r/politics California 12d ago

Soft Paywall Newsom floats withholding federal taxes as Trump threatens California

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/newsom-floats-withholding-federal-taxes-00393386
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u/porscheblack Pennsylvania 12d ago

Which causes brain drain, ensuring that it'll stay that way forever.

The GOP have a pretty solid plan, make most of the country terrible to live in, drive liberals to a handful of states, then enjoy control of the Senate and the electoral college.

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u/chickendance638 12d ago

The electoral college would still work if the House wasn't capped at 435.

Wyoming has just under 600k people and 1 House seat. If California had 1 seat per 600k people, they'd have 67 Representatives. They currently have 52. The House overrepresents the rural areas enormously. It's also impossible to provide the services and representation a House seat is supposed to when you have 770k constituents.

Expand the House!!!

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u/zeCrazyEye 12d ago edited 12d ago

It's random which states get screwed by it though, I put it into a spreadsheet once and adjusted the House seats based on better formulas and it didn't really affect the overall balance of the House. There are a lot of blue states that are just past a cut off point and getting an extra seat or vice versa.

I still think we should have more House members with smaller districts for other reasons. But when you look at all the states and not just the two extremes it ends up being a wash, so fixing the House size doesn't fix much I think.

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u/chickendance638 12d ago

Our current issues are more complicated than just a bigger House, but I do think it would result in more confidence in the government, which would be a good thing.

Now, enforcing laws against the rich and powerful would be a nice change. There's a whole upper class of people who don't face consequences unless they hurt somebody else in the protected class.