Griffiths Quoted in New York Times Article on Secession and Movements to Redraw State Lines

June 13, 2026

The New York Times

Ryan Griffiths

Political Science Department

International and Intra-State Conflict

Government

Political Parties

United States

The New York Times

Portrait of a person smiling outdoors with a brick building in the background.

Ryan Griffiths

Amid growing political polarization, several movements across the U.S. are pushing to redraw or dissolve state lines, from a progressive Cascadia secession effort in the Pacific Northwest to the conservative Greater Idaho campaign to shift rural Oregon into Idaho.

Researchers say these efforts are driven less by ethnic or cultural identity than by economic frustration and a sense that distant, dysfunctional government fails to represent local interests.

Separatism is “in the zeitgeist,” says Ryan Griffiths, professor of political science and author of The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won’t Work (Oxford University Press, 2025).

“Whether they’re libertarian or conservative or liberal,” Griffiths says, the people he interviews complain that government is “in their face, it’s dysfunctional and it’s distant.”

Read more in the New York Times article, “Independent Cascadia? Greater Idaho? Disunited States Look Toward Divorce.”