Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California
Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California
Newsom is shitty but THIS IS THE WAY!!!
This fucker needs to put his money where his mouth is. He has been too deferential to Trump so far.
See, when people say Democrats need to start DOING things to push back against Trump, this is what they're talking about.
Is this a foolproof idea? Probably not. Could it backfire? Possibly. Will it really help? If it makes the admin second-guess what it can get away with, yeah, that's helpful. This is the energy we need. Stop playing softball with these fascists.
I'd be fine if the west coast joined Canada somehow. I realize it's probably unrealistic and impossible, but one can dream.
Source: Live on the west coast.
I'd rather be an independent republic, with all the regions in California becoming states of this new country. And the new constitution must be made so that we don't have neglect of vast areas of our country, just like we currently have with the US constitution. Otherwise I can foresee far northern California and parts of the central valley becoming bitter right wing states which trample on individuals rights, just like all the red states of the current country.
Considering how Trump is gutting the IRS I wonder why I’m paying federal taxes.
So people with more money than you don't have to?
If you don’t want to support trump’s federal government, you don’t have to.
why are you paying federal taxes? There are so many easy ways not to.
"Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back,” the Democratic governor said in an X post Friday afternoon, referencing a recent analysis from the Rockefeller Institute that California contributed about $83 billion more in federal taxes in 2022 than it received back from Washington."
So if Newsome cuts off the flow, it's not just the $83B overage, it's everything + $83B.
California is, what? 13th largest economy in the world? 11th?
Whoah... 4th. Just ahead of Japan and behind Germany:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/04/23/california-is-now-the-4th-largest-economy-in-the-world/
US and China being #1 and 2.
California, propping up red states since 1970’s…
That jerk is just going to make Musk their fascist king
Newsom is the King of awful neoliberalism. If the tech oligarchs demand fascism we'll get fascism in California too. You're not wrong. But Musk has proven himself to be a useless child. That's not how things would go. The ruling class isn't that stupid. That's why Trump kicked him out. Use him as tool? Absolutely. But Musk is basically political poison. But then again, the Democrats have been so incompetent they might actually try to work with him publicly.
Texas is the 8th largest economy in the world.
that blew my mind recently.
I'm too lazy to verify my hunch, but I'm guessing Texas is largely oil (exploiting natural resources), whereas California is largely intellectual output (tech, with some Hollywood and other sundry stuff), though California certainly does exploit its natural resources too (good farming conditions, some oil...).
This is the first stage of sedition.
The US is literally about to become divided. The DSA
Based
Can someone explain how this would work? When I work a job and they withhold money from my check, they then pay that withheld money along with the matching taxes paid by the business directly to the federal government, don't they? Would the state just order the businesses to send the money to them instead? If my tax dollars don't get sent to the fed, wouldn't the IRS still come after me to pay them?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. I just don't understand the mechanics of how it would work.
Just declare that jobs within the state no longer collect it, and provide a hotline to identify employers who don't comply. It's not like the IRS has the people to manage federal enforcement.
Damn. Sounds exactly like a way to boost small businesses profits as they steal taxes they won't pay. This type of policy can't be left to the businesses and a phone line. Just saying. It needs to be collected by the state imo. Placed into state Medicaid, Medicare, or a new universal healthcare plan for California.
One way would be the actual taxes paid on state, county, and municipal employee salaries. That's going to represent a large source of federal taxes that the state could divert. I'm sure there are other taxes paid by the state that could be withheld.
They can't stop the fed from collecting taxes on individuals or businesses. State agencies, maybe, but even then. Individuals get taxed by the fed.
They could probably pass a law that companies within California pay taxes to the fed through an escrow account held by the state, pass the data through so if nothing crazy happens, it doesn't really affect anybody, and get enough companies to comply that Trump would back down.
The courts would eventually decide whether or not it was legal, but by then Trump will have moved off to another target to performatively attack while pretending to help people who aren't multi-millionaires while siphoning their money instead.
How would CA even do this? Most of the taxes go from people to the feds without the state as an intermediary.
Doge just gutted the irs. Who will collect?
CA could just offer an service to run the irs around in circles or even pay for your audit.
Create an escrow account, and tell CA businesses that federal withholding goes there. Same with payments by individuals.
Maybe some won’t. But most probably will. Especially if you plan to tell them you’ll fund Medicare/aid and snap from it.
where there is a will, there is a way.
But that might UPSET Trump and we CANT have THAT!
-The DNC!
Only problem I see with this plan is the Mustard Mussolini's fox and friends would push the federal financial systems to cut off Californians from the banking network, effectively embargoing the state.
As much money as it has, it's not totally self sufficient.
Plan a bit first, get some other states to join in, and countries who are sick of Trump's shit to help supply.
Worst case is the president comes in with military, while the Cali national guard could be called up, technically they can be federalized, court battles, federal soldiers looking to arrest Newsom.
Cali, Washington, New York, New Jersey splitting though would be a hell of a blow, cripple shipping.
National guard would be under the control of the president.
What you want is the State Guard (which is often trained by and shares members with the national guard.) the state guard cannot be coopted by the president. They answer only to the governor.
Canadian Dollar works as alt currency
California has a bigger economy than Canada. Don't think there's enough CAD$ to go around