Donald Trump is running a protection racket out of the White House, and Democratic states keep writing checks hoping the abuse will stop. It won’t. It’s time blue states fight back with the one weapon that actually scares him: money.
Trump operates with a straightforward method that is extremely harsh. Vote Democrat? Lose your federal funding. Refuse to enforce his immigration crackdown? Billions disappear. Yes. Say goodbye to infrastructure dollars. Challenge him in court? Watch your state’s congressionally approved money vanish into thin air. This isn’t governance. The president uses his official power to perform extortion.
The statistics reveal the entire situation. Trump and his budget director Russ Vought are currently blocking over $410 billion in federal funding that Congress already approved and Trump himself signed into law. They’ve frozen $18 billion for New York City infrastructure. Canceled nearly $8 billion in climate funding for 16 blue states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Notice the pattern? Every single one voted against Trump in 2024. Vought displayed the list on social media while he celebrated the elimination of what he named “Green New Scam funding.” The cruelty is the point. The targeting is deliberate. The illegality is blatant.
The Constitution has been violated according to multiple court decisions regarding Trump’s funding restrictions. Federal Judge AliKhan wrote that the administration’s “actions potentially run roughshod over a ‘bulwark of the Constitution’ by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds. “Another judge blocked Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship. A third stopped his PEPFAR freeze that would have killed millions. The court handed Trump a defeat which led him to continue his actions in various places thus triggering states to fight legal battles that dragged on for multiple years while communities faced ongoing hardship.
This is government by hostage taking. The Democratic Party continues to engage in talks with the person who has taken hostages.
Here’s what Trump understands that Democratic governors apparently don’t: power respects power. The court system produces decisions which he chooses to disregard. Congress passes laws he violates. A person who displays total disrespect for democratic principles will disregard all existing rules and past decisions. Trump communicates only through leverage because blue states possess more leverage than they understand.
Maryland’s Democratic House Majority Leader David Moon gets it. He compared Trump to a “deadbeat debtor” and introduced legislation that would let Maryland withhold payments to the federal government when Trump illegally withholds funds from the state. Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, and Washington are drafting similar bills. California’s Governor Newsom has openly discussed withholding tax payments if Trump slashes federal funding to his state.
Legal scholars clutch their pearls and cite the Supremacy Clause. The authors point out two major problems with the proposed system which include constitutional violations and insufficient legal frameworks. The critics have valid points regarding the potential dangers. The authors demonstrate complete misunderstanding of the situation. Trump has started a constitutional crisis through his direct violation of the Impoundment Control Act, his refusal to follow court decisions and his use of budget power to punish citizens based on their voting choices. The crisis is here. It’s happening now. And playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules while Trump brings a crowbar to the fight isn’t noble—it’s suicidal.
Blue states aren’t talking about some anarchist fever dream of secession. They’re considering withholding the federal taxes collected from state employee paychecks and grant payments owed back to Washington when Trump has already illegally withheld funds Congress appropriated to those states. It’s not revolutionary. It’s reciprocal. States can establish their federal responsibilities through the same method Trump uses for congressional funding by making them subject to his individual choices.
The financial amounts involved in this case are quite large. The state of California paid $806 billion in federal taxes during fiscal year 2023-24 which exceeded the combined total of Texas and New York’s federal tax payments. Blue states function as economic powerhouses which sustain the operation of the entire nation. They subsidize red states that take far more from Washington than they contribute. And Trump is telling them to shut up, comply, and be grateful when he deigns to give them back a fraction of their own money.
Trump has violated federal law thousands of times in his first nine months back in office. The funds which Congress had legally allocated to him have been seized through illegal means. He’s defied court orders. The president has used federal agencies to conduct investigations against universities while using them to silence his opponents. The president has threatened to punish governors who refuse to carry out his administration’s policies. The president has used his power to cancel disaster relief programs and freeze agricultural funding and block public health research for areas that do not support his political base. He’s running the most corrupt, lawless, brazenly authoritarian administration in American history.
And Democratic states keep hoping someone else will save them. The courts? Trump packs them. Congress? Republicans enable him. The media? Half of it cheerleads for him. There is no cavalry coming. Blue states need to save themselves.
The United States faces a critical test according to Trump who is pushing the nation to reveal whether it operates as a constitutional republic or has evolved into a more sinister system. Every illegal action he takes without consequence emboldens the next one. Each time he breaks a rule without punishment it establishes a new benchmark for what will be tolerated. Every abuse of power that receives only symbolic opposition will eventually become a regular practice. Trump isn’t trying to govern within the system. He works to destroy the system so thoroughly that all forms of resistance become impossible.
The Project 2025 agenda makes this explicit. Consolidate executive power. Weaponize federal agencies. Purge the civil service. The Justice Department requires transformation into a legal advocacy organization which would function as the president’s legal protection agency. Eliminate regulatory independence. The government needs to create a patronage system which distributes funds to states that prove their commitment to the government. Trump currently executes this strategy through his actions while Democrats issue forceful statements and show helplessness as healthcare programs disappear, infrastructure deteriorates and Alzheimer’s and cancer research funding gets eliminated.
States withholding federal payments when Trump illegally withholds their funding isn’t escalation. It’s self defense. The actual leverage they possess should be used instead of the leverage they desire. Legal experts forecast that the new policy will create more problems for the system. Worse than what? Trump is already stealing hundreds of billions from blue state residents. Courts are already being defied. Constitutional principles are already being trampled. The point at which fighting back will transition from dangerous to necessary remains unclear.
The method presents itself as straightforward to understand. Blue states wouldn’t be refusing to pay taxes indefinitely. The payments would follow the same pattern as Trump’s illegal withholding of funds thus establishing a link which his supporters would also understand. You freeze our disaster relief? We freeze our payment. You cancel our infrastructure funding? We cancel your check. It’s transactional. It’s Trump’s own language. And it might actually work.
-Sarah Mitchell, Political Correspondent for FUSA News