Reading from their own version of a "Declaration of Independence," a new group have taken what they're calling the first steps to a new state cut out of California.
The founders of "New California" say they don't want to leave the United States, just California. According to the declaration which was posted online:
With faith, diligence, and our sacred honor, we do hereby declare our Unity with Natural Law and the United States of America’s Constitution. We stand firm in our pledge to maintain and support the freedoms of the people of our Nation and New California at all times, at home and abroad. With God as our witness, honoring the foundational principles, we take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, to stand together as free citizens of New California, to be a sovereign state of that nation which we hold dear, the United States of America.
As we seek to remain a member of our Union, in order to form a more perfect Union we resolve to create the Free, Sovereign and Independent State of New California due to the past and current government of California having failed in their oath of office, obligations, and responsibilities as representatives of “We the People” to provide a republican form of government as guaranteed by Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.
The state of "New California" would be made up of most of the state's rural counties, leaving the urban coastal areas to remain as the original Golden State.
"There's something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed," founder Robert Paul Preston told CBS Sacramento. Preston, who hosts a podcast on the dangers of 'Agenda 21", a conspiracy theory about the United Nations, says the 58 counties in California have become ungovernable.
Unlike previous movements in the past, the state of "New California" would be created out of Article 4, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution which provides an avenue for new states to form - similar to how West Virginia was formed.
This isn't the first attempt to split up California and its 55 electoral votes. In 2014, a proposal to split California into six separate states was proposed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper.