The cuts to several states come amid an escalating fraud fallout fueled by a dubious YouTube investigation of Minnesota day cares.
The Trump administration on Monday said it had slashed billions in social services funds to a handful of blue states as part of its escalating response to new and unproven fraud allegations in Minnesota.
The Department of Health and Human Services will freeze $10 billion worth of federal grants to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, an HHS official told HuffPost, confirming news first reported by The New York Post.
It’s not clear whether the freeze was inspired by specific fraud allegations or solely for political reasons. Officials did not immediately provide a public explanation.
On an individual level everyone can do this today, change your federal withholding to $0 on a w4.
It’s 100% legal, and you will still need to pay taxes in April. But you can just not pay anything ahead of time. That whole process is essentially a payment plan that’s relatively new but already taken for granted of by the government.
There’s an under withholding penalty fee to prevent exactly this.
We’ve already seen enough examples of “doing things at the individual level” to know that not even close to “everyone” will be on board.
By all means, do it. But don’t expect the level of solidarity required to make the federal treasury even notice.
Things like this require collective action, and since the average american is union-phobic, the only organizations we can look to are the state governments. But since they don’t handle federal taxes, there’s not much they can do short of seceding from the union. Which would be a bit too extreme as long as there’s even an inkling of hope in a free and fair election followed by a peaceful transfer of power saving us.
In short, we’re fucked.
I’m not even pushing it, just saying technically anyone could do it easily.
I agree, and I even explained that in a different comment somewhere. I just find it highly doubtful that enough people will do it for it to make a difference.