California bans state-funded travel to Idaho over new anti-transgender laws

[Lisa's voting Biden]

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article243719897.html

[Non Swing Voter]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

[DaleCooper]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

Yeah, blue state imperialism is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to do. That's a great alternative to winning over the Idahoan voter.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

Yeah, blue state imperialism is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to do. That's a great alternative to winning over the Idahoan voter.

Democrats are a majority of the country by almost every metric. The only reason they don’t win more often is the built in advantage rural, less populated states have.

I’ve said for a long time the wyoming Democratic Party needs to buy build boards in the Bay Area advertising how cheap it is there…

[Mr. Matt]

"This article is subscriber-only content."

[dead0man]

Democrats are a majority of the country by almost every metric.

cite?  My Googling tells me they are in the 29% to 33% range.  The only way Dems could be a majority is if you really word the qualifiers well.

I’ve said for a long time the wyoming Democratic Party needs to buy build boards in the Bay Area advertising how cheap it is there…

poor Dems are too poor to move (I know, it sounds stupid to me too, but I've been told repeatedly that's it's actually true).  Rich dems are boring people, so they must live in places with very specific forms of entertainment (and they actually have the balls to say some of them should be subsidized by the govt!).  These people would have a hard time surviving in Atlanta or Denver, they certainly ain't moving to Wyoming.  I'd suggest maybe focusing on the working Dems, but I think all 14 of them are on strike right now.

[Hammy]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

Yeah, blue state imperialism is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to do. That's a great alternative to winning over the Idahoan voter.

Democrats aren't going to win over Idaho voters any more than Republicans are going to win over California voters.

[DaleCooper]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

Yeah, blue state imperialism is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to do. That's a great alternative to winning over the Idahoan voter.

Democrats aren't going to win over Idaho voters any more than Republicans are going to win over California voters.

I know, that's largely by choice.

[Хahar 🤔]

This sort of thing happens all the time and nobody remembers it. Do you remember which states currently forbid non-essential government travel to which other states? I sure don't.

I’ve said for a long time the wyoming Democratic Party needs to buy build boards in the Bay Area advertising how cheap it is there…

I have in fact seen billboards for Ohio along Interstate 880 in Oakland. You may note that the government of Ohio has installed these billboards despite being run by Republicans, which may indicate that importing voters for political reasons is not seen as a serious strategy.

The margin of victory in Wyoming in last year's presidential election was about 120,000 votes. Even assuming you could import 120,000 voters from the Bay Area or similar places and 100% of them would turn out and 100% of them would vote Democratic and this would not affect the politics of any existing residents, this would involve increasing the population of the state by more than 20%. Wyoming certainly has the space to accommodate an increase of its population by 20%, but it has neither the housing stock nor the available jobs nor the other facilities to do so immediately. Changing that would not be so cheap and probably people would catch onto the Wyoming Democratic Party's planned great replacement of the Wyoming electorate.

poor Dems are too poor to move (I know, it sounds stupid to me too, but I've been told repeatedly that's it's actually true).  Rich dems are boring people, so they must live in places with very specific forms of entertainment (and they actually have the balls to say some of them should be subsidized by the govt!).  These people would have a hard time surviving in Atlanta or Denver, they certainly ain't moving to Wyoming.  I'd suggest maybe focusing on the working Dems, but I think all 14 of them are on strike right now.

As I imagine you know, rich Democrats love Wyoming. It's hard to think of any place more stereotypically for rich Democrats than Jackson. As for other people, well, you can find figures suggesting that people are far less likely to move between states than they were fifty years ago. A lot of this presumably has to do with the difficulty of finding a new job wherever you end up; office jobs are differentiated in ways that are often vague, thereby impeding transferability, while a lot of skilled labor nowadays is subject to professional licensure requirements. This is the sort of thing that it's hard to see fixed because it's not clear whose interests it'd serve to do so.

Poor Democrats are obviously also a lot likelier to belong to distinct ethnic communities. If the unskilled work you can get in Wyoming isn't any better than the unskilled work you can get at home and you aren't sure if there are any Salvadorans in Wyoming, you're probably going to stay home. My parents are not rich or unskilled, but speaking anecdotally, they seem to be terrified that I will be subject to a hate crime if I ever venture outside a major metropolitan area. Obviously I disagree with this because I've driven extensively across this country and have loved all of it and have never been mistreated in any way, but that can't compare to a half-remembered story of what happened to a friend's cousin in Alabama in 1991. Nowadays I just don't tell them where I'm going.

[Big Abraham]

Isn't this blatantly unconstitutional?

Article IV, Section 2 guarantees that states cannot discriminate against citizens of other states, or travel between them. They must give people from or to other states the same fundamental rights to its own citizens.

Crandell v Nevada declared that freedom of movement is a fundamental right and therefore a state cannot inhibit people from leaving the state by taxing them (or in this case, banning state-funding travel to a certain state for political reasons).

[DrScholl]

Isn't this blatantly unconstitutional?

Article IV, Section 2 guarantees that states cannot discriminate against citizens of other states, or travel between them. They must give people from or to other states the same fundamental rights to its own citizens.

Crandell v Nevada declared that freedom of movement is a fundamental right and therefore a state cannot inhibit people from leaving the state by taxing them (or in this case, banning state-funding travel to a certain state for political reasons).

You are not reading correctly. It doesn't ban residents of California from traveling to Idaho (that would be unconstitutional), it just bars state funds from being used to travel there. Meaning that state employees can't be required to travel there and that state funds can't be used to pay for state employees travel expenses.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is mindless virtue signalling. It'd be the same if Texas did the same thing to protest CA gun laws.
States should not do this sort of thing to each other.

[Big Abraham]

Isn't this blatantly unconstitutional?

Article IV, Section 2 guarantees that states cannot discriminate against citizens of other states, or travel between them. They must give people from or to other states the same fundamental rights to its own citizens.

Crandell v Nevada declared that freedom of movement is a fundamental right and therefore a state cannot inhibit people from leaving the state by taxing them (or in this case, banning state-funding travel to a certain state for political reasons).

You are not reading correctly. It doesn't ban residents of California from traveling to Idaho (that would be unconstitutional), it just bars state funds from being used to travel there. Meaning that state employees can't be required to travel there and that state funds can't be used to pay for state employees travel expenses.

Yes, I'm aware. I specifically mentioned state-funded travel in my post. This is still discriminatory towards other states, however, and denies the right of state travel funds to other states (Idaho in this case) that would ordinarily be available. The Court has consistently emphasized that—under the dormant commerce clause of the Constitution—states may not enact legislation that affects interstate commerce, nor inhibit free travel between the states. This ban on state-funded travel does that in both instances.

It's obviously an attempt to force Idaho and other states to amend or repeal existing legislation relating to sexual or gender issues. Although the majority of state-implemented travel bans today are implemented to effect positive change—deterring discriminatory laws—these bans are themselves discriminatory and there is no guarantee that these bans would always be used justly. For example, a Tennessee assembly bill banned state-funded travel from California simply because California banned them first. California has potentially opened what could become an economic civil war between the states.

[Hammy]

more states need to do sh** like this.  Red state economies are A LOT more dependent on blue states than vice versa.  We could easily destroy their economies until they cut out their crap.

North Carolina caved on its anti-trans law after it was getting destroyed by boycotts.

Yeah, blue state imperialism is exactly what the Democratic Party needs to do. That's a great alternative to winning over the Idahoan voter.

Democrats aren't going to win over Idaho voters any more than Republicans are going to win over California voters.

I know, that's largely by choice.

In a way that's correct--the Democratic Party is choosing, rightfully, not to embrace anti-American, anti-intellectual, or deranged antisocial conspiracy theories, and choosing not to become a clone of the Republican Party. That is about the extent that this is "largely by choice."

Isn't this blatantly unconstitutional?

A state deciding how to use it's own tax dollars is not unconstitutional, as it is neither preventing people from moving freely, nor does it tax anybody (nobody is guaranteed a right to state funding to move/travel to another state).

To claim this is unconstitutional is, at best, a gross misreading of your own cited case, or more likely outright intellectual dishonesty.

[Big Abraham]

A state deciding how to use it's own tax dollars is not unconstitutional,

It is when it openly discriminates against another state for political purposes, and inhibits interstate commerce, as I mentioned in my previous post.

(nobody is guaranteed a right to state funding to move/travel to another state)

Now this is just false. Plenty of public universities and other state institutions are guaranteed the right to state-funded travel. Except, of course, for those Trump states Sacramento apparently doesn't like.

[Del Tachi]

Gee, I wonder how many state-funded trips to Idaho California public employees have been making recently?  (Hint: zero)

Regardless, the law is vapid virtue signalling of the lowest possible kind, evidenced by how it's not even that effective of a ban.  Mission-critical and agency director-approved travel is still authorized and the ban only applies to state travel funded with general revenues, not special or dedicated funds.