Government

Trump Mocks Federalism, Steps Up Retaliation Against California

I just need everybody to remember what Trump is doing to California when a Democratic President comes for Texas.

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I’ll put out your fire in exchange for Wall — firefighter Donald Trump probably. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

As part of his ongoing war against the state of California, President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Transportation to revoke $929 million in federal funding for the state’s high-speed rail project. In addition, we’re told that the administration is looking for some way to make California pay pack the $2.5 billion the federal government has already given to California for the project. Trump’s reasoning behind the revocation of funds, and I’m quoting here, is “The failed Fast Train project in California, where the cost overruns are becoming world record setting, is hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!”

Seeing as this is a open attack on state sovereignty where the President of the United States is trying to coerce a state government into acting the way he wants it to, I will cede the rest of my time to all you conservative, federalists out there who are hopping mad about the President’s dangerous actions.

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Oh, you feckless hypocrites have nothing to say? Well, allow me to reclaim my time.

“We have upheld Congress’s authority to condition the receipt of funds on the States’ complying with restrictions on the use of those funds, because that is the means by which Congress ensures that the funds are spent according to its view of the ‘general Welfare.’ Conditions that do not here govern the use of the funds, however, cannot be justified on that basis. When, for example, such conditions take the form of threats to terminate other significant independent grants, the conditions are properly viewed as a means of pressuring the States to accept policy changes.” — That’s not me, that’s Chief Justice John Roberts striking down that Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act. Everybody remembers that Roberts saved the individual mandate, but his decision also held that conditioning Medicaid funds on an expansion of coverage was improper. “In this case, the financial ‘inducement’ Congress has chosen is much more than ‘relatively mild encouragement’—it is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

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The California high-speed rail project has long been mired in cost-overruns. It was supposed to connect the state’s largest cities, but in his state-of-the-state address, new Governor Gavin Newsom argued that planners had to be “realistic” about what the state can accomplish. He wants to focus on finishing the Central Valley part of the project first.

Trump falsely claimed (see how I did that there, MSM) that Newsom was canceling the project. After that lie was corrected, he claimed that Newsom “scaled back” the project, which is less patently false but not particularly accurate either. But it is, of course, the President’s right to bitch and moan about things he doesn’t understand.

Taking away the funding is a legal problem. Clawing back funding already spent is a legal impossibility. And you’d have to be a drooling idiot to think that it was a “coincidence” that Trump announced his plans to take money away from California a mere day after California became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit to block Trump’s use of national emergency powers to build his Wall.

Trump is trying to threaten California’s rail money to coerce the state into backing off the Wall lawsuit. He only thinks it will work because Trump sees everything as a transaction. I promise you, if California A.G. Xavier Becerra said that he was pulling out of the lawsuit because “we need Wall now!” Trump would release the DoT money, and then praise Newsom for making “a good deal.” He doesn’t understand how federalism works, he only understands how extortion works.

California will fight for their $929 million in court. It won’t have to fight for the $2.5 billion because there is no freaking way for Trump to make them disgorge that money, even if he was willing to back up his petulant threats with tanks.

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And I will end up being drafted into the defense of “state’s rights,” because actual conservatives and federalists are far too craven to actually stand up the monster they’ve installed in the White House.

With high-speed rail, Trump finds a new weapon in his war with California [L.A. Times]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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