Summary
House Speaker Mike Johnson stated that federal aid for California’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, which have killed at least 24 and displaced nearly 200,000 people, should come with conditions, citing alleged failures by state and local leaders.
Johnson also hinted at tying aid to debt ceiling negotiations.
Other Republican leaders, including Senators John Barrasso and Ron Johnson, expressed similar views, blaming liberal policies for exacerbating the fires.
Critics denounce these positions as cruel, given the scale of destruction, with over 12,000 buildings lost and massive evacuation orders in effect.
If I was governor of California:
Sure, go ahead. We’ll stop paying Federal taxes. Let the red states crumble as they don’t have our funds. You hold us hostage, we’ll play by your games. You go low, we go low.
Maybe then we’ll have some sort of progress as a nation for the first time in years.
California is welcome to become Canada’s 4th territory or 11th province (both are equal).
I don’t know if we can help you a lot, but we definitely won’t treat you like shit.
Ya fuck these US annexation tweets, lets bring back Cascadia talks. The mountains divide us physically and culturally.
BC is tired of having our old growth forests raped, pipelines we don’t want or benefit from rammed through our mountains against our will scarring the landscape, and our coastlines littered with trash from Alberta both literal and figurative.
The economy of the State of California is the largest in the United States, with a $4.080 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2024.[1] It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a nation it would rank in terms of nominal GDP as the world’s sixth largest economy, behind India (4.27 trillion) and ahead of the United Kingdom (3.588 trillion).
And we are also a donor state. Even with all the RnD that we have.
I hate this century so goddamn much.
None of these people are serving the United States. They need to be removed.
by force
Tell me republicans, what California policies have the evil democrats done to cause the fires or made it worse?
I was told there would be no fact checking.
If y’all want to see what happens to the federal budget when California stops paying, keep it up.
Should probably stop giving the free money to moochy red states though.
You know California could just not pay the federal government taxes for a year and we would be back to 100 real quick.
No reason to giving money to other red welfare states that this state earned.
I want this to happen soooo bad. Signed, a New Yorker (State, not city)
That would be a very dangerous escalation. I love the idea of the red states finally finding out but that’s not how that would go unfortunately. We’re in this union for life for the worse.
It’s supposed to be for better or for worse. Lately it’s just been better if you’re a red state that refuses to invest in education and worse if you’re a blue state that actually generates money from your educated and well-paid citizens. Enough is enough.
You’re essentially arguing for succession. That means civil war. You can assume neither of us survive that if anyone does. This echo chamber has gotten real dumb
Sometimes you gotta fight a civil war…sometimes people need to die for their ideas…
You’re a troll or an idiot if you believe that. A civil war in a country with this man nukes could be the end of humanity and would absolutely cause unbelievable devastation for California even if it somehow won so much worse than paying into federal taxes. That is a lose lose. I would think you’re a Chinese troll but even China would lose one of it’s biggest trade partners and it would be devastating for their economy
Oh well, maybe the Republicans should have thought of the consequences of their actions when they’re legitimately evil and hurting people because it makes $0.01 more money than doing the right thing.
Sucks to suck, Republicans need to eat shit.
The thing is that it is us, who pay the federal taxes. We would have to stop paying them and then redirect it to state government. The problem would be how California could change that?
The IRS can’t manage their current workload without state help, this would be very simple:
Newsom announced that California will no longer assist the feds in unpaid tax investigations within California. Only unpaid state tax will get our state guys involved, feds actively get hindered. Californians get told to not pay their federal tax that year and that they’re safe because the feds can’t do shit. Imprison the rich who’ll pay anyway because they’re traitors, take their cash and assets for state use.
Fun fact this is actually somewhat similar to how the state burned out pro-Confederate individuals during the civil war. Basically taxes were paid with cash, raw, and refined materials to the Junta’s if ya sent money to the Feds it was assumed you were sending it out east to the Confederates.
The GOP also cut funding to the IRS. Who is going to do that collecting?
State-level tax bureaus would do the state-level tax collecting.
Kentucky would be sad
Here’s hoping Mike meets his Luigi soon.
The Government of Fucking Putin and their America Last agenda.
California should be like: “We will not negotiate with terrorists.”
Is this how you Make America Great Again? Is this America First?
Yes. When you consider that means making the left suffer. This is exactly what MAGA wants.
Except there’s more Republicans living in California than the total population of most red states.
Doesn’t matter. They’d jump on a grenade if they could push a liberal down underneath them.
They care when it does effect them. But they can’t ever seem to forsee it.
Well, it just so happens this tragedy happened in a blue state. The only place where governing and politician’s actions are scrutinized.
If this had happened in a red state? It’s just an act of god. (Also, their cops would be considering anyone they see as looters and killing them, all while driving around in unmarked vans, wearing plain clothes and using their personal armories [to kill innocent Americans])
They will eat their own shit to spite us.
Mexico is helping while “America first” government officials are deliberately withholding aid. Absolute demons.
Mexico takes the high road and helps after all they have said and done. It speaks volumes about the Mexican politicians and shows that our conservatives are the enemies they make everyone else out to be.
they’re worse than enemies. we’ve seen enemies help each other during devastating natural disasters. countries with long history of animosity still send each other humanitarian aid in times like this.
This is “Republican America First”.
More like Make The Confederacy Great Again.
This is their version of it… Make white America great again
Homer Simpson: “White, cishet, christian-fundamentalist America”.
The entire qon thing of “California bad” is just so very fucking stupid. It’s clear they are very jealous of California, which is arguably our most important state.
I guess California and other blue states should also tie federal taxes to things of their own. Maybe even leave the union altogether, alongside with other states.
Maybe the more than 6 million people in California who voted for a Republican candidate will learn from this… Guessing not though.
Jesus, wasn’t it like a month ago and all Republicans could talk about was how biden was withholding aid from Florida. What’s the point of all these arguments if one side decidedly won’t argue in good faith?
Being hypocritical is something they embrace. It shows weakness to argue with them and they know it. They are essentially terroristic in nature and no one should ever have an actual good faith discussion with them since they have proven time and time again that they are incapable.
There’s no point, just distraction. They both want the dollar out of your pocket, all the pointing fingers is just so people don’t notice it’s ultimately the same hand.
When can I stop paying federal taxes? I don’t get anything in return for them.
I honestly think this is going to be the start of hopefully cold civil unrest. GOP will block federal aid, California and maybe other blue states will stop paying federal taxes. Red states start imploding.
Yeah except Democrats are generally too cowardly to actually go that far. The most we’ll probably see is lots of lawsuits against the federal government from blue states like during the last Trump admin.
One can only hope
States don’t pay taxes – people do. *
*And corporations.
How much longer do they think California is going to keep paying into the federal government if the federal government keeps pulling this shit?
California is the single largest net contributor to federal spending.
That’s the neat part, they don’t think.
It’s worse than you think. Many of them don’t think. But for many of them that’s the dream. Without the blue States contributing to federal government you’ve just starved the Beast that much more and hurt that many more people. It’s enough to push them over the edge and make them cum. Thinking about California doing that. It would be handing them exactly what they want.
It’s much easier to destroy than it is to build. And they are gleeful little arsonists.
They want to knock CA down because it’s a wealthy, successful state with mostly Democrats, but they don’t think far enough to realize if they succeed in damaging CA’s economy then CA can’t contribute as much to their red welfare state.
Nah, a good chunk of them know it would hurt them. They hope it would hurt the people they hate worse.
Having quite a few family members like this, trust me when I say there’s plenty of them who THINK they would happily deal with an economic crash if it meant that black/brown/gay/leftist people starved to death.
