Issue #236: 44% of Californians want to secede, 71% like autonomy
Happy July 4, America?
Our June 2025 poll is done, and topline results are up on our website.
And if you’re hungry for more, it’s not too late to donate and join our special event:
Should we vote to be independent . . . or just act like it?
The results of our latest poll seem to favor the latter. Find out more at ICI’s
SPECIAL ZOOM EVENT
for our donors (including paid Substack subscribers)
to dig into the results of the poll.
Save the date! Saturday, July 12
Presentation and Q&A: 2:00 - 3:30
Optional open discussion: 3:30 - 4:00
If you are already a donor or paid subscriber, expect to receive your invitation to the event shortly!
This will be the first in a series of premium events bringing together a community of like-minded Californians, as we explore the future of our great nation-state.
Time to fly the California flag
Californians say local police should arrest rogue federal agents
Save the date! ICI donor event coming July 12
INDEPENDENCE DAY
This Independence Day, take down your American flag
Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square
If you’re a Californian who wants to celebrate your independence this Fourth of July, put your American flags away.
Instead, fly a California flag. Or, even better, run up the flag of your county, municipality, or community. It’s at the local level that you have the best chance to hold onto liberty in this country.
It is altogether fitting and proper that Californians respond by pulling down the flag on the Fourth. Because in all his actions, Trump almost perfectly resembles the lawlessness and war-making by King George III that inspired the Declaration of Independence 249 years ago.
Californians should read that document aloud to each other while removing their U.S. flags. “[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government,” it reads. The abuses in the original declaration’s list are familiar today—“he has refused his Assent to Laws… he has obstructed the Administration of Justice… For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world… For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent…For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences… He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.”
Pulling down the U.S. flag would be even more powerful if California’s governments did it too.
C.C. Marin, director of the Independent California Institute, has been publicly encouraging challenges to the custom of American flag supremacy.
“California’s state flag is a powerful symbol of resistance and unity in the face of a cruel, lawless presidential administration,” Marin wrote recently, adding: “Flags remind us who’s in charge. California is not and has never been a subsidiary of the federal government. We’ve always had our own sovereignty… Voluntarily flying our own flag below the American flag is literally a symbol of inferiority and compliance.”
Marin suggests that those communities who are shielded from flag rules take the lead. Charter cities—which have their own constitutions and are said to have “supreme authority” over their own municipal affairs—are exempt from flag laws. Every major California city, and dozens of smaller ones, including my Pasadena hometown, are charter cities. Special districts—governments that carry out a special duty, like running a hospital or a utility—also don’t have to fly the American flag.
Click here to read full analysis of California’s flag laws and possible strategies.
ICI POLL: CALIFORNIANS READY TO GOVERN THEMSELVES, STOP SHORT OF SECESSION
California Independence Support Hits 'Record High'
A new poll has found 44 percent of Californian adults would vote for the state to leave the United States and become a fully independent nation, which the Independent California Institute (ICI) told Newsweek is a "record high poll result for secession."
James Bickerton, Newsweek
Between June 11 and 23, YouGov polled 500 Californian adults for the ICI, a group that says it aims to "educate the public on greater self-governance for California." The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percent.
It found 44 percent of Californians would vote to "declare California's intention to peacefully and legally withdraw from the United States, through negotiation with the federal government" while 54 percent said they would be opposed.
Speaking to Newsweek, ICI executive director Coyote Marin said "this is a record high poll result for secession," citing 12 other polls conducted by Ipsos, SurveyUSA, YouGov and Zogby, which showed the previous high was 42 percent in a June 2021 YouGov survey.
The latest poll also found 50 percent of Californians said they trust state authorities in Sacramento more than the federal government in Washington D.C., with only 23 percent having the opposite view. This was a stark deterioration in the federal government's position since the last ICI survey in January, which put the figures at 34 percent for Sacramento and 18 percent for Washington D.C. respectively.
In addition, 72 percent of Californians said they want state police to arrest federal immigration officials who "act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law" while 80 percent want California to have stronger border controls "more like a country," with checks for illegal guns and other contraband entering from other states.
Of those surveyed, 74 percent think there should be a pathway to state citizenship for long-term California residents who don't hold American citizenship, and 71 percent think the state would be better off if it negotiated "special autonomous status" within the United States.
Last month, during the row over unrest in Los Angeles, Newsom suggested California could withhold federal tax payments in response to reports of funding cuts from the Trump administration.
What People Are Saying
ICI executive director Coyote Marin said: "This is a record high poll result for secession. At the same time, it indicates that passing the Calexit [California exit] initiative or something similar would be a steep uphill climb, especially without special autonomous status as an option."
Speaking to Newsweek, ICI vice chair Timothy Vollmer said: "Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions. We are ready."
What Happens Next
While there are no immediate proposals for radical constitutional change, the survey indicates that most Californians want more power to be given to their state, possibly handing Newsom a tool in potential negotiations with the federal government.
Join us at ICI special premium zoom event July 12 for donors and paid subscribers for deeper dive into the poll results and Q&A with Executive Director C.C. Marin.
Other comments on the poll results:
Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
The same survey also found that a majority of state residents want to completely forbid California officials from collaborating with immigration enforcement and make it easier for citizens to file lawsuits when “authorities violate the due process rights of immigrants.”
The LAPD has long claimed that it has no role in civil immigration enforcement, but the department is now facing pressure from City Hall and beyond to go further and protect Angelenos who are undocumented.
‘Calexit’? As rift grows with DC, more Californians favor secession
Alan Judd, Straight American News
44% of Californians want to leave the U.S.—Secession support hits record high
Jacob Shelton, San Diego Post
WHAT SHOULD CALIFORNIA DO ABOUT ROGUE ICE AGENTS?
Survey says: Arrest them!
C.C. Marin, Executive Director, Independent California Institute
The poll question was carefully phrased to match case law on the limits of federal supremacy immunity from state prosecution. For example, Clifton v. Cox, a 9th circuit court of appeals case about a federal drug enforcement office that shot an unarmed man in Garberville, CA, reads: “Essential to this determination… is whether the official employs means which he cannot honestly consider reasonable in discharging his duties or otherwise acts out of malice or with some criminal intent.”
In recent weeks, there have been numerous cases of federal officials apparently pushing well past the bounds of their authorities. For example, federal immigration officials recently blasted the front door of a home in Huntington Park, CA where they knew only U.S. citizens were resident, in apparent retaliation for one of the residents colliding with a Border Patrol vehicle in a traffic accident.
Californians also want to strengthen the California Values Act, which limits state and local officials’ collaboration with immigration. 72% want to make it easier to sue California officials who “help federal immigration authorities violate the due process rights of immigrants, in violation of state law,” holding them “civilly accountable.” 57% of Californians want to completely forbid California officials from collaborating with immigration enforcement and to penalize government employees who violate this policy.
On a more positive note, 74% of Californians endorse creating a path to state citizenship for long-term California residents who don’t hold U.S. citizenship.
Join us at ICI special premium zoom event July 12 for donors and paid subscribers for deeper dive into the poll results and Q&A with Executive Director C.C. Marin.
Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
Libor Jany, LA Times
The reported kidnappers, it turned out, were special agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Police Chief Jim McDonnell defended the officers’ response, saying their first responsibility was to keep the peace and that they had no authority to interfere with the federal operation.
The incident was one of more than half a dozen in recent weeks in which the LAPD responded to federal immigration enforcement actions that were called in as kidnappings.
The presence of local police officers at the scenes — even if they are not actively assisting ICE — has led some city leaders to question the department’s role in an ongoing White House crackdown that has swept up hundreds of immigrants and sown fear across Southern California.
Incidents of impostors masquerading as law enforcement have compounded the situation, along with rumors — so far unverified — that federal authorities have enlisted bounty hunters or private security contractors for immigration arrests.
Trained volunteers patrol L.A. streets as ICE raids intensify
Myriam-Fernanda Alcala Delgado, Capital & Main
Such patrols are nothing new. Since the civil unrest that erupted after the beating of Rodney King in 1992, Unión del Barrio has operated community patrol networks to monitor for law enforcement activity and other potential dangers to residents in neighborhoods across California. But the environment has become more treacherous in recent weeks. There has been an increase in ICE operations across the city, including masked officers detaining suspected undocumented immigrants from local stores, street shops and neighborhoods. Their enforcement actions have led to protests in Los Angeles and pushback from residents and organizers alike.
In addition, Unión del Barrio — along with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — has drawn the attention of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who alleged in a letter sent to the groups in mid-June that they are providing “logistical and financial resources” in support of civil unrest and “aiding and abetting criminal conduct.” The letter calls on the groups to “cease and desist” their operations.
In response, Unión del Barrio said in a June 15 statement, “The objective of Mr. Hawley’s letter was to intimidate us and compel Unión del Barrio to stop organizing the self-defense of our communities.”
ICE raids spur aid network in Orange County
Spencer Custodio and Julie Leopo, Voice of OC
Orange County community groups, activists and many residents aren’t waiting for local politicians to help curb the impact of ICE raids.
They’re not waiting for official local government programs to give them critical assistance.
Community leaders have also established a network of direct aid to some of OC’s most impacted families.
There’s an increasing focus on the ICE raids from local residents and community organizations after a viral video made its rounds online, showing a violent arrest in Santa Ana – where federal agents punched a man on the ground before handcuffing him.
Immigrant advocacy groups, like the OC Rapid Response Network, are providing direct aid to families impacted by the immigration sweeps – money given to people who can’t go to work out of deportation fear or funds sent to a family whose breadwinner was caught up in the sweeps.
ICE fears shut down July Fourth events in multiple California cities
Farley Elliott, SF Gate
Several Southern California cities have discontinued plans for various July Fourth events, citing safety concerns and immigration enforcement in public posts announcing the cancellations. The suburban Los Angeles cities, each overwhelmingly Latino in population, have scuttled planned movie screenings and Independence Day celebrations as fears of ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to ripple through the state.
Immigration enforcement fears have severely impacted businesses and communities across the state. Flea markets in Northern California and swap meets in Orange County have suffered from cratered sales, while many popular street vendors across Southern California have either closed entirely or gone underground. Church services, graduation ceremonies and other events have also seen dramatically reduced attendance.
Los Angeles County, home to nearly 10 million people, continues to grapple with the ongoing effects of federal enforcement and immigration raids, as tips, community notices and videos of ICE raids and detainments spread daily across social media and sites like local news organization L.A. Taco. While firm numbers are understandably difficult to ascertain, by some estimates, nearly a million people in Los Angeles County are living in the U.S. without legal permission, and one in three are immigrants.
Man possibly posing as Border Patrol agent arrested in Huntington Park
Ruben Vives, LA Times
Huntington Park Police Chief Cosme Lozano said that the arrest occurred at 10 p.m. on June 24 in the 7000 block of S. Alameda Street, after police officers came across a silver Dodge Durango with tinted windows that was illegally parked in a handicap zone.
Lozano provided details of the arrest during a Friday afternoon news conference at Huntington Park City Hall and included a large photo of Diaz and a table that displayed the items recovered from inside his vehicle, including radios, cell phones and more than a dozen U.S. Homeland Security notices from 2022 to “detain, remove or present alien.”
At least one document included a list of names with asterisks drawn next to them. Another list included about a dozen names next to room numbers and the words “present.”
Lozano said when officers came across the Dodge Durango, they noticed that the vehicle did not have a handicap placard and was missing a front license plate. When they got closer they could see the vehicle was equipped with red-and-blue visor lights, mounted radios resembling police equipment and a semi-automatic firearm magazine.
The officers initially believed the Durango was an unmarked police vehicle. But when they ran the license plate with a police dispatcher, they learned that it was registered to a resident in Los Angeles, not a law enforcement agency.
Farmworker youth take to the streets as deportations and displacement threaten their parents
Davod Bacon, Civil Eats
In Santa Maria, California, where 80 percent of the resident farm workforce is undocumented, deportation threats are a daily reality. Growers, and the Trump administration, are focused on hiring temporary, H-2A guest workers, which means there are fewer jobs, too.
This March 30, the day before Cesar Chavez’s birthday, a high school student named Cesar Vasquez walked up the rise. He was surrounded by other young protesters, all from Santa Maria farmworker families, 80 percent of whom are undocumented. He turned to face the several hundred marchers who’d paused there, and began reciting a stream of consciousness poem, fierce gestures punctuating his emotion-filled words. The noisy crowd before him grew silent.
As Vasquez spoke, the strawberry season was just getting underway—the time of year when people depend on going back to work after months of winter and unemployment. Instead of relief, however, most farmworkers this year have found themselves swinging between fear of being picked up by “la migra” on their way to work and anger that wages haven’t gone up despite the sharp rise in rents and grocery bills.
POLICE STATE COMING TO CALIFORNIA
Opinion: Trump is trying to turn California into a police state. Here’s what’s coming next
Brett Wagner, J. Holmes Armstead, SF Chronicle
Stir something up, wait for your loyal base to call on its dear leader to restore order.
Send in more troops, provide that “iron fist” for which your followers yearn, tighten your grip on power.
Wrap yourself in the flag, flood the zone with propaganda, rinse/repeat.
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Marines are now stationed on the California border. Newsom’s office calls it ‘mission creep’
Wendy Fry, CalMatters
Some Marines there told CalMatters on Wednesday that they are out in Campo patrolling the border twice a day.
That’s a change from how Marines have operated in Southern California since President Trump took office. Until now, Marines have been limited to a supporting role, adhering to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which keeps the armed forces away from civilian law enforcement.
But Trump has long hinted at using the armed forces in unprecedented ways at the border to deal with what he describes as “an invasion.”
And recently, the Trump administration shifted immigration enforcement northward toward the interior of California. Border Patrol agents have been seen chasing farmworkers through strawberry fields in Oxnard and swarming workers in unmarked cars at bus stops in inner-city Los Angeles.
The Marines have not disclosed detaining anyone in California. Active-duty Army soldiers patrolling the border in New Mexico earlier this month reported turning people over to immigration authorities, a change that illustrated escalating immigration enforcement by military service members.
DAMAGE TO CALIFORNIA GROWS
California’s National Guard fire crews are operating at 40% capacity due to Trump’s deployment
Hayley Smith, LA Times
Task Force Rattlesnake is made up of more than 300 members of the California National Guard who work at the direction of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Only six crews are left to prepare for and potentially respond to fires, down from nine just a week ago, according to the governor.
“With peak fire season well underway across California, we need all available resources to protect communities,” Newsom said in a statement. “President Trump: rescind your illegal order and get the Guard back to the critical firefighting and prevention work that actually keeps communities safe.”
CalGuard’s reduced firefighting capacity comes as the president weakens other agencies that help the state prepare for and respond to wildfires, including the U.S. Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity. The Forest Service has lost about 3,400 employees since Trump took office due to layoffs and buyouts, and is contending with budget cuts, funding freezes and a renewed focus on timber production, among other changes from the Trump administration.
There are currently five active blazes in the state, according to Cal Fire. So far this year, the agency has responded to 2,990 fires that have burned through nearly 93,000 acres.
Trump’s attack on CA environmental law brings us closer to climate catastrophe
Trump wants to destroy the ability of states to chart their own course on combating climate change.
Sasha Abramsky, Truthout
Trump, far and away the most anti-environment modern president, has long had California’s state-level environmental standards in his sights. That includes targeting the half-century-old EPA waivers which allow the Golden State to establish pollution and emissions standards for vehicles that go above and beyond the federal minimums. In the last years of the MAGA leader’s first administration, he pushed to roll back the waivers, resulting in a lengthy legal battle that was still unresolved when Joe Biden entered office, and his administration declined to defend the position of its predecessor.
Now, in version 2.0 of Trump’s presidency — with the entire federal government weaponized against climate research, mitigation efforts, and any policies that could move us away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable fuel alternatives — that campaign against California has accelerated. The gutting of the 2035 internal combustion engine phaseout effort is one part of this. The ongoing effort to eliminate the right of the state’s Air Resources Board to set its own tailpipe emissions standards is another. Meanwhile, on the federal level, these efforts include the attacks on universities and on climate science and the gutting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies responsible for generating climate data. And this past week, the Supreme Court also put its thumb on the scales, ruling that a group of fuel producers could sue California over its vehicle emissions standards.
Why the Trump admin’s immigration sweeps threaten California’s population, economy
Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters, Times of San Diego
In fact, during the last Trump administration, California’s population declined in part because immigration to the state slowed down after the White House put up increased obstacles to enter the U.S., according to the state’s chief demographer, though COVID-19 didn’t help. The Newsom administration is worried about history repeating itself enough to cite Trump’s immigration policies as an economic risk in the state budget forecasts.
Key business sectors, including hospitality and construction, rely on the labor of workers in the U.S. without legal authorization, who themselves are a small portion of California’s immigrant population. The state’s leading tech companies, major drivers of state wealth, overwhelmingly employ highly educated people born abroad.
A full third of the state’s prime working-age population is made up of immigrants, including immigrants in the country without authorization. That latter group represents roughly a tenth of the state’s workers, said Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at UC Davis who studies the economic impact of immigrants. And despite popular rhetoric, California workers living here without legal authorization fill jobs that few legal residents want.
Most of the undocumented workers in California have been here for a long time — an average of 15 years, Peri said.
“They have family and they have kids who are American citizens normally,” Peri said. “So these are people very well integrated in the economy of California.”
More than a quarter of the state’s population was born abroad; double the national average. Nearly half of California’s children were born to an immigrant parent and more than half of California’s immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens.
Trump administration freezes $6.8 billion in federal education funds; California hit hard
Howard Blume, LA Times
Although the frozen funds make up less than 1% of California’s total education budget, they have an outsize cumulative effect. And they involve dollars that already have been accounted for in terms of staff hired and programs planned. The disruption would be substantial — and state education leaders, including Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, said the problems are unfolding immediately.
“There have been many rumors about the Trump Administration cutting education funding, and now that rumors have become reality, it is worse than we imagined,” Thurmond said in a statement to The Times. “Trump is illegally impounding billions of dollars appropriated by Congress to serve students this fiscal year.”
Word of the federal action began to trickle out to worried school systems Monday afternoon. The notification, in an email from the federal Department of Education, was 84 words in length — and, according to education officials and advocates, included no amplification:
“Given the change in Administrations, the Department is reviewing the FY 2025 funding for the [Title I-C, II-A, III-A, IV-A, IV-B] grant program(s), and decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year,” the email began.
“Accordingly, the Department will not be issuing Grant Award Notifications obligating funds for these programs on July 1 prior to completing that review.”
To fight Trump's funding freezes, states propose a new gambit: Withholding federal payments
Democratic lawmakers have introduced the novel and untested approach in at least four states.
Adam Edelman, nbc news
The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure.
These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.
In all four states, the bills direct state officials to withhold payments owed by the states to the federal government if federal agencies have acted in contravention of judicial orders or have taken unlawful actions to withhold funds previously appropriated by Congress. Payments available for withholding include the federal taxes collected from the paychecks of state employees, as well as grant payments owed back to the federal government.
Asian American leaders urge their communities to stand by Latinos, denounce ICE raids
Melissa Gomez, LA Times
Organizers say many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants working in the country without documentation. Dozens of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders had been on indefinite hold have been detained after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigration attorneys and advocacy groups.
In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants whose deportation orders had been stayed — in some cases for decades — have been told that those orders will now be enforced.
The Asian immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them subject to deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens.
While an estimated 79% of undocumented residents in L.A. County are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16% of people in the county without legal authorization, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the U.S., Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadorans.
Trump administration launches probe into University of California system
AlJazeera News Service
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California (UC) system, the latest instance of his feud with higher education.
The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it would investigate efforts by the UC system to increase the diversity of staff, accusing the school of employing practices that “openly measure new hires by their race and sex”.
The school defended its hiring practices on Thursday in response to the investigation announcement.
“The University of California is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” a spokesperson for the UC system said in a statement. “The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported.”
Poll shows majority of California voters offer strong support for immigrants
Contact: Louis Pitter Bruce, The California Endowment
The poll shows strong support for undocumented immigrants as valued community members. A clear majority of voters also favor maintaining access to Medi-Cal coverage for all Californians regardless of their immigration status.
Support cuts across the electorate’s major demographic groups, including voters across age groups, race and ethnicity and across various regions of the state.
“Contrary to narratives in the national discourse, Californians overwhelmingly support immigrants and see them as essential members of our communities and our state. It’s an indisputable truth that immigrants make invaluable contributions to our state and the nation and deserve to have safe and healthy lives. We stand in solidarity with those in our immigrant communities who now face imminent threats, and we remain resolute in the fight for health and justice for all,” said Brenda Solórzano, president and CEO, TCE.
The sentiments in the poll are rooted in voters’ positive view of the important contributions immigrants make to California. A majority of voters agreed that undocumented Californians are integral to communities, families, and the health of the state’s economy, pay taxes, and are long-term members of our communities. Poll results also showed:
58% of those polled agreed that undocumented immigrants contribute approximately $8.5 billion in state and local taxes each year and deserve to benefit from the taxes they pay.
72% of voters polled offer broad agreement that immigrants are a vital part of the California economy.
75% agree that health care is a human right.
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