Sort of a GQ, but so wildly hypothetical any answers would almost certainly contain speculation.
So let’s say Gavin Newsom wakes up one morning and is watching the news while munching on his Wheaties. Trump’s successor, unrestrained by reason thanks to precedent, is once again embarrassing his own country and threatening the safety and livelihoods of Americans (this week because he has declared war on those godless isopods!)…Gavin throws up in his mouth a little. He can’t believe his own constituents are having to tithe to this circus. But of course, the last time someone seceded there was a big messy deal made of it. So what if…what if Gavin just said, no. California will be its own thing, Cali people & businesses won’t pay federal income tax, and federal laws will not be enforced. You get the idea. Independence is simply “accepted” and not declared as such, and Cali people simply continue on their more or less normal day to day routines.
What actions could a state expect from the Federal Government? Harshly worded letters? Actual military attack (upon whom)? Withheld funding (would it matter if Cali was agreeable to paying its own way)?
My intent is not to map out how to make all of this happen so much as to understand whether The Federal Government has any actual power if said power is ignored. How much of the unity of the United States is anchored primarily in good faith?
For sure they would lose all federal funding for virtually everything. That alone would have a huge and negative economic impact on the state in question and anger their voting population. It would probably be political suicide for the politicians who insisted on doing it. That’s probably why even the craziest Republican Right Wingers haven’t as yet tried it.
It’s primarily good faith. But the force is there.
What would normally happen is the President would decide upon some aspect of federal power that wasn’t being enforced in the breakaway state. The state isn’t collecting the tariff or delivering the mail or complying with a Supreme Court decision or allowing military personnel to travel though the state; some symbol of the supremacy of federal power over state power. And he would inform the state government that he’s going to carry out this exercise of federal power in their state.
The state then has a choice. They either back down and allow the exercise to happen, in which case they are de facto abandoning their claim of state supremacy. Or they can resist, in which case the President can use the means at his command - primarily the armed forces - to enforce compliance.
Well, it has been tried before. S. Carolina tried it in 1861 and in the early 1960s (segregation). It didn’t go well for the state either time.
All state officials I am aware of swear an oath to the US Constitution as well as the state Constitution. So lawsuits and/or recalls would be an initial response.
Adding onto what Little Nemo said, let’s remember the War of Southern Aggression began basically the same way. Just saying “Hey, we decided we’re done, good luck.” But, much as with Brexit, that’s easier said than done. Suddenly, you start getting into the not-so-mundane details of things, questions of border control and ownership of state or federal lands, and it either becomes a protracted discussion between two parties who at least agree that the state in question has a right to pull out (as with Brexit) or parties start making unilateral decisions as both sides are fundamentally at odds (as with a hypothetical US state refusing to recognize any federal authority, effectively seceding). The state government says it’s no longer subject to the federal government and the Constitution, and that’s nice and all, but what happens when individual citizens refuse to file taxes and the IRS comes knocking?
At some point, federal laws will be broken, if not by the state, then by its residents, at which point you get the ultimate test of sovereignty: who comes away with the monopoly on violence within the states borders? Whether the federal government uses the military to enforce its monopoly, or it just never gets to that point because individual citizens lack the wherewithal to follow their state’s government off a cliff, my money would be on any such declaration of independence (which is basically what you have posited) coming to a swift end, unless the move away from federal power involves more than one (many) states.
As **Jasmine **pointed out, the state would lose all federal funding.
That being said, with this particular example - since politics permeates everything - if it’s a Republican president in power, and given the state of politics these days, I think we would actually see many Republicans call for California to simply be recognized as an independent nation and kick it out of the Union. It would shift politics immensely in favor of the GOP for the remaining 49-state America. It would mean that 55 blue electoral votes and many millions of liberals had just removed themselves from the equation. So I don’t think a Republican-controlled government would actually put up much of a fuss over this.
I don’t think it’s as easy as that. Based on the events of the Civil War and its aftermath, particularly the SCOTUS decision in Texas v White, it would take an amendment to sever ties between the federal government and a state. So it’s not enough that a state and even a super-majority of that state’s residents decide they are done, and a bunch of Republicans in Congress decide to agree. At there very least, they’d have to go through the process to push through an amendment, and I don’t think it’s likely that you’d get the necessary 75% of state legislatures to go along with that in the foreseeable future.
Barring an amendment, if even one resident of a seceding state felt they were having their rights due under the US constitution denied to them, they could avail themselves of the federal courts and force the issue as I previously outlined: at some point, federal laws get broken, and the state and its residents can be made to comply. I suppose it is conceivable that you could end up with a situation where the state refuses to comply and the executive branch of the federal government refuses to compel compliance (it’s happened before) and so the question is put off, but that only lasts until the next party—a party concerned with union and federal authority—decides for the federal government to assert itself again.
What would happen would be dependent on the political leanings of the state, the Congress and the President…and the willingness of the latter two to do their Constitutional duty.
I also wonder if there would be any effect on California being represented in the Electoral College and Senate/House. Might a Republican presidency claim that a delinquent state doesn’t get to have its votes counted on Election day until it’s in good standing again?
I think OPs scenario has California also putting a hold on any federal income tax going out of California (redirecting it back to the state). I believe the net result is a wash, at least from a pure dollars-in to dollars-out standpoint.
Obviously just the disruption in services and uncertainty would result in substantial economic impact, but this is difficult to quantify.
Define “in good standing.” Because, again, it’s not like history offers us no examples of disputes between state and federal governments. So while I’m sure there was some rationale used to not worry too much about Alabama’s electoral votes during the election of 1864, I doubt the same rationale would work to deny a state government that refused to, say, cooperate with the federal government in identifying illegal immigrants or preventing sale of marijuana the chance to name electors in a Presidential election.
States don’t collect federal tariffs; federal employees do. Guess where their paychecks come from?
Postal employees deliver the mail. They work for the federal government.
What decision, and how are they not complying with it? There are likely many ways that the federal government could force compliance. Withholding federal funds is the most likely means but it’s far from the only one. Imagine, for example, if banks within the state lost the ability to transmit or receive funds through the Federal Reserve. Or airports lost air traffic control coverage. Or if airlines operating in the state weren’t allowed to operate in other states.
How exactly is the state going to stop them? They are already in the state.
States are already refusing to enforce Federal laws and comply with ‘requests’ from Federal LE agencies that aren’t legally enforceable, and that’s completely normal. If people refuse to pay US income tax, they’ll be prosecuted by the feds for tax evasion - and the IRS doesn’t need local law enforcement involved. there’s plenty of evidence of what happens to people and companies who refuse to pay taxes. If banks refuse to comply with reporting rules, they’ll be treated as illegal and some arrests will be made and the banks will no longer be able to operate in the US at large. There are plenty of examples of what happens to banks that don’t cooperate with the feds, and it’s completely devastating to the bottom like of the boards, owners, and shareholders.
If people from the state, LEOs or no, try to actively stop federal LEOs from doing their job, it will be treated as some flavor of illegal activity or insurrection and arrests will be made or military units called out, depending on how widespread it is. This would be a great boon to Trump and the republicans , as the poster child of ‘Blue States’ attempting something like this would be eaten up by his base and (despite what Republicans say) Democrats actually want to have a USA, so opposition will be bipartisan.
“Calexit” scenarios are in general pretty senseless.
Poking at the heart as usual. If ever there was a time for a state, or a group of states (say, Cascadia), to pull this sort of shenanigans it would seem this is the best opportunity for success in my lifetime.
Honestly what’s driving the question is: how much dereliction of duty and malgovernance do the states have to tolerate from the Executive and Legislative branches before it can be largely agreed that the Fed is no longer a legitimate governing body?
Note that the US Federal government is the owner of more than 45% of the land in California, and that includes some major military facilities. This is would not a minor matter of selling a park somewhere. Also, while I wasn’t thinking of it before, having the military personnel that reside in California refuse to pay income taxes would be kind of tricky in this scenario.
Not if anybody took 5 seconds to think about it. California on its own is the 5th/6th largest economy on the planet. The Republic under Republicans just can’t take that kind of hit. Plus losing the top 2 container ports in the country. Plus the San Joaquin Valley. They’d all starve.
Another strong precedent would be the Nullification Crisis of 1832. It centered around a tariff (I didn’t use that example at random). The tariff had been enacted by the federal government but South Carolina didn’t like it. So the South Carolina state government declared that they were “nullifying” the law in their state and it would not be enforced.
It’s worth noting that South Carolina was not declaring independence; they still considered themselves a part of the United States. But they were declaring the belief that states had a right to veto federal laws that they disagreed with. I’m not clear if this is what the OP is describing in his post.
But either way, the President (Andrew Jackson) and Congress responded the way I described. They enacted a Force Bill which authorized the President to use military forces to collect the tariff and federal marshals to arrest anyone who breaks a federal law in a state which refuses to arrest them.
This came up in the big thread about Calexit a while back. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to do - as screwed up as Republicans are, they still want to exist in the United States and once States start being able to up and leave, that will end as various states leave under pressure. And cutting out that much of a population and tax base is not a small deal. OTOH, the Federal government owns 45% of California’s land including military bases, and much of California’s water depends on interstate compacts, which would cease to exist and have to be rengeotiated if CA
Also, the logistics of separating with modern laws would be a nightmare. The US revoking citizenship for Calexiters might not be possible - but if Calexiters don’t choose to revoke their citizenship, their citizens are still required to pay US income tax, and their banks have to report all income to the IRS or be unable to work with any US bank. If Calexiters do revoke citizenship, it’s likely that the US would change the laws on social security payments to non-citizens living abroad, since SS payments to California are a huge expense to the US. California’s big economy depends on trade with the US, and suddenly having tariffs and border controls for people driving trucks and trains to take goods into the rest of the US would cause a huge problem and need a huge amount of negotiation.
No one is going to vote to enact that mess. Some loudmouths like to talk about it, and paid Russian shills like to encourage such talk (the guy who created the movement was paid by the Russians, presumably to do so), but it’s not a serious possibility.
I’ll clarify. I’m asking about a passive aggressive secession. Specifically, how much can a state ignore the feds before it becomes problematic. I reckon “when the money stops flowing” is pretty close to the answer, DC having little use for the several states apart from what can be squeezed from them.
And again, the specifics of how to make it work or why it may not be a good idea are not what I’m after here.