People don’t get what’s actually happening here. Everyone keeps screaming “orange man bad” or “coastal libs seceding” but they miss the historical precedent. What you’re watching with Newsom, Ferguson, and Kotek is the West Coast forming its own proto-institutional sovereignty a shadow government in miniature. And yeah, it looks like “just health policy” now, but in practice this is how legitimacy fractures. First it’s vaccines, next it’s climate compacts, then economic standards, until you wake up and realize California has more say over your life than DC. It’s the same pattern we saw in the Articles of Confederation period: weak center, strong periphery. The CDC is gutted, Trump is flexing federal power, and in response the states are setting up parallel bureaucracies. That’s literally state capacity migrating away from Washington.

If you’re on the West Coast, you probably love this because it feels like independence without firing a shot. If you’re in the rest of the country, you should be worried, because it means the “union” is becoming a brand name, not a real government. In other words: stop thinking this is about COVID shots. It’s about sovereignty transfer, happening right in front of you. And honestly? The alliance knows exactly what it’s doing. California doesn’t need permission anymore.