'Rebellion': Calls mount for 'soft secession' in response to Trump’s 'abusive' agenda

In response to what she calls President Donald Trump's "abuses and usurpations," Mother Jones writer Clara Jeffrey suggests that blue states starting with California should implement a "soft secession."

Jeffrey points to a California ballot initiative launched in 2013 by venture capitalist Tim Draper in which he argued that, "with some 40 million people, more than the population of the 20 smallest states combined, California was too big, too diverse, to be 'efficiently' governed. So why not break it up into six new 'startups,' a.k.a. states? Instead of two senators, we erstwhile 'Californians' would get 12."

While that initiative failed to get enough signatures, a similar one proposed by Draper after Trump won the 2016 election did, but the Supreme Court blocked it so, Jeffrey says, "Draper gave up."

But Jeffrey argues Draper had a point, saying, "While his motives were murky, Draper tapped into something now excruciatingly felt. ... The assignment of two senators per state, no matter its population, was always a deeply flawed (and deeply racist) proposition. But the unfairness has only gotten more acute."

Between brutal immigration policies and redistricting efforts in California and Texas, she writes, "California, and the country, cannot await the outcome of the midterms to repel Trump’s siege on democracy. More drastic action is required."

The state's sheer size alone and status as the country's largest agricultural state supports Jeffrey's argument that "it’s time to think outside of the electoral box and start flexing our considerable leverage."

Add to that Hollywood's $47.2 billion industry "exerting immeasurable global power" and the fact that the $623 billion tech sector "is even mightier," Jeffries says, and " were California to secede, almost 15 percent of America’s GDP would go with it, and the US could slip behind China as the world’s biggest economy."

Jeffries says California not only has the clout, but the incentive to lead a "financial countervalue rebellion."

"It could learn from the Jimmy Kimmel showdown, she writes, using 'the full weight of blue states’ market power, cultural influence and legal authority to raise the stakes of Republican red-state aggression.'"

Pointing to a Washington Post article written by Democratic strategists that urged "Democrats ... to go nuclear," Jeffries says, "We could start by disinvesting our pension funds from red-state companies like AT&T, American Airlines, ExxonMobil and Tesla."

Economic retribution, Jeffries explains, is what some experts call "soft secession."

"With Trump provocatively sending troops into blue cities, and using recision and the shutdown to claw back congressionally appropriated funds from blue states, it’s time to turn the tables on him," she writes. "Soft secession, powered by the presidential ambitions of multiple blue-state governors, could, should it come to that, be the proving ground of a new confederacy."