Is it accurate to describe the federal funding California gets as California’s own money? Would the U.S. be poorer and weaker without California? Does California’s economy prop up red states? Is California one of the states least reliant on the federal government?
The short answer to all these questions is yes. But it’s pretty hard to win a debate with just one data point.
On January 31, 2025, Mr. Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release millions of gallons of water from Northern California dams “Fire and Flood: Federal Interference Wastes California’s Water Resources”
Joe Mathews: The flames that leveled Pacific Palisades and Malibu are believed to have started in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. (That’s you!).
The blaze that turned Altadena to ash burned through the Angeles National Forest, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the United States (you again!) Department of Agriculture.
Jill Lawrence: California is an easy target, but it’s far more than that. It would be comparable to Canada if it were its own country, and that is not as far-fetched as it seems. A poll released January 19, as Trump was about to take office, showed 61 percent of Californians favor a peaceful “Calexit” and 77 percent said California should control its state borders “more like a country.” A few days later, as Trump was about to visit, the California secretary of state cleared a petition drive to get a secession proposal onto the 2028 ballot.
Trump wants to be the president who annexed Greenland and Canada, not the one who lost California. If there’s a lesson here, it may be make love, not war, and stop referring to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.” Trump has a country. The question is whether he can keep it.
Fully 68% of Californians believe that California would be better off if California negotiated a special autonomous status within the U.S., according to a poll that my think tank, the Independent California Institute, commissioned from YouGov earlier this year…. Why might Californians want more independence from the federal government?
My fellow Californians, The results are in. A native-born Californian woman of color, Kamala Harris, has been chosen to serve as the next vice president “Californians have four years to prepare for independence”
Wildfires in California are happening more often and becoming more intense, with 2018 seeing the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in California history. By “Firescaping California with Native Fire Resilient Plants”
