Should we 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. Dividing up states requires approval by all impacted states as well as Congress, something that’s near impossible to pull off. The state being left does not want to cede territory, people, tax income, or political capital and is thus unlikely to agree to separation. Even if it did, Congress wouldn’t get on board. Starting a new state means more senators, or shifting the House of Representatives. Any deal that would result in more Republican Congress members would be blocked by Democrats, and vice versa.
Despite the gridlock, it’s worth considering whether the end result is something we’d want to achieve. In theory, shouldn’t people live in communities that are more like them, and with governments that better represent their interests? Shouldn’t Oregon’s liberal coast be able to govern the way they want to, and shouldn’t Oregon’s conservative half govern the way they prefer it?
I’m especially sympathetic to the urban/rural divide. Cities are more liberal for a reason—residents get a lot of benefits for their tax dollars including sidewalks, public parks, and nice libraries. There are good public schools and hospitals and police forces; residents have access to public transportation, good universities, and plenty of jobs and careers to choose from. But people in rural areas pay the same tax dollars for benefits they don’t see. These areas are more self-sufficient, with small local sheriff’s departments or satellite hospitals. They are more likely to homeschool or homestead rather than rely on public infrastructure or services. They work jobs in the local community, run their own farmer’s markets, and have volunteer fire departments.
Why should people in rural areas be governed the same way as people in urban ones? Why should their budgets be allocated the same way? They have very different societal needs, and much less need for tax revenue. And why should urban areas be governed the way rural places are? They can’t be. The more people there are, the more need they have for infrastructure and organization. For this reason, as smaller communities become bigger ones they naturally become more liberal (and tax more!) as Tomas Pueyo points out in his article “Why the world becomes more progressive.”
Splitting into more states would not only allow for differences between urban and rural governance, but it would better align us culturally. Colin Woodward has long documented the 11 cultural regions of America, each influenced by its own unique history of settlers and colonization.
His map of US cultures aligns with voting maps by county.
It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a future where states separate into more culturally aligned groups along these lines. The western coast separates from inland counties, a North and South Arizona, and an East and West New Mexico. Texas may as well become three states, several northern states might separate into two, so might many southern states.
Would this be a bad thing?
In today’s polarized political landscape, some say yes. Many liberals, for instance, believe that conservative states, if left to their own devices, would start behaving despotically. They’ve banned abortion, after all, do we really want to give even more power to the states? My answer to that is: “not that kind of power.” As I’ve said before, laws and regulations that protect human rights and democratic governance should absolutely be enshrined at the largest possible level of government to keep small states from behaving badly. Slavery and discrimination should not be decided by state, it should be outlawed everywhere. Worker protections and voting rights should not be decided by state, they should be protected everywhere. This is the intention of both US and EU governments where federal law trumps state or country law, keeping small communities from becoming insular and autocratic. (Even though, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work in practice—as the US abortion bans illustrate.)
I am not proposing that federal governments give up their powers to protect people—far from it. What I am proposing is that, at the same time that we protect human rights and democratic governance with the largest possible federal governance layer, as we do now, we also allow decisions regarding taxation, education, healthcare, public transportation, and local infrastructure to take place in the smallest possible government structure and thus work in the best interests of the people who live there. Eastern Oregon shouldn’t be able to treat workers badly, but shouldn’t it be able to charge less taxes since those counties don’t need as many services? Western Oregon shouldn’t be able to interfere with voting rights, but shouldn’t it be able to fund social services for its residents if it wants to?
The question isn’t whether or not we should allow states to become despotic, obviously we shouldn’t. The question is whether we should allow states to decide their own budgets, fund their own education systems, invest in their own roads and fire or flood management if they need it. The question is whether small communities should be allowed to govern in the way that works best for them, rather than in the way that works best for the big city down the street. The question is whether big cities should be able to govern the way they want to, without pushing it on communities in the outskirts who won’t be benefactors.
Maybe they should. And in a world where states can manage their own taxation and control their own budgets, why not create even more states that are better aligned with our communities and could thus govern even more effectively?
After all, my vote was one of 500,000 in Salt Lake County where I live, it was one of 2 million in my state, and it was one of 155 million in my nation. My vote counts quite a lot on the things that matter to me and my life, and not at all at the national level. If my state, and perhaps a smaller state created from it, had tax autonomy, we would have a lot more say in how our money is used for our communities. And our governments would better represent the people who lived in them.
I’ve so far used this hypothetical as a way to think through small governance and autonomy, but I want to return to the point that it’s near impossible to do. The hold out here is liberal cities and states that don’t want to lose power. After all, conservative states largely want tax autonomy for the states, and conservative counties largely want autonomy from liberal counties—Idaho would happily take on those Oregon counties if it could. Conservatives even have a majority in Congress and are in a position to push these ideas forward if they want to—but because they’d need 60% of Congress to agree, they’ll have to get liberals on board to make any changes.
I see this as an opportunity. I have always lived in metropolitan areas—86% of Americans do. I want my taxes to give me and my husband free healthcare. I want my sisters to receive subsidized childcare so they don’t have to choose between earning money and caring for their kids. I want my parents to receive social security and I want to receive it when I’m older. I would love to see my city offer free access to community college so everyone has an opportunity to succeed. I want to live in a place with nice parks and pedestrian streets, and I have lived in places that would provide all of these things if they could—but they can’t because their hands are tied by the federal government and the conservative coalitions living in the outskirts.
Liberal metropolitan areas can’t get what they want because the conservatives in their states don’t need the same things, and conservatives can’t get what they want because the liberals in their big cities need something different. Both can’t raise much in tax revenue because the federal government raises most of it. But if metropolitan areas could break away into their own states, they would gain more Senate representation rather than being diluted by rural votes. If they had tax autonomy, they could fully embrace high-tax, high-service models without interference from federal policy or pressure from conservative regions within their borders.
While it’s true that splitting California would result in a new conservative state, it’s also true that splitting Texas would result in a new liberal state. Liberals should want that addition more than they fear the subtraction.
Liberals should want the same autonomy conservatives do.
If we don’t split into smaller states, liberal voices could stand to lose representation altogether. In pursuit of lower taxes and cost of living, Americans have been steadily moving away from liberal states and diluting themselves into conservative ones. If current population trends continue, liberal states will lose power and conservative states will gain it. As a result, our 2030 census will see an electoral college that shifts dramatically to the right. “The states Kamala Harris won in 2024 will lose house seats and electoral college votes, the states Trump won will gain them,” Ezra Klein explains. “In that electoral college, a democrat could win every single state Harris won in 2024, and also win Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and still lose the presidency.”
Right now, if Californians move to Texas, California loses its liberal stronghold and Texas gains its conservative stronghold. But if we split both into two states, a San Franciscan could move to Austin and maintain liberal representation in Congress, just as a Dallas resident could move to Fresno and maintain conservative representation in Congress. As populations shift, states that become more populous will become more liberal as they grow—just as Salt Lake City, where I live, has. As in many conservative states, we have a Democratic mayor for both our city and our county even as the surrounding rural areas remain Republican.
A country split into even smaller ones would thus mean more autonomy for communities that currently exist in states that don’t represent them, and better representation of all Americans on the congressional floor. And there is no reason we couldn’t build policy in a way that would benefit liberals and conservatives alike. To prevent extreme political shifts new states could be formed in pairs (one red-leaning, one blue-leaning); a bipartisan commission could oversee state formation requests, ensuring fairness between representation; the total number of US Senate seats could be capped, requiring adjustments or restructuring if new states are formed in order to maintain proportionality.
A bi-partisan “American States Empowerment Act” could propose greater tax autonomy and flexible state formation while preserving the unity and economic stability of the United States, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t benefit both sides in the process.
And us most of all.
But I’d love to know your thoughts. Should we create even more US states?
Thanks for reading and thinking with me,
This essay is part of CITY STATE, a collection of seven writers exploring autonomous governance through an online series and print pamphlet.
Creating new states to maintain more even representation between two sides of a political divide reminds me of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led to the rise of the Republican Party. The Missouri Compromise admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state, and states were admitted with a view to keep things even until 1854 when the specious popular sovereignty doctrine caused "Bleeding Kansas."
I wonder if we could create a balance in new states that wouldn't have to be revisited every so often the way it was before the Civil War. Perhaps giving more authority to the states, as you suggest here and develop more in your post "US states should have autonomy" post, would keep them from fighting over the federal government so fiercely every four years.
Your bigger point, of course, is that people will get more of what they want without moving if we had smaller states. That would be a relief.
I had never really thought of framing our divide along the lines of people who want "high tax for high service" [I would summarize this as people who are seeking more social collaboration and interdependence] and those that want to do their own thing as self-sufficiently as possible. Something about this framing has the nice effect of casting either choice as valid, and both complementary to each other.
Anyway. I read this after reading Bryce's piece. Whether you call it anarchist or not, there's a common strain of thought in all these pieces that goes back to reducing base unit of governance and, in the process, building everyone's atrophied muscle for direct democracy. I'm all for it.