Calexit: Leftists File Papers to Secede, Form New Confederacy

A group of left-wing Californians, frustrated with the recent election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, has filed an application to put a secession referendum — “Calexit” — on the 2018 ballot.

The East Bay Times reports that the group, called Yes California, intends to circumvent the U.S. Congress:

A “yes” vote would trigger a special election the following March in which residents would decide if “California should become a free, sovereign and independent country.”

Another “yes” vote would require the governor of the newly minted “Republic of California” to apply to the United Nations for membership.

California has been moving in the opposite direction, politically, from the rest of the country for several years.

As former Assemblyman Tim Donnelly noted earlier this week at Breitbart News, looking back on the recent election: “While blue states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan turned red for Trump, California turned a deeper shade of blue.”

While some expect California’s left-wing policies to radiate outward to the rest of the country — especially if there is an “amnesty” for illegal immigrants — others have given up hope, given Trump’s victory, and simply wish to secede, taking the nation’s most populous state and the world’s sixth-largest economy out of the Union.

Gov. Jerry Brown has even joked about the idea. In March, he told a union gathering: “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country.”

Proponents of secession will need 585, 407 valid signatures for their referendum to qualify for the 2018 ballot. An effort to split the state into six separate states failed to qualify in 2016 for lack of signatures.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.