Ought California Voters Vote to Redistrict and Combat Texas's Fire with Fire?
What, precisely, is the role of Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it can be hard to determine. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has also defaulted to the executive, with the White House claiming the authority to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all bills must now be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens notice. Currently, the government has been closed for the entire month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on humming along.
And so the issue of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly abolished itself?
How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail
And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more House seats to the Democratic Party if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a belated reaction to developments happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced dramatic biased redistricting while large Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s example in seeking to redistrict.)
The California measure seems likely to be approved, as Democratic and liberal voters react with concern and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have questioned the proposal on more purely ideological pro-democracy bases: a district that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it implies, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.
It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The initial critique, that the measure will spur conservatives to redraw their own districts in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to claim that Republicans will be compelled to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s measures when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The Republican party, I would observe, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been ready to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.
The other objection, I think, is more substantive, expressing not just a strategic difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a kind of sad wish for a distinct country than the one that the US has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our situation. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is harmful for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is negative that votes are rendered uncontested. That these actions have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian advance of Trump’s control and reduce the level of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a indication of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.
If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five blue representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still holds is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and legislative decline, it has utilized of that power to significant impact. In the coming years, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the authority to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist