1 | The Tipping Point

gonna put your name on this and publish this. Are you sure you know what you're doing? Because you don't get to walk this back. What if it's time to end the United States as we know it? Quality and democracy are under assault. Protesters have now broken into the US capital for Americans believe there will be a civil war in the United States. The United States is in terminal the client the trend line is obvious. It is falling apart. We want to hope for the best, but

we need to prepare for the worst. More and more Americans believe that the United States is hopelessly broken, and so a group of activists in California have made a radical proposal to leave. They called their movement cal Exit. What when do we want it now? The term cal Exit has taken social media by storm. So I really see California as this kind of life raft where we can escape the sinking empire. We don't have to go down. The ship. Was started as a wild idea quickly grew

much bigger. There is a legitimate movement to have California break away from the rest of the United States. It's an idea that some people believe could us are in a new era of justice, peace and prosperity for the state, and others fear will plunge it into chaos. The most violent civil wars are the ones over succession. Those are the conflicts that governments will fight to the death over. This is the story of cal Legs. It's the story of two friends who set out to change the United States.

We met personally started brainstorming the campaign for California Independence. They built a movement with hundreds of thousands of supporters. My phone is ringing off the hook. They said, I want to succeed now, I want the initiative right now, and ended up in the middle of a still unfolding. Criminal conspiracy. Now that's raising questions about whether Russia is behind the succession campaign. The guy who's leaving the California Independence woman is sitting in Moscow next to this guy.

We know it's funded either Kremlin, and that showed me how crazy he was. It really let me kind of peer into his soul and just see what a malignant narcissist he really is. The United States is more divided than ever. Could collexit be the solution or could accelerate the breakdown of our democracy? Wake up to the bad scene?

Has it been on the ground. You could hear the voices a seen about the crown, how it goes to five winning up and uh everything go phone and going to the gate on duh, duh, duh they go to gate Uh from Interval presents an awfully nice this is the last resort I'm shoot Episode one, the tipping point. He was a kid, my mother choos. Last June, Megan the Stallion was performing at Glastonbury Festival when she stopped to let the crowd know how she was feeling. Audience

right now to save motherfucking choice. That's quite so let's put all a lot of middle fingers up right now, and we went into the campus ship to these motherfucker's all right. That Friday, the U. S. Supreme Court had overturned Roll versus Wade, ending the constitutional rights on abortion. Megan, like many others, we're trying to process the horror of it all. Performer after performer took the stage that weekend to speak out. Phoebe Bridgers, Olivia Rodrigo, devastated and terrified.

So many women and so many girls are going to die because of this. Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day. Fuck, where God fucking renouncing my citizenship? I'm sucking. Millions of other people raised their voices and protests that weekend. Across America. People marched, they donated, and they looked to their government for a response. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a

plan to strengthen the state's laws protecting abortion rights. We're going to enshrine that codify that as we should in the state constitution. Why do we do? Why don't we built? Yeah that watching all of this go down was a guy named Marcus Ruiz Evans. We caught him up the day of the verdict to get his reaction. People are in pain. I mean, people are scared shitless in California today.

I know them. I live here in California has a history of saying, we don't like what the federal government does. We're going to pass the law to stop that. What difference did it make? The Supreme Court upheld Trump could redirect funding to the wall. The Supreme Court upheld Trump could ban people from Muslim countries, and he could keep Mexican children in cages on the border, and he could sell off California lands to oil and there's literally nothing

the California government could do about it. And it is because California has treated this way that we have said you must calex it. For Marcus, this kind of talk is very on brand because he has spent the last decade pushing an idea most people would regard as impossible. Marcus believes that California should succeed from the United States, that we should quote unquote callegs it. The callegs In movement was started by Marcus and another activist, Louis Marinelli.

Back In supporters believe that cal exit is the only way Californians can live according to their values. That's great, that Gavin Uson wants to trine it in our constitution. But just because you put something in our constitution does not give you any additional legal protection against decisions by the Federal Supreme Court. So that's great you're doing that, and that will absolutely not protect us from the Supreme

Court at all. We have to get connected as Californians and push for cal Exit before they take away another right, because this isn't gonna stop. Most Americans support abortion rights, but that didn't stop the Supreme Court from taking them away. Maybe that's one reason why, according to a Reason Pull, a majority of voters believe our system of government doesn't work. That's created an opening for people like Marcus Ruiz Evans to argue that it's time for change. Still, though cal

Exit this is crazy talk, right. Most state has ever seriously tried to leave the Union since the Civil War, but some experts believe that this moment we're in could be different. Hi, my name is Barbara Walter. I'm the roar Chair of International Affairs at the University of California, San Diego. That I've studied every single civil war that's happened since the end of World War two and there's

been over two hundred of them. Walter helped identify two factors that strongly predicted if a country would fall into civil war. The first factor was something we called innocracy, which is just a fancy term for a partial democracy. Imagine a country where you have elections, but that the person with the most votes doesn't always win. That's inn ocricy. It happened in two thousand Al Gore winning the popular vote by a slim margin, George Bush, though, taking the

election by winning the electoral college. And then the second factor is something we call called factionalism, which is a fancy term for when citizens in a country organize themselves politically pretty strictly around identity. Today, the Republican Party is almost white and Christian, in other words, a faction. So you see, I also call myself a Christian nationalist, and that's not a bad word, and there's nothing wrong with leading with your faith, and I think that's what the

Republican Party needs to be about. So you start to get political parties that are ethnically, religiously, or racially based, and then those parties try to gain power not because they want to share power with the other groups, but because they want to actively exclude them from power. Our radical democratic partners are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage. They want to destroy you, and they want to destroy our country as we know. It not acceptable. It's not

going to happen. And I'm seeing that both of these two features were emerging here in this country, and they were actually emerging at a surprisingly fast rate. We don't always end up with the government that we vote for, and according to Walter, we don't just see each other as political opponents but his enemies. These factors could mean big problems ahead. I have no doubt in my mind that there is going to be, sometime in this decade the very first, very real secession crisis the US has

faced since the eighteen sixties. Here's Casey Michelle. He's reported on Collex for places like Politico and The Washington Post. I don't know if that's going to be in Texas

or California or elsewhere. But given the fraying of political balls and the broader political tensions, people are just gonna start casting about for other ideas, and we're gonna reach some kind of breaking points, some kind of tipping point for Americans across the country to ask themselves, is this something that we want to continue or if it's not, what are the potential alternatives and what should really be

on the table. Marcus from Calls thinks that this tipping point, it's actually already behind us, that calls isn't just possible, but it's inevitable. Oh, we're convinced calls gonna happen in the next five years. A lot of people think that that's a little bit extreme, but our point is this, when we started in two thousand and fourteen, people laughed

at us. No one's laughing anymore. On January six, an armed mob of far right extremists storm the US capital, hoping to keep presidant Trump and power for another time. When you hear the phrase a tipping point, you might think that January six was it. But January six wasn't about splitting the country up. It was about controlling the government,

not ending it. If we have reached a tipping point beyond which calls or some kind of succession crisis is inevitable, there's an argument to be made that it actually happened later a year after January six, when a tech executive named Harry raga Van decided to move from San Francisco to Florida. I got a Twitter d M from a friend of mine. He was like, I think you're my first friend to get a setting US congresswoman to declare civil war over something you said. This is hardy. He's

in his mid thirties Starcare. Harry grew up in the Midwest, where he wanted to work in tech. So when it was time to start his career, he knew there was only one place for him to live. California. It was where you wanted to go when you wanted to make it right. For a sexy state. It's also incredibly influential by virtue of sheer size and resources. It's the epicenter of like tech in startups. It has to be. At first, Harry loved California. He met a woman and got married.

His career was going great, but eventually his feelings changed. He thought San Francisco was too expensive, he didn't feel safe in his neighborhood, and so in late Harry decided to move to Florida. Some guy moving across the country shouldn't have been news, but before he left San Francisco, Harry has something he wanted to say, and so he started tweeting, So here we go. I'm moving out of the Bay Area. My biggest reason is that I believe the Bay Area is no longer the best crucipal for

the American dream. Harry laid out his reasons for leaving, and then he wrote this, it's such a cliche, but we're moving to Miami. I know there's plenty to be opprehensive about. Worst politics from our perspective, its own superficiality, weather issues, critters, guns, but lots of love about food, warmth, service industry, and vibrancy. Worst politics from our perspective. These were the words that turn Hard's moving day international news.

Twitter lit up with outraged comments like this one. This guy is moving from California to Florida because he can't stand living in the mess that live politics created, and he still has the updacity to talk down to Flirtians about their politics. Libs are a cancer. There are the absolute worst people in this country. And then there was this tweet from another user. I support actively discriminating against

transplants like this through legislation. They shouldn't be able to vote for a period, and they should have to pay at tax for their sins. Finally, in response to that, a congresswoman from Georgia named Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, this all possible in a national divorce scenario. After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida. All possible in a national

divorce scenario. What exactly is a national divorce? Here's Casey Michelle. Again. A lot of pro Trump voices have over the past year started floating what they call a national divorce, and it's kind of a cute way of saying we want

to dissolve the country. These calls for a national divorce were mostly coming from pretty obscure figures, so to hear it coming from a member of Congress was something new and alarming and finally new role Americans must answer the question posed on Twitter last week by Representative Marjor Taylor Green. Should America have a national divorce? National divorce in which we separate the red states from the blue stakes? National

di like? What on earth are like? This is a U. S Member of Congress talking about tearing the union part and if we've hit the tipping point. Maybe this was it. This wasn't a debate about saving the country, it was about ending it. Marjorie Taylor Green is well known for her extreme positions, like denying the election results, but the idea that a member of the U. S Government would openly suggest that there shouldn't be a US government just shows how divided the country is and is a warning

for what might be coming next. Well, I mean it was immediately apparently national divorce means civil war, right, Um, it's yeah, like it's it's I don't know, is that even a euphemism like Support for the idea of a national divorce has continued to grow. But her question does represent the thinking of a lot of Americans on both sides. Of Republicans in the South say they would support secession to join a new confederacy. You have a lot of people on the left and on the right talking about

the country splitting up. We are going to be a country where the red states become redder and the blue states become bluer, and maybe then the best help is a friendly separation. In Texas, this year, Republicans added support for a vote on secession to their official party platform. New Hampshire is considering a bill to declare its independence. And then, of course there's California. The campaign for cal Exit, the secession of California to become an independent country, has

been gaining steam. OR recent Reuters poll found one in three California support the idea of the state withdrawing from the United States. Proposals for California secession have been around for a while, but it wasn't until the election of Donald's Trump in sixteen that people started to talk about it seriously. Trump scared and alienated many liberal Californians. In their eyes, the American flag waving at Trump rallies didn't

represent freedom or democracy, but something ominous. They went looking for a way out, and search led them right to cal Exit. This flag represents from you a flag of imperialism and war and discrimination and all of those other things more than it does like this flag of freedom. This is Louis Marinelli. He co founded Calls along with

Marcus Ruise Evans. We interviewed Louis several times for this podcast, and this type is from our first conversation with him back in the middle of I think that not only would it be beneficial for the people of California and for the people the United States to have this type of national divorce that allows the two to kind of go their own separate ways and to pursue their own futures. But also I think the California is an independent country, would be able to do things to make the world

a better place. For some of the Californians horrified by Trump, the vision presented by cal Exit was exactly what they wanted to hear. I mean, imagine the California where you had, you know, quote unquote free universe city education and quote unquote free healthcare. I mean, you're kind of turning into a country like northern Europe, which is, you know, according to most surveys, are the happiest countries in the world. And so that's kind of the direction that we'd like

to take California. I would like to make Californias that app to people in the world. According to Marcus and Lewis, Californians could free themselves of Donald Trump, they could protect progressive values like abortion rights, and they could stop taking ship from the rest of America. All they had to do was cal Exit. This scene from the TV show, the politician summed up the sales pitch. We can't agree

on policy in this country because we can't agree on facts. Okay, I'd like to move on, And that's why I think California should seceed from the Union. I'm sorry, would you care to elaborate? California should be its own dependent country. Most of our federal tax dollars go out of state to people who think that we are lot smoking, Satan worshiping abortion doctors or something, who can't shut up about

how our high taxes are strangling the private sector. And yet somehow California manages to remain the world leader in growth, industry, innovation, and culture. We have the best public university system in the history of humankind. So maybe, just maybe we are doing something right. And you have to ask yourself eventually, are we ever going to change their minds? Are we ever going to change them? No? This state is in a bad marriage. And what do you do when you're

in a bad marriage, You get a divorce. Sorry, Texas and West Virginia and Alabama. I'm sure you're a beautiful deep down inside. But we're moving on. You can see why the pitch for collegs. It might appeal to a lot of Californians. But for me, I'm not sure what to think. You might be wondering who am I. I'm an Indigenous artist and activist. I'm twenty two, and in a way, I kind of grew up living like two lives.

I was a poor Native kid, isolated in a very white community and trying my best to stay connected to our culture in Mexico. But I was also a rising figure in the climate movement. I was six years old when I gave my first speech. Hello, my name is Matthew, and I came to talk to you today about how sacred the earth is. As I grew older, I learned more about my ancestors history and how governments today, especially the US, continue to exploit indigenous communities, who are among

the most impacted by the climate crisis. Our government is largely responsible for the climate crisis in the world today. The environmental movement can seem separate from the rest of the world, but if you look at it, it's connected to politics, to human rights, to race relations. Like when I was fifteen, I gave a speech to the United Nations urging world leaders to take action on climate change.

We are approaching one years of Unitedations Climate talks, and then the last twenty years, almost no agreements have been made. We need you to take action before it's too late. In the seven years since that speech when viral, I've watched world leaders failed to meet the urgency of the climate crisis, and back home, politicians from both parties were selling out to the fossil fuel industry left and right.

I became more and more disillusioned by our institutions. While I was doing all the activism stuff, I was also falling deeper in love with music. I grew up listening to cars, one Quality and the Roots, soaking up inspiration for the songs that I began to write and perform around my hometown. I wanted to be a part of this legacy of artists using their voice to bring people together. When I was seventeen, I went on tour for the first time. It started to feel like I could really

be a part of that. All of my experiences have led me to deeply believe in the interconnectedness of our world and our struggles, but at the same time, our society has only grown more polarized and more apathetic. That contradiction. This part of what inspired me to write the song you're listening to you right now. It's called say write and open letters, close and now my kin? How they shut in skins? So there's nothing left. I've been playing

it in the again and moving west. Question of my purpose? How to wear my guest? I know we are war coming for our flag? Never gonna love us? Why we love a bad How we clip democracy? And stolen land? Maybe revolution? So we Who I am? I wonder what we're all to say? I want big systemic change in the United States, But it's cal Exit the change we need. I don't know. So we're gonna try and find out. Over the next seven episodes will unpack the cal Exit story.

We're gonna try to understand what it would mean if cal Exit actually happened. Do you fully comprehend the implications of this? Why would the rest of the States? Why would the rest of US Americans let California go without a war? Along the way, we'll also ask a bigger question, how did the US become so dividedd that people are seriously talking about a solution? Is radical as a national divorce?

What will it take for those divisions to heal? It's a question that feels way more urgent as we head into mid terms that could decide the future of issues like election integrity, the fight against the climate crisis, and the right to an abortion, issues that could push our country to the breaking point. The notion of succession is very novel right it's gaining quickly. I think the abortion

debate is going to make it front and center. Genuinely, I think it is going to really cause people to question whether they are living in a unified country anymore. What I do know is that the trends go one way, and that if steps are not taken, America will fall, will stop being a democracy in the near to medium future. So let's get started. Next episode, we dig into the origin story of the guys who started it all, Calgs and founders Marcus Ruiz Evans and Louis Manelli, two dudes

that could end up being our new founding fathers. Who are they, what do they believe? And how did they go from best friends too? Well? This Lewis is out of the movement. He is dead to the movement. He will never be coming back. He's destroyed his reputation and nobody wants to have anything to do with him. If you say he's attached to cal exit. People are going to call you out on that and call you guys liars.

That's all coming up on the Last Resort. The Last Resort is an Interval Presents original production from Awfully Nice. From Interval Presents. The executive producers are Alan Coy and Jake Kleinberg. Executive producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges. Written and produced by Jesse Burton and Dana Bulut. Associate producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by Kadi Kama Kat Editing, sound design and mix by Nick

Sabriano and Keiana McClellan of Bang Audio. Post original music by My Boy Mattaway, Yuhi and Me Shoots Scott. Theme song by Me Shoot Tescott and Sweet. Sound fact checking by Lauren Vespoli. Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead is Sarah You, Business development lead is Cheffi a Lnswig, and marketing lead is Samara Still I'm Your Host Shoots God. For a full list of the sources used in this episode,

please check the show notes. Make sure to follow, rate and review The Last Resort on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. I wrote the Wars do when we want? I wrote the Wars Yeah,