The growing movement to secede from Illinois and become the 51st state

0:00I'm Ayesha Rascoe and you're listening to the Sunday Story from Up First. 250 years ago this weekend, the Declaration of Independence was signed. It marked the beginning of American democracy. This year, NPR has been looking at how things have gone in the series America in Pursuit, stories from 250 years of life, liberty, and happiness. Americans tend to think about the Declaration of Independence as a founding document, the start of something, the text that brought the country together. But if you read it closely, you realize it's also a breakup text. A good portion of the Declaration of Independence is saying it's not you, it's me.

0:46This is just not going to work. We don't work well together, you know. So in addition to being a document declaring freedom, the Declaration of Independence is also a document of secession. Today, we have a story about a group of people who see themselves as following in a fundamentally American tradition. A group of people who are claiming their right to declare their independence from a state they feel no longer represents them. We, the people of the counties of New Illinois, solemnly publish and declare that these counties are and of right ought to be a free and independent state. When we come back, a modern day secessionist movement in the state of Illinois.

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3:00Connor, hi. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Aisha. Great to be here. So, Connor, I just want to get this straight. You've been talking to people who basically want to succeed from their own state? Yeah, I've been talking to people in the New Illinois movement. New Illinois, that's what they'd call this new state. And what they want is for all the counties in Illinois, except Cook County, that's where Chicago is, to secede and become their own state, the 51st state. So basically, they just want to ditch Chicago. Why? Power. in Illinois politics to be far from Chicago is to be far from power. Chicago is a big city, the third most populous in the country.

3:40The rest of Illinois, rural, far less populated. What that means is they don't have the same voting power as the Chicago area in the state legislature. Right now, because Chicago is a blue, liberal area, Democrats have a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature to the dismay of the people in rural downstate Illinois who are mainly conservative. Okay, so people from rural Illinois have created this group, New Illinois, with the goal of seceding from present-day Illinois and starting a new state. I mean, that's a pretty ambitious goal. Is there even a legal pathway to do this? There is, and it's in the U.S.

4:22Constitution. The Constitution lays out, in Article 4, what has to happen in order to admit a new state to the republic. There are two big things, the approval of Congress and the approval of the state's legislature. So that's a pretty high bar. I mean, especially since the reason the new Illinois people started their movement is that they don't like how their state legislature makes decisions. And it seems unlikely that the current state legislature is going to let, you know, a whole lot of the state just up and leave. Right, exactly. And there's no shortage of irony that this is all happening in the land of Lincoln.

5:00But to be clear, those in the New Illinois movement, they don't want to start a new country like the Confederacy did in the Civil War. They see themselves as a very proud, very patriotic movement, taking inspiration from the Founding Fathers. They want to stay in America, just not in the same state as Chicago. And leaders of New Illinois say they no longer consent to be governed in this way, the state run by the big city. The only way they see to redress their grievances? is to leave. So basically, they're making the argument taxation without representation. That's right. Aisha, back in October of 2020, G.H.

5:36Merritt, she's a chairman of New Illinois, she formalized her group's intentions. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed On the steps of a courthouse in western Illinois, she recited the Declaration of Independence, the original one. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. And then she recited the new one. We the people of the counties of New Illinois. The one that declares independence from Illinois. Solemnly publish and declare that these counties are and of right ought to be a free and independent state.

6:19So tell me more about G.H. Merritt. So she's the one who got this started? That's right. Yeah, she says she first got the idea to start a new state back in 2018. She lives in northern Illinois, up by a lake near the Wisconsin border. And she says she was frustrated by the state's high taxes. She felt like all that power in Chicago didn't really translate into many opportunities elsewhere. She and her husband considered moving away. But I live in a house that my dad built. And one day it just kind of hit me like an epiphany that I don't want to sell my house. It means too much to me. And yet I had sense almost of being propelled out of the state because our state is so corrupt and the taxes are so high.

7:05And I just thought, why should I have to be the one to move? Thus the tagline of the organization, leave Illinois without moving. And, you know, the idea caught on. It turns out lots of people shared her frustrations. So, Aisha, if you'll indulge me a little revolutionary history. Well, I mean, you know, I think there's no better day than today or this time. I think everybody's thinking about it. Totally. It's on everyone's mind. So, you know, the original declaration, it included grievances against the king. And they put those grievances in the document itself, the breakup text. And New Illinois has a list of grievances, too.

7:43But Merritt told me they had to break precedent there. We didn't put grievances in our declaration because it would have been as long as an encyclopedia. So the grievances, they publish them separately. They include tyrannically high taxes, unconstitutional gun laws, gerrymandering, debt, immigration enforcement, or lack thereof. The list goes on. So there are a lot of policies and laws that they don't like, but they do not have the votes to stop. Exactly. Yeah, but at the same time, critics of New Illinois point out that the folks downstate actually benefit from Chicago's tax dollars. Chicago is a big economic engine for the state.

8:25There's this study from a few years ago showing just how Chicago helps rural counties. Some counties, people will get back something like$2 and change in state services for every dollar they pay in tax. On the other hand, people in Cook County, they get like 90 cents back for every dollar taxed. So, yeah, in that light, it's good to have Chicago in the state. Supporters of splitting up the state, they push back on that, though. Given their own way, which I guess I mean given their own state, they say they'll create their own economic engines. They pledge to create a more business-friendly environment.

8:59Fewer regulations, lower taxes, they want to revitalize the coal industry. Plus, they see all these economic liabilities brought about by Chicago Democrats. They point to the state's debt and underfunded pension system. They claim the state's being overtaxed. These are all things they want to get away from. So instead of receiving the Chicago tax dollars, they want to generate, you know, the revenue themselves by like lowering taxes, bringing in new companies and things of that nature. They believe, like many conservatives, that that will be better for them. That's right. That's the game plan.

9:35So, I mean, it sounds like they have these plans and they have this vision, but it seems like a bit performative because of that paradox that we talked about. You know, they're going to read the Declaration of Independence on the courthouse. It's dramatic, but what's it doing? Totally, totally. And you aren't alone in thinking it performative. I reached out to Governor J.B. Pritzker for comment about New Illinois. He called it a stunt. Except the thing is, after all my reporting, it doesn't seem like a stunt to me. New Illinois is serious, and they're organized. How much support is there in the actual counties?

10:12Okay, so to understand that, you've got to meet Lorette Newland. I'm probably the most persistent person in Illinois separation, so I guess that kind of makes me the leader. So Newland is very much a New Illinois secessionist, but her focus is on the mechanics of making it happen. So she has her own group that works in tandem with New Illinois. It's called the Illinois Separation Referendum. So the separation referendum. So they want voters to weigh in on this question of leaving? Have voters weighed in? Yes. Part of the reason that New Illinois has had so much traction is in part because they've actually been able to get the question of secession onto the ballot.

10:53Like, this is a thing that people are voting on on Election Day. So how does that work? So it's an advisory question. It's non-binding. but it's been on the ballot in 33 counties so far. That's a third of the counties in the state. And the response has been resounding in favor of the idea. Newland showed me a map of the referendum results so far. Let's look at that map. Okay. So talk to me about this map. It is striking. I mean, you look at basically the southern half of the state, pretty well colored in there. We can get solid from Edgar all the way to Christian County if we can get Douglas and Coles both on there.

11:32And those numbers, I will say, are striking. Fayette County, 79%. Clay County, 80%. Edgar County, 83%. Those are big numbers. And we started from zero. So they are 33 for 33. Like, she's gotten this referendum on the ballot in 33 counties, and each time they've gotten a yes? A big yes. And it's easy for some to dismiss, say, Moultrie County for voting for separation. There's a joke about how few stoplights there are in that county. How many are there? Two, I think. But yeah, it's small. But then there's Madison County, which is a pretty big county. It's about 250 ,000 people. It's part of the St.

12:16Louis metro area. And they voted to leave too. And Newland told me after the Madison County referendum, more people started taking them seriously. And she's not stopping at 33, right? She's going to want to go further. The midterm elections are coming up in November. She is. That's right. So you can get the referendum on the ballot in one of two ways, either via petition or by lobbying the county board. Newland's done both. She's petitioned everywhere. Courthouse squares, parking lots, even the junkyard. But she prefers going through a county board. Just this morning, I heard from Henderson County.

12:50They just voted six to two in favor of putting it on the ballot. We had three counties down in Southern Illinois, Gallatin, Saline, and Hamilton, that their boards all voted unanimously. Okay. So these referendum results are proof of concept. Like they are showing that there are people who do want this. It seems like more and more people are going to get a chance to at least show their support for this on the ballot? Yeah. So in answer to your original question, yes, they are serious. And yes, they are making progress. We'll be right back.

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14:20A window has been broken at home, and you're miles away. That's why ADT offers professionally installed security systems backed by the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. With 24-7 monitoring, they're always keeping watch over your home, so you're always supported during an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com to learn more. We're back with the Sunday story. So we have this secession movement in Illinois called New Illinois, and they have a ton of support in these rural counties. Connor, I'm curious how the people in this movement are actually gaining all this support.

15:02How are they getting the word out and getting people on their side? Through a whole lot of lobbying, Aisha. Larry Mulch, he's the vice chairman of New Illinois. A few months back, I drove out to Hancock County in western Illinois to interview him. I want to save Illinois, and it's worth saving. Mulch and I talked at the Hancock County Courthouse, where Mulch holds monthly meetings for his new Illinois committee. So inside the courthouse? So they're working on building a new state inside a government building for the old state? They're actually holding these meetings in a courthouse where a portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs in the lobby, which, again, historical irony abounds.

15:41While the ballot referendum demonstrates the movement's support among voters, I was also starting to see the traction they have higher up. Larry Mulch is an elected official. He's a township supervisor. And the former sheriff of Hancock County is in the group. That's how they were able to use the courthouse in the first place. And Mulch explained to me that's why they're organizing on this grassroots, county-by-county basis. That's the purpose, is to go out and find a core group within that county that is willing to do whatever's necessary. You build a base of support among your neighbors, your township supervisors, your sheriff.

16:19Then you start to lobby the county board, the state senators. And they're speaking from a place that is so resonant to so many of their neighbors. Lots of people I've spoken with talk about downstate Illinois as fundamentally different from Chicago. To a person, everyone I spoke with referenced the history of downstate Illinois, settled in the 19th century, largely by Kentucky and Tennessee farmers. Well, early on, Chicago had more of a connection to shipping and the Great Lakes, and then, of course, became this big metropolis. As they see it, the state is cleaved together, two places with two pasts, two presents, two ways of life.

16:53We are a different people, and we've got a different mindset. And so when you feel so connected to a place, but you don't see your priorities, your values, your worldview reflected and how that place is run, there's a distress, but also a motivation. That sense of powerlessness is always the driving force. So Aisha, I talked to an expert on secession movements, Dr. Kenneth Owen. He's a history professor at the University of Illinois Springfield. He's been following New Illinois for years. I think there is something about the idea of secession that appeals to the American mindset. I think it's part of the American founding myth.

17:32having our own government is a way that they can reclaim some of that power that they feel they don't have. So Owen says there are two hallmarks of these movements. One, a sense of cultural identity distinct from the place you're seceding from. And two, clear political stakes, a sense of what can be gained by leaving. Owen sees both at work in New Illinois. They are building the sort of political infrastructure that you would expect to need. I just think that there are much greater structural impediments ahead of them. And those impediments, I imagine, are the constitutional requirements for starting a new state.

18:12That's right. That's right. So given all of that, what are the chances of this actually happening? Has something like this ever happened before in the U.S.? So New Illinois likes to point to West Virginia as precedent, but Kenneth Owen doesn't really think that applies. West Virginia seceded from Virginia because Virginia had seceded from the United States. The context of the Civil War is so distinct, it just wouldn't set a precedent. People also point to Maine leaving Massachusetts. That's part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, this agreement to let one slave-holding state, Missouri, into the Union along with one free state, Maine, to maintain this precarious balance in the lead-up to the Civil War.

18:53So again, Owen says, the context is just totally distinct. So there is, in theory, a constitutional mechanism. It has never been used to create a new state on this scale. So you're saying there's a chance. This is what's interesting about secession, right? They all sound crazy right up until the time that they happened. OK, it's a long shot. And even though some people are dismissing it as a stunt, you've been digging in and the people who are organizing this are serious and they're taking serious steps. So something is happening here, but it seems like it's about to run straight into a wall. That is the state legislature.

19:36So what happens if this doesn't work? So I asked Kenneth Owen about this. He says there's a best case scenario in which the tension can actually prove productive for the state. It's maybe about reopening the social contract. So in a lot of the cases that I've studied, people are really unhappy about a particular issue. Regular political channels haven't quite worked. And then when they threaten secession, it gets lots of attention and it starts a conversation that moves things together. So, I mean, the threat of secession could be looked at as kind of like a check engine light. Exactly. And as a blinking light, it's already working.

20:17Take LaShawn Ford. He's a Democrat from Chicago in the state legislature who takes the concerns of New Illinois seriously. Rural Illinois and urban Illinois, we need to figure out how we can find common ground. And Ford actually spoke at a New Illinois conference back in 2023. He's described by the group as the only Democrat in the legislature willing to have the conversation about splitting the state. While that's an overstatement, he does see himself as someone they can talk to, someone who can dialogue. But what is his stance on the issue? Oh, he's against it. And said so at the New Illinois Conference.

20:51He thinks those two extra dollars of funding that the rural counties are getting from Chicago provide crucial services, infrastructure. He thinks leaving would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. And he puts the issue in more populist terms. It's not really North and South that's at war. It's the have and have nots. Ford says the issues facing working people, food deserts, health care, they're the same across Illinois. But his solution, a progressive tax on the wealthy, it's a nonstarter for conservatives downstate who are allergic to taxation. So the impasse holds. Well, you know, the policy debate here, taxes, regulation, guns, it is extremely familiar because we hear it over and over again and it just seems intractable.

21:42But I also have to ask, Connor, this rule, mostly white group, is complaining about the big city. To what extent is this about race? This was a big question for me, too. Everyone I asked in the movement, they denied any kind of racial animus behind their work. But LaShawn Ford had an interesting take on the question. I don't think that it's overwhelming, the issue, but I do think that people are aggravated about Black people. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes that becomes a punching bag and people start saying, see, all of our tax dollars are being wasted in Chicago. So he doesn't see it as the factor, but a potential aggravating factor.

22:31Does Ford see race shaping the issue in other ways? He does. Me being a Black man, even though this country has been good to me, it still could be frustrating being in a minority. And that's the way they feel. They know what it feels like to be in a minority and not be able to have the sway that they would like. Do you have any advice, man, given that? Yeah, I think that my advice to them is let's work together. Let's make Illinois stronger. But how does that stronger together, we're one Illinois message play with the new Illinois movement? About as well as you'd expect. And I don't think many people in a state are under any illusions about unity.

23:17An Illinois historian has compared the state to a set of conjoined twins. The diagnosis from a longtime journalist here was schizophrenia. Given that the odds are against secession actually passing legislatively, what other outcomes might there be? In one scenario, the state just carries this tension. In another scenario, the tension continues to ratchet up. Here's how Kenneth Owen sees it. Do the circumstances exist for political violence to break out in the United States at the moment? Yes. Is it likely? I'm not sure that political violence is ever likely or unlikely when those circumstances exist.

24:02Most of the time that a rebellion breaks out, it's because there's a spark that lit the fire. The question is, how many sparks are there around? Well, clearly, it sounds like you've been seeing a whole lot of sparks. Yeah. So, Aisha, let me take you one last place, over to Highland, Illinois. This St. Patrick's Day, I went to meet Virgil Strader. Strader is in New Illinois' transitional legislature, helping to build the political infrastructure for the state, drafting a constitution, writing laws. In his day job, he's an auctioneer. He was hosting a benefit auction for the local quarterback club.

24:43Jim, I'll come sit here next to you if that's all right. So over a plate of corned beef and cabbage, I chatted with the people at my table. afterward I told Virgil about our conversation. So I told him a little bit about the story that I was working on. They hadn't heard of New Illinois and yet everyone at the table they're talking about the gas tax, they're talking about the tax that finances the trains in Chicago. It is a thing that people are kind of fluent in even if they're not necessarily involved in the movement. Well how can you not be fluent in it if you're subject to it? We have taxation without representation.

25:19They had taxation without representation. They're aligning themselves with the American Revolution. Exactly. There's no way to fix it, politically. There comes a time of reckoning, and we're getting very close. I wonder for you, is there a point where you'd think, like, this isn't working? Or what? Grab your gun. If it don't work, grab your gun. Strader says if they neither get the approval of the state nor the federal legislatures, then that could potentially trigger violence. If we don't get the approval of the Illinois legislators, then I would say that there would be a better than 50 % chance that we would have a battle.

26:02Now, a bill to split the state was introduced during the most recent legislative session in Illinois, but it didn't make it out of committee. The legislator who introduced that bill, Brad Halbrook, he told me the plan is to introduce the bill again in the next session. When I asked him about the possibility of violence, he pointed to the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers weren't worried about the law, he said. They were worried about the political will to do something different. That's where we're at in Illinois, he said. The question for Halbrook was, what are you prepared to do?

26:32Well, and when he says, what are you prepared to do, does that essentially mean, like, are you willing to take up arms? That's the question on Virgil Strader's mind. He tells me there's no militia associated with New Illinois, but he does know people with heavy arsenals who would be willing to join a secessionist fight. We may surround the Capitol building in Springfield. I wouldn't rule that out. There's been no talk of doing that, but I wouldn't rule it out. Strader imagines, fantasizes maybe, a scenario in which an armed group would surround the Capitol and demand to form a new state, forcing the split without having to fire a shot.