Hawaii has a sovereignty movement older than its statehood. New England just filed a seven-state joint lawsuit today. Colorado and Minnesota are net federal contributors watching their money fund their own marginalization. New York is the financial capital of a country threatening to govern it as a province. The Pacifica question is not regional. It is national — and it is accelerating.
Pacifica did not invent the idea that a region might govern itself better than a distant federal government. It refined it, documented it, and made the economic case for it. Now other regions are asking the same question — some loudly, some quietly, some with centuries of grievance behind them.
This issue maps the national landscape: which regions have the assets, the political conditions, and the existing infrastructure to follow a similar path; which face structural obstacles that make the question far more complicated; and what a practical blueprint looks like for any state or region considering where to begin.
We also note, with some precision, that the Pacifica model is not secession. It is democratic self-determination through existing legal mechanisms — regional compacts, parallel institutions, coordinated governance, and conditional loyalty to a federal compact that must be earned. That distinction matters enormously for how other states should think about their options.
The model. Six documented joint governor actions since 2025. A parallel health institution. International climate agreements. Active litigation defiance. A combined GDP of $5.1 trillion that makes the economic case self-evident.
Pacifica's advantage is structural: three governors who are already coordinating, a clear Canada option for currency and defense, and an economic base that needs no outside subsidy. The blueprint being built here is the one every other region will reference.
The Northeast is already operating as a bloc. Today — June 2, 2026 — seven northeastern states filed a joint federal lawsuit over the Trump administration's cancellation of a major offshore wind project. New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island acting in coordinated legal unison is not symbolic. It is governance by another name.
New York alone contributes more to the federal budget than it receives back. Massachusetts leads a multistate vaccine coordination effort. Vermont and Maine post the highest Trump disapproval rates in the nation at 78%. New England also shares Canada's longest land border — the same geographic asset that makes Pacifica's northern option viable.
Hawaii's case is categorically different from every other state's — and older. The Hawaiian Kingdom was an internationally recognized sovereign nation until a U.S.-backed coup in 1893 overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani. Nearly 38,000 Hawaiians — approximately 95% of the native population at the time — signed the Kūʻē petitions opposing annexation. The United States Congress formally apologized for the overthrow in 1993 (Public Law 103-150).
The sovereignty movement is active, organized, and legally sophisticated, currently arguing its case before federal courts and international bodies simultaneously. Hawaii posts 78% Trump disapproval — tied for the highest in the nation. The Nation of Hawaiʻi holds active working groups on governance, tourism, and economic independence.
Hawaii's position in the Pacific also makes it strategically critical — and strategically distinct. Its independence pathway runs less through Canada and more through Pacific partnerships: Japan, the Marshall Islands, and existing Compact of Free Association frameworks already in place with Pacific Island nations.
Colorado is the sleeper in this conversation. It is a net federal fiscal contributor, home to a booming tech and aerospace sector anchored by Denver and Boulder, and has seen its political character shift dramatically toward the urban-educated professional class that drives the Pacifica economic argument. Governor Jared Polis has been among the most vocal governors on federal overreach, positioning Colorado as a laboratory for progressive governance independent of federal direction.
New Mexico has a unique indigenous sovereignty layer — over 20 federally recognized tribal nations — that gives the state a political texture closer to Hawaii than to Colorado. Nevada's Las Vegas economy is trade-dependent and tourism-dependent in ways that make federal relationship complexity acute. Arizona is genuinely divided and does not belong in a regional bloc without significant caveats.
Michigan and Minnesota are the strongest candidates in the Midwest for regional governance thinking. Michigan controls the largest freshwater system in the world — the Great Lakes, which hold approximately 21% of the world's surface fresh water. In an era of accelerating climate stress, that resource has geopolitical value that dwarfs most other assets any American state controls. Minnesota is a consistent net federal fiscal contributor and borders Canada along a 547-mile stretch.
Illinois anchors the region with Chicago — the third-largest city in the country and a major financial, logistics, and cultural center. The Great Lakes states already coordinate on water management through existing interstate compacts, providing an institutional precedent for deeper cooperation.
Texas is worth noting separately. It has its own independence movement, its own power grid, its own mythology of self-sufficiency, and — critically — a GDP of approximately $2.6 trillion that makes it the economic peer of Pacifica. Texas's independence conversation is driven by different values than Pacifica's, but the structural logic is similar: a large, economically self-sufficient state with a distinct political culture that increasingly diverges from the national governing coalition.
Virginia and North Carolina are battleground states with significant federal employment bases — Northern Virginia in particular is deeply integrated with federal agencies. Georgia has Atlanta, one of the country's major economic centers, but the state's political diversity makes regional bloc formation extremely complex.
Pacifica moves first and most completely. New England follows with its own parallel compact — health, energy, trade — building on the seven-state legal coordination already underway. Hawaii pursues its own track simultaneously, with a Pacific-oriented framework distinct from the continental compacts.
The effect: The United States finds itself governing a diminished geographic and economic core as its most productive peripheries build parallel governance infrastructure. This does not require coordination between regions — each acts in its own interest. The cumulative effect on federal authority is the same whether they coordinate or not.
Rather than independent regional compacts, the 19 states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 form a formal governing coalition — the "United Blue States" framework discussed in academic circles. A combined population of approximately 140 million. A combined GDP that would rank second in the world.
The effect: This is the most politically charged and constitutionally complex option. It essentially creates a shadow federal government with democratic legitimacy derived from popular vote. It would face immediate legal challenge, but its political power would be immense — and its economic leverage over the remaining states would be decisive.
Canada's gravitational pull extends beyond Pacifica. New England shares a long, largely open border. Minnesota shares 547 miles with Ontario and Manitoba. Hawaii shares Pacific trade infrastructure with Canadian ports. A Canada integration scenario that began with Pacifica could, over time, draw multiple U.S. regions into closer orbit — creating a de facto North American democratic realignment without requiring formal political union.
The effect: Canada becomes the anchor institution for democratic governance on the continent's productive periphery. This is not farfetched. 14% of Americans already say they'd want their state to join Canada if it seceded — making it the most popular single-destination option in current polling.
What separates the regions most likely to follow Pacifica's lead from those that won't is not political will — it is economic self-sufficiency and geographic access to democratic alternatives. New England has both. Hawaii has a unique historical claim and Pacific alternatives. The Great Lakes have freshwater leverage that will only grow. The Mountain West faces a structural landlocked barrier that makes the calculus more difficult.
Texas is the most interesting counterpoint: a state with Pacifica-level economic independence and a diametrically opposite political direction. The Pacifica blueprint is not ideologically exclusive. Any region with sufficient economic mass and a coherent political identity can apply it. Texas's independence movement and Pacifica's are not allies — but they are, structurally, the same argument. Self-determination is not a left-wing idea. It is an old one.
The question that November 3rd will begin to answer is whether any of this becomes necessary. A functioning democratic check on federal overreach — a Democratic House, a narrowed Senate majority, a restored institutional balance — changes the calculus for every region considering these options. The blueprint does not disappear. It goes back into the drawer. Ready for the next time someone in Washington decides that the country's most productive regions can be governed as colonies.
They cannot. This is what the blueprint looks like when they try.