Imagine waking up tomorrow to discover that the borders of your state have been completely redrawn. Not through war, not through federal mandate, but through something far more revolutionary. The consent of the governed. This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening right now in the state of Oregon. And guess what? More and more legal analysts are saying they have the Constitution on their side. And it’s not just Oregon. Forget the redistricting wars. We may be witnessing states redrawing their borders all over. And it promises to make the country a whole lot more red. Voters in Crook County, Oregon have become the latest Oregon county to vote in favor of becoming what’s called Greater Idaho.

So far, 13 eastern Oregon counties have passed a measure in support of moving the state line, including Malheur and Baker counties. The goal is to get 14 counties and three partial counties to sign onto this. Last year, the Idaho legislature passed its own measure to begin talks with Oregon lawmakers about the idea. However, it would take approval of both state legislatures and also Congress to make moving the state line a reality. Welcome to the Greater Idaho movement and unlike the countless political movements that fizzle out after a few news cycles, this one shows no signs of stopping.

We’ve talked about it numerous times on this channel in the past, and it does have legitimate constitutional pathways to success. Thirteen counties and counting in eastern Oregon have voted to secede from Antifa-ridden Portland and with the hopes of joining their neighboring red state, Idaho. All 13 counties have passed legally binding measures requiring their local officials to begin the secession process. Now, that number should be 15. There are two holdout counties that are being blocked by these feckless county clerks who refuse to allow signature gathering, which of course is a stunning abuse of the democratic process and the consent of the government.

But it’s only a matter of time. You can only stave off the inevitable for so long. The writing is on the wall, and it is crystal clear. Eastern Oregon wants out. Now, the data tells a story profound political alienation. Take a look at this map. So, this is from their last gubernatorial election. This is back in 2022. Now, if I were to ask you, who do you think won this election? The red team or the blue team? Who do you think won? Well, it seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? The map is virtually all red, but it doesn’t matter.

The Democrat, the blue team, won by nearly four points. The Democrat won despite having lost 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties. The Republican candidate won 80% of their counties, eight and 10, and she’s still lost. And just to put an exclamation marker on this, if you remove just one county, Multima County, that’s where Portland is, if you were to exclude that single county, the Republican would have won that governorship by over 10 points. So, what all of this means is that over 80% of the regions of Oregon are experiencing profound political disenfranchisement as they’re being ruled by woke Antifa supporting politicians and policies that hate them and despise everything they stand for.

Oregon state legislature is controlled by Democrats with super majorities in both chambers, giving them the power to pass any legislation without a single Republican vote. So, for a rancher in Baker County living five hours from Portland, this means having virtually zero voice in policies that govern his property, his livelihood, and his children’s education. And so, now, patriots in Oregon are fighting back, and the fight continues to grow like wildfire. They know that eastern Oregon and western Oregon are completely different states, they’re different nations. The residents have distinct incompatible values. They desire completely different outcomes for their communities with fundamentally different visions of the public good.

So, this isn’t about partisan squabbling. This is literally civilizational. It’s about whether citizens have the right to be governed by consent rather than coercion. And so, the Greater Idaho Movement was born. It started early in 2020. It was led by a fellow by the name Mike McCarter. We’ve had him on the show before. He’s a wonderful Christian patriot, and he and others mobilized a growing number of eastern Oregon counties who seek to politically redraw the boundaries of neighboring deep red Idaho. They want to redraw Idaho’s boundaries westward to encompass the Oregon counties that are more conservative and better aligned with Idaho’s political and cultural landscape.

But the fundamental question, of course, is, would that be constitutional, that redrawing of the boundaries? Is that something that is actually constitutionally realistic? And the answer, surprisingly, for some, is a solid yes. It most certainly is. Article 4, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution provides an explicit mechanism for exactly this scenario. The clause states that new states can be formed from parts of existing states with the consent of both state legislatures involved and Congress. And this isn’t theoretical. It’s how Kentucky separated from Virginia in 1792. It’s how Maine left Massachusetts in 1820.

How West Virginia broke from Virginia in 1863. So the precedent exists and the legal framework is established. Now, as far as Idaho’s concerned, they’ve already signaled their enthusiasm over this. So in February of 2023, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring readiness to discuss relocating the Oregon-Idaho border. The buy-in from one side was secured. But what about Oregon? What are Antifa-loving legislators in Salem saying about this? Well, that may be the most surprising development of them all. When I first read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, it changed literally everything for me.

It helped me understand how we got here to this confusing moment in our culture and where we’re headed. Lewis saw that when truth is no longer taught, people stop knowing why life matters. But the good news? He also showed how we can indeed recover it. I’m walking through this incredible book with our courageous Patriot community in a seven-week live book series, and I’d love for you to experience the first session and get the book completely free. Go to turley.pub slash abolition of man and join me for this special preview. You’ll see truth isn’t lost.

It’s just waiting to be rediscovered. Lawmakers have indeed introduced a bill in the Oregon legislature that argues that Oregon may actually benefit from letting these counties go. The bill outlines two compelling reasons. First, eastern Oregon is an economic drain costing northwestern Oregon wage earners over $500 annually in subsidies. Second, this is the part progressives aren’t saying out loud, removing conservative counties would create a permanent progressive supermajority with more resources and zero opposition. So it’s a win-win scenario that politicians on both sides have incentives to support. Now, unfortunately, Oregon’s Democrat controlled legislature basically allowed these two critical bills to die without so much as scheduling hearings.

So House Bill 3488, which would have created a move Oregon-Idaho border task force to study the legal processes and impacts of relocating the border, it was buried. And Senate Joint Memorial 7, which merely urged Oregon and Idaho to begin border discussions, that languished in committee for over a month with no action. So needless to say, Greater Idaho Executive Director Matt McCall condemned this legislative stonewalling as an affront to all the residents of the 13 soon-to-be 15 eastern Oregon counties that want out. And they want the Democrat process to simply be honored.

And of course, their radical ultra-woke governor Tina Kotek has maintained total radio silence on the issue. She’s completely ignored all efforts by Greater Idaho leaders for meetings and discussions and the light. But unfortunately for Oregon Democrats, this issue ain’t going away anytime soon. And that’s because the Greater Idaho movement is actually part of a larger secessionist or separatist movement that’s happening all throughout our country. In the ultra-blue state of Illinois, 27 counties have already passed pro-secessionist referendum. Some state lawmakers have even proposed bills to separate Chicago and its surrounding Cook County from the rest of the state.

There are a number of Maryland counties that want to join up with Deep Red West Virginia. In California, San Bernardino counties recently voted to study the process and prospects involved in seceding from their increasingly failed state. And what’s so interesting here, and we’ve talked about this before with regard to Alberta secessionism and Saskatchewan and so in Canada, what we have to understand is that independence referendums are incredibly popular. Historically, they draw the biggest voter turnouts of all elections. People who are not normally interested in voting come out in droves for an independence referendum.

And more times than not, they vote for it. They vote to separate. And again, I think that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing in Oregon and Illinois and I’m sure in a number of other states whose rural populations have had it with their woke left-wing progressive urban centers. Can you imagine what’s going to happen in New York after Ma’am Donnie wins in their city? They’re embracing the wisdom of founding fathers who gave us a constitutional mechanism for redrawing boundaries in such a way that’s far more conducive to the traditional values of rural areas.

And so as it turns out, the Greater Idaho Movement really does embody this founding ethos as well as this broader secession of sentiment that more and more states are embracing. The real question facing America isn’t whether state borders should be redrawn. It’s whether we still believe what we say about consent, representation, and the right to self-governance. If eastern Oregon secedes and the constitutional political and economic case suggests it most certainly may and the boundary of Idaho is redrawn, this could be the first of many peaceful border adjustments in 21st century America. The map is changing and it promises to get a whole lot redder.

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