The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding for California, an effort that could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.

Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California. Sources said the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

Singling out one state for massive cuts would be an unusual move, but Donald Trump has long made Democratic-led California a target.

  • miguel@fedia.io
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    22 hours ago

    I mean, good luck? CA is also obscenely well defended, since most of its modern wealth came from it being considered a battleground vs Japan and Russia, so there’s loads of bases.

    Most likely, this will just yet again be a defeat in court. That dude is just throwing shit against the wall and hoping some of it will stick.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      Why are people still convinced that the courts have any meaningful power anymore? The orangeboi regime has already flagrantly ignored a ton of court rulings; they’ll continue to ignore more court rulings. They don’t care. It’s not “who’s gonna let me”; it’s “who’s gonna stop me”. Orangeboi et al have inserted their own loyalist flunkies into the leadership of all the organizations that can effectively function as the enforcement of court decisions. There are no guardrails anymore. “Checks and balances” is and always was a gentlemen’s agreement, and it’s no longer being honored.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      That and the geography is an absolute mf for logistics. There’s like three good roads that cross the Sierra Nevada.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      so there’s loads of bases

      Staffed with federal employees. Fort Hunter isn’t going to protect Californians from the Pentagon. It is the Pentagon.

      Also, and this is a much bigger deal, Gavin Newsome is a cowardly little parasite. He’s not going to side with Californians on this. He’s going to grovel on his belly and lick Trump’s shoes hoping he can convince The Donald to relent.

      Most likely, this will just yet again be a defeat in court.

      So long as DOGE runs the US Treasury, it hardly matters. If Trump starts cancelling payments and reversing transactions at a California scale, he’ll drag the whole country into recession overnight. Courts can issue orders, but only the Treasury has the power to authorize payments.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      You’re assuming Trump wouldn’t also fuck over troops stationed here in California. Remember military personnel are reliant on local infrastructure in a lot of areas and if Trump starts fucking with it again the military may be caught in the crossfire.

      • miguel@fedia.io
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        21 hours ago

        I’m assuming the comment “declaring martial law” would require nat guard (natives) and stationed troops (federal) to attempt to impose order. Not sure what that has to do with local infra, but the last time they tried that (LA Riots) it didn’t go great. Doing it for a strictly political reason would likely result in some very hard decisions for a lot of nat guard and some federal career military. The Nat Guard and federales couldn’t even restore order in South Central when most of the state was in their corner, it’d be madness to think they could handle the whole state when it was over a pissing match.

        California gets roughly $162.9 billion from the fed. California pays roughly $692 billion to the fed in taxes.

        It’d be pretty easy to see them choosing to just withhold whatever Trump decided to deny them and say “fine, then we’ll just make up the offset, suck it”, and then things would get interesting indeed.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          21 hours ago

          I thought ya meant that because of how militarized the state was it’d be hard for the state to respond. I was just stating you could cut water and electricity as a response to that.

          But yeah you are right on the fact the response would at best be a mess, honestly if they were told to occupy the state they’d probably just sit around getting heat stroke and doing nothing.