Greater Idaho Movement and Other Secessionist Groups Look to Trump 2.0 as Their Time

The Greater Idaho Movement, a campaign for rural, conservative eastern Oregon to secede from the state and join Idaho, is calling on President-elect Trump to support its cause.The group sent to President-elect Trump this week an open letter, which they also posted to X, asking the incoming president for a meeting and arguing that “helping us achieve this would cement your legacy as a peacemaker and transformational president.”“We need help from your administration to make this happen. The people here overwhelmingly voted for you,” the letter says. “We humbly ask you for your support in helping Eastern Oregonians achieve what the people have said they want, and that’s to join Idaho.”Rural-Urban Fissures GrowThis isn’t the only secessionist or state border change movement gaining momentum these last few years, as the fissures in the rural-urban divide grow deeper along partisan lines. The 2024 election results map that shows a sea of red with blue dots around major cities and coastal areas showcases this divide.“We have a new Congress coming in. We have a new administration. We see this as an opportunity to move this to a national level and get this done,” the executive director of the Greater Idaho Movement, Matt McCaw, tells The New York Sun. “This solves a problem. It gets better government for 400,000 people. It lowers political tension, and it’s an idea that’s popular.”Supporters of Greater Idaho want to leave dark blue Oregon for redder pastures. Since 2020, 13 counties in eastern and central Oregon have voted in favor of joining their neighbor, Idaho. The proposed new state border would run along the Cascade Mountains and move nearly two-thirds of the eastern part of the state into a larger — greater — Idaho. The counties in question voted for Trump in November by an average of 70 percent — a similar percentage to Idaho. These are sparsely populated, rural counties that depend on ranching, timber, and blue-collar industries.Western Oregon, anchored by the cities of Portland and Salem, is home to roughly 85 percent of the state’s population and votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Those in the east say this population imbalance means they’ll never get a state government that reflects their values and priorities. Democrats not only have a trifecta in Oregon state government but also a supermajority in the legislature, where they have passed far-left policies when it comes to drugs, gun control, taxes, abortion, and transgender issues.“The tension doesn’t come from Portland having different values from eastern Oregon. The tension comes from Portland values being forced on eastern Oregon because of the state government,” Mr. McCaw says.The Idaho house voted in 2023 in favor of commencing border talks with the Oregon legislature. The state’s senate has yet to do so. Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, has said he would be open to the idea — if both states’ legislatures approve it.Oregon Refuses To EngageOregon’s legislature, though, has yet to take up the issue. Oregon’s Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, did not return the New York Sun’s request for comment. Both states’ legislatures and then Congress would have to approve any border change to make it happen.“Oregon is refusing to engage, and in essence they’re holding these people in eastern Oregon captive,” Mr. McCaw says. “We’re reaching out to the President and seeing if he can use his office to help break the stalemate and help bring Oregon to the table.”A spokesman for the president-elect did not return the Sun’s request for comment. Trump has made no public comments on Greater Idaho or the handful of other secessionist and state border change movements. His political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, did call for “national divorce” on X last year.“We need a national divorce. We need to separate red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Ms. Taylor Greene posted. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”The New State of New IllinoisIn Illinois, a group is pushing for the state to break off from Cook County — where Chicago is located and 40 percent of the state resides — to form a new state. So far, 33 of Illinois’s 102 counties have voted in favor of a nonbinding referendum to form a state called New Illinois. The movement’s campaign slogan is, “Leave Illinois Without Moving.”Supporters of New Illinois give similar reasons for wanting to break away as Greater Idaho supporters do. The referenda have passed in largely rural, conservative counties that feel they are held hostage to the liberal state policies and Democratic trifecta in state government.California has several secessionist movements, and the calls for “national divorce” come from both sides of the aisle. The movement for an independent Texas, dubbed Texit, declared 2024 a “victory” on Facebook after ten elected Republicans who support the referendum on secession from the United States were elected to the state legislature.A Republican Maine state senator, Eric Brakey, who resigned from office in November after he moved to New Hampshire to lead the Free State Project, is proposing that Maine’s second congressional district join New Hampshire. Maine-2 is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi, is rural, and mostly votes red. The southern coastal areas, anchored by Portland and home to most of the state’s population, vote Democrat.“If you look at the political divide between the first and second districts, it’s clearly two very different political cultures that are actively in a tug of war with each other,” Mr. Brakey tells the Sun. “If the people of Portland and the surrounding areas want to live in a progressive socialist system, then why should they have to fight with the people of the second district to achieve that?”The West Virginia FissureThe last state to form by breaking away from another was West Virginia during the Civil War. Congress is unlikely to approve a new state since it would alter the senate balance. Those pushing statehood for the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico face a similar challenge. Changing state borders but not forming a new state would slightly alter elector calculations in presidential races. Seceding from the United States, as in the case of Texit or New Hampshire’s secessionist movement, face even larger hurdles.Support from Trump for a state border change could be a gamechanger for Greater Idaho, but all these movements are fringe, or at a minimum, longshots. Mr. McCaw says his movement did not send its letter directly to Trump yet because they have no contacts in the administration. They are hoping to make these once he gets in office.What these movements speak to is the real divisions between rural and urban and right and left — and the sort of existential language that is now commonplace in our politics. “This is the last election” was a refrain on both sides of the aisle coming into 2024.What’s more likely now is a revival of the notion of state’s rights. Democrats are preparing their Resistance 2.0 to Trump in blue attorneys general offices across the country, where they are prepping lawsuits to assert their sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment. It seems both sides are now embracing federalism to maintain the policies they feel may be under threat from the federal government.“The problem is not geographic sorting,” Mr. Brakey says. “The more we sort into geographic regions ideologically and also restore Tenth Amendment controls over the federal government so that we can have more localized decision making, I think that’s actually in the long run — if you put those two things together — that’s going to be a recipe for us actually to be able to live with each other and to not go through national divorce.”

Greater Idaho Movement and Other Secessionist Groups Look to Trump 2.0 as Their Time

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