The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding for California, an effort that could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.
Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California. Sources said the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems.
Singling out one state for massive cuts would be an unusual move, but Donald Trump has long made Democratic-led California a target.
If the federal government isn’t going to give California back the federal taxes paid by its citizens then it should stop paying federal taxes.
Taco Don doesn’t understand how anything works.
Is that functionally just seceeding?
I have NO clue what the legal ramifications are here. If it’s not, that would seem like a next step.
I wonder how one could do this.
The state of California could implement say, an 80% state income tax. This would be deductable from federal tax per IRS tax code. The state could then create an instant tax credit to credit back a gross 69% income, leaving 11% to the state to match their current tax rate.
The Feds would only get tax on 20% of wages, unlike the 89% they do now
Then you get something like the current SALT cap that cancels that out
It would only delay things. When you get a state tax refund, the next year it’s counted as federal wages.
Delaying things might be enough if the state can do it for years
Taxes are collected through the private for-profit banking system in a manner that’s completely disjointed from the state of residency. Payroll taxes are incredibly efficient, with north of a 98% collections rate, for this reason. The private banks need the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve needs the US Treasury. So when the US Treasury says it’s taking a vig on your employer’s deposit at Bank of America or Citigroup or even your local Credit Union, compliance is instant and unquestioning.
Going Unbanked is one way to get around this. But without an employer who is operating on the same wavelength and willing to play ball, unbanking yourself is difficult and expensive and fraught with criminal liabilities.
So, the short answer is that there’s no (practical) way for a State Government to intervene on Federal income tax collection. Not when all the transactions are taking place in a server farm hosted in a NYC boiler room, anyway.
its a good thing i stopped paying federal taxes.
First pretty dumb to say this publicly if true… But second: you do realize that the rules about paying taxes literally, only apply to people like you and I? They 100% will continue to go after low hanging fruit, and that means people who can’t afford a team of attorneys on retainer.
You will lose against the IRS. The only way this works is if everyone acts together. You cannot beat Uncle Sam alone.
i’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. its been easy as hell to cheat on your taxes for a long time. extremely easy to invent stuff and end up owing 0. not as easy for them to actually check. especially not now.
So Americans need to switch it off and on again. Gather up new founding fathers and mothers, write up a new constitution and declaration of independence - write up documents for a new federation between states…
Create a back up United States. Declare the old one null and void. Stop interacting with the old one. Start interacting with the new one.
Call all this something benign sounding. Try not to go to war about it. But yeah, you all need to switch this shit off and on again.
I agree. Time for a good old constitutional convention.
Except that’s exactly what the Heritage Foundation has been wanting for decades so they can turn the US into an official Christofascist nation.
I can’t wait to be the United Coca-Cola States of Unilever America.
Yup, by excluding the south east (Texas to Florida) they could easily reboot it in a much more progressive manner.
Texas and Florida? You mean North Mexico and Cuba Libre?
if state funding is being canceled, that state should leave the union. why be apart of the united states government if trump is dismantling and destroying the united states government.
The American thing to do is fight for America.
The people who want California to just leave are the ones who want to dismantle the country.
I’m Californian. The federal government, for my entire life, has just taken and taken and taken from me. I have received nothing in return. I don’t need your shitty union of thugs and mouth breathers, and I don’t need your bullshit military colonizing waste of time and money.
Well you probably don’t realize the things the federal government does give cali. Interstate highways are one. Coast guard. Bridges. And clearly funding to the universities. Now the balance is lopsided, in that cali gives more back. But that doesn’t mean cali would have given you those same things.
That said… determining if CA would be better with our without the feds is a complicated question. For one, they would probably need to fund thier own military, as they would be a ripe target given thier economic prosperity.We pay more into those federal programs than they spend back on us. If we just kept the taxes locally, while maintaining funding for all those programs, we would come out ahead by a factor of nearly 2:1.
As for military spending, there is a lot of savings to be had by not fighting endless bullshit Christian jihads.
So you missed my point. Many of those things that the feds pay for just wouldn’t happen if the state was paying. Politics is tricky like that.
It’s not a matter of the state taking over things, the federal government is (hypothetically) stopping those funds regardless of what they do, so why wouldn’t they fund it themselves because all those things you mentioned still need to happen.
See my comment to the other response about the not in my backyard crowd.
Why wouldn’t they?
The more local the governing body, the more they have to pacify the not in my backyard people. The federal government can generally ignore those people and just make things that need to happen, happen.
Isn’t the point of this post that soon the state isn’t going to be paying anyway?
Correct. But what you may have implied and got wrong is that this is somehow a bad idea. America is long overdue for a federal collapse. This cultural infighting is unsustainable.
As a new Yorker I am sick of having my tax dollars go to subsidize hicks in the deep south and Midwest that ultimately vote against my rights. I am more than happy to see the bridges that unite us burn because the concept of “unity” in a melting pot is a ticking time bomb, as it always has been.
The people who want California to just leave are the ones who want to dismantle the country.
This Canadian is fine with it at this point. Fuck the USA. We’ve been your friend forever and you shit on us.
Burn baby burn.
I wouldn’t really want to be sharing the largest land border in the world with the size of tempest brewing up in the US right now, should it ever boil over. Seems like that might be a bit of a nightmare to keep contained.
The strategy isn’t to keep it contained.
… Wait so you want the war spilling over into canada? Why?
I think it maybe time to change the dynamic of the USA. Maybe instead of 2 levels, maybe three. Federal, regional, and state. Where the federal hands over some powers to the regional government. I am not sure how that could happen, but it might be a good direction.
I don’t want what’s best for America. I want what’s best for California. It’s in a bad relationship and is always the provider and the victim.
Without liberty and justice for all, there can BE no one nation indivisible.
Dude, this all blue states. We always help the poorly uneducated… and always get fucked on. Those leaders don’t even say thank you, or even wear a suit.
California should cancel state funding for the federal government.
He’s still mad that Schwarzenegger took over The Celebrity Apprentice
How about California cancelling paying federal taxes in turn? This would probably lead to a big loss for the federal budget, wouldn’t it?
California should confiscate Trump National golf course.
Finally a good use of eminent domain
Turn it into a homeless shelter.
The ICE raids are meant to cause the response we are seeing, and eventually an even more powerful response. The White House has already been throwing around the word insurrection, which implies the insurrection act. If the natural escalation that they expect takes place, it could create the conditions where the insurrection act can be invoked. Since the Federal level is under control of the Trump Administration, that leaves the National Guard, state police, county sheriffs, and local police departments. The only one of these capable of standing up to the Feds would be the National Guard. If things turn ugly over the next few weeks during continued raids in places like L.A., it could force the Governor to deploy the national guard given the numbers of people involved. Some of these communities are well armed and they are already fighting back. If the goal is to cause the conditions to invoke the insurrection act, it would take away the ablity of the California Governor to direct his national guard. They can be forced to follow the orders of the President, which is one of the reasons for using the Insurrection Act in the first place.
In a place like L.A., this leaves just the LAPD and Sherrifs department and they do not have the power to stop both the Feds and a national guard under White House control. L.A. seems to be heavily targeted by the Trump administration in many different ways. They are looking at bribery and corruption in many areas like LA Homeless Agency. The ICE raids targeted the Fashion District are meant as an economic attack, as many of those people worked in shops and factories. Other ICE raids targeted companies involved in agriculture. The Trump admin is also looking at other Federal funding to take away from California.
All of this combined could mean that the state Government, state and local police cannot protect these communities from what is being sent after them, partially as an overall form of economic warfare against California generally. You have the wildfire funds, the tariffs attacking the shipping areas of coastal California, and it’s obvious that it is a well planned operation. Behind this too is a hostile DOJ and FBI, not to mention DHS, ICE, and everyone else. They are being hunted.
The State Government can’t protect anyone either, they have been totally outmanuvered at every stage, because they are just coasting until 2026. The one advantage people have is their numbers. Peaceful protest is the way forward, it just takes a lot more people knowing about the raids and being present to protest them. If the Trump admin wants a Kent state or Tiananmen Square type situation on their hands, that will be on them…
National Guard was already deployed by Trump to Los Angeles today.
I posted that about 30 minutes before it happened.
Yup, not arguing, just adding some updates.
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Looks like a class action lawsuit involving the people of California and the Feds.
And just like they did in Maine, California will sue him and win.
california doesnt even need federal funding. california funds everyone else.
All blue states feed the poorly uneducated.
Cali should stop paying taxes.
I’m not paying taxes to a fascist government. A State can figure out how to do it too.
Easier said than done. Payroll systems do this automatically
So hire an A-Team of Payroll experts to figure it out. Use the money that would have gone to GovCo to pay their fee.
It’s not that it can’t be done. It’s whether or not they want to do it.
Wow, so I thought I was fucked when I had “California secedes” on my bingo card
He’s just jealous because California has the best TACOs.
TACO.
