Louisiana

Divided states of America: From Oregon to Louisiana, campaigns for secession are taking place at local and state levels – and some are succeeding

Published

2 years ago

May 26, 2024

Divided states of America: From Oregon to Louisiana, campaigns for secession are taking place at local and state levels – and some are succeeding

In an increasingly divided United States of America, a radical solution to resolve fraught political differences is gaining momentum: secession.

Be it the campaign for Texas to quit the US and form its own republic or efforts by red counties in Oregon to join Idaho, movements are gaining support at both local and state levels.

In nearly every case, the campaigns have been formed in conservative areas by voters eager to break away from the progressive leaders who govern them.

Some are a pipe dream. Texas is unlikely to depart the union any time soon, despite the optimism of those leading its ‘Texit’ independence campaign.

But several localized efforts have succeeded – or gained enough support to be taken seriously.

DailyMail.com recently reported that voters in thirteen counties of eastern Oregon now support secession from the state to join Idaho by redrawing state lines.

More than 2,000 miles away in Louisiana, the new city of St George was recently incorporated after wealthy residents controversially voted to separate from Baton Rouge over claims of crime issues and a poor education system.

Here, DailyMail.com explains some of the most prominent and longstanding secession campaigns in the country.

East Oregon

Travel 200 miles south east of Oregon’s uber-progressive capital, Portland, and you’ll reach Crook County, a picturesque and sparsely populated region where agriculture and livestock drive the local economy.

The way of life is vastly different from that of Portland’s metropolis, which has been blighted in recent years by crime, drug use and homelessness.

Earlier in May, Crook County became the 13th county in eastern Oregon to formally support starting the process of redrawing the state’s border to create a Greater Idaho.

More than a dozen fed-up liberal counties in eastern Oregon have voted in support of measures to start negotiations to secede from the state and join conservative Idaho

Crook County became the 13th to approve the Greater Idaho Measure following a vote

Supporters say they’re disillusioned by the state’s Democratic leaders, whose efforts to decriminalize drugs and defund police have backfired spectacularly. They want their counties to be absorbed into a ‘Greater Idaho’, essentially joining the neighboring state which is overwhelmingly Republican.

‘The Oregon/Idaho line was established 163 years ago and is now outdated,’ according to the movement. ‘It makes no sense in its current location because it doesn’t match the location of the cultural divide in Oregon.

‘We want an economy that is not held back by Oregon regulations and taxes, including environmental regulations.

‘We’ll still have federal and Idaho regulations, and that’s plenty. Idaho knows how to respect rural counties and their livelihoods.’

The recent vote by Cook County is largely symbolic but indicates majority support in eastern Idaho to open negotiations for the Greater Idaho project.

Campaigners say their wishes can no longer be ignored.

St George, Louisiana

St George became Louisiana’s newest incorporated city in April after a years-long fight which started as a campaign to create a new school district.

The predominantly white, wealthy area has seceded from Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital.

The seismic – and highly controversial – victory means St George residents are no longer Baton Rouge taxpayers and will take control of many public services.

Supporters of the new city claimed that Baton Rouge’s city-parish government is poorly run, with high crime rates and bad schools.

Opponents labeled their campaign ‘racist’ and said it creates a ‘white enclave’. St George’s population is around 70 percent white, while an estimated 52.4 percent of Baton Rouge are black and African American. Supporters vehemently deny that race is a factor.

The predominantly white, wealthy area of St George has seceded from Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital

The campaign initially started as an attempt to create a new school district for St George. It later became a bolder effort to create the new city.

In April, after years of legal wrangling, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled the City of St George could be incorporated, separating it from Baton Rouge.

Their success has given hope to other similar localized campaigns – but also highlights the political and economic consequences of such a radical move.

A 2014 study by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber found that the effects of the partition would be economically devastating for the remainder of Baton Rouge, immediately creating a $53 million budget shortfall.

Texas

The ‘Texit’ movement to withdraw Texas from the United States and form an independent sovereign state has simmered for decades.

Advocates for this radical campaign claim it has been boosted in recent years by broader political divisions in America – not least surrounding the migrant crisis.

But unlike other secession campaigns at a local or state level, breaking away from the United States entirely could prove impossible. Many scholars argue that the constitution does not allow any state to quit the union.

Polling has found growing support in recent years for an independent Texas.

In 2009, a Rasmussen Reports survey found only 18 percent of people supported secession. A separate poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies in February 2024 found the total had increased to 33 percent.

Texas independence gained traction after the federal U.S. Border Patrol cut down razor wire along the Texas-Mexico border, only for the state to erect new fencing in defiance

The leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), Daniel Miller, told DailyMail.com in February that political tensions at the border with Mexico ‘highlighted the broken relationship’ between Austin and Washington, D.C.

His comments came amid a stand off between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and President Joe Biden over security measures at the Mexico border.

Miller also made the ambitious claim that independence could be achieved in three decades. His campaign points out that out that Texas has the 8th largest economy in the world, valued at more than $2.4trillion by the IMF, and was a net contributor to the U.S. economy

But experts say it’s unrealistic to expect that Texas could simply withdraw from the US and maintain its economic power.

Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project, said supporters of secession didn’t like to think of the downsides, like how federal dollars that paid for public education, transportation, or border security would be replaced.

‘Essentially, the belief is that you can have the same government you have now, but just remove the relationship to the federal government and stop paying federal taxes, and just live in Texas,’ Blank said. ‘That’s just an impossibility.’

Lost Creek, Texas

Secession campaigns in Texas aren’t confined to the statewide attempt to leave the union.

Earlier this month, the wealthy Austin neighborhood of Lost Creek voted to leave the city in response to issues with crime and public services.

Lost Creek was forcibly annexed by Austin in 2015. The controversial measure, which also included the annexation of several other neighborhoods, meant residents became city taxpayers.

But on May 4, Lost Creek and two other areas voted to disannex, which removes them from the city limits and overhauls their taxation and the delivery of certain public services including policing.

Lost Creek, a rich enclave in the west side of Austin, voted with a whooping 91 percent to break away from Austin during a May 4 election

Like St George in Louisiana, Lost Creek is a wealthy area which has separated from a city where average incomes are lower and the demographics are more diverse.

‘What an FU to the Mayor and Council of Austin,’ tweeted local retired judge and attorney Bill Aleshire on election night.

Following the vote, Lost Creek’s law enforcement and fire response will now be handled by Travis County. Some public services will still be managed by the city.

Austin is understaffed by 483 officers after the former mayor and city council went to war with the police in 2020, slashing the department’s budget by a third.

‘We are our own little community, and I think that’s how we should be treated,’ said Lost Creek resident Rachel Cole.

‘State of Jefferson’

The movement spanning swathes of Northern California and southern Oregon to create a ‘State of Jefferson’ epitomizes the view in many rural communities that they are neglected – and misunderstood – by elected leaders in urban capitals.

Efforts to create a State of Jefferson date back to the late 19th, making it one of the oldest secession campaigns of its kind in America.

Today, the movement involves rural, majority conservative areas in Northern California and southern Oregon seeking to create their own state free from their currently liberal-minded leaders.

Like attempts to remove Texas from the US, the likelihood a state of Jefferson will ever be created is tiny – but that has not dampened the efforts of some campaigners.

As recently as 2017, a lawsuit was filed aiming to enlarge California’s legislature, arguing that the senate and assembly were too small for a state of 40 million people. The lawsuit, which gained national attention but was unsuccessful, was intended to force lawmakers into looking at splitting the state.

A year earlier during the 2016 presidential election, California counties inside the proposed state of Jefferson voted overwhelmingly in favor of Donald Trump, while the rest of the state supported Hilary Clinton. The difference was touted by State of Jefferson supporters further credibility for their campaign.

The State of Jefferson already has its own seal which consists of two Xs which represent a ‘double cross’. The seal is intended to illustrate the regions inside the proposed state have been left behind by California and Oregon’s leaders.

Buckhead, Georgia

The campaign to split Buckhead from the city of Atlanta has echoes of the secession efforts in St George and Lost Creek.

Buckhead is an affluent area at the heart of Atlanta’s economy and has more conservative and white residents than many other parts of the city.

Efforts to separate Buckhead from Atlanta date to around 2008 but were delivered a catastrophic blow in March last year when Georgia lawmakers – including several Republicans – voted to reject the movement.

Supporters of secession argued that Buckhead should be a city in its own right because it is responsible for 40 percent of Atlanta’s tax revenues, despite making up less than one fifth of its population.

Bill White, former CEO of the Buckhead Exploratory Committee which campaigned to split the area from Atlanta. White quit the campaign after the idea was rejected by lawmakers

Buckhead is an affluent area at the heart of Atlanta’s economy and has more conservative and white residents than many other parts of the city

They argued that should give them control over their own public services – particularly the police force.

But their arguments also worked against them. Allowing Buckhead to become its own city would be devastating for Atlanta due to the loss of its main commercial area and the tax revenues which come with it.

There was also fierce criticism of an attempt to essentially allow a richer, majority-white neighborhood to divorce itself from the poorer, mostly black city at the heart of the Deep South’s largest urban area.

‘If we jerk the heart out of the city of Atlanta, which is Buckhead, I know our capital city will die,’ said Georgia Senator Frank Ginn, a Danielsville Republican, last year.

Weld County, Colorado

Weld County in the far north of Colorado is touted as one of the richest agricultural areas east of the Rocky Mountains, leading the state’s production of cattle and grain.

But some residents there think state’s Democratic leaders take their contributions for granted.

In the words of one: ‘The state of Colorado is at war with three major economic drivers for Weld County: small businesses, agriculture, and oil and gas.’

That sentiment is a driver behind the ambitious campaign to separate Weld County, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968, from Colorado and join Wyoming to the north.

All states have at least some support for secession from the country, according to a recent poll

Leaders of the campaign have registered a political committee named ‘Weld County Wyoming’ to try and get a referendum on the idea.

But the efforts have come up against fierce opposition, even within the county itself.

Tommy Butler, a councilmember in Weld County’s most populous city, Greeley, said: ‘I absolutely love living in Colorado. For those that don’t love living here, there are certainly less ridiculous ways of moving to Wyoming.’

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Louisiana

As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide – Inside Climate News

Published

7 hours ago

May 30, 2026

Press Room

As Seas Rise, Louisiana Faces a Choice: Plan for Movement or Let Crisis Decide – Inside Climate News

The shoreline of Louisiana has never been still or fixed, though recent generations have treated it as such.

Since the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago, around when people arrived in what is now the United States, sea levels have repeatedly reshaped aspects of the Gulf Coast. But today, human-caused warming is accelerating that ancient process, pushing Louisiana’s dynamic shoreline into conflict with cities, roads, ports and levees built to contain and stabilize nature.

A new study in Nature Sustainability argues that this history is a guide to what comes next. Coastal Louisiana, the authors write, is ground zero for coastal climate adaptation: a place where rising seas and sinking land are already reshaping where people live, and where planning for movement could offer more agency than crisis-driven displacement.

“We have got to remember that when people first came to North America 20,000 years ago, there had already been a lot of climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, a co-author of the paper and professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University. “There’s been a lot of sea level rise in the region, and Indigenous populations have always moved with that shoreline.”

In geologic time, he added, “New Orleans has been there for just a blip. We’ve got to get it out of our heads that this is terra firma.”

The physical stakes are still stark. Southern Louisiana is facing a convergence of rising seas, wetland erosion, stronger storms and land subsidence, much of it worsened by decades of oil and gas canals cut through the coast. The state contains what theIPCC has identified as the world’s most exposed coastal zone, where the shoreline is projected to move more than 30 miles inland of New Orleans.

By comparing today’s warming trajectory with the last interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were similar and seas were much higher, the new study estimates that the region could eventually face three to seven meters of sea-level rise and lose as much as three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands.

Keenan emphasizes that the point is not to forecast a sudden disappearance, but to widen the planning lens: if the coast is already moving, Louisiana has a chance to decide how people, infrastructure and economies move with it.

The danger is assuming everyone has the same ability to act on that choice. Social mobility, he said, depends on financial mobility— which means adaptation cannot simply tell people to move to safer ground. It has to move opportunity, too: jobs, industries, schools and affordable housing beyond the form of voluntary buyouts, a common managed-retreat tool in which governments purchase flood-prone homes and return the land to open space.

“Outmigration is often framed as tragedy or failure, but in some cases it signals agency,” said Brianna Castro, a co-author of the paper, who highlights that this is a chance to plan around choices people are already making.

Nearly all of Louisiana’s coastal zone has lost residents since 2000, and since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, about a quarter of Orleans Parish’s population has left the area, while more than half of rural Cameron Parish has relocated.

“If you build jobs and you build homes, specifically affordable homes, [on] safer ground, people will come,” said Castro, who is a professor of urban sustainability at Yale University’s School of the Environment.

The opportunity, she argues, is to make those moves possible before crisis forces them on harsher terms—with schools, housing and work in places where communities can carry culture forward rather than be scattered by disaster. New Orleans at its core, she said, is not confined to its current footprint.

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“We’re not going to ‘lose’ New Orleans,” she said. “New Orleans has an incredibly rich local culture, and that will carry across the lake.” What must change, she argued, is the assumption that a moving coast can be met with immovable systems.
That idea resonates beyond Louisiana. Vivek Shandas, a professor of earth, environment and society at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, said the paper widens the frame from emergency response to long-term adaptation.

“We’ve been resettling for hundreds of thousands of years as a species,” Shandas said. “I think we’ve gotten really complacent with thinking that once we’ve set up a place and invested in it that it has to be like that forever. But the Earth is a very dynamic and incredibly fluid system.”

For that reason, he said, Louisiana is a “bellwether” for the rest of the country—a place where planners, policymakers and communities can study what adaptation strategies work before the same pressures intensify elsewhere.

“It’s super important for people to recognize that what we’re ultimately calling for in this paper is a public, private, and civic engagement with adaptation policy, planning and practice,” said Keenan.

The study points to immediate action projects, including reviving the canceled Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion—a $3-billion coastal restoration project designed to reconnect the Mississippi River with the Barataria Basin, the rapidly disappearing wetland area on the west bank of the river south of New Orleans—and advancing the Breton diversion on the other side of the Mississippi River.

Unlike dredging, which moves sediment once and deposits it in place, river diversions are designed to restore a more continuous flow of sediment into wetlands, mimicking the processes that built the delta over thousands of years. Dredged material can create land, Keenan said, but it does not sustain the same root systems and ecological processes as a living riverine system.

“We’ve got a big challenge here, but this isn’t about the challenge. This is about the opportunity,” he said. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. There is so much economic opportunity to engage with people and to build things. Data centers won’t give people more jobs, but adapting to climate change just might.”

About This Story

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.

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Louisiana

How is U.S. immigration policy hurting a key Louisiana industry? : Consider This from NPR

Published

17 hours ago

May 29, 2026

Press Room

How is U.S. immigration policy hurting a key Louisiana industry? : Consider This from NPR

Crawfish sit in a water bucket to get clean before they are boiled in New Orleans, Louisiana on Saturday, April 11, 2020.

Claire BANGSER/AFP via Getty Images

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Claire BANGSER/AFP via Getty Images

Louisiana leads the country in crawfish production, bringing more than $300 million to the state each year. What happens when there aren’t enough employees to get them to buyers?

Farmers, landscapers and the hospitality industry have long argued that the U.S. government doesn’t issue enough temporary visas to meet seasonal labor needs.

Current limits under Trump’s second term have worsened that problem.

And farmers in rural Louisiana are feeling that pinch.

NPR’s Debbie Elliott went to Louisiana to find out how.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Christine Arrasmith and Alejandra Marquez Janse, with audio engineering by Tiffany Vera Castro.

It was edited by Russell Lewis and Courtney Dorning.

Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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Louisiana

Louisiana Governor Signs Bill That Will Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses – Marijuana Moment

Published

1 day ago

May 29, 2026

Press Room

Louisiana Governor Signs Bill That Will Send People To Jail For Smoking Marijuana Near College Campuses – Marijuana Moment

Louisiana’s governor has signed a bill that threatens to send people to jail for up to one year if they smoke marijuana within 2,000 feet of a school property—including a college campus.

The legislation from Rep. Gabe Firment (R) was passed by the Senate in a 23-10 vote earlier this month after having cleared the House of Representatives in a 59-34 vote last month.

Gov. Jeff Landry (R), whose staff previously testified in favor of the measure at a committee hearing, quietly signed it into law last week.

The new policy applies to people who violate drug laws “while smoking, vaping, or otherwise abusing such controlled dangerous substance while on any property used for school purposes by any school, within two thousand feet of any such property, or while on a school bus.”

Firment previously told senators at a House committee hearing that his bill “strengthens enforcement of Louisiana drug-free school zone laws by creating a clear behavior-based offense, so that when someone is openly smoking or vaping illegal drug in the school zone, law enforcement can act and prosecutors can prove the case.”

“For marijuana, the bill establishes a clear and consistent penalty—up to a year in jail and $1,000 fine, ensuring that violations in school zones result in real, enforceable consequences,” he said.

Sen. Rick Edmonds (R) argued on the Senate floor ahead of this month’s final vote that the bill, HB 568, “strengthens enforcement of Louisiana drug school zone law by adding a behavior-based trigger for violations and clarifying the penalty structure.”

“The bill does not change what’s legal. It gives law enforcement a practical tool [and] ensures consistent consequences in school zones,” he said.

Kevin Caldwell, Southeast legislative manager for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said the group is “disappointed to see this deeply flawed legislation become law with the signature of Gov. Jeff Landry.”

“His personal lobbying efforts forced many legislators to vote for a bill they know will have profound negative life altering consequences for potentially thousands of Louisianans,” Caldwell told Marijuana Moment. “His solution to every perceived problem has been a return to incarceration. These failed policies of the past should remain in the past.”

“No child in Louisiana will be any safer after this legislation goes into effect,” he said. “But historical data clearly shows who will bear the brunt of this policy. The governor and legislature are seriously out of touch with the people of Louisiana.”

In 2021, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana by removing the threat of jail time for possessing up to 14 grams.

—
Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.

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Meanwhile, a Louisiana Senate bill to let patients with terminal and irreversible conditions use medical marijuana in hospitals is also on Landry’s desk for final action.

Separate legislation to create a psychedelic-assisted therapy pilot program, using opioid settlement dollars to fund clinical trials aimed at developing alternative treatments such as psilocybin, ibogaine and MDMA is also being considered this session.

A lawmaker recently filed a proposal that would create a new state task force to “study and develop findings and recommendations regarding the potential legalization of recreational marijuana.”

Another lawmaker also introduced a bill to create an adult-use marijuana legalization pilot program in the state to determine whether the reform should eventually be expanded and permanently codified.

Rep. Candace Newell (D)—who has long championed legislation to end cannabis criminalization and filed a similar legal marijuana pilot program measure last session—is sponsoring what’s titled the “Adult-Use Cannabis Pilot Program Regulation and Enforcement Act.”

Getting the bill across the finish line could prove complicated in the conservative legislature, however. Newell’s earlier version of the pilot program legislation didn’t advance to enactment last year, and lawmakers that session also rejected other marijuana reform proposals such as one that would have established a tax system to prepare the eventual legalization of adult-use cannabis.

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