A Proposal for the 51st State: Whinyassistan

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Today we have the news that Siskiyou County, CA wants to secede from the state of California and potentially join with other rural counties in Oregon to create a new 51 state. This comes on the heels of news out of Colorado in June that 10 rural counties wanted to secede from the state and create the new state of “North Colorado”. In each case, these are rural, conservative counties wanting to secede from states that are either liberal or beginning to trend in a liberal direction.

So with these are other micro-secession movements, I have a proposal for the first virtual state. It’s very difficult to secede from a state. You need to original state’s permission – the whole state. And then you’ve got to get Congress to sign off. Up until now though it’s always been assumed that new states must be contiguous. But I don’t think there’s any constitutional reason why that needs to be the case.

So what I propose is having Congress group together all the whiny sad-sac counties like Siskiyou and create the virtual state of ‘Whinyassistan’. A rightwing piece of California here, a chunk of Colorado there, perhaps a few totally freak counties from the northern tier of New Hampshire and basically whoever else wanted to join. Transportation and economic development would be challenging. But it would be real independence.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: