My column for the San Francisco Chronicle on CalExit
It's a silly idea.
California secessionists are at it again. Do they have a chance this time ?
By Jack Ohman
April 28, 2025
CalExit is back, and there are probably more Californians considering this scenario because of the not-even-at-100-days daze of the Trump administration maelstrom.
Originally conceived of as a conservative separatist effort — “effort” is a generous term here — now CalExit is spearheaded by an actual liberal who’s disgusted by President Donald Trump and his antics.
CalExit’s leadership wants to get a ballot measure qualified for November 2026.
That will require the legally valid signatures of 546,000 California registered voters and, given the current political climate, doesn’t seem like an overly heavy lift.
California’s nearest analogous political fever dream is Quebec, where the French-speaking Canadian province has undergone various convulsions for decades to leave the country.
It went nowhere.
So too will CalExit.
The original leader of CalExit was a peripatetic MAGA anti-gay-marriage guy named Louis J. Marinelli, for whom the term gadfly might be a little generous. Maybe “Russian tool” would be more apt. Marinelli even left the United States for Russia and lived there for several years. Coincidence? Nope.
Russia has a particular political interest in separatist movements, and now that they’ve got a U.S. president who seems to be, at baseline, in Vladimir Putin’s thrall as an aspiring authoritarian or, more frighteningly, perhaps an actual Russian asset.
CalExit’s new leader, Marinelli’s former partner in schism, is Marcus Ruiz Evans, who owns “CalExit LLC,” and is now on the outs with Marinelli.
Without getting too deep in the weeds, Evans and Marinelli eventually split up, angrily, and, well, it’s hard to lead a separatist movement when your leaders are separating.
Evans seems to mostly be on the up-and-up, if ridiculously naïve — unlike Marinelli, who is currently an unnamed co-conspirator in a case brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida, accused of working with a Russian operative named Aleksandr Ionov.
Ionov’s main hustle is to encourage states such as California, Florida and Georgia to break off from the United States — all of which have visible separatist movements that have been influenced by Russia.
Secession is illegal, incidentally. Note the unpleasantness in our nation from 1861 to 1865 when 11 states did just that.
Since Evans doesn’t seem to be doing this for any reason other than he actually believes this, let’s take him at his word and examine the ramifications of California going off on its own.
First, if California were to pass a ballot measure, which I don’t think would happen, it doesn’t matter. It’s advisory.
Second, no doubt you’d see a significant number of voters supporting it. I could easily see it getting 30% or more just as a “the hell with this, I’m protesting MAGA” gesture.
Third, California or any other state’s exit would have to be approved by both houses of Congress. As Evans noted as a prime reason to separate, California is a donor state: Last year, it sent $83 billion more than it collected in federal taxes. The Rockefeller Institute noted that California paid out $692 billion in taxes to the federal government in 2022, but got back only $609 billion in federal funding. Congress wouldn’t throw out California for that reason alone, even if the Freedom Caucus would be all over it.
Fourth, doesn’t a nation need an army of some kind? Well, we have over 24,000 members of the California National Guard. While they are all patriots serving their fellow Californians, they also have this little U.S. constitutional oath they swore to uphold.
Of course, so does Trump, but it’s feeling more and more suggestive and performative these days. Maybe that’s why some Californians are exit-adjacent.
Even if you got every California National Guard member to be our new standing army, maybe some of them might not be down with it.
Short answer for viewers at home: We won’t have an army.
Fifth, would all of those small businesses and other corporate behemoths like Nvidia, Apple, Cisco, Google, Adobe, Wells Fargo and Salesforce want to be on the Island of California? Unlikely.
Oh, and sixth, does California have an open border or a Checkpoint Charlie at every incoming highway and road? We don’t currently need to show our passports to get into Nevada, but that would require a lot of logistics, maybe the CalExit people didn’t factor in.
Seventh, what would our relationship be with, ahem, the former United States of America? Big trading partner or bitter military rival?
Eighth, would the Giants and the Dodgers get to play outside California and against our enemy Uncle Sam’s teams, or would it be strictly intrastate play? Actually, let’s give Red America the Dodgers, since they were oh-so-happy to meet with Trump the other day. We’ll take the Twins. Nice folks.
Ninth, are we all alone in this? Do we hook up with Washington and Oregon, who don’t even like us much, and then on to an alliance with Canada, or fragments of it? What about Mexico? Hawaii? Do we become allies of China, since they’re right over there and all?
And, oh my God, what about the future of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast?
Do you see how silly this all is?
I haven’t even mentioned barring Red America children from Disneyland. Do we stop exporting Hollywood movies to Iowa? No more avocados to Minnesota?
What do we call the leader of California? President Newsom? Prime Minister Newsom? If Marinelli had his way, Czar Newsom?
Like a lot of things, CalExit falls apart immediately upon any sort of critical examination.
Probably better to stay in the United States and do what Californians have always done to the rest of the country:
Be cooler than they are.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman
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Hey, You Betchans! : Two cartoons today, I hope, and I’ll be working on another Chronicle column as well. Hope you have a great day, and I’ll be lightly flooding your mailbox shortly.—J.