This is not an armed secession, but a financial & “rights” focused secession. This is about states asserting their rights. Red States have ignored laws they hate for years. Blue States are finally waking up, and considering how to govern themselves without any federal help, and how and when to oppose the feds. The key here is organized opposition across multiple states, a compact or an alliance, to assert human rights, social safety nets, and financial governance within Blue States. One topic is cutting off funds to the Federal Government when they unlawfully refuse to spend appropriated money in blue states.
This is the first promising thing I’ve read in a very long time. Blue States need strength in numbers, and need a strategy to combat Trump. If we let him pick us off one-by-one, we’re toast.
How can they cut off payments to the feds? The states don’t pay taxes; their inhabitants do and they will be guilty of tax evasion if they don’t.
On top of that, most people don’t even have voluntary say in the matter - their income taxes are already deducted by their employers on their paychecks before the pay arrives to them. So even if 10 million Californians and New Yorkers wanted to deny the federal government their taxes, they can’t.
That’s why they’re studying it, not doing it yet.
Here’s an article that discusses items that could be withheld (state employee payroll taxes & grant money they owe back to the feds). I’m not sure how material these would be, or what else is available.
I’ve long been of the opinion that there will be a secession crisis. But it won’t be blue states taking their ball and going home. It will be a reverse secession in which the Trump administration provokes states and imposes absurdly onerous policies on them, leading to the state saying “screw you, we’re not doing that”. Then Trump will declare that the state has seceded, and he’s fine with it, and they don’t get Congressional representation anymore.
So, really more of a constructive expulsion, but Trump will color it as secession. Anybody’s guess whether he’ll actually send in troops or start shooting missiles into statehouses.
I suppose the first Trump retaliation would be to hold onto the state tax withholding of federal employees.
There must be other steps Trump would take to punish the soft secessionist, not in the NBC link, but taking federal employee money is one.
I think if it’s just one state, then Trump retaliation could really hurt. If it’s a concerted compact action across many blue states, that changes the calculus a little, IMO.
I think if our federal government is going to withhold lawfully appropriated funding from Congress, then I think the states have a case to withhold tax dollars, or to charge the federal government for services they receive from states. Here’s another link from the same guy I originally linked, where he delves into how blue states could fight back financially. Admittedly, there’s some risk here. But at some point, blue states need to band together and fight back against Trump’s illegal impoundments and other attacks against blue states.
The west coast, IL, NY and the northeast could make a meaningful difference.
Doing a rough calculation, it seems like CA, WA, CO, MN, IL, NY, NY, MA, RI, DE, CT, i think those states give close to 500 billion to the government more than they get.
Incidentally if you take all the red states that are donor states and add them together, they’re barely 130 billion in donations. These are rough numbers.