Louis Marinelli, president of the Yes California Independence Campaign, announced the news in an official farewell statement last week.

“While Washington refused to act and the Americans continued to spew their hatred towards immigrants, Sacramento actively worked to protect our immigrants,” he said. “It was this contrast which motivated me to start this campaign for independence.”

The movement was always seen as a long-shot effort, but it highlighted the way in which many Californians have tried to distance themselves from Washington in the age of Trump.

The measure would have needed to get 585,407 valid signatures by July to qualify for the ballot in 2018.

“I have found in Russia a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland, and a future detached from the partisan divisions and animosity that has thus far engulfed my entire adult life,” Marinelli added.

Furthermore, multiple donors pulled out of the effort due to fears of being tied to Putin, complicating a path forward for the movement.

“People got scared,” Ruiz Evans, vice president of Yes California told the Sacramento Bee. “They got spooked by what they saw on the news and pulled out.”

There were also constitutional hurdles, as a secession would have needed an amendment to the Constitution, meaning there would need to be approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures.

But still, Ruiz says he’s not giving up and plans to file a new “Calexit” proposal by May 1 in association with a new group called the California Freedom Coalition.

More Californians — but slightly fewer Americans — would support the Golden State’s withdrawal from the Union, according to a new poll feeding attention around a nascent movement to achieve a lawful, peaceful secession.

“About 32 percent of Californians want to create their own country, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found, including many Democrats who are frustrated with the election of President Trump,” the Hill reported. “Pollsters surveyed 500 Californians between Dec. 6 and Jan. 19. Nationally, 22 percent of respondents favor secession, they found” — a figure, like the California number, sure to have included some people with federalist or libertarian interests in seeing a discussion over the state’s status change.

“Still, half of Californians opposed the idea,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “though Democrats were more inclined to support it than Republicans. The survey found that 60 percent of Republicans gave the idea of peacefully seceding a thumbs down compared with 48 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of independents.”

In 2014, 24 percent of respondents nationwide were found to be amenable to California secession. But in-state, the new percentage represented a big jump. “The 32 percent support rate is sharply higher than the last time the poll asked Californians about secession, in 2014, when one-in-five or 20 percent favored it around the time Scotland held its independence referendum and voted to remain in the United Kingdom,” Newsmax noted. 

Parting ways

Although peaceful secession has long been confined to the realm of political fantasy, California’s perceived increased deviation from broader political trends nationwide has helped ensure the scheme a prominent place in the popular imagination and the press. “Even though California is the most populous state in the union and has the sixth-largest economy in the world, secession would be, realistically speaking, very difficult,” as the San Francisco Chronicle noted. “Two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of U.S. states (at least 38) would need to approve of the creation of an amendment that would allow for the legality of the state’s withdrawal.” But California Democrats, leery of losing ground on several fronts, have taken advantage of the state’s big popular vote margin in favor of Hillary Clinton to promise a continuation of their hallmark policies. 

“It may not be ‘Calexit’ — the name of a decidedly quixotic campaign for California to withdraw from the union — but it is turning into what is, for all intents and purposes, a slow-motion secession,” the New York Times suggested. “California is becoming to Mr. Trump what Texas — which is as Republican as California is Democratic — was to President Obama: a sea of defiance and a potential source of unending legal and legislative challenges.” On the other hand, “it will be difficult for California to promote the kind of spending program[s] lawmakers want to make up for cuts in Washington, particularly on health care,” the Times observed, complicating the rosy picture summoned by secessionist leaders of a prosperous march to the beat of the state’s own drum. 

Style or substance

For members of Yes California, the quixotic group working hardest toward secession, the increased popularity of a break with the union came as welcome news that seemed to square with their expectations. “We always thought that if we just connected with the people who thought about this, but didn’t tell their friends and family because they would be seen as kooky and weird, that the quiet population would become vocal,” as Marcus Evans, vice president of Yes California, told the Sacramento Bee. 

Nevertheless, growing support could be largely symbolic — a familiar way of expressing dissatisfaction with national politics. “California isn’t the only state which has flirted with abandoning the U.S.,” as HotAir pointed out. “Prior to the election, Public Policy Polling, which often asks gag questions intended to embarrass Republicans, found that 40 percent of Texans would consider secession if Clinton won the election.”

Democratic supermajority in Legislature

Good morning. Happy Tuesday, also known informally around the CalWatchdog newsroom as “Almost Thanksgiving.” We have a bit of breaking news this morning: Democrats appear to have achieved a supermajority in the state Legislature.

The linchpin is one Southern California Senate district, where Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang had held a narrow lead over Democrat Josh Newman in the race to replace the former Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, who is termed out. 

But Chang’s lead dwindled daily. On Monday it was less than 200 votes. This morning she trails Newman by more than 800 votes.

We wrote about the importance of this race yesterday. 

In other news:

• Pension costs: “There’s bad news coming down the pike for California municipalities following several days of board meetings for the nation’s largest state-based pension fund. Although no action has been taken, it’s clear the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, might again lower its expected rate of returns on investments. That means cities and other member agencies would have to pay more to make up the shortfall.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Calexit: “Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general’s office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• More Calexit: Most “Calexit” advocates do not note how legally difficult the process of secession is. In 2006, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Trouble in Silicon Valley: “When it comes to working with the Trump administration, Silicon Valley finds itself in a bit of a bind: It needs to mend fences with an incoming president it derided, without stirring up liberal employees and netizens,” writes The San Jose Mercury News. 

Legislature:

• Gone till December.

Gov. Brown:

• In Modesto for the memorial service of Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Dennis Wallace. 11 a.m., CrossPoint Community Church, 1301 12th st.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

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New follower: @MahmoudAbuAish

Two weeks after Donald Trump’s surprise win in the presidential election, dismayed Californians continue to talk up the idea of secession in

This has led to the birth of a self-styled California independence movement — yescalfornia.org — that on its website urges Trump opponents to prepare for a spring 2019 vote on whether California should leave the union. The group is gathering signatures for a November 2018 ballot measure that would authorize the vote on independence.

But the organization and most “Calexit” advocates do not note how legally difficult the process of secession is.

In a 2006 letter to a Hollywood screenwriter who asked him about the feasibility of state secession, Justice Antonin Scalia was dismissive.

“I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court,” Scalia wrote. “To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘one Nation, indivisible.’)

“Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.”

Scalia’s sweeping stance was also the formal view of the Supreme Court in an 1869 case in which justices affirmed that the U.S. government had never recognized the right of Southern states to secede, which triggered the Civil War.

“The Constitution, in all its provisions,” the court wrote, “looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

In a June Washington Post story about some Texans’ interest in secession because of their unhappiness with President Obama, Columbia University Law School professor Gillian Metzger noted that there was not even a mechanism in the Constitution for such a separation.

Only way out: Constitutional amendment OK’d by 38 states

West Virginia was allowed by Congress to secede from Virginia — but not the Union — under unique circumstances born of the Civil War. Scholars say that the only way that California could be allowed to leave the United States is through a constitutional amendment.

This is an exceptionally difficult process. An amendment would have to be approved by three-quarters — 38 — of the states after it had been sent to their legislatures for consideration either by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate or by the support of two-thirds — 34 — of the states at a constitutional convention convened by Congress.

Only one constitutional amendment has been approved in 45 years. The 27th Amendment, passed in 1992, forbids members of Congress from raising or cutting their pay during their current term. It was originally introduced in 1789 by James Madison and swept to adoption 203 years later after being touted in 1990 as an anti-congressional corruption measure by a newly elected Ohio Republican House member — future Speaker John Boehner.

Even if a secession movement overcame all these obstacles, it is still an open question whether it would actually be popular with Californians. On the most practical level, while non-U.S. citizens can be part of Social Security and receive checks, they can’t be paid if they live outside of the U.S. for more than six months in a row. They must return to the states for at least a month to trigger renewed payments, according to the Social Security Administration.