Ayesha Rascoe opens by tying the episode to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, part of NPR's broader 'America in Pursuit' series. Rather than celebrate the Declaration as a purely generative document, she strips it back to its essential function: a formal declaration of secession from British rule. 'It's not you, it's me,' she says, paraphrasing the founders. This reframing is doing real work — it lends philosophical legitimacy to the movement the episode is about to introduce, positioning New Illinois not as a fringe protest but as a continuation of a fundamentally American tradition. A brief clip of G.H. Merritt reciting a new declaration of independence teases what's coming, before the episode breaks for its first sponsor reads.

The first ad block features BetterHelp, citing its 2026 State of Stigma Report: 85% of 2,000 surveyed Americans think getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages it. Capital One promotes its Savor card's 3% cash back on dining, and Carvana advertises its fully online car-buying service. These reads run back-to-back before the host re-engages with reporter Connor Towne O'Neill.

Reporter Connor Towne O'Neill joins Ayesha Rascoe to explain the New Illinois movement in clear terms: all Illinois counties except Cook County (Chicago) would secede to form a new state. The driving frustration is political arithmetic — Chicago's size as the nation's third-largest city gives Democrats a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature, leaving rural conservatives structurally powerless. ^{[1] — Connor Towne O'Neill "Democrats hold veto-proof supermajority: Chicago-area Democrats currently hold a veto-proof supermajority in the Illinois state legislature…" 03:45 Play} O'Neill is quick to distinguish New Illinois from the Confederacy: these are patriotic Americans who want to stay in the United States, just not in the same state as Chicago. They invoke the language of the founding — taxation without representation — as their philosophical grounding. Crucially, there is a legal path: Article IV of the Constitution allows new states to be admitted with congressional and state-level approval, but that second requirement is the Catch-22. The state legislature they want to escape would have to let them go.

Merritt first got the idea for New Illinois in 2018 while living in northern Illinois near the Wisconsin border, frustrated by the state's high taxes and the sense that Chicago's power created few opportunities elsewhere. ^{[1] — Connor Towne O'Neill "New Illinois founded 2018–2020: G.H. Merritt first conceived of New Illinois in 2018 out of frustration over high taxes and Chicago's polit…" 06:19 Play} She and her husband considered moving, but something stopped her: her father's house. Standing in it, she had what she describes as an epiphany — why should she be the one to move? The state was pushing her out through corruption and taxation, and she refused to accept that. From that personal refusal came the movement's deceptively simple tagline: 'Leave Illinois without moving.' In October 2020, she formalized the group's intentions by standing on the steps of a western Illinois courthouse and reciting both the original Declaration of Independence and a new one for New Illinois.

O'Neill explains that New Illinois published its grievances separately from its declaration — because, as Merritt put it, 'it would have been as long as an encyclopedia.' The list includes high taxes, unconstitutional gun laws, gerrymandering, mounting state debt, and failures on immigration enforcement. But the movement runs straight into an economic paradox: a study found that some rural counties receive more than $2 in state services for every $1 they pay in taxes, while Cook County residents get back only $0.90 on the dollar. ^{[1] — Connor Towne O'Neill "Rural counties get $2+ per $1 in taxes: A study cited by Connor Towne O'Neill found that some rural Illinois counties receive more than $2 …" 08:07 Play} Critics — including the movement's rare Democratic ally LaShawn Ford — see this as rural counties cutting off their nose to spite their face. Secessionists counter that they'll create a business-friendly environment with lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a revitalized coal industry. Governor JB Pritzker dismissed the whole thing as a stunt. O'Neill disagrees.

While G.H. Merritt provides New Illinois with its philosophical founding, Lorette Newlin provides its operational spine. Running her own parallel organization — the Illinois Separation Referendum — Newlin focuses relentlessly on mechanics: getting the question onto ballots. The advisory referendums are non-binding, but the results have been strikingly one-sided. Across 33 counties, Newlin has never lost: Fayette County (79%), Clay County (80%), Edgar County (83%). ^{[1] — Ayesha Rascoe "33 for 33 — every referendum passed: The Illinois separation referendum has been placed on the ballot in 33 counties and passed in favor of…" 11:11 Play} These are small counties, and they're easy to brush off. But then Madison County — 250,000 people, part of the St. Louis metro — voted yes too. After that, O'Neill reports, people started taking New Illinois more seriously. Newlin has petitioned courthouse squares, parking lots, and junkyards to gather signatures. She prefers going through county boards, and has lobbied them successfully — including Henderson County (6-2) and three southern Illinois counties that voted unanimously.

The second sponsor break runs three back-to-back ads. Capital One again promotes the Savor card's 3% cash back on dining. Betterment pitches its automated investing platform, emphasizing tax-smart tools and year-round after-tax growth. Alloy Health introduces its AgeWell longevity care program for women in midlife, offering $20 off sitewide for new customers using code NPR at myalloy.com.

The scene is hard not to appreciate for its irony: New Illinois organizers meet monthly inside a courthouse that displays a portrait of Abraham Lincoln — the Great Emancipator, the president who held the Union together. Larry Mulch, the movement's vice chairman and a township supervisor himself, explains the organizing logic: you build a core group in each county, recruiting neighbors and local officials, then lobby county boards upward to state senators. The former Hancock County sheriff is in the group — which is how they got to use the courthouse in the first place. O'Neill notes that the movement draws deeply on a shared sense of cultural and historical distinctness. Downstate Illinois was settled largely by Kentucky and Tennessee farmers; Chicago grew from shipping and Great Lakes commerce into a global metropolis. As residents see it, the state was 'cleaved together' — two different peoples with two different pasts, two different ways of life. That sense of cultural distinctness, combined with political powerlessness, is exactly what history professor Dr. Kenneth Owen identifies as the two hallmarks of a serious secessionist movement.

Dr. Kenneth Owen brings scholarly grounding to a movement that's easy to dismiss. He identifies two defining hallmarks of serious secessionist movements: a sense of cultural identity distinct from the political body being left, and clear political stakes — what can actually be gained by leaving. He sees both in New Illinois, and acknowledges the movement is building the political infrastructure you'd expect. The historical precedents New Illinois cites — West Virginia splitting from Virginia, Maine splitting from Massachusetts under the Missouri Compromise — are real, but Owen stresses the context was so extraordinary (Civil War secession, slavery-era balance of power) that they don't constitute usable precedent. The constitutional mechanism exists in theory; it has never been used to create a new state on this scale. And yet, he notes: 'They all sound crazy right up until the time that they happened.'

Owen's most optimistic read of New Illinois is not that it succeeds, but that it forces a conversation. In the cases he's studied, when regular political channels fail, the credible threat of leaving compels the dominant power to reopen the social contract. O'Neill uses the metaphor Rascoe offers — a check engine light — and agrees it's already blinking. ^{[1] — Dr. Kenneth Owen "Even if New Illinois never becomes a state, the threat of secession might force a renegotiation of the Illinois social contract. Dr. Kennet…" 19:30 Play} LaShawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat in the state legislature, is the evidence: he spoke at a New Illinois conference in 2023 and describes himself as the movement's one Democratic interlocutor. Ford opposes the split, arguing the rural funding relationship with Chicago is too valuable to sever. But his willingness to show up at all represents exactly the kind of productive tension Owen describes.

Ford's analysis of New Illinois is the most layered in the episode. He rejects the north-south framing entirely: the real divide, he says, is between haves and have-nots, and working-class people across the state face the same problems — food deserts, inadequate healthcare — regardless of whether they live in Chicago or rural Illinois. But he's honest about the racial dimension too. While he doesn't think race is the dominant driver of New Illinois, he acknowledges that resentment toward Black Chicagoans occasionally surfaces as fury over 'wasted tax dollars.' And drawing on his own experience as a Black man in a minority, Ford finds an unexpected note of empathy for rural conservatives who feel politically powerless. His solution — a progressive tax on the wealthy — is a non-starter for conservatives who are, as O'Neill puts it, 'allergic to taxation.' The impasse holds. An Illinois historian called the state's condition schizophrenia; another compared it to conjoined twins. Neither metaphor suggests a clean resolution.

The episode's most alarming section opens with Owen's measured academic warning: the structural conditions for political violence in the US exist right now, and rebellions historically start not by plan but by spark. Then Virgil Strader removes all academic distance. Strader serves on New Illinois's transitional legislature, helping draft a constitution and write laws in preparation for a state that doesn't yet exist. In his day job, he's an auctioneer — and at a St. Patrick's Day benefit auction in Highland, Illinois, he told O'Neill exactly what he thinks happens if the legislature says no. 'Grab your gun.' He estimates a better than 50% chance of armed conflict. ^{[1] — Virgil Strader ">50% chance of armed conflict — Strader: New Illinois transitional legislature member Virgil Strader said there would be a better than 50% …" 25:44 Play} He fantasizes about surrounding the state capitol in Springfield with an armed group, forcing the split without firing a shot. He knows people with heavy arsenals who would join. A bill to split the state was introduced in the most recent session by legislator Brad Halbrook but died in committee. Halbrook plans to reintroduce it — and when pressed on violence, he invokes the Founding Fathers: they weren't worried about the law, they were worried about political will.

As the episode nears its close, O'Neill returns to the two women who anchor the movement. Merritt explicitly disavows violence: leaving Chicago is like leaving a bad marriage to avoid killing your partner, she says. Newlin's framing is different — quieter, more stubborn, and arguably more powerful. She doesn't think about failure. She's a farm girl. You plant seeds without knowing the weather, the price, or what storms will come. You plant anyway. And she keeps planting: 8 more county boards have agreed to put the separation referendum on the ballot in the upcoming midterm elections. ^{[1] — Connor Towne O'Neill "8 more county boards added for midterms: Lorette Newlin persuaded 8 additional county boards to add the separation referendum to the ballot…" 28:20 Play} O'Neill's closing question — what happens to all that energy if this doesn't work? — hangs unanswered, because for Newlin it simply isn't a question worth asking. The seeds are in the ground.

Rascoe wraps the episode with a brief reflection — 'the question is, what's going to grow?' — before thanking Connor Towne O'Neill and crediting the production: produced by Sharon Mashihi with help from Ben Rapoport, edited by Jenny Schmidt, fact-checking by Will Chase, engineering by Jimmy Keely, with the Sunday Story team including Andrew Mambo and Leanna Simstrom, and executive producer Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Chip Brantley and Illinois Public Media. A final ad block covers Capella University's FlexPath degree program, the NPR Wine Club (which has raised over $1.75 million for NPR), and Middi Health's AgeWell longevity care line for women. Up First returns Monday.