Top San Bernardino County officials and a network of their supporters and political donors are preparing now to officially initiate the secession process to excise the county’s 20,105 square mile expanse from the State of California as early as January 2025.
If several political developments take place as anticipated and other arrangements take place, it is anticipated that the 51st State, Empire, will achieve its recognized status by some point in 2027, in time for it to achieve standing as the 36th largest state in terms of population, with five votes in the electoral college to be cast in the 2028 presidential election.
The odds-on favorite at this point to accede to the governor’s position upon Empire’s admission to the union is the prime mover behind the San Bernardino secession movement, Jeff Burum.
Thus far, the 57-year-old Burum has himself steered clear of elective politics, preferring the role of kingmaker he has assumed by virtue of his hefty political donations rather than that of officeholder. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that by the time he reaches the age of 60 in 2026, Burum will have made the transition into being an active politician, one whose ascendancy will be matched with the crowning achievement of his career, the founding of the first addition to the United States since Hawaii was admitted in 1959.
Burum’s largesse to San Bernardino County’s politicians going back for more than two decades has put him into the vaunted position he holds today, San Bernardino County’s shot caller. While he does not own every politician in county government and those on the various city councils in the at least eight cities in the county where he has real estate and developmental interests, those who are registered Republicans are safely in his pocket. With only limited exceptions, Burum does not support Democrats.
Despite California being a solidly Democratic state in which all of the constitutional offices from governor to lieutenant governor to attorney general to secretary of state to superintendent of public instruction to state treasurer to controller to insurance commissioner are held by Democrats and the Democrats hold a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, San Bernardino County remains tightly within the grasp of the Republican Party. This is at least partly because of efforts by deep-pocketed Republican donors, of whom Burum is the foremost, heavily investing in the political process, providing the San Bernardino County Republican Party and Republican candidates with enough money to grandly outspend their Democrat rivals and purchase newspaper ads, hand bills, mailers, radio spots, television commercials an, yard signs and billboards to promote their candidacies. As a consequence, even though registered Republicans are outnumbered by registered Democrats by a [4 to3] margin, four of the five members of the board of supervisors are Republicans and Republicans outnumber Democrats on 17 of the county’s 24 city and town councils.
Burum was mentored by his business partner, Dan Richards, who was formerly an elected officeholder as a member of the Foothill Fire District Board of Directors before that agency was subsumed by the City of Rancho Cucamonga. What Richards had learned while serving in the Foothill Fire District board member capacity is that governmental policy is controlled entirely by the votes on the boards or councils overseeing such governmental entities, including decisions on franchises, contracts and project applications. As developers, Richards and Burum took this understanding to heart, and they established a pattern of making hefty political donations to officeholders or would-be office holders, ingratiating themselves with those elected decision makers who in virtually every case returned the favor by making decisions favorable to Richards and Burum in their capacities as project proponents/developers.  That paved the route for their economic success, which provided them with more and more capital with which to invest in the political process.
While comprehensive figures are not available, over the years, Burum has made somewhere between $4 million and $5 million in donations to politicians.
It is Burum’s view that the Democratic Party is anti-development. This led him to the conclusion that the only realistic way of obtaining a level playing ground for himself and other developers, given the Democrats’ domination of Sacramento, is to remove the areas where he wants to develop out of California. Thus, in July 2022, less than a month before the deadline for getting initiatives onto the November 2022 ballot, Burum came before the San Bernardino County board of Supervisors with a call for San Bernardino County to secede from California. Despite the fact that the normal lead time on qualifying an initiative for the ballot runs from anywhere between six and nine months, the four Republican members of the board of supervisors at that point demonstrated just how beholden to Burum they were by ordering county staff to facilitate placing a measure onto the ballot asking the county’s voters whether they would support withdrawing the county from the State of California. County Staff did so with alacrity, qualifying what became Measure EE for the ballot.
On November 8, 2022, at the county’s precincts and using mail-in ballots, the county’s voters passed Measure EE, calling for San Bernardino County to secede from California, with 212,615 or 50.62 percent of the county’s 420,054 voters in favor of leaving the Golden State and 207,439 or 49.38 percent remaining as Californians.
San Bernardino County’s Republican officeholders, together with Burum and his political consultants and representatives, confident that Donald Trump will prevail in the upcoming November 5 presidential race and that he is very likely to bring in with him Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, believe that the time will be ripe to bring the issue of having Republican-controlled San Bernardino County leave the Democratic fold in California. Multiple vectors of momentum will be coursing in that direction at that time. In Washington, D.C., the majority of the nation’s leadership will be, they believe, primed to have five of California’s 54 electoral college votes that always safely fall to the Democrats peeled off and put into the Republican column thereafter. Moreover, things will have evolved to a point, they hope, that the Democrats in Sacramento will be willing to divest themselves of San Bernardino County and its persistently GOP-leaning electorate.
Given the two years or so, at a minimum, that it will take to effectuate the San Bernardino County secession from California and the admission of Empire as a state, the secessionists feel that they need to act rapidly before political dynamics in both Washington, D.C. and Sacramento change to prevent them from achieving the goal they are pursuing. The Trump Administration, they are certain, will prove amenable to the actuation of their game plan.
That game plan includes creating Empire as a state along with its administrative offices, which, while entailing the complex and varied machinery of government needed operate and provide basic public services, including public safety and regulatory functions, not coming close to replicating the excessive bureaucracy and overregulation that Burum and those of like mind consider to be the primary problem with the State of California.
With the assistance of the Trump Administration, advocates of Empire statehood are intent on exploring Empire embarking on what would be a significant deviation from a major limitation imposed on states’ authority throughout U.S. history to this point. Essentially, Empire would either seek a reinterpretation of a key element of the U.S. Constitution and marry that with certain historical precedents relating to the state’s before the forming of the union or otherwise obtain a special dispensation from the U.S. Government in general and the Trump Administration and the John Roberts Supreme Court in particular, to allow it to issue currency.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution prohibits the states from coining money, and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have recognized Congress’s coinage power to be exclusive. Nevertheless, there have been deviations from the monetary policy laid out in the U.S. Constitution which would indicate that the prohibition on states minting coins and paper money is not necessarily absolute.
According to the U.S. Constitution, the basic unit is the dollar, what at that time was a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of pure silver. Only gold or silver coins and currency, that is, paper money backed by gold or silver could be considered legal tender, according to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution disallowed the individual states from issuing coins or currency. And the Constitution further banned fiat money notes, also known as “bills of credit,” that is, paper money not backed by gold or silver.
In the years since the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the dollar has been redefined, such that at present the dollar is equated not to 371.25 grains of pure silver but 12.59 grains of silver. The United States no longer requires that its currency be backed by gold or silver. A substantial number, indeed a majority, of legal and Constitutional scholars maintain that the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, upon which the nation’s entire monetary system is now fully dependent, is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution.
Consequently, the prohibition against states issuing legal tender is now subject to potential contravention, particularly if in issuing that legal tender the states adhere to the principle of backing that tender with precious metal.
Empire state formation advocates have just such a plan.
Located toward San Bernardino County’s extreme northeast end, close to the Nevada border and about 53 miles southwest of Las Vegas is the Mountain Pass Mine. Discovered in 1949, the Mountain Pass Mine is the world’s richest source of lanthanides, also known as rare earth metals. The Mountain Pass Mine, in addition to featuring deposits of other highly valuable substances, contains substantial concentrations of bastnäsite, which is riddled with the rare-earth minerals cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and europium. Compounds containing rare earths have diverse high tech applications, including in electrical and electronic components, lasers, glass, magnetic materials, and industrial processes.
The Molybdenum Corporation of America, which more than two decades later changed its name to Molycorp, first began operating the mine on a small scale in 1952, and over the next dozen years transformed it into the largest rare earth mining operation in the world as the demand for europium, a critical component in color television screens, skyrocketed. Molycorp was acquired by Union Oil/Unocal in 1977, which was bought out by the Chevron Corporation in 2005. Rare earth metals generally exist in a radioactive environment, often coexisting in conjunction with thorium, radium and uranium. Contamination of the desert floor as a consequence of leaks from a pipeline conveying wastewater used in the mining process dogged Molycorp beginning in the 1990s, leading to regulatory and prosecutorial action against the company, which ceased operating in 2002 as a consequence of the costs associated with the mitigation of those environmental issues, including $1.4 million in fines and settlements in addition to the costs of purchasing new equipment and infrastructure. Shortly thereafter, China eclipsed the United States as the leading supplier of rare earth metals, and has not relinquished that position. In 2005, 96 percent of the world’s rare earth elements were mined in China.
Unocal in 2004 obtained a new operating permit for the mine, which was thereafter inherited by the Chevron Corporation and then by Molycorp Minerals LLC, based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass mine, when it purchased the operation from Chevron in 2008. In July 2010, Molycorp, Inc. became a publicly-traded firm by selling, using the proceeds from its stock sales and taking on an additional $1.4 billion in debt to modernize the mine. While Molycorp, Inc. made tremendous strides in this regard, the Chinese government was monitoring what was occurring, subsidizing its rare-earth mining and production operations to intensify the competition for rare earth element customers worldwide, by so doing undercutting Molycorp and destroying any potential the company had for profitability for four straight years, which ultimately forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015.
The Mountain Pass Mine was acquired out of bankruptcy in July 2017 by MP Materials, which is 51.8 percent-owned by US hedge funds JHL Capital Group and QVT Financial LP. Prospectus and corporate management statements by MP Materials were that it had acquired the Mountain Pass Mine with the intention of reviving America’s rare-earth industry, and it did resume mining and refining operations in January 2018. However, Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd., a state-owned and controlled enterprise of the Chinese Government holds an 8 percent stake in MP Materials. It is further known that Gina Rinehart, an Australian mining magnate, has a 5.3 per cent interest in MP Materials, and it is believed that as another 26 percent of the investment capital in MP Materials originated with speculators outside the United States.
It is believed that a second Trump Administration, if installed following the November 2024 election, after facilitating the Empire break-off from California, would be willing to issue a national security memorandum declaring the Mountain Pass Mine a critical national asset that should not be subject to control or ownership by any foreign entity, clearing the way for the State of Empire to effectuate a government takeover of the Mountain Pass Mine, the ownership of which would transition to a public-private partnership. This would be coupled by a special dispensation, giving the State of Empire the authority to issue legal tender, which in this case would be backed by the valuable metals accumulated form the Mountain Pass Mine.
The faces that are to grace the denominations of the paper money to be issued by the State of Empire have already been determined, as have been the visages that are to be struck on the State of Empire coins.
George Washington will be depicted on the $1 bill; San Bernardino Supervisor Paul Cook on the $2 bill; Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill, the $10 bill is to feature Former San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Biane; George Chaffey’s likeness will be on the $20 bill; San Bernardino County Supervisor will inhabit the $50 bill; San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman the $100 bill; the $500 bill will portray San Bernardino County Founder Charles Rich; the $1,000 bill will picture Jeff Burum; and the $5,000 bill will honor San Bernardino County Founder Amasa Lyman. Edith Head is to be engraved on the silver dollar; William Chaffey’s face is to appear on the fifty cent piece, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren on the quarter; Upland Mayor Bill Velto’s face is to be struck on the dime; Ontario favorite son Anthony Munoz is to be outlined on the nickel and Medal of Honor recipient George Sakato’s face is to be sculpted on the surface of the Empire penny.
Upon its chartering as the 51st State, Empire will in large measure subsume several elements of state government that exist within San Bernardino County, primary among which is the California Superior Court as it exists in San Bernardino County, including its two downtown San Bernardino Courthouses, one of which was built/completed in 1927 and the other in 2014; the West Valley Courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga; the Fontana Courthouse in Fontana, the Mental Health Court in Colton, the Victorville Courthouse in Victorville, the Big Bear District Courthouse in Big Bear Lake, Barstow Courthouse in Victorville; the Joshua Tree District Courthouse in Joshua Tree; and the Colorado River District Courthouse in Needles. With the lone exception of Judge Charles Umeda, the Superior Court judges in San Bernardino County, who are currently technically State of California employees in their judicial capacities, will be offered Empire Superior Court judgeships. Umeda, who as a deputy prosecutor with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, pursued a civil/criminal case against Unocal/Union Oil/Chevron/Molycorp in the late 1990s and early 2000s relating to contamination and pollution issues at the Mountain Pass Mine, a legal action which greatly complicated operations at the facility, resulting in Molycorp shuttering mining operations there. For that reason, as a consequence of the Mountain Pass Mine being an asset that is central to Empire’s success as an independent state, it is thought best that Umeda not be affiliated with the Empire state government.