We should create more US states
Inside the growing movement to redraw state lines, and why it might be better for liberals and conservatives alike.
If we should give tax autonomy to US states, maybe we should also create new ones.
After all, as we’ve seen, our smaller local governments better represent us than our national ones, and democracy works better in small groups. Maybe that means we should create even smaller ones.
A growing separatist movement aims to do just that: Redraw state lines to better represent communities. The “Greater Idaho” movement, for one, picked up steam in 2024 when 13 Oregon counties approved ballot measures to join Idaho. These rural counties make up 65% of Oregon by land, but only 12% of its population, with 500,000 people who feel they are more culturally aligned with their rural neighbor than their urban coast.
Indeed, the rural/urban divide is central to this movement, with “New California” similarly aiming to separate inland counties from urban centers like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Sacramento. Unaligned with the way liberal cities are run, these largely agrarian counties prefer smaller governance with lower taxes and spending. The proposal would split land unevenly but the population in half, with 20 million people living in California and 20 million in New California.
From 2020 through 2024, 33 out of 102 Illinois counties similarly passed nonbinding referendums in favor of separating “New Illinois” from Chicago’s polar center. As in New California, the movement’s organizers have taken to drafting a mock state constitution and drawing up plans for their legislative and judicial branches. Three counties in Maryland similarly wish to leave the Baltimore to DC corridor and join neighboring West Virginia—in 2021, a group of elected officials even sent a letter to West Virginia’s legislature asking to be admitted into the state, to which the governor replied “come on down!” One group, Divide NY, wants to divide New York into three autonomous regions—New York City, Long Island (as “New Montauk”), and the rest of the state (“New Amsterdam”), each with its own regional legislature and governor. Even Washington and Nevada have nascent movements to partition their states, separating rural counties from urban ones.
Separatist movements are nothing new. There have been more than 200 attempts to create new US states, but none have been successful since the Civil War when West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1863.
