu home burned down. But recent events haven't brought them closer to the rest of the country.

“If what I see coming down the pike from the current (Trump) administration, if it goes in the direction that I think it’s going to go, I think that seceding is something that needs to be considered,’’ he told USA TODAY, while walking with his dog at Venice Beach on Thursday. “I don't know if I'm un-American for feeling that, but that's how I feel.’’

Tense relations with the White House only getting tenser

Of late, the already high level of vitriol between President Trump and Newsom has amped things up between the federal and state governments over the topic of water.

Trump said California has all the water needed to fight fires but it's been using it instead to protect fish.

"All they have to do is turn the valve. And that's the valve coming back from and down from the Pacific Northwest, where millions of gallons of water, a week and a day even, in many cases, pours into California," he said at a Tuesday news conference.

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump threatened to withhold federal aid to fire-stricken areas unless the state changes water management practices.

"I don't think we should give California anything until they let water flow down into there," Trump said in the interview. Trump is visiting fire-devastated areas of Los Angeles on Friday.

LA resident Bryant called Trump's threats to withhold federal aid “repugnant.’’

Newsom's offices says regional water reservoirs in Southern California are at historic highs. Fire hydrants in Los Angeles ran dry during the fires there because the city's water infrastructure was not built to respond to such large conflagrations, not because of a lack of water.

Newsom, who Trump often refers to as "Newscum" online, posted on X that "The only thing fishy are Trump’s facts. California pumps as much water now as it could under prior Trump-era policies. And there is no shortage of water in Southern California."

The two political leaders aren't the only ones sniping. A survey by YouGov in February found that 29% of Californians said they'd support seceding from the United States. And they weren't even the most disgruntled. A full 31% of Texans said the same thing.

At a time when tensions are high, could the vast, Golden and contradictory bookend at the far Western edge of the United States actually go it alone?

Of course not.

But that doesn't mean people on all sides don't keep suggesting it.

Could California secede from the United States?

The short answer is no – there's no legal way for California to secede from the United States.

Section 1 of Article III of the current State Constitution states that California “is an inseparable part of the United States of America.”

In addition, the U.S. Constitution doesn't provide any legal method for a state to secede – that's why the Civil War was fought, killing as many as 620,000 Americans.

California's State Constitution very clearly says the the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Meaning if the Constitution says it can't be done – which it does – then secession is impossible.

"It's a bit like the song "Hotel California," said Andrew Torrance, co-author of a 2020 paper "Fault Lines: An Empirical Legal Study of California Secession." "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Has California ever tried to secede?

Just because it's impossible doesn't mean various Californians haven't tried their darnedest to leave the Union, though the fact that you can still drive straight on through from Oregon, Nevada and Arizona shows none has yet succeeded.

Actually, California was briefly (very briefly) an independent nation.

The California Republic lasted for 25 days in 1846 at a time when what was then known as Alta California was part of Mexico. The unrecognized Mexican breakaway state was based in a small area north of San Francisco in what's now one of the nation's prime winemaking regions, Sonoma County.

This effort was quickly overturned and in 1850 California became the 31st state of the United States. That said, the official state flag, first adopted in 1911, still says "California Republic" under an image of a grizzly bear, a reference to the rebellion, which was called “The Bear Flag Revolt."

Grizzlies, it bears noting, became extinct in California in 1924, 78 years after that revolt.

In the past decade there have been at least three major attempts at enable California to secede, according to the paper by Torrance and Bill Tomlinson of the University of California, Irvine.

They included two groups founded in 2015, the California National Party and Yes California, both of which sought self-determination and ultimately independence. The California Freedom Coalition, begun in 2017, sought to promote "nonviolent actions to establish the country of California using legal and constitutional means."

Yes California suspended operations on Dec. 31, 2024, saying its campaign had "ultimately became more of a showcase for personal delusions and ambitions than a serious political effort."

Another attempt got underway Thursday, when the California Secretary of State's office cleared an initiative asking voters whether California should become an independent country.

If 50% of registered voters participate in the November, 2028 election and at least 55% of them vote yes, a commission would be created to report on the state's viability as an independent country.

California estimates this will cost about $10 million in one-time election-related costs and to form a new commission and around $2 million annually to operate the commission. The organizers must gather at least 546,651 signatures of registered voters by no later than July 22, 2025 to get on the ballot.

In a survey Torrance and Tomlinson conducted in 2020, more Americans thought California should leave than California's thought they should leave America. But both groups were far in the minority.

California's a big deal in the world

While not its own country, California is still a big deal in the world. There's a reason Apple products say "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China."

If California were a country, its economy would rank fifth internationally, behind only the U.S., China, Germany, and Japan. Despite having a population the size of Canada. It's home to one in eight Americans. Nationally, its residents contribute the largest amount to federal income tax coffers.

California has long been not just a state but an ideal, a place where things happened that couldn't happen anywhere else. When the Mamas & the Papas first sang their iconic song "California Dreamin'" in 1965, the whole country sang along.

California was the Gold Rush, Hollywood, Disneyland and the Summer of Love.

It was where the transistor, the computer, the Internet got going, where the future took off. It was home to many of the nation's top technology companies, including Apple, Google (ok, Alphabet), Facebook (ok, Meta), Twitter (ok, X), and Tesla along with eBay, PayPal, Adobe, Square, Salesforce, Oracle and Intel.

The state's live-and-let-live vibe also made it a natural home to the gay community (San Francisco's Castro District) and the entertainment world (Hollywood). It's also got the most certified organic farms of any state.

That dream has soured somewhat in recent years, with some businesses and people leaving the state.

But California remains a major economic powerhouse, with a gross domestic product of $3.9 trillion, comprising 14% of the U.S. whole. It produces 9% of the nation’s international exports of goods, 17% of U.S. agricultural products and 18% of computer and electronic products, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

So whatever people might be feeling when most annoyed, leaving is no small thing. And who might want to leave and why changes depending on the decade and the political winds. Remember, California was once a conservative bastion.

California's conservative credentials

In the midst of heated exchanges between Trump and Newsom, it's sometimes hard to recollect that California is and was home not to only wildly liberal ideas but also some of America's staunchest conservatives.

"Ronald Reagan was governor of California long before he was President of the United States," said Torrance. "And Richard Nixon before him."

The state was also a trailblazer in efforts to take away the right of legislatures to raise taxes. In 1978 a voter-led initiative resulted in the overwhelming passage of Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes and made taxes of all kinds more difficult to impose.

That tax revolt spread widely across the United States and in some way was the precursor to the conservative Tea Party movement

Really, said Torrance, California is a bellwether for where America's going next – whichever way the winds blow.

"California is a pioneer at both ends of the spectrum," he said. "It tends to be at the cutting edge of culture in the United States. Things happen there first and then spread to the rest of the country and the world."

What would happen if California left the U.S.?

Chaos. Not that it's possible, but even as a thought experiment the only outcome of California leaving the United States would be mayhem on both sides of the border.

The economic hit would be enormous.

In 2022, California paid more than it received from the federal government, according to an analysis by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. That year the state contributed $83 billion more in taxes than it got from the federal government.

Losing such an integral part of the nation's economic fabric would be devastating, requiring trade agreements, treaties and work permits. The state has hundreds of miles of borders with neighboring states and both the Colorado and Klamath rivers – subject to contentious treaties – run through it. More than a third of the country's vegetables and over three-quarters of the its fruits and nuts are grown in the state.

Maya Jones, a 24-year-old hairdresser from Palm Springs, visited the Santa Monica Pier on Thursday to celebrate her birthday.

She's heard Newsom saying he wants to "Trump-proof" California, so it's imaginable. “But that seems like a crazy idea for California to be its own country.’’

Jones also said it “makes no sense’’ that Trump would withhold aid from California.

Do people appreciate what the state does for the country?

“I don't think so,'' Jones replied. "I hear a lot of people talk crap about California.''

(This story has been updated to add new information.)