California, Oregon and Washington Are Governing Together. Is the Next Step a New Republic?
This column is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Flag image by Joe Mathews using Google Gemini.
Down with the USA!
Up with COW!
COW stands for an alliance of three states—California, Oregon, and Washington—that is restoring rights and institutions the Trump administration is cancelling.
And as COW replaces former functions of the U.S. government, it is starting to resemble a new republic.
Earlier this month, COW announced the West Coast Health Alliance, through which the three states will bring together actual experts to provide guidance on vaccines—and more broadly ensure scientific integrity in public health.
COW’s vaccine policymaking body will step in where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is dropping the ball. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. essentially canceled ACIP’s crucial work—studying and advising on vaccine safety and efficacy—when he fired all 17 committee members and appointed anti-vax cranks in their place.
Protecting health is only one pillar of the COW alliance. With Trump gutting the U.S. Fire Service, California recently signed on to the Northwest Wildland Fire Fighting Compact, of which Oregon and Washington are pillars. “While the Trump administration retreats from firefighting, California is proud to join forces with our northwestern neighbors,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
These new collaborations build on years of alliances among the COW states. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, California, Oregon, and Washington announced an alliance to protect reproductive rights and abortion access. Early in the pandemic, COW formed a Western States Pact to review COVID vaccines, acquire personal protective equipment, and coordinate strategies for reopening the economy and travel.
Before the pandemic, through the Pacific Coast Collaborative, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington (along with British Columbia) joined forces to improve trade and fight the opioid crisis. The COW states also have long worked together on ocean health and on climate plans.
Looking at all this collaboration, it’s natural to dream of California, Oregon, and Washington forming their own nation. Except that it’s too late to dream.
Californians need COW country now.
We need a new free and democratic republic because we are no longer part of one. While Americans are slow to realize it, the United States government has abandoned its constitution and morphed from a republic into what political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism,” or autocracy with somewhat competitive elections. This rapid shift toward dictatorship has been wrought by what the world’s leading democracy and electoral assistance organization, International IDEA, referred to as a “presidential coup” in its latest report.
To be clear, California hasn’t seceded from the union. Rather, by cancelling the republic, the U.S. regime—Trump and a compliant Supreme Court—have, for all practical purposes, kicked the Golden State out. Military occupation of peaceful cities, illegal bankrupting of public universities, holding back state funding appropriated by Congress, abducting our neighbors, and denying our fundamental rights effectively nullify the constitution upon which the republic once stood. The United States now treats California—and our progressive neighbors to the northwest—as a foreign land.
Without a country, California could fight to get back into the union, but why? That would mean choosing to live under an American tyranny that is likely to last decades.
The problem is that we’re not yet ready for independence. Trump has taken the U.S. into authoritarianism faster than California can build its own republic. Which is why we must speed up the process. And the quickest way is to accelerate our fledgling union with COW.
Much of this work will be legal and technocratic, the standing up of a national government. But we also must build a new shared COW culture. The name is a start—it’s whimsical, but also good politics, recognizing lesser-known regions: the cheese-producing dairies of Hanford, California; the beef cows of Oregon’s Willamette Valley; and the butter-makers of Pasco, Washington.
As a metaphor, COW works on multiple levels. COW, as a country with more than 50 million people (as many as South Korea) and $5.3 trillion in annual GDP (third largest economy on earth), would be strong enough to “cow” aggressive Americans seeking to retake their lost Pacific coast.
The cow is also a symbol of motherhood, nourishment, abundance, wealth, and the earth. And it’s sacred in India, where that great campaigner for independence, Mahatma Gandhi, declared, “Cow protection to me is not mere protection of the cow. It means protection of all that lives and is helpless and weak in the world.”
Californians would have to tread lightly in formalizing the COW alliance. Oregonians and Washingtonians would naturally fear being dominated by our mega-state, politically and culturally. To head off backlash, we should jettison our dated state motto (“Eureka” is so Gold Rush) in favor of Oregon’s independence-minded “Alis volat propriis” (“She flies with her own wings”).
We’d also benefit from putting COW’s capital in Washington state, to While we share progressive politics, Washington more reliably produces progressive outcomes. Even without an income tax, Washington runs better schools, builds more housing, and boasts lower poverty rates than California.
To assuage fears of our cultural dominance, we might need to fake some humility. We’ll have to praise the Northwest’s atonal grunge music, find ways to make flannel shirts slimming, and hold our tongues when Portlanders claim they’re weirder than us, or when Yakima yahoos boast that their wine is as good as Napa’s.
What California must bring to COW is our speed—our custom of inventing new thing fast. We need to build this new culture and this new republic right now.
So, let’s jump in!
COW-abunga!
