10 Separatist Movements In The United States

Most American separatist movements are far smaller and far less popular than the headlines around them suggest, yet the underlying sentiment is more common than you might expect. In a 2021 Bright Line Watch and YouGov survey, about 37 percent of Americans said they would support their state leaving the Union, a figure that climbed to roughly 66 percent among Republicans in the South. Pollsters were quick to note that those answers track partisan frustration far more than any real intent to break away, and the numbers swing with whoever holds the White House, rising in conservative states under Democratic presidents and in liberal states under Donald Trump. Almost none of the movements below is anywhere close to actually leaving. But each one says something about where and when American discontent tends to boil over. The list runs from the movements drawing the most interest right now to the ones that have faded into history.

Texas

Texas runs the most active secession campaign in the country today. The Texas Nationalist Movement, led by Daniel Miller, pushes for a peaceful, ballot-box exit it brands "Texit," and claims more than 632,000 registered supporters, still a small slice of the state's 31 million people. The cause draws on real history: Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1845 before joining the Union, then seceded to join the Confederacy in 1861. Its modern high point came in 2024, when the group turned in roughly 140,000 signatures to place a nonbinding independence question on the Republican primary ballot. The state GOP kept it off the ballot, but the party platform now formally states that Texas retains the right to secede, and the movement says it will keep filing an independence-referendum bill in the legislature. Hard support for leaving still polls well below a majority, even as a larger share of Texans say they want more autonomy from Washington.

California

California's "Calexit" is the blue-state mirror image, running on the same engine of political grievance. The movement, now led by Marcus Ruiz Evans, first drew national attention after the 2016 election and revived after Trump's return to office in 2024. In January 2025, the California secretary of state cleared a Calexit initiative for signature gathering, aimed at a nonbinding 2028 ballot question: should the state leave the United States and become a free and independent country? Organizers needed about 547,000 valid signatures but pulled the petition in July 2025 to refile and reset the clock, so it has not qualified. With the largest economy of any state and about 39.4 million residents, California is one place where backers argue independence is at least plausible, though support for actually doing it remains a minority view.

Alaska

Alaska's movement just lost its main vehicle. The Alaskan Independence Party, founded by gold miner Joe Vogler on resentment of federal control over Alaskan land, was for years the state's third-largest party, with more than 19,000 registered members. Its peak came in 1990, when Wally Hickel won the governorship on the AIP ticket, the party's only statewide win. Vogler was murdered in 1993, and the party slid into perennial also-ran status. In December 2025, its board voted to dissolve the party outright, concluding that most members were either apathetic or had registered with it by mistake. The state is now notifying those former members that the party no longer exists, though the desire for Alaskan self-reliance that fueled it has not gone anywhere. Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959.

Hawaii

Hawaii's movement is older and rooted in a specific wrong: the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, for which the US Congress formally apologized in 1993. The Nation of Hawaii, led since 1994 by Dennis Pu'uhonua "Bumpy" Kanahele, treats itself as the successor to that kingdom and runs a cultural village at Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo. The broader Hawaiian sovereignty movement splits into camps: some want full independence, some want a "nation within a nation" with federal recognition like a Native American tribe, and others want reparations and control of Hawaiian trust lands. Support is hard to quantify and independence has never been close, but the cause stays active because it is tied as much to cultural survival as to politics. Hawaii joined the US as a state on August 21, 1959.

Cascadia

Cascadia is less a political campaign than a cultural identity. The proposed bioregion would tie Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and sometimes slices of neighboring states and provinces, into one ecologically defined homeland of more than 500,000 square miles, depending on where the lines are drawn. Its boosters lead with environmentalism and bioregionalism rather than any formal exit plan, and the movement is best known for its green, white, and blue "Doug" flag, which turns up at Pacific Northwest soccer matches and street protests. There is no referendum, no party with real traction, and no near-term path to a Cascadian state. As an idea about regional belonging, though, it has held on for decades.

New England

New England independence is more a mood than a structured campaign. No major party is organizing a regional exit, but polling picks up real openness to the idea. In the Bright Line Watch surveys, roughly a third of Northeasterners, and a larger share of the region's Democrats, said they would support their states forming a breakaway union. The six-state region's distinct political identity, traceable to its founding as an English settlement in the 1600s, keeps the notion in circulation even without an organization to carry it.

Vermont

Vermont's secession talk leans left and bookish. The Second Vermont Republic, founded in 2003 by economist Thomas Naylor, called for a peaceful return to the independent status Vermont held as a republic between 1777 and 1791, casting itself as a nonviolent stand against corporate power and federal overreach. Interest peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s, boosted by opposition to the Iraq War, and TIME named the group one of its "Top 10 Aspiring Nations" in 2010. The movement was damaged by reported ties to neo-Confederate figures and never recovered after Naylor died in 2012. Today it survives mostly as a loose network of sympathizers rather than an organized push. Vermont, for the record, was the 14th state, the first added after the original 13.

Lakota

The Republic of Lakotah was framed not as secession but as reclaiming sovereignty. In December 2007, activist Russell Means and the Lakota Freedom Delegation delivered withdrawal papers in Washington, arguing that because the United States had broken its 19th-century treaties, the Lakota were free to reassert independence across parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming. The declaration drew headlines but little backing. Few elected tribal leaders endorsed it, and appeals for recognition from foreign governments went nowhere. After Means died in 2012, the effort lost its driving figure and is now largely symbolic.

The Conch Republic

The Conch Republic is the country that was never meant to be one. On April 23, 1982, Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow declared the Florida Keys independent as a tongue-in-cheek protest after the US Border Patrol set up a roadblock on the only highway off the islands, snarling traffic and treating residents, the self-styled "Conchs," like foreigners crossing a border. The secession lasted about a minute before Wardlow symbolically surrendered and requested foreign aid. It was always theater, and it survives as exactly that, a tourism brand and an annual celebration rather than a serious bid for independence.

The Confederacy And Its Heirs

The Confederate States of America is the one American secession that actually happened, and the one that ended in war. Eleven Southern states left the Union in 1860 and 1861 to preserve slavery, after Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party opposed its expansion into the Western territories. The Confederate government formed in February 1861, the Civil War began at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and the rebellion collapsed in 1865. Its modern echo is the League of the South, founded in 1994 by Michael Hill, which advocates Southern secession and has drifted into white-nationalist politics. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies it as a hate group. Unlike the broad, partisan "national divorce" sentiment the polls capture, this strand carries the explicit baggage of the Confederacy it venerates.

How Real Is Any Of This?

For all the poll numbers, the legal reality is settled. In the 1869 case Texas v. White, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot unilaterally leave the Union, which is why every active effort here aims at nonbinding votes and symbolic declarations rather than a genuine exit. The sentiment behind these movements is real and, by the surveys, fairly widespread, but it follows partisan anger more than any concrete plan, swelling and shrinking with each election. Texas has the most organized campaign, Hawaii's has the deepest historical roots, and most of the rest are small, dormant, or, in Alaska's case, freshly disbanded. The map of American discontent keeps shifting. The map of the United States, so far, has not.