Ah, California. Is there nothing you can’t make more ideological with every passing week? In the Golden State’s latest effort to prove that they’re really not interested in being part of the rest of the nation, California’s state government – which viciously opposes President Trump’s travel ban – has expanded their own travel ban. Of course, it only applies to state funded travel, and rather than restricting traffic with terrorist hot spots, it blocks airline tickets to states which it deems insufficiently “woke.” In this case, that would be Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and South Dakota. (Fox News)

California’s attorney general blocked state-funded travel to Texas and three other states on Thursday in response to what he considers anti-LGBT rights laws enacted this year.

Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra added Texas, Alabama, South Dakota and Kentucky to the list of places where state employee travel is restricted. Lawmakers passed legislation last year banning non-essential travel to states with laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee are already on the list.

California taxpayers’ money “will not be used to let people travel to states who chose to discriminate,” Becerra said.

California didn’t invent this idea, though they’re clearly working on being a leader in the travel ban field. New York enacted a ban on “non-essential” state funded travel to North Carolina in 2015 in response to their so-called bathroom bill. Of course, we later learned that was mostly a stunt, and any travel, be it for SUNY school purposes, “fact finding” trips or most anything else was quickly deemed to be “essential” and little actually changed.

That will likely be the case in California as well. As the linked article indicates, state law already provides immediate exceptions for a variety of reasons, including any and all contracts which were signed prior to 2017. Also, Fresno State is scheduled to play the Crimson Tide this fall. Anybody think they’re going to forfeit that game over this bill? Color me skeptical.

Hey, here’s an idea. How about if everyone gets in on this game? Maybe all of the states with a more sensible approach to immigration and law enforcement can ban state funded travel to all of the states that have sanctuary cities in them. States with no state income tax can ban travel to those which levy such taxes because of their anti-freedom agenda. And why stop there? Hell, let’s just have all of the states that voted for Trump ban travel to states that voted for Hillary and vice versa. Wouldn’t that be great?

No.. that would be stupid. The states have various reasons to do business with each other which sometimes require travel. (Though in the era of internet technology and video conferencing, voters in all states would be justified in asking why people are still taking so many trips in person and running up all those bills.) We have different states which each make their own rules because that’s how the founders planned it. They even insisted that the states respect each other’s individual choices, giving us a good hint in that direction by including the Full Faith and Credit Clause. We were never intended to be uniform nor to start these pissing contests over differences between state laws. If any of those laws are unconstitutional they will be struck down in due order through the normal process. If they hold up under challenge then the states are doing as they wish within the limits of the law and it’s not California’s job to reprimand them.

Of course, there’s a quicker solution available which could probably satisfy everyone. Calexit anyone? We allow California to secede and also split off New York City as their own state at the same time (separate from the upstate region) and then we won’t even have to change the flags. Let’s get this ball rolling, people!