In The News Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Independent California Institute

The Bulwark: Extorting With Disaster: Why Stop At California?

ICI January 30, 2025

Jill Lawrence: California is an easy target, but it’s far more than that. It would be comparable to Canada if it were its own country, and that is not as far-fetched as it seems. A poll released January 19, as Trump was about to take office, showed 61 percent of Californians favor a peaceful “Calexit” and 77 percent said California should control its state borders “more like a country.” A few days later, as Trump was about to visit, the California secretary of state cleared a petition drive to get a secession proposal onto the 2028 ballot.

Trump wants to be the president who annexed Greenland and Canada, not the one who lost California. If there’s a lesson here, it may be make love, not war, and stop referring to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.” Trump has a country. The question is whether he can keep it.

CalMatters: If California split from the US and became a nation, it would be comparable to Canada

ICI January 24, 2025

Legendary California reporter Dan Walters covers our poll for CalMatters:

The transcontinental sniping raises an old question: Could California sever ties with the United States and once again become an independent country? The San Diego County-based Independent California Institute thinks so.

Photo credit: Ken Lund via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Democracy Local: How to Achieve Local Autonomy

ICI November 2, 2024

Fully 68% of Californians believe that California would be better off if California negotiated a special autonomous status within the U.S., according to a poll that my think tank, the Independent California Institute, commissioned from YouGov earlier this year…. Why might Californians want more independence from the federal government?

Only United In Name: Round-Up of Recent Doings

C.C. Marin April 18, 2024

Richard Kreitner, author of the book Break It Up, gave ICI a shout-out in his recent newsletter:

A more insightful survey was conducted (also by YouGov) for the Independent California Institute, whose director, Coyote Marin, reached out to me after reading Break It Up. What I like about the ICI is…

Newsweek: US ‘Breaking Apart’ With 25 States ‘Ready’ to Leave: Texas Secessionist

ICI April 8, 2024

Miller argued that in the survey, support for independence was lower than it should be because “polling companies have no idea how to poll the issue of secession or withdrawing from the union.”

To support this argument, Miller referenced a separate YouGov survey conducted in February for the Independent California Institute.

USA Today: Not really American, and proud of it

ICI March 28, 2024

Is it any wonder that a majority of our not-really American state is ready to leave before the Americans kick us out? According to an Independent California Institute poll, 58% of California adults say we’d be better off than we are now if California peacefully became independent — its own country — in the next decade.

Ventura County Star: The ‘Calexit’ sentiment might be rising

ICI March 21, 2024

68% of Californians believe they would be better off than they are now if the state negotiated for itself a “special autonomous status within the U.S.” and arranged for transfer of almost all federal land and water infrastructure here to state and local governments. More than a supermajority, then, want at least special standing.

Newsweek: Most Californians Believe They’d Be Happier if State Seceded

ICI February 27, 2024

While many reject the idea of state secession as a fantasy of just a few, a new survey revealed that a majority of Californians feel they’d be happier if their state was no longer part of the United States.

Connecting California: Gavin Newsom’s ‘Campaign for Democracy’ Has a Democracy Problem

ICI April 25, 2023

Data on “democracy deserts” provided by C.C. Marin of the Independent California Institute show that more than 22.1% of voting-age adults in Los Angeles can’t vote. A quarter of voters in cities as different as Cupertino, Anaheim, and my mom’s hometown of Hawthorne are disenfranchised.

representation_in_the_u-s-_senate-1024x864-7819185

LA Weekly: Backers of California Secession Say State’s Senate Representation Is Dire

ICI July 25, 2017

Smaller states overrepresented in Congress tend to lean conservative and Republican and, as big blue states like California grow, the power of smaller counterparts actually increases “LA Weekly: Backers of California Secession Say State’s Senate Representation Is Dire”