I'm no longer a resident of Caifornia, but California should use eminent domain to seize the forest land, or just burn it and ignore federal law. What are they possibly going to do?
What are or what could they do? The latter is basically the same as what would be done to you and me running out and torching federal forest. Jail.
He'd be the greatest folk hero we've made in a long time.
At some point politicians need to have some chutzpah.
Probably not. But you would see Calfire agents being arrested.
> some point politicians need to have some chutzpah
I agree and also asked the question [1]. As a political stunt, it might work for the individual. But it would also set a precedent most Californian voters probably wouldn't appreciate when it comes to federal land in red states. To say nothing of basically every Californian wildfire funding battle in D.C. being ex ante conceded for a few years.
Liberalism: the fear that someone, somewhere is doing something you disagree with.
But thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. If we want to make progress as a nation we have to literally love ourselves (in this case, our lungs) more than we hate those we disagree with.
You clearly haven't seen the political scene in the past decade. Both democrats and republicans have gone 180 on several issues. Democrats, supposedly the stalwarts of bodily autonomy, fully embraced mask/vaccine mandates. Election security (eg. hackable voting machines) went from being the concern of left-leaning techies to a rallying cry of election denying republicans. It's impossible to predict where alliances will lie based on a few principles.
What are they possibly going to do? Send in the army? oh no...
Realistically though if california wanted to fund and manage this i'm sure the feds would be extatic.
They do. But torching federal land might be somewhere the federal courts wouldn't find it.
Putting the matter of settled law to one side, I think the discussion here is about criminal liability, not civil.
A state could apply for a license from the Department of the Interior, but no, a state can’t take federal lands via eminent domain. This is long-settled and even a plain English reading of the Constitution makes this pretty clear. There are mountains of cases on the Supremacy Clause that support this.
If California were to use a hypothetical eminent domain to seize U.S. land, they’d have already done it with Moffett Field if only to get the property tax revenue from the Google Gulfstreams parked there.
again, we need politicians with chutzpah. Oregon recently arrested federal officials for similar environmental issues. I'm not 100% read up on the entire case, but I appreciate people trying to do what's right instead of armchair governance.
> This is long-settled and even a plain English reading of the Constitution makes this pretty clear. There are mountains of cases on the Supremacy Clause that support this.
Luckily we have a new Supreme Court makeup that might make a more sensible decision when it comes to states literally doing what needs to be done so their citizens don't literally die in infernos.