President Donald Trump at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
After Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 presidential election, articles on Americans becoming expatriates in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world were not hard to find. Liberal American actress Rosie O'Donnell, for example, is now living in the Republic of Ireland and plans to stay there indefinitely now that Trump is back in the White House.
American political refugees don't necessarily leave the U.S. altogether; some move to more liberal states.
In an article published on April 23, The Guardian's Ed Pilkington takes a look at Americans who moved to other states for political reasons.
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"America is on the move," Pilkington explains. "Hundreds of thousands of people are packing up boxes, loading U-Hauls, and shipping out of state in an urgent flight towards safety. They're being propelled by hostile political forces bearing down on them because of who they are, what they believe, or for their medical needs. All are displaced within their own country for reasons they did not choose. They are the new generation of America's internal refugees, and their ranks are growing by the day."
New England schoolteacher John Dube, for example, looked at job opportunities in Vermont after New Hampshire passed a law outlawing the teaching of "critical race theory" in public schools. Dube, according to Pilkington, was "angered by the edicts of Orwellian thought police in a state whose motto is 'Live free or die.'"
Because of a strict abortion ban in Idaho, Kylie Cooper moved to Minnesota. And a former Texas resident identified as "Sandra" in Pilkington's article moved to the West Coast because of an anti-transgender law.
Kristy Lewis left Florida for Rhode Island because of far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis' policies, including the "Don't Say Gay" law and his attacks on academia. Now, she is a scientific researcher at the University of Rhode Island.
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But Pilkington notes that if oppressive laws are passed at the national level, moving to another state may not be enough.
"This month, (Lewis) received a letter from the Trump Administration informing her that two federal grants she had already been awarded for research into offshore wind energy, amounting to $1.5m, had been cancelled," Pilkington reports. "They no longer met 'funding priorities,' she was told. Lewis fled Florida to escape the attack on her science. Now there is nowhere left to hide."
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Read Ed Pilkington's full article for The Guardian at this link.