Is It Time for California to Go?

America Keeps Failing the Golden State—And the Supreme Court Decisions on Abortion, Guns, and the Environment Are Pushing Us to the Edge

To encourage us to think about the unthinkable, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets a Doomsday Clock, showing how close humanity is (in metaphorical minutes and seconds) to the “midnight” of the apocalypse (nuclear or otherwise) and human extinction.

California may now need its own Independence Clock, showing how close we are to that seemingly unthinkable moment when our state departs the U.S., to become an independent nation.

In recent weeks, that prospect drew unmistakably closer, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court.

First, justices overturned more than a century of legal precedent …