The novel and untested approach has been introduced by Democratic lawmakers in at least four states.
Democratic legislators mostly in blue states are attempting to fight back against Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold funding from their states with bills that aim to give the federal government a taste of its own medicine.
The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure.
These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.
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Is it really doable? Federal income taxes go directly to the fed without state intervention
Payments available for withholding include the federal taxes collected from the paychecks of state employees, as well as grant payments owed back to the federal government.
As I read it: as a state employee my federal taxes would still come out of my paycheck, but the state would hold to the money. Sounds like it could get complicated for me come tax season.
Otherwise known as “The collapse of the USA”.
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Balkanization is probably the end result tbh
I’ve been thinking more along the lines of NUSA like in cyberpunk. States with the largest cities such as california, illinois, and new york join together and the states in between follow because they need them for economic reasons. Then the south can be the decaying fascist shithole it so badly wants to be.
Inshallah
Can’t wait to get imprisoned in a mental institution and Aktion-T4’d as a trans person in the wrong state!
That’s what’s going to happen to us if the US doesn’t collapse.
My state is unambiguously going to be on the wrong side of the civil war.
So is mine, but if there isn’t a civil war my state is still going to put me in a camp for being trans.
Let me rephrase: do you think we’ll be safe if the US doesn’t collapse?
and legal experts said they would face obstacles.
Do they? Those at the top of government aren’t following the rules anymore. Why should states still be bound to do so?
Those at the top of government aren’t following the rules anymore. Why should states still be bound to do so?
Republicans are ignoring the laws applied to themselves, but not the ones applied to other groups, and they’re in control. They will for sure use the law against states that do this. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it though.
If we become the people we’re fighting, then victories become losses and our motivations die.
wE gO hIgH
Fuck off with supplicant nonsense. This form of “resistance” is largely what got us here in the first place.
What a bunch of liberal nonsense
Bc that’s the difference between these groups. One believes in the law and what it means. The other doesnt
So while yes, it would be great to see the Dems play hardball they can’t without failing to uphold what they believe is right
Is it naive? Yeah probably. Will it be enough? Probably not
But going against the fed in a way that is considered “illegal” could be seen as declaring civil war. And while the fed can’t live without it’s taxes it can bomb you to hell if provoked
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The entire basis for the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, was to strike a balance between State and Federal power. It is a contract agreed to, by all parties. And contract law is very clear on what happens when one side breaches their contractual obligations.
These threats by Trump constitute a breach of that contract. If the States withholding tax revenue is considered illegal, then so is withholding Federal funding from the States. The State pays for those benefits, through their tax revenue. The Federal government has no right to withhold those benefits, without also voiding the contract that requires payment.
You don’t have to pay for services you did not receive.
I don’t know about you but I’m sick of being on the team that follows the rules and loses to the criminals that completely ignore the rules.
But going against the fed in a way that is considered “illegal” could be seen as declaring civil war. And while the fed can’t live without it’s taxes it can bomb you to hell if provoked
Not making a payment is seen as civil war? If its already at that point we’re already done.
However, realistically not making a payment won’t earn you bombs. It might earn guns though. What would that look like if a state withheld payment? Would a fed law enforcer with a gun go into an office, up to some state employee sitting an a cube responsible for making money transfers as part of their work, and have the gun in their face or threatening arrest if they don’t make the payment to the fed? Would it instead be indictments of state government officials, and perhaps jailing them? Who would they jail? The Governor that signed the bill into law? The state legislature for putting the measure forward?
When high level state officials or low level state office workers start getting arrested, that moves the game to a different level. That escalation may have knock on effects on the citizenry. This would be especially true if the reason the state would be withholding the payment from the fed would be for cutting of services from the fed.
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I feel like you’re missing a point here. It’s significant that this isn’t just
they disagree with federal policies that are affecting them.
It’s that the federal government has made a commitment to provide funds to the state (e.g. the broadband construction funds, funds to build EV charging stations, etc.) and the federal government is now refusing to disburse those funds because the current administration has decided it doesn’t like paying the bills the previous administration incurred, at least to states Trump feels aren’t adequately supportive of his policies. The proposal in this case is to withhold delivery of funds the state is supposed to give the government in order to offset the funds the government is also contractually obligated to deliver.
I agree with you that this specific supreme court would definitely rule in favor of the feds, but I definitely don’t think the case is as absurdly one-sided as you seem to find it. I think a different court could probably find precedent for this kind of dispute if they were so inclined.
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Yeah, I think we just disagree about this. You’re implying that letting this go forward would be giving in to the state acting capriciously, but that’s really not what this is. The states have literally already started spending the money–hiring contractors and so forth to physically build things–based on the funds that the government had already decided to send them, but is now arbitrarily yanking back. Note that this is different from “we are accustomed to receiving funds for this”; instead it’s “you made a specific commitment to provide X funds for Y purpose, and are now suddenly stiffing us on the bill.” In that light, withholding a portion of the funds that the state ostensibly owes the government in order to make up that unexpected shortfall really isn’t that unreasonable. You keep portraying this as them withholding money “because they disagree with federal policies,” and saying “what those policies are and why is completely irrelevant,” but the policy they disagree with is the sudden and arbitrary withholding of previously-committed funds to the state, and they are withholding state funds to the feds as a direct way of offsetting that deficit. That makes it feel extremely relevant.
I just don’t think it absolutely has to be the slippery slope you’re portraying it as. I’m getting into technicalities because we’re discussing the law and precedent, and technicalities matter a whole freaking lot when you’re dealing with the law. There’s a reason descending into technicalities is referred to in roleplaying games as “rules lawyering”.
And as for highly populous states having a larger influence on federal policy…isn’t that just democracy? Power derives from the consent of the governed, and at the moment that consent is at a particularly low ebb.
In any case, yeah, I think we just disagree on this, and it’s all moot in the face of the specific court in power. I’ll let you get the last word if you want to reply, but I’ll probably drop it at this point.
No, it would be blue states (not just California) setting aside in escrow money owed to the federal government, while pursuing a legal suit for the federal government to follow through on its commitments. This is a legit approach for an individual with a complaint against a business like a landlord, so it seems like you could pursue similar logic
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The supreme court has discretion to elevate a case to themselves immediately if they so want to. Just like they have the discretion to refuse to hear a case at all. They just rarely exercise that discretion and mostly take cases that come to them on appeals.
So really the moment it becomes a lawsuit, the SCOTUS could elevate it to themselves (given the severity of the situation and the need for immediate resolution) and make a ruling without waiting for it to come to them on appeals.
I would assume that ruling would go exactly how you expect tho, certainly
We need to just ignore the Supreme Court entirely. They’re a fundamentally illegitimate institution. Their opinions are worth less than soiled toilet paper. Ignore them.
The law does allow you to withhold payments to someone who owes you. For example, it’s legitimate to withhold rent from your landlord as long as you are setting it aside and have a legitimate habitability case ongoing.
This should follow the same logic
could be seen as declaring civil war.
To anyone paying attention, we’ve been in a cold civil war since at least 2016, if not before that.
“We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday, and in spite of all of the injustice — which of course friends and audience of this show, of our friend Steve, know — we are going to prevail,” Mr. Roberts said, alluding to Mr. Bannon’s imprisonment.
He went on to say that “the radical left” was “apoplectic” because “our side is winning” and said, “And so I come full circle in this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
This is Kevin D. Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. Point one is that he promotes the idea that the second American Revolution will be “bloodless” only if the left allows it to be, and point two is he describes it as something that is in the process of happening. That means it has already started and has been in motion.
We didn’t fire the first shot of the war here and I’m sick and fucking tired of the people acting like us pushing back is “declaring civil war.” No the fuck it isn’t they declared war on us decades ago now. What a fucking joke. This is classic DARVO, Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender. It turns the victims of a cold civil war into the aggressors when the actual aggressors literally passing bills that will fucking cause institutional social murder at a grand scale. It’s abuser tactics, plain and simple, at a national level.
Please don’t play into this false narrative, the civil war is on, us fighting back isn’t declaring it. Please stop letting liars and abusers dictate the rules of reality and what we accept as truth. You’re letting their lies set the bounds for how we operate and it’s that kind of bullshit that got us here in the first place. Stop giving them deference and treating their falsehoods as truths.
Point one is that he promotes the idea that the second American Revolution will be “bloodless” only if the left allows it to be
Fuck this asshole. “It won’t hurt if you don’t resist” isn’t a civil war, it’s a hostile coup led by jackboot-supported fascists.
There are a lot of candidates, but he should be one of the first ones against the wall when the revolution comes.
It’s literally also how abusers speak to their abused spouses. “Look what you made me do to you.”
Why should states still be bound to do so?
That’s going to depend on who whatever law enforcement agency the feds sic on the state leaders are loyal to.
Trump notoriously doesn’t pay his bills after all.
Yes, yes, please this. He’s a rogue. He is not entitled to payments.
Please do this.
Secede. Whatever happens in the US after this administration, there is no repairing the damage that has been done without violence. There is no restoring the Constitution, no repairing the rule of law, no restoration of democracy, no restoring affordable living, no curbing the power of billionaire oligarchs, no path to freedom, liberty, or sanity.
Escape is the only option that has a chance at minimizing bloodshed. Individual escape by emigrating, but what countries would want American expats now? so many are following the US’c corrupt lead. Special privileges for the rich, slavery for the serfdom.
Collective escape via secession and the creation of new independent countries is the only sane path forward now. Alternatively annexation could work, but I don’t see Canada or Mexico going out of their way to save Americans, for reasons that should be obvious.
So you don’t see Canada putting any effort into saving… California or the north east coast?
Let the red states have their trumpistan, I’ll lobby my new Canadian representative to veto aid packages all day long eh.
No. Canada is a small country and can’t actually absorb the millions of people that acquiring US states would entail. California alone has a population similar to that of all of Canada. The US West Coast, if it joined Canada, would suddenly represent the majority of the Canadian population. Canada could absorb a single low population state, like Alaska. But asking Canadians to absorb large chunks of the US is asking them to make existing Canadians a political minority in their own country. Is doesn’t make sense. The US West Coast can simply be its own independent country.
Canada is three mining companies in a trench coat.
It’s both not as liberal and not as nice as it has a reputation for being.
If Cascadia has a chance, it isn’t with Canada.
Lmao no and why would they? It’s not canada.
I guess a big difficulty in the way of secession could be that it was denied to Texas in the last 200 years. This attitude carries a certain momentum. That might hinder blue states from seceding as well. What do you think?
What about the current administration gives you the impression historical precedent matters anymore?
fair point that you’re making here.
I’m sorry, but fuck Texas and it’s “denied secession.”
The American South plays victim every chance it can in its lost cause mythos and “look at how poor picked on we are” when they spent years pushing federal requirements like the Fugitive Slave Act on the non-slave states and got pissy when they couldn’t overtake the numbers of slave states over non-slave states so they wanted to take their ball and go home, but the North wouldn’t let them lea… no… wait… they fucking shot first. “War of northern aggression” indeed.
The mess we’re in is the culture that created the civil war originally can’t get over themselves and have mythologized themselves into the victims when they were the assholes causing the problem.
-Signed a southerner who is FUCKING sick of hearing how Texas never signed to rejoin the union every time he’s near at least three Texans.
ok sorry i’m not that familiar with US history, i was just pointing it out.
No taxation without representation.
We have plenty of representation, most just don’t give a shit about their constituents wants and needs.
So…not representation.
Honestly, that’s probably the most effective thing that can be done.
In business, where it really hurts, is in the money. Hit them where it really matters.
If a company becomes too large to manage and kits subsidiaries make individual profits, some making profit and others at a loss, you divest. You sell off the crap companies. Makes sense to me. They say Trump wants to run the US like a business, right?
Is it not simply a matter of contract anyway? The states agree to pay the federal government in exchange for the security and cooperation that the federation brings. If the federal government is no longer holding up it’s end of that agreement no matter the reason, why should the States be obligated to remain in that agreement?
Well legally, because that agreement simply declared the new situation. There’s no exit clause, it’s just how things are now.
Morally, nothing. Fuck the federal government. We technically deleted the first, the articles of confederation, we can delete this one.
I also see it as an honest matter of balance … what they’re budgettary short on from not receiving anymore from the government they must fill from own means that will be deducted from outgoing federal contributions.
For example Fema is to be dismantled and states need to make their own local disaster funds, meaning less budget to go to the federal government…
Ofcourse this will be a sour pill for the maga government and they’ll use the SC to thwart it and enforce full payments to the federal government if they can get away with it.
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Yeah keep attacking CA, NY, MA, shithead.
Without their money you’re literally fucked.
Trump will be fine.
The US government will be fucked.
There is, a difference.
That comma is making my balls itch…
I have no idea if this would even do anything.
The federal government prints money. If the states don’t pay the federal government it doesn’t actually mean the government will run out of money.
What will happen is the money supply will balloon, because federal payments are one of the ways the government controls the money supply. If those payments don’t go back to the feds, the delayed payments will stay in circulation.
That might create inflation? Will it do anything else? Again, no idea.
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The Federal government is going to draw up and execute its budget as if they had the funds anyway.
That’s what I was getting at when I pointed out the fact that the feds print their own money. The federal government would be fine.
I was just running the thought experiment of “would this even do anything” under the assumption that it was successful. And it’s a fantasy on its face, even in the best case scenario it accomplishes nothing.
And the best case isn’t what would happen, because ultimately you’re right and this won’t be allowed. There are a lot of mechanisms the federal government has to compell the states to pay their dues.
No taxation without something something
