Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, exactly, is the purpose of Congress? During another Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a unclear right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed additional of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.
The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from Congress too; currently, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be packed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.
And so the question of dominance of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely rendered itself powerless?
In what way ‘screw Trump’ messaging may assist California’s Prop 50 succeed
And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could provide five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the attention of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic biased redistricting while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State create their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The state measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that was recently approved in Texas, which installed boundaries that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)
The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic centralization of power and seek methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But Prop 50 is not free from controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could backfire, with blue states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is valuable taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical argument: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has not needed any motivation of retaliation to change maps that secure long-term seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other critique, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to address the Republicans’ anti-democracy shift, but a sort of sad desire for a distinct nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a better situation – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be unappealing to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is undesirable to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that elections are rendered uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian creep of the president’s control and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. Only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.
If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of stagnant government and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if the measure passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer
