|
 |
In solidarity with the anti-ICE general strike in Minnesota, I am donating all proceeds from today’s newsletter to People over Papers, the Midway-Hamline Diaper Bank, and Every Meal. If you’re not already a paid subscriber but would like to do so and support good causes, please click below and sign up.
While the most visible sign of the administration’s war on Minnesota is ICE’s brutal and deadly occupation, it’s not the only way President Trump is attacking the state.
As punishment for the crimes of having a diverse population, not voting for him in three elections straight, and having Tim Walz as governor, Trump has also stripped or withheld billions of dollars, attempting to starve the state of resources. Meanwhile, the state, like all others, continues to pay into the federal government’s coffers.
Like many other blue states, Minnesota pays more to the federal government than it takes in. But why should the state continue to subsidize a government bent on destroying it? What if it just … didn’t?
 |
|
A few other states have already floated this idea. Legislators in Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin introduced bills to withhold federal payments way back in June of last year. Those bills would authorize the state to withhold federal funding if the state determines that the federal government is delinquent in its funding. States would withhold federal taxes collected from state employees and stop repaying federal grants.
A similar proposal in New York would allow the state to withhold federal taxes from state employee paychecks as well as an amount equivalent to any federal payments being withheld in violation of a court decision. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said his state might withhold some funds given Trump’s threats to slash billions in funds, but Newsom hasn’t specified what funds or how this would work.
All of these proposals run into the same problem: How, if at all, can a state tell the federal government to pound sand when the taxman comes around?
Could Minnesota do any of these things? As with all law-related questions in the Trump era, the answer is: it’s complicated.
Funding your own occupation
At first blush, the ability of a state to fight back when the federal government has functionally gone to war against it is pretty much zero. That’s not really a function of individual laws or case holdings, but rather is embedded in the Constitution. Stupid Supremacy Clause:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
There’s also the Sixteenth Amendment, which says that “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on income from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
Dammit.
There are any number of arguments that can be raised to justify not paying federal taxes, most of which tend to make you sound like a sovereign citizen, mumbling about how the Sixteenth Amendment isn’t real or paying taxes is an illegal search and seizure. Red states make a lot of noise about figuring out ways not to pay federal income tax to the tyrannical federal government, though maybe not so much these days.