r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 19h ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/LordChunggis 19h ago

I think the founding fathers would have framed the senate a little differently if they had thought a state like California was even a possibility.

My brother and I have heated arguments on the senate. He says the senate is functioning as intended, "protection of the minority," I call it tyranny of the minority when California and New York have the same Senate representation as South Dakota and Wyoming.

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u/boo_jum Washington 19h ago

Or Alaska.

It’s bizarre to me how red Alaska is just on the fact that the government literally subsidises people to live there. (I get and very much support the Native population living in their ancestral lands; I don’t get white folks with deep red politics getting paid to live there but being deep red in their politics.)

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u/EitherSpite4545 18h ago

Hi Alaskan here let me give some context on why. So native population tends to as a whole lean Blue not wildly but by enough. Now let's move onto why white people made Alaska as a whole red despite constantly whining for more socialism but also cutting government services (our current red governor only won because he literally bribed the people saying he'd increase our pfd even though there's no money to and then over 6 years never did).

Back when Alaska first became a state in 59 we trended very very purple and would've been a swing state in a modern election. Even then the red we had in us would be what would eventually become the upcoming libertarian movement type of red and not the current christofascist red.

That all changed however when oil and gas was found in the 70s. Before that point Alaska's industry was basically all logging and fishing which would get a diverse group of people from all over the states and other countries (the state has a very large population of southeast asians because of fishing industry). When oil was discovered however the various drilling companies saw that the state was a gold mine and that the population was so low it was actually feasible to overwrite the dominant culture in the state with transplants. So the drilling companies started exclusively posting job openings for the slope in East Texas and the Deep South, almost no other state (though in the 90s East Washington and Idaho would be brought in). This in turn started a shift in our demographics as a state that caused us to go rapidly more and more red and even the nature of what kind of red it was started turning towards the puritan christian red. edit: I didn't include the reason even though it's probably obvious, oil companies realized they could get these new Alaskans to basically give them free reign over resource extraction, 0 tax, ect.

By about the mid 00's I would say was the tipping point where they took full control of the Republican party in our state and we are basically now in 2025 a deep south state that's cold.

I fucking hate it here, I hate these people so much.

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u/LordChunggis 18h ago

Thank you for the information, I've always been curious why Alaska is so firmly red.

I live in Iowa. I remember most of my early life we were considered Purple. I've gotten to see the real time decline into Red over the past 10 years.

The decline started on the state level, and federal followed. Dems local and state level ground game has got to improve, or we're going to keep getting waxxed in the long run.

I hope to see a Purple Iowa again some day.

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u/boo_jum Washington 18h ago

Thank you for the context! It's good information for people to have (I was vaugely aware of everything you just laid out, but couldn't speak so articulately to it without having invested some research).

And yeah, Alaska definitely aligns with E. Washington and Idaho, so it makes sense that they'd draw folks from there as well.

One of my besties here in Seattle is originally from Alaska (went to university in Oregon, settled in Seattle after school), and they and their spouse are leftist as fuck, but their parents (especially their father) is right-wing as fuck and it drive them up the wall because in HIS mind, their father 'pulled himself up by his bootstraps,' to make a successful life for him and his family in Alaska. But he's also the first person to start screaming bloody murder if someone even considers touching the subsidy he gets to live there. My friend has been unable to get him to see the absolute hypocrisy of that stance in 30 years of being aware of it and trying to ask him how it makes any sense.

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u/WoofLife- 18h ago

Also capping the House means more populated states have less represetation there, too. The minority is way overrepresented under the current system.

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u/GreyLordQueekual 16h ago

The Senate was originally intended to function and grow in similar fashion to the House, the idea was scrapped pretty early because the smaller farm colonies saw little reason to be beholden to the ones with major cities dealing with the expansion of early industrialization.

The Senate in the form we use has always been about minor States controlling major States, then we stupidly allowed the House to cap itself almost a century ago, all but guaranteeing more control from smaller States and adding to part of our current tyrannical minority State system.

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u/LordChunggis 16h ago

Having one chamber skew left and another skew right based off state vs. population seems like it would be decently balanced. But I only learned today, from this Reddit thread, that the House is capped.

Low pop states are getting to double dip in a clear contrast against how the system was designed to function. But I've never heard anyone talk about this problem before, have any modern politicians talked about reform on this?

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u/GreyLordQueekual 16h ago

Uncapping the House today means those 400+ politicians voting for themselves to have proportionally less power, this is a no go from pretty much all Rs and the majority of Ds. Reform within Congress must be forced by the population and we lack systems and accountability to do such things within the scope of law, even before Trump.

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u/LordChunggis 14h ago

So, it falls into the same category as term limits. It's a nice thing to have, but no politician will willingly do it. I love our politicians...

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u/i_love_rosin 15h ago

Don't forget that the House is capped. Cali should have way more reps.

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u/OneAlmondNut 13h ago

we actually LOST a rep because our population stalled despite having 40 mil ppl

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u/Worthyness 18h ago

The senate is indeed working as intended. It's the House that is not. The Senate intentionally is meant to represent the state level. The House is meant to represent the populace. The problem is the House has been artificially capped since the early 20th century meaning that it hasn't been balanced or adjusted for the massive population growth the country has had. Therefore the minority now has more representation in the entire congress than it realistically should. The house needs to have the representation readjusted to match the higher population of the country. States like California should have significantly more representatives than Wyoming.

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u/LordChunggis 18h ago

I'm ashamed to say I had no idea the House was capped. That makes a lot of things make more sense. I've long questioned why the House is always a toss up when it should skew to the left based on State Pops.

Thank you very much for the info, I'll be amending my argument in future fights with my brother.

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u/Worthyness 18h ago

yup. Historically it was capped because they literally couldn't fit anymore people in the building and didn't have the technology to broadcast the discussions live with people, so it was a realistic limitation. But in the modern day we literally can broadcast and discuss in real time from anywhere, so there's no reason that the House should be capped.

And honestly this would give a lot of representation to republican counties too. If California had more districts, there would be more republican reps from there. sure it counters by having more blue reps from other states too (like Florida and Texas), but that's really the point of the House- it's supposed to represent the people.

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u/lofi-buttes California 13h ago

The Senate isn't working as intended if it was created to represent the states and is now a voting bloc of MAGA sycophants solely focused on blocking any Democrat action and tongue-bathing the rogue president.

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u/bschott007 North Dakota 14h ago

There wouldn't have been a country formed without the Senate. The smaller states would never have agreed to the Union without a way from keeping the tyranny of the majority at bay.

Every state is equal in the union, hence the Senate. Everyone getting two senators representing their state.

The issue is underrepresentation, which per the 2020 census, the House should have about 692 representatives.

That's the issue

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u/LordChunggis 14h ago

I've learned a lot from comments in this thread. I'll be changing my argument from now on. I can't believe I didn't know the House is capped.

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u/bschott007 North Dakota 14h ago

also getting rid of the Senate is nearly impossible at this point. Article I, Section 3 of the constitution created the Senate. A constitutional amendment that revokes that section would be needed, but it would be nearly impossible.

Why?

Well an amendment may be proposed either by:

1) The Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. (you can see that you'd never get the Senators to agree to dismantle the Senate so this is a non-starter)

OR

2) A constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures (34 states). None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention, but this could happen. There are only 13 small states so 34 of the 37 large states could call this.

A proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States) regardless of the method it was purposed, and that is where the trouble is in this method...one of the 13 small states would have to vote against their own interests.

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u/IndigoHawk 18h ago

If your brother honestly believes that argument, what does he think about changing how states are made? What if we simply made a new state every time we reach another 10 million people? With that plan we'd currently have have 33 states, but we wouldn't have big or small states. They'd all be equal size.

Like if the concern is actually tyranny of the majority, then we could simply redraw states every census and add new ones if necessary. There would be no more outliers like California or Wyoming, just states with about the same size population that wouldn't be too small or too large.

It's kind of dumb to think we need the Senate to protect us from tyranny of the majority while also ignoring the massive population equality in states that creates this concern in the first place.

If it's a problem then fix it at the root by redrawing state borders instead of ignoring voters from California and claiming that Wyoming voters should have a bigger vote because they know better than everyone else how to run the country.

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u/LordChunggis 18h ago

I don't know what he would think. I'll have to pull this out next time we start arguing at Family Dinner.

I'm the token Liberal of the family, I need all the info, theories, and arguments I can get.

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u/IndigoHawk 17h ago

I doubt it will change his mind but I'm always curious to what extent people are willing to consider a better solution if I meet them part way and agree with them on the problem.

In this case, ok! Let's agree tyranny of the majority is a real and major problem. Then the electoral college is a bandaid because it's protecting us from the majority but leaves the majority intact to attempt to oppress us in other ways. Would it be ok to support a real fix instead of a bandaid? Is it worth redrawing states?

I find most people don't really think through their positions though and just repeat what they've heard. I doubt you'll get anywhere but good luck if you try!

Even if we don't agree on what a better legislative body should look like, I think it's still progress to reach agreement that the Senate and the Electoral College is not the best way to operate a democratic republic.

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u/DOG_DICK__ 17h ago

I think the founding fathers would have framed the senate a little differently if they had thought a state like California was even a possibility

Yup, it is an objectively stupid system for the modern USA. It introduces wild inefficiencies in our government, such that it doesn't reflect the will of the people. Will we ride it right into our graves? Probably.

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u/cleverpsuedonym 14h ago

Why are there two Dakotas?

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u/linkolphd 11h ago

It might be unpopular, but I think the theoretical value of the US structure is precisely that it is slow and anti-reactionary, at least historically. Part of this is that whole minority protection thing. For legislation to pass, there had to be some level of consensus.

Of course, this is all prior to us getting a live demonstration of how nonfunctional our country is if someone just ignores all the gentleman’s agreements we relied on.

If I had to redesign it, I might preserve some of this “protection of the minority” idea, but with an ability for there to be some overturn from the population representation arm. One argument for this, is that while population distribution self-evidently matters a lot, there is also some knowledge and cultural insight that can come from the different lived experiences of smaller groups, like those in smaller states. Deriving some power from that is valid.

That said, the balance is so far off now.

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u/Valderan_CA 19h ago

to be frank - California should be 4 states.

Ironically a number of those states would be potentially republican

If you were to consider the CCEA regions (https://cceanet.org/about-us/regions/) I could see two of those 4 regions being potentially republican (Region III and Region I)

It would be a hell of a lot more fair to Californians and to be frank - make a lot more sense

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u/OneAlmondNut 13h ago

lol you just want to gerrymander California

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u/Valderan_CA 12h ago

I mean CCEA is an an educational support institution, not a political one. I imagine their regions aren't "gerrymandered" but based on a thought out population distribution where the people within those regions have some commonality.

Gerrymandering implies much more artificiality - where the regions are allocated based on creating voting blocs (so not 4 roughly square regions each with a city that would make a reasonably/normal state capital.

Making California into 4 states would mean MORE representation for the average CA resident in the Senate/Presidential race. It would mean presidential candidates actually spending time & money in california and california issues being more relevant during presidential election cycles.

I think that's a good thing - it probably makes someone like Trump less likely to be elected.