Border-moving discussions are suddenly popular! With the recent US Supreme Court ruling on race-based districting, state legislatures are busily moving congressional district boundaries. So, why can’t state borders be moved with the same fervor? Maybe they can, and maybe the federal government has an obligation to help citizens disenfranchised by a gaping urban-rural divide. In fact, the US Department of the Interior (DOI) already houses expertise that could help resolve interstate conflicts. We’d like to see the federal role formalized into what we’ll call an Office of State Border Transition and Sovereignty (OBTS).
State border challenges are arising throughout the country as rural areas suffer under urban domination and seek representative government in neighboring states. Oregon and Idaho are the textbook example of a politically charged environment that could be resolved by simply moving the border. Eastern Oregon is as big as the state of Georgia and votes even more conservatively than neighboring Idaho. Yet, its 9% share of Oregon’s population ensures it’s consistently ignored by the Portland metro area’s special form of progressive liberalism that has dominated the governor’s mansion and both state houses since 2007. To address the very real harms of non-representation, the Greater Idaho movement formed in 2019, giving voice to this block of conservative voters that seeks representation in Idaho.
How Did We Get Here?
Eastern Oregon has futilely voiced its disagreement with westside social issues since statehood was declared in 1859. But a growing economic divide widens the gap. Environmental regulations of the 1990s throttled the timber industry, hamstrung ranching and farming, and left many living east of the Cascade mountains reliant on government services. Eastern Oregon is part of Oregon’s 2nd congressional district, ranked among the highest in the nation for its percentage of Medicaid and SNAP recipients. An independent economic analysis estimated that eastern Oregon drains a net $2 billion each year from the state’s coffers to support a population of less than 400,000.
Promises to replace shattered natural resource industries with tourism never materialized. Low-wage seasonal jobs catering to tourists couldn’t touch the financial security or work dignity once provided by full-time family-wage jobs from logging and agriculture. Oregon’s legislature continues to adopt European socialism and net-zero greenhouse gas goals, making business creation impossible and bankrupting established businesses. State officials feed the doom loop by raising personal and business taxes while generously funding services for illegal immigrants.
So why would Idaho adopt these economically anemic counties habituated to sucking on the government teat? Because scrappy self-determination still lives in eastern Oregon. Its farmers and ranchers continue to eek out a living, despite Oregon’s boot on the neck of their livelihoods. Eastern Oregon voters support conservative candidates and issues at even higher rates than Idaho’s voters. Oregon’s government once protected the pioneer spirit honed by the Oregon Trail with farmer friendly statutes that persist. While eastern Oregon residents reluctantly enroll in government programs, the will to build thriving businesses, ranches, and farms burbles beneath the surface. If Idaho could release that spirit of self determination, the Points Consulting analysis predicted a surge in economic activity would benefit both eastern Oregon businesses and Idaho state coffers.
Eastern Oregon’s spark for self-determination burns in the Greater Idaho movement, which hosted citizen ballot measures that passed in 13 counties by an overall margin of 60%. Their trips to Idaho for shopping and medical appointments give tantalizing glimpses of thriving businesses, working class housing, lower taxes, clean cities, and cohesive small towns.
But western Oregon politicians hold the state border as sacred even while manipulating congressional and legislative district boundaries. They’ve secured power through extreme gerrymandering, murky mandatory vote-by-mail systems, illegal immigrant services, and mid-term judicial appointments. Agencies and taxpayer-funded nonprofits export newcomers to eastern Oregon by funding affordable housing programs (giving preference to racial groups that don’t already live there), bussing in the homeless (a deadly recipe in eastern Oregon’s harsh winters), and relocating state mental hospital patients (far from medical services). Environmental shibboleths ensure the area’s natural resource economy can’t reignite.
The few local elected officials that dare speak about moving the border experience backlash as evidenced by a recent bill that required counties to declare loyalty to the state before receiving state funds.
Obviously the only option for eastern Oregonians to get the governance they want and need is to join Idaho.
How are State Borders Moved?
The US Constitution’s interstate compact process is used to move state borders and requires approval by the affected state legislatures and the US Congress. Oregon and Washington completed such a border adjustment in 1958. A clear federal role emerges from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, which mandates replacing outdated programs with those that solve current problems. Rural counties in eastern Oregon and other states like Illinois, California, Maine, Virginia, and Maryland face a current problem of urban progressivism overtaking their sovereignty, and the DOI could help if properly organized.
The OBTS would be charged with facilitating disenfranchised citizens wanting to move state borders or form new states. The DOI already houses demographers, geographers, map makers, economists, constitutional lawyers, political scientists, and statisticians. These employees could be reassigned to OBTS, forming a strike team that makes state border adjustments orderly, technically sound, while protecting federal and tribal interests.
While an executive order can reorganize the executive branch, congressional approval would lengthen the OBTS lifespan. A coalition between Greater Idaho and similar movements will be asking the Trump administration and Congress to form the OBTS. Public understanding and support could help these trapped rural people find representative government.
It truly is time to redraw the maps.