Picture the 19th century, a time when America was less a nation and more a wild-eyed maverick with a semi-legitimate map but a fully working gun, and with an itch to stretch from sea to sea. California and Texas, two giants that now prop up the U.S. economy, weren’t always stars in the American flag. They were Mexican lands. And they were snatched through a mix of settler hustle, military muscle, and a doctrine called Manifest Destiny.
You could call this last one, a divine GPS for empire. Fast-forward to today, with Los Angeles burning over immigration raids and Texas playing wingman to Trump, these states are less siblings and more feuding cousins. So, how did these two end up in the Union, and what is California’s future? Especially when it looks like America is bent on pulling itself apart. Let’s try to unpack it.
Texas: The Lone Star That Demanded a Plus-One
Texas in the 1820s was a magnet for American settlers, lured by dirt-cheap land and a chance to play cowboy in Mexico’s backyard. By 1835, these Anglos outnumbered Mexicans, bringing their slaves and their gripes about Mexico’s no-slavery rule. Cue the Texas Revolution — a bloody affair that ended with Sam Houston’s boys trouncing Santa Anna at San Jacinto in 1836. The Republic of Texas was born, a scrappy nation with big dreams and bigger debts. Independence was cool, but Texas wanted a sugar daddy, and the U.S. looked tempting.
But annexation wasn’t a quick Tinder swipe. The U.S., under President Van Buren, balked — war with Mexico loomed, and the North fretted about adding a slave state. By 1845, President Tyler, drunk on Manifest Destiny’s Kool-Aid, pushed through a joint resolution to annex Texas as the 28th state. Mexico, still claiming Texas up to the Nueces River, wasn’t thrilled. Obviously.
The result? The Mexican-American War (1846–1848), and a land grab dressed as liberation. Texas joined the U.S. with 268,581 square miles, a slave state that tipped the scales toward the South and set the stage for civil war. It was less a voluntary marriage, more a shotgun wedding, and Mexico held a grudge.
California: Gold, Guns, and a Quickie Conquest
California’s story is less rebel yell, more like a smash-and-grab. In the 1840s, it was a sleepy Mexican province — think missionaries running around to convert the Native tribes, with a sprinkling of American drifters eyeing Pacific ports. The U.S. wanted California for trade routes and naval dominance, and the Mexican-American War was the perfect excuse. In 1846, American settlers, egged on by John C. Frémont, pulled the Bear Flag Revolt, a half-baked rebellion that lasted about as long as a TikTok “trending reel” of today. U.S. troops swooped in, taking Los Angeles and Monterey with barely a fight.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 sealed the deal: Mexico handed over California and half a million square miles for $15 million — a steal, even by 19th-century standards. Then came the Gold Rush. By 1850, California’s population exploded from 14,000 to over 100,000, a human tsunami of prospectors and hustlers. Congress, desperate to keep the slavery debate from imploding, fast-tracked California as a free state in the Compromise of 1850. No territorial phase, just straight to statehood — a golden ticket that pissed off the South and foreshadowed the Civil War.
California and Texas: The Common Thread and the Divide
So? Both Texas and California were born of America’s expansionist fever. This was legitimized by the belief that God greenlit the land grab. Texas was a settler-led revolt, California an opportunistic military heist. But the bottom-line is, both were about power. And as luck would have it, Texas leaned into tradition, California went the other way. This set up a rivalry that’s echoes in their 2025 personas: Texas is conservative; California liberal. All along, their Mexican roots linger — around 39% Hispanic populations in both.
2025: Californian Identity?
Flash to June 2025, and Los Angeles is a powder keg. ICE raids, starting June 6, hit workplaces like the Fashion District, nabbing over 100 undocumented immigrants. Protests erupted, naturally; the fury directed at Trump’s deportation machine. When the National Guard rolled in, against Governor Newsom’s wishes, things got ugly.
Tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullet rounds turned downtown LA into a battleground. Looks to me, this isn’t about policy, but about identity. California’s $3.85 trillion economy — tech, Hollywood, and green dreams, have probably emboldened them. 60% of Californians today want to secede from the USA. In theory, they could survive alone — California’s GDP makes Canada blush with embarrassment. But realistically, can they?
The Future: Climate, Demography, and Defiance
Three wild cards there. California’s 2025 wildfires, tied to drought and heatwaves, expose its Achilles’ heel. Demographically, the Hispanic population is growing. California’s liberalism soaked solution seems to signal towards digging deeper into progressive turf, but, there lurks the real aspect of organizations shipping away. Yes, Californian regulations are pushing business to Cousin Texas.
Fed-up with California’s signature wokeism, the whisper these days is, “go woke, go broke”. But that isn’t stopping California to act like a mini nation of geopolitical consequence, like leading the U.S. Climate Alliance after Trump ditched the Paris Agreement.
Patience, it would seem, is running low on both sides. Gavin Newsom calls Donald Trump a dictator, Team Trump bats for arresting Newsom. This is the first time since 1992 that there is this state versus federal authorities’ stand-off. This is also the first time since 1965 that the Federal Government has invoked Title 10 to federalize the National Guards of the state. The 2025 LA Protests — as they are being called — could well become the torchbearer of all that is irreconcilable between Californian identity and the Trump Administration: green energy, wokeism, or whispers of secessionism.
An outsider like me sees in all these, events that are still shaping America’s story, maybe even its breaking point, who knows. History says they’re too big to fail, but in this mess of a decade, bets are off.
